maplewood bicycle

(photo courtesy of maplewood bicycle's website)

i first walked in to maplewood bicycle when it was on sutton avenue in 1978. i was sporting the webco that my parents had bought for me, and i was always on the lookout for trick bmx racing parts for it. after some years, they moved over to the current location on manchester road. and i was still going in there, pestering the staff about trick bmx racing parts.

i became friends with many of the employees then, and i continue some of those friendships today. i had talked to then-owner rich morris several times about working for them, but nothing ever worked out. on monday morning, after 32 years of pestering the staff for trick bike parts, i'm going to work for them.

my consignment business has run it's course. it has been a good experience and earned money for my family at a crucial time. i used a lot of my work experience and used a lot of my connections to get it up and running in an incredibly short time. within two weeks of leaving my old job, pedalbrakepedal was a legitimate ebay store and my house was full of merchandise to sell for a miraculously receptive customer base. i am very thankful for that. i am very, very thankful to everyone who has used the business to get rid of their old stuff and bring in the new.

again, i can't thank any of you enough. i know many of you have friends and connections at bicycle stores, but i would love to see all of you stop by and say "hey" at maplewood.

and, after my current crop of things are gone from my ebay store, i hope never to sell anything on ebay again!

2010 fisher superfly

so it's ready to go. brakes bled. stem fit. steerer tube finally cut to length.
i may need new tires. scratch that. i will have new tires before it's race time.
drivetrain works flawlessly. inner tube chainstay protector representing.

saturday afternoon

a very nice day, weather wise, on saturday. eli is still getting over his bout with pneumonia, so we did have to limit the outside time. we had to stop by 7-11 on our way out to get the slurpee's and gum. the dogfish hat kept his little ears warm.
all happy from slurpee infusions, the kids were ready to go. where? anywhere but home.
mrs k finally got a chance to drive her future vehicle. the kids were all over the dealership, and lucky for me eli kept running around the new mustangs (a 2010 gt and gt500) which makes me truly believe he is my child.
a quick stop at quizno's so hanna could test out her new theory on how many cheetos she could hold in her mouth while maintaining a straight face. deanna was also trying an alternative theory, how many cheetos she could put in her mouth and keep it closed. i did not participate in the testing, choosing to swallow my cheetos instead.

hi hanna!

going forward, upward, elsewhere

where do you want to be? tomorrow, next week, next month, ten years from now? does the specific goal matter? or, is just going forward, upward, elsewhere a goal in itself?

some people are born with a personal planner in their soul, one that tells them at any given moment where they are, where they came from and where they should be. there is a laser like focus in their life that pulls them toward something, somewhere. there is a lot to envy and admire about those people.

what if that's something you want, but the drive is just not there? i think most people go through their lives with major and minor goals, and sometimes both are sharp and in clear view and sometimes they lose their way. They find impetus again, or they change direction, or they resume with varying levels of commitment to those old goals. and sometimes, i'm sure, they never regain the drive for "more" again.

a piano drops on your head. a meteor lands in your yard. the proverbial light bulb goes on, bright and vivid. of course you'll recognize your star and chances are, you'll follow it. that's easy. what happens if you're not lucky enough to have an epiphany like that?

forward. upward. elsewhere.

where is my piano?

themistocles

themistocles, athenian politician and naval general, 524-459 b.c. and i'm themistocles as well. it's a very rare name, and i've never met another. hell, i've not met too many people who can even pronounce it.

you know how you get stuff in the mail...you know, junk? we seem to get a lot of stuff from barnes-jewish hospital. we get these glossy pamphlets that look sort of like prospectuses. tonight, while watching the pixar shorts with the little general, deanna was looking through the junk mail and said: "look! a guy named themistocles!"

well, knock me down and call me nancy. there it was, in black and white and glossy colors. a doctor from the wash u medical school named themistocles. i knew there were others, but surely they were in the halls of the grecian aristocracy, or in a turkish prison. funny that one of them shows up here in st. louis.

and guess what he's a doctor of? inflammatory bowel diseases.

i can't make this stuff up.

the olympics

and so the winter olympics have started. more thrills, chills, and spills. hopefully, no more deaths. i am very dismayed that the network chose to show the actual footage of the luge rider on his failed run. not needed, not necessary.

although i have been an "athlete" i suppose since i raced my first bike race in 1979, i didn't pay much attention to sport in general. i don't remember ever watching a whole football or baseball game. i'm sure i watched the wide world of sports on abc just to see that skier go down in the agony of defeat, but that was the extent of my interest in sport.

that changed in 1984. that summer, i happened to be around the tele a lot and caught a bunch of the summer olympic games. i got hooked. i got hooked on sports i didn't like. i was inspired by wrestling of all sports. wrestling, a sport i loathed because my brother was a wrestler in high school. but i remember watching the unlikely hero winning a gold metal and it inspired me. i watched the stars of those games, carl lewis, mitch gaylord, mary lou, micheal jordan, greg louganis...stars in sports i don't care about, but i sure remember their names and their performances. and what about alexi grewal, and nelson vails?? again, cycling stars in cycling sports i didn't care about at the time, but they were AWESOME.

