So....I been lying' low since the cancellation of the Symposium last Monday.

I'd say most of the folks who've been here before understand and ..... if y'all were here last year you know that it really couldn't have been improved. Well, maybe free beer - that would be an improvement.

Registration was at only 9 people (yes, I know many of you were just waiting.....for) Well, I'd been worried all year that gas prices, and lack of camping this year would bring the numbers way down. So last Monday was the day I needed to write a check for event insurance, tent deposits, etc. I doubt that gas prices will fall, but maybe another event sometime in the fur=ture. In the meantime, you're still welcome here in in Traverse City anytime, but especially this August.

Hey.....Nils and I were out riding in the woods this evening. He on his Kona fixed (in the Gallery for Friday, how about that?) and me on the Swamp Donkey (pics down below.) Great fun. You oughta try it.

Freakin' busy day today.

A copy of "The Ride" arrived today. 145 pages, lots and lots of photos, over 50 short stories (I even wrote one + Richard Risemberg, and many others). It's issue #1 from Philip and Andrew Diprose from Great Britain. Check it out - just 1,000 copies available at 7pounds.

A 56cm Ritchey Break-Away Track showed up at the office door today, so I had to put it together and give it a test, right? First Nils and I rode up to Suttons Bay, we probably rode 30 miles, Nils on his Marinoni with 49x16 (15?) and me with a 34x14 YOW? Good for my spin Nils says. Also good for just burying me on every downhill. I forced him onto the Leelanau Trail (unpaved two-track) for about a mile. He says he was taking it easy because he didn't want to flat. I think he was just scared to wind out that big gear. We got back about 6, and then I hooked up with a much younger group of fg folk and took them up Paper Birch Dr and back. We did a few fairly fast laps around a residential block - they'd never ridden a paceline fast through corners. Shit they did pretty good, thought it was pretty ok. Showed them how to ride in a chevron in a crosswind, few other things. We rode about 15 miles or so, 4 of the 5 had never ridden that far before. They were all about 20, except Erin - he's 24 I think. Wore 'em out.

Earlier in the ride we bumped into Jonathan and Mark doing some Trials riding on the steps at a law office. Jonathan is damn good. But look at that bike he's got.

Today is Carl's birthday. He's 25. Holy cow.

Anyway, about the '08 Symposium. It's over. People are welcome to come to Traverse City and I'm sure there'll be some riding and fun anyway.

Stuff on the road. I've often thought about having a contest for weird stuff that you'd find riding a bike on the road.

I found this thing today riding on the Peninsula. I was riding (jra) out by Old Mission Tavern and the shadows from the trees on the west side of M-37 made shadows on the 10' wide paved shoulder. You always need to be extra cautious if you're riding fast - watch for junk. I barely missed this thing and it looked so ominous that I turned around to see if it was a dried leaf or what.

Image what would have happened if I'd drilled this thing?

Keep "your eyes peeled."

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It’s spelled peeled, as in peeling an apple. It derives from an old verb pill, “to plunder”, which is the root of our modern word pillage.

It came to us from the Latin root pilare, meaning “to take the hair off, pluck” (closely connected with our depilate), but which also had the figurative meaning of “plunder, cheat”, almost exactly the same as the figurative meaning of our modern verbs fleece or pluck.

From about the 17th century on, pill was commonly spelled peel and took on the sense of “to remove or strip” in the weakened sense of removing an outer covering, such as a fruit. The figurative sense of keeping alert, by removing any covering of the eye that might impede vision, seems to have appeared in the US about 1850.
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In Charles Earle Funk's book "Heaven's to Betsy" on words and their origins he writes: To be very observant or extremely alert; to keep a sharp lookout. No record of this American expression has been turned up earlier than 1833, but the fact that it then appeared in a newspaper (The Political Examiner, of Shelbyville, Kentucky) is a fair indication that it was already well known to any reader. The meaning was not explained. The passage read: "I wish I may be shot if I don't think you had better keep your eyes skinned so that you can look powerful sharp, lest we get rowed up the river this heat." That is all Mr. Funk wrote on the matter. As to the expression itself, I think it's self-explanatory.
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To keep one's eyes peeled means to be alert, observant. This seems an odd phrase, but dates back to the 1820s in Britain, when Sir Robert Peel established the first organised police force. The officers were known as 'peelers, or 'bobbies'. They were expected to be particularly observant and to keep their eyes 'peeled', after their founder's orders! Of the two popular names, only 'bobby' survives.
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That's enough school work for tonoght. Ride safe.

Last night we had a CM downtown, in part led by LostGears, who has sponsored a raffle at each CM for a new, top model helmet. Either use it yourself or give it to someone who needs it. Anyway, we had about 70 - 75 people riding - that's damn good for up here.

So, I was supposed to drive down Saturday morning to Indianapolis to see Don Walker and ride the N.I.T.E. ride on Saturday night. Don's probably wondering what happened to me because I should be rolling into Indy just about now.

I was in my car headed home last night (bike in the back seat, laptop, camera, clothes, just about everything I needed to roll to Indy. Listening to BBC News and there was an interview with a British National who was rounded up and sent to Guantanamo for 6 years - 3 1/2 of it in Solitary - never charged (he would not describe his imprisonment or interrogations) and then abruptly released to the Saudis where he was kept for another 4 months before being released. I decided right then and there that I was going to a demonstration at Division and the Parkway at 10am instead.

We've generally kept politics out of the Gallery and the Forum, but I thought I'd better explain my absence in Indianapolis. Sorry Don, I'll make it down there one of these days.

People been askin' about the Swamp Donkey, so here's some photos. Yes, I know the chain is a bit slack, I need to file out the vertical dropouts a bit more, or toss on a new chain, but at least the drivetrain is quiet. A stick derailled the chain last night, but if you'd seen the trails we rode you'd be thinkin' "only once?"

Where'd the name come from? I thought it up back in 2000 (or at least I think I did anyway) An internet search back then yielded the info that it was a local term in Liverpool for a Lady of the Night - anyone out there from Liverpool who wants to confirm that?