street art

2 blocks from my house.

Forsaken

Who knows why but after a summer of riding and hating the rain we threw in the towel on a night of pleasure pedals for cans of beer due to the wind. What a freaking lame excuse we pulled out but it was the best we could do. I guess most cyclists would look down on the lurker and me for not feeling like riding after commuting by bike all week in piss poor rainy conditions then trashing a breezy Friday night ride for piss, in a can. yet we did so like it or lump it. After several beers and few arguments we headed over to the trendier sites that offer fashion sense over riding and felt upon the vimeo links. I'm not sure what vimeo is but I am dead sure it doesn't have Urkel dance links. There we found people doing stuff on bikes that we both laughed at and then claimed we could do. To those guyses dismay we found out we could do their tricks and to our dismay we had fun doing it. Thus.........the no hand skid whilst drinking a beer. We went through 3 beers taking this.

Zombies abound

Here it is. The second installment of the pre scary night ride. I have no idea how many people will show up and I myself will be surprised if it actually happens but a boy can dream.

idle days

The sign has a list of rules to follow while you are in the parking of 711. Most of them are common sense and you would follow them whether they were posted or not. Making noise for example. How many people do you know go to a 711 in the suburbs late at night and start screaming or setting off fireworks? Not too many I hope. We had our post ride beer and laughed at how it would be fun to adjust the sign with lewd comments or change the pictures etc. The background music to our conversation was the loud idling of a truck while the driver was inside slaving over the microwaves provided to make his supper. He must have been rick to let a behemoth of a vehicle like that run unattended because gas prices are getting higher and higher everyday. After preparing his tasty cup noodle and sticky rice he came out to chow down while sitting in the driver's seat. I half expected him to have a beer with his meal because he seemed like the kind of person who wasn't content with just breaking one rule. We continued talking about how it would best if we did a 100km ride before November so we would be in shape for the winter to come.


After ditching our juice bottles and cans we decided to head to out to around the neighbourhood to see if there were any other interesting things around. It was then that we noticed that Goldilocks had thought it best to have a little post nosh nap. At this point in time the truck had been running for just under an hour. Sweet. With all the ECO life and save the world garbage floating around in the media today I was glad to see that not everybody is buying the hype.

Kicking myself

This past week was 270 kms of kicking myself that I left the camera at home so that my wife would be able to take baby shots at her leisure. I am not saying that my wife has a job on the side but that she always takes photos of the baby when the go to the park. The whole entire fricking week all I saw was knuckleheads doing their thing as they drove. Some of the more notables were:

1. The guy in the Porsche that was dogging me the entire hill climb into Sangenjaya. I bet there's nothing like the feeling a race before sitting in traffic for an hour. The intense speed, split second decisions and wheel sucking an over weight foreigner as he commutes to work on a rust bucket of a bicycle. The worst part about it was that when he eventually past me he was talking on his phone and rolled through a stale red light. I wish that I had had my camera so that I could've caught the moment on digi film to show my friends. "and this next shot is the douche that could have driven right by me but decided to stay close behind and rev his engine. Fucktard.

2. The white BMW driven by a tropical island castaway. I bet the guy loves the fact that he drives a BMW and I also wager that he has quite few things inside that add to that living room/head up my ass while driving ambiance. I bet he loves the inside of his car so much that he doesn't even know what colour the outside is or what side his gas cap is on. How can I be so sure you're wondering. Because anybody that can get in their car, start the engine and drive away down a crowded street without noticing that their front tyre is completely flat must have no idea about anything but the steering wheel and the search button on their dash mounted ipod. I knocked on the window several times and when his bucktoothed slug of a girlfriend finally acknowledged I pointed at the wheel and told them that it was flat. So shocked were that they both tried to look out the passenger window while driving. Another clue to how much of toad penis that the driver is. I even heard him exclaim "oh, that's why........".

3. Old man Bianchi. This guy is the best thing since steak sandwiches. I have seen him quite a bit since I started commuting by bike and he always has his signature darth vader gas mask on and multiple lights on his rig. One night we hustled from Shibuya to Komae and he laughed out loud when I intentionally scared some slow moving oblivious fixsters by blowing my whistle whilst approaching. I saw him the other day fixing a flat a sans mask and he must be in his forties at least. He is the kind of guy that the homeless theory sprung from because our chance meetings our cool but I wouldn't ask him to stop for a beer. After all he has does have too many lights for my liking.

Funny...............I guess

I just got home from work and decided that peanut butter would be the best thing to compliment a shower. I was right, bread was wrong. Nothing beats peanut butter and I'd step into a ring to defend that. Maybe not the American ring where they hold a 16 year old prisoner and beat him till he looks the old shaky lady but a fair one yes indeed. The thing about peanut butter is that it cost more than I can afford and then even more than my friends abroad who don't send me butter can afford. Even when I say " Hey Dave, you're headed back to Barrie to visit your family and then back into to Toronto to see your brother........., could you grab me some peanut butter?" all I get is "It's not good for you and you don't need it". How the heck did he that heroin was next on my list. Anyway back to the peanut butter. When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to do fuck all. I looked up to the kids who were able to openly watch cartoons in front of their parents. Under the iron fist the only thing I had was to sneak peanut butter and, oddly enough, a small black and white TV into my room on Friday nights. I had bunk beds because they were hand me downs despite being born a single bastard and I would hide the TV on the first bunk while hanging a sheet down from the top. The reason I did this was so that I could watch kids in the hall and not get grandma censored from all the funny parts. This skit I came across made me laugh and I thought "yeah. Being a bike is really a shitty job". To find out what I used to do with the peanut butter you'll have to ask around.

Free bike!

recently that guy in Toronto who probably has two partially worked in Brooks saddles in his collection was busted for possession of over 2000 stolen bikes. It's really sad that someone could go on stealing that many bikes and get away with it. I don't mean sad in the sense that he is sick and probably has some sort of velo kleptomania but sad that nobody ever caught him despite knowing who he was. If he had started spray painting his name on walls in the summerhill area they would have organized a task force and busted everybody buying spray paint in the GTA but he didn't. He stole bicycles. I am not claiming that I am any better because I have stolen a bike before. It was behind the station in a garbage truck. I also purchased what I believed to be a stolen bike and tried to cleanse my throbbing conscience by telling myself the guy had found it in the garbage. Sad isn't it. Sadder still is that the above pictured bike was outside my workplace and may as well have been locked up with a noodle. Oh had the frame been my size. Through out the day I took my breaks outside and was in awe to find it still intact, I had been expecting to find a securely locked front wheel safe from the evil elements surrounding it. One of my coworkers, a fellow cancuk, pointed out that one could easily swap front wheels and flee the scene leaving a bewildered velo owner to find my poor excuse of a commuter bike instead. Alas after a hard days work I found that the owner had safely guided their steed out of the valley of death and was probably safely home in the shower with the large screen LCD televiision sitting out on the sidewalk where nobody would think of stealing it.

Super fast

I thought this clip was sick because I live in Japan and you can turn on the TV during the summer and find Theo Bos interviews after Keirin events. On one occasion the announcer handed Theo Bos a pointer and the translator, heard over the mic, told Theo to point out the region he liked best on a certain buxom young woman that was standing next to him. A bewildered Theo asked for clarification in Dutch and seemed doubly shocked that he hadn't misheard. I guess he was expecting questions about racing or competition or at least something relevant to cycling. The reluctant Bos pointed at the girls legs, which upon further examination weren't that great. The shocked and dismayed announcer explained that they thought he would have pointed at the woman's overflowing bra. I guess that's why she had been chosen despite her bubbly personality. Never the less I still believed him to be the fastest human on a track bike. I mean he had broken the previous record that had stood for nine years. when I saw this clip I was really into it because you can see how fast they are going plus the strategy that is falling into place. Australians might be really really fat but at least some of them will be ready when all the oil dries up and the road warrior emerges.

new brooks?

anyone want this? looks crazy and hilarious, but strangely sick - part of a new Brooks line of natural saddles.
or how 'bout the new white Brooks(hands off)? any takers? trouble is, once the sweat begins to seep from the ass pores and the dye from your jeans bleeds in, you're gonna have one nasty looking saddle...that'd be sick if you were a girl and got your period while riding and there was a big red spot in the middle and all these hipster douches would be coming up to you asking you where you got the custom Japanese flag model Brooks.....stilllllll guyyyyyyy!!!!!!
(photos stolen from velo orange)

Velowe'en

This year we are getting on the planning earlier than we thought we could. Working under the "more peeps equals more free beer" theory we joked about organizing a super short ride, about 20 minutes total, to a close by park. After a few beers and some more jokes about how no matter what we did it would only be me and the lurker anyway we made this. The content is vague and shoddily thrown together but we had fun doing. I can't guarantee that there will be more but we did try for a Frankenstein look. The bike stand kept sliding off my neck though.

Mah teeth!

The lurker had a rough couple days and everything seemed to go against him. He got a flat and when he tried to fix it his pump broke. So he hopped on his mountail bike and scooted out to the not so nearest bike shop that didn't have the part he needed. The it was off to another bike shop that decided to be closed that day thus turning him around to check 2 other bike shops, one not having the part and the being closed due the staff being away with the Japanese national cycling team. He finally found the part at a shop that was actually close to his house. Then the rain came. We had 8 days of straight rain and crappy weather just to make sure we couldn't ride our bikes. When we finally met up for our ride his chain popped off and he skidded to a stop where, upon further examination, he noticed the one of the teeth had been sheared off his front chain ring. An excellent start to the ride. After that he lost a ring from his finger while fixing the chain. Talk about shitty luck.

The one you love....................

The process is long and you have to figure if it's worth it in the long run. "my house is only 9 minutes from the station" yet you know that walking that 9 minutes could possibly make you late or allow you to hold an umbrella and smoke while checking your text messages without running into someone. Yet your here, the bicycle shop, where you need to figure out whether you're going to ride or walk away. The away part echos in your head and you remember that it took over 11 minutes to walk here because there wasn't a bike shop closer to the station. F it all in the end because it's only a hundred and forty bucks and you can't stand walking to the stationanymore. Get that commuter bike and let her roll! Roll all over town, to the river, to the shop and fucking beyond! You aren't walking anymore, you're coasting and what could be better!?! Fuck, the Tokyo police have nothing better to do than to sit around and make sure someone isn't jacking your laziness wheeler. They pay full on task forces to hang out in the rain and hassle people commuting by bicycle so why would you ever questions yourchari'ssafety. yet there she lay at the river. Reviving an Eloi after puller her out of the water would be less hassle because drowning chicks don't rust and the cops don't care about dead chicks. Had I brought this bike home I could lose my visa and possibly get locked up but someone can buy and leave it there for fucking ever. It's 2 months and standing so I welcome her to the urban decayathon. Everytime I see one of these, or several hundred, laying on the street I wonder if the person was happy riding it home from the shop or they knew that in six months they were just going to ditch it and get a new one.

Not just a Greek sandwich

I have no idea why the police honked and turned on the siren when The Dr. and I went by. bye bye pinch cycle is what I thought. they were barking over the roof top mounted loud speaker that he shouldn't be riding without hands. I was a little(distraught) because I thought they were on about me not having updated my foreign registration card and that they were going to take my family away. If they had only known that this was on the market then they wouldn't have fussed. Who needs this? I guess drunk people or people who just started riding a bike because they love Greek people. loving Greeks is wrong and should be the new death sentence because my grandmother, on my fathers side, did it and look at the filth you're reading.