it's taken me more years to come around to the winter sports. i hate cold. i hate watching the cold on tv. but some years ago i sat down and watched speed skating. and of course, who can resist the downhill skiing? and now snowboarding has me intrigued.

ah, the olympics. a surrogate for tour coverage on tv, and a great time to be inspired.

i'm a seriously handsome dog

what? i had a cold last week, and hardly anyone batted an eye. i was sneezing and hacking, just like the little general and no one took me to the hospital. all i can figure is that i'm so good looking, hardly anyone notices when i'm under the weather. speaking of weather...when is someone going to shovel the deck so i can do my business without getting snow on my bum?

pneumonia

we knew the little guy wasn't feeling good when he started asking to sleep. he was already coughing quite a bit and he had a bit of a fever. sunday, he was quite bad off so we were told to take him to the emergency room at st. anthony's.

i'll refrain here from my health care rant, because it's a politically charged hot button. suffice to say that our visit sunday did nothing to change my mind about the systems we have in place.

after a few hours, we were finally discharged. the little guy has pneumonia and both ears are infected. he's such a trooper, though. he rarely whines or complains about feeling bad. he's been taking his medicine and underneath the runny nose and the hacking, he's all eli.

nothing sharpens the attention like a serious health issue. it's funny, when one of the kids are sick, i start watching every move, listening to every breath...it's a sort of hyper intensity that i don't think i ever achieve at any other time.

dodge is gone

how would you like that grill bearing down on you??

we dropped the dodge off at the rental car place over the weekend. we didn't hurt it or anyone else in the process. thank god.

lincoln mark III

the 1969 lincoln mark III remains one of my favorite styles from the 60's. there isn't much visually to distinguish the 68-71 marks, but 1969 is a good year and the car also retains it's high compression 460. the slight boat-tail look (that i really like from the mid-60's riviera's) is broken up by the tire hump in the trunk lid. the upright grill really thumbs it's nose at aerodynamics. the long hood, something i like about the early grand prix's, is sleek and strong. the bumpers are very well integrated, not something that was very common in the era of big chrome bumpers. best of all, good examples are not insanely expensive like thunderbirds or mustangs.

because it just never gets old

it's super short and the music really makes it for me. wrong? yes.

LESS THAN PROFESSIONAL MOTORCYCLE STUNT

followed by another one that seems to defy the laws of physics. his crash seems to be at 100mph even though he approaches the ramp at maybe 20??

ACCELERATING EVENT

bed head rosco

whenever rosco finds a pile of covers, he dives in and gets his head inside and under them. he comes out with a bad case of bed head.

kids with big shoes, castlewood mountain biking

as i was trying to clean my "office" tonight, i heard the ripping sound of velcro and then clip-clopping that can only be some hottie walking down the stairs in fmp's or someone walking in cycling shoes. lucky for me, it was the latter. eli loves to walk around in the grownups shoes and he just looked so funny in them i took his photo. then he asked if he could ride my trainer.

although it was "warm" today (a balmy 38 degress), i wanted to ride my mountain bike. one thing for certain...the gravely climbs at castlewood are always solid enough to ride on. i try to climb some hills at least once a week so the trip out to the 'wood seemed like a good idea.

it was sort of a good idea. i pedaled around on the pavement to warm up a bit and of course i noticed all of the mud and water on the sidelines. and from the vantage point of the park road, the lone wolf climb looked soaked! as i approached it, it wasn't soaked...it was frozen, glazed over with ice. ah. well. so i climbed it anyway. and it was good. a bit slippery, but it was a nice kind of slippery that allowed me to practice technical climbing. once at the top, it was evident that i wasn't going any further. fine...so i just did that a few times and rolled over to the grotpeter climb. facing the other direction, there was no ice and certainly no mud, being made up entirely of rock and gravel. so, i climbed that a few times.

once my pathetic legs turned to cream cheese, i limped back to the dodge ram quite satisfied that i had no mud on me nor my bike, and i left no trace.

marco pantani bianchi

the longer pantani has been gone, the more i like him. perhaps it's a case of "absence makes the heart grow fonder", but truly it's more a matter of me actually having watched him race. it seems as though pantani is in so many of the cycling videos that i watch while riding the trainer. up until this point, i really only read about him in magazines and on the web. the press rarely painted a pretty picture of the man. i like to let a rider's performances speak for them, although it's hard in this instantaneous information environment to allow that to happen and i get caught up like the next guy. simoni, ricco, rassmussen, pantani, petacchi, etc...there is always something in the press to taint a person's view. but watching them RACE, which is what we all love to see them do, erases that from my mind.

cycling news has THIS ARTICLE on marco's bike.

dog in a basket

i still get a kick out of walking into the room and seeing this. it's just funny to see a dog in a basket. looks comfy, too.