Scotch Pronunciation Guide

This is relevant to my interests.

An Cnoc
AH-nock

Auchentoshan
AUK-en-TOSH-en

Bruichladdich
Brook-LADDY

Bunnahabhain
Boo-na-HAHB-en

The Balvenie
Bol-VAINNY

Bowmore
Ba-more

Tags: booze, pronunciation guide, scotch

Buying a Real Bicycle

I want to buy a bike that is good for road and trail riding. I have a $500 budget, and I may want to ride it across the Country with my cousin next summer.

What should I buy?

Tags: basics, bicycles, bikes, buying guide, fit, intro, new, shopping, size, used

flipboard

Flipboard has been a really fun way to read the news, as well as my twitter and facebook feeds. It turns newspapers, blogs, facebooks and twitters into one really nice personalized newspaper.

A few complaints though.
(1) Its difficult to change text size.
(2) While it has an instapaper feature, I prefer use read it later for reading things later.
(3) It picks up the links included in twitters, but it doesn’t display the twitter user’s commentary on the link. This is often the most important information.

Anyway, overall it’s one of the best ipad apps I’ve used.

Secret Science Club – James Hanson

I went down to bell house last night for secret science club, a monthly science lecture series at a bar in Gowanish. As always, the bell house was packed with scientists and science enthusiasts.

James Hanson is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute – the part of NASA that studies the earth, rather than the stars. Anyway, this dude became a science hero when he called out the Bush Administration for editing his global warming reports. The president has a lot of power, but not the power to control the scientific method.

Rad dude, but unfortunately, his lecture wasn’t that exciting. He was basically power pointing to the choir. Previous secret science club lectures had video’s of rats running around on various drugs. Hanson just gave us a bunch of graphs with watts per meter squared and parts per million all over the place.

This is halfway through the Huge Copenhagen Climate talks, and Hanson was talking to a bunch of kids in a Brooklyn bar. Essentially a “fuck you” to the worlds leaders.

On the plus side, I hung out with Justin Talent afterward and caught up on life.

Bell House is a nice spot, but the beers are expensive. I wouldn’t go there except for science.

Holy Matrimony, Wild Cards, Loose Cannons, Mavