FEED ME

In case this fact has gone unnoticed, I have feeds at the bottom of my blog for cycleicio.us, treehugger and gristmill. All three are blogs that have a whole lot more important stuff to talk about than I do, so please check them out. All three are also in my links.

My brother Gabe moved to LA this month and his coworkers decided to fill his office with bicycles to show him they'd miss him.

Yet another reason that cars suck.

My grandparents were visiting in November and we went out to eat at a restaurant in Yuba City. Afterwards I was driving back into Marysville over the 10th St. bridge and was pulled over. I had no idea why I was being pulled over, as I wasn't breaking any laws. The officer was amazingly rude and after badgering me about not producing my info fast enough he took his sweet time writing me a speeding ticket saying I was traveling at 60+ MPH over the bridge. He then badgered me about my signature, saying it didn't look like my name. Then he grumpily told me to stay where I was until he was gone and he drove away. Had I been speeding I would have chalked it up to bad luck and moved on with my life; I'm quick to admit when I've made a mistake, but I hadn't. I contested the ticket, payed my bail and waited for months for my court date, which was today. After waiting through an hours worth of trials and listening to the group of police officers giggling in the corner every time a guilty verdict was awarded my name was called. The officer and I were sworn in and he gave his version of events. The "proof" that I was speeding: he paced me. When he was done, I gave my version of events and pointed out the following:
- I don't speed, hence my clean record.
- I especially don't speed over that bridge, because I got a speeding ticket there in highschool.
-I was behind a group of cars, and we were all stopped at the light in front of the bridge, so we would have all had to burn rubber getting up to 60+ MPH in that short stretch.
-I don't freaking speed.
I said I don't know why he chose to pull me over, perhaps he mistook me for someone else, misread his speedometer, etc. I wasn't freaking speeding. He said the court finds me guilty, end of story, would you like traffic school. !@#$%^??!!!!! This is proof beyond a reasonable doubt? This is why I'm not interested in working in our legal system grandpa.

www.coffeemonk.info

This blog can now be accessed directly by enterining the url www.coffeemonk.info

Yes, bigfoot does live here.

They're on to us, CBS 13 news is reporting that bigfoot may in fact live in Plumas National Forest.

Full story.

hummus, hummus, hummus!

Max and I had a dinner date tonight so I made us a meal inspired by those served at Cafe Yumm in Oregon. I prepared cilantro brown rice, black beans with lime and a chipotle hummus sauce. I made the sauce this morning following my normal hummus recipe but I added two chipotle peppers (seeded and stemmed) and a dash of paprika, then stirred in about two tablespoons of EVOO and some nutritional yeast, thus producing a variation of the recipe for chipotle Yumm sauce. Then we spooned some beans and rice onto our plates and topped it off with the sauce, a squeeze of lime, a garnish of cilantro and a few slices of avocado. It was delish. We also bought some skinny cow ice-cream sandwhiches earlier so we're set for the night.

Ghetto/bootleg Latte

Several news sources have reported recently the fact that some people order a double-espresso in a large cup at starbucks and then add a few ounces (as many as 20 ounces) of milk or cream at the condiments counter, thereby creating a luke-warm latte. Further, these people then aparently microwave the drink at their home or office.

full story here

I started to write a lengthy post on the legal, moral and financial implications involved in ghetto lattes, but it boils down to one thing: starbucks espresso isn't very good when it's fresh, so after you douse it in milk and microwave it, it's just plain bad. Save yourself the time and trouble and spend it finding a good, local coffee roaster and a decent coffee machine so you can make your own fresh coffee at home. Add a splash of milk and you've got a much tastier and healthier and less shady alternative to your ghetto latte. Worried about time? Take a single-cup brewer or a french-press to work with you. Stop the insanity, what you save in money you lose in taste and self-respect.

There isn't much on this planet that's more beautiful than a pretty girl riding her bike. The cello on her back is just the icing on the cake.

DUI driver sentenced to 19 years in prison for death of Palo Alto cyclist.

Seen on cycleicio.us:

Santa Clara County Judge Rise Jones Pichon gave 19 years in prison to a Fremont felon today who capped a meth binge by lethally smashing his Oldsmobile head-on into an engineer who was spinning his bike through the sunny Palo Alto Hills.Court records allege that Chevelle Bailey was high on methamphetamine and alcohol when his car hit John Peckham, a Mountain View amateur bike racer, on Old Page Mill Road at an estimated 60 to 90 mph.Witnesses told police that Bailey opened a beer after the crash and said: 'I thought I was going to die, but I got out of the car like a soldier, cracked a beer and downed it.'

read on

Nerds are fun!!!

The top picture is of me filming an impromtu jam session and the bottom picture is one I took of Buzz Aldrin during his keynote address. I was in Los Angeles last week working as videographer/editor for PCB007, a printed circuit board industry news zine. We were covering the IPC Expo/APEX and Designers' summit at the convention center. The show was enormous and our schedule was exhausting; I personally worked an average of 15 hours a day and I was barely pulling my own weight. Some of the highlights of the show were keynote speakers such as Buzz Aldrin and the "Mythbusters" Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, as well as a gala at the Calfornia Science Center complete with gogo dancers. Oh, and Stormtroopers. Nerds like Star Wars, who knew? It was a big event. It struck me many times this week that I've never even considered who makes those little green plastic cards that are in all of our electronics and yet there's a whole subculture of people who's life-blood is spent toiling over every detail of them. There were freebies too. Tons of them. I scored a sweet commuter mug and a messenger bag. Oh, and tons of pens.

My kind of SUV

This is a Surly Instigator mountain bike built up with a Xtracycle into a very classy SUB-commuter with two kids seats. I stole the image from the Surly Blog to show here because it makes me smile every time I look at it.

my bike haiku

curious machine
your passenger and engine
are one and the same

white trash

This afternoon when I left work, I met up with an old friend who wanted to get lunch. He suggested we take his truck to the restaurant because he had little faith that I would make it the whopping two miles from my work. On the drive there, he showed me his new tattoo (a cross with his parents’ names above it and “por vida” in gangster script below). I rolled down my window to avoid inhaling too much of his cigarette smoke. We arrived at our destination intact and had a lovely lunch; then—at his insistence—we walked around the mall for a few minutes before heading back to where my bike was locked up. He lit another cigarette and turned down the rap music he was blaring to ask, “So you ride your bike to work everyday?”
“Yes,” I answered, glancing nervously at the wheel that he was controlling with his gut, all the while ignoring the road completely. He threw his cigarette out the window, and it landed in his half-primered bed, in the middle of a pile of Mountain Dew bottles. Then, without looking back at me, he said, “Riding your bike is white trash.”
I looked down at the torn, stained upholstery of the bench-seat. My gaze ran across the seat to his baggy, ripped denim shorts, half-hidden by his giant, faded blue t-shirt that hung loose over his enormous belly. Then I glanced up to his eyes, barely visible behind his plastic sunglasses.
“Yup.”

scientists bribed to dispute global warming report

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)....
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees....
read the complete article