This week has been gorgeous in the weather department. Gorgeous for December anyhow. I’ve ridden on my lunch break or extra after work every day so far, and I plan to do the same tomorrow. Being as it has been basically cold and shitty the previous couple of weeks, I had been racking up a stellar case of cabin fever. Tomorrow’s supposed to be crazily nice – like 50+ degrees, so I’m probably going to ride on my lunch hour as well as after work before meeting up with a friend for dinner.
Because it’s been pretty warm, I was able to run my camera on video mode the other day (I can’t go bare-handed when it’s super cold, and I can’t video with gloves on.) I made good on my threat to do video of that cycling pathway that gets shat upon by roosting starlings. So. Here is a video of Starling Poo Alley. I also got a little bit of the cool bike/ped bridge under the highway, but it’s really too dark to be appreciable. I’m obviously going to have to do video of the bridge in daylight because even the mighty TriNewt wasn’t able to illuminate the bridge and gates well enough to video them at night.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC87RFOurNc&rel=1]
I say “poo” about a hundred and forty times within 3 minutes. It’s pretty awful. Then again, so is that 30′ stretch of bikepath which is paved in bird-shit.
That same night, I took a couple of pictures of the outside of the Strawberry Hill Museum, since I was on my way over to Joel’s house and he lives just up the street from there. They decorate it up like electric insanity for Christmas, and it really ought to be seen in person to be appreciated. From the street, and even from the highway it looks very like a riverboat gambling casino. Given the general architectural whackiness of your average Queen Anne Victorian, you can imagine that the addition of heroic quantities of christmas lights creates a totally giddy image.
I wish I had some pictures of the crazed decorating job they do on the inside, but alas, I do not. This lady on Flickr has some pictures in her set just recently of a house/museum in her area that approach a similar level of “OMG, Michael’s Crafts just exploded all over the inside of this cool old house” so if you view her recent photos, you will get an idea of what they do to the old Scroggs House.
Besides taking pictures of fearfully and wonderfully decorated historic houses and video-recording pooping birds, I have been making deliveries. I have taken boxes to the post-office twice, and delivered bags of goodies to a handful of folks in the past couple of weeks. The above picture is from my last jaunt, when I mailed off the presents for my nephews an niece and delivered the last half-dozen bags of cookies. On Flickr I have described the rig you see above as Santa’s sleigh, if I am santa. Santa’s Sleigh has a lot of Captain Underpants stickers on it, to be honest. And a very hokey mudguard in back.
I am a bit surprised you ride around that area after dark, having grown up and work in part of the city…well…seems a bit risky for a pretty girl to be riding her bike around under the overpasses.
Are you part of the Serb/Cro community there on Strawberry Hill?
I have wanted to check out that bike trail several times. I have driven by it on many occasions and thought it might be a good ride. Where does it dump out at? I have seen the entrance there just North of James St.
Well, it’s no worse than the neighborhood I live in – I live in the Old Northeast, off Hardesty. I’ve never been hassled going through the West Bottoms, whereas I get hassled (mostly yelled sexual innuendo) fairly regularly in my neightborhood. I find that I feel a lot safer on a bike anyway. Somebody on foot might holler at me and leer, but they can’t do much beyond that. I pass by pretty damn swiftly.
That bike trail doesn’t go much of anywhere. It goes up to where the parking lot for the EPA building is, and it goes down to just shy of the water treatment plant a street south of Woodsweather. It maybe goes all of 10 blocks total. But the little bridge is handy to get across the river and not have to deal with the junction of three streets an on ramp and an off ramp. I can bypass that nasty intersection and just have to cross the two streets that come in from the Kaw Point area.
Ya, that area is a bit rough. Ever thought of moving? You strike me as more of the crossroads loft kind of person (I mean that in a good way).
Not that I actually know anyone who lives in the crossroads area….anyway.
Glad you took advantage of the weather to ride yesterday…cuss it sucks out there now. I inherited two winter bike projects yesterday which make being trapped indoors a bit more bearable.
A nice older Peugeot that is destined to be my first single speed bike:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/4436/peugeot1fg1.jpg
Then I bought this great older Raleigh that will be cleaned up and updated:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/9008/raleigh1ez2.jpg
I dig the two color factory paint they put on the Raleigh:
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3582/raleigh2bv2.jpg
Then I have my other project which I can’t seem to finish. Bought this Giant road bike off a guy in Topeka. Stripped it down and ran it through my powder coat system at my work, shot it a nice Red with a couple coats of clear coat to make it look “wet”. I need to get this thing finished:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/8779/giant1jx0.jpg
I have a metal fab shop over in KCK so I have been playing around with cutting different parts on the plasma cutter and stuff. I also just got in some cool midnight blue metalic powder for my powder coat system, will be interesting to see what that looks like on a bike or some rims.
I digress…off to tape the “Ole Crow Medicine Show” concert on Austin City Limits tonight. I need a shot of funky bluegrass on a crap weather day.
Paz
Wardrive
Well, the River Market is a bit too high rent for my budget. Also, I really like having a yard and not having to worry about being too loud (not that I am usually particularly loud, but still…some apartment neighbors are just plain cranky about any sound they personally didn’t make).
Fun bikes you’ve got on deck. It’s awesome to have projects. I have a few projects lined up, myself. An old 3-speed which needs a little TLC, my purple art-project bike, and the ol’ Debutante could use some attention in the form of re-packing the bearings.
the Giant looks great…good shade of red. Powder-coat is some awesome stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing the metallic blue when you put that to use. Word of warning – if you do your rims, expect your braking to kind of suck until you wear the coating off the braking surface. I had a set of black powder-coated Sun rims for my singlespeed, and they were a total bummer until I’d worn the powder coating off the braking surface. For that period of time, I had to work with a faith-based braking system. Lots of prayer, not much stopping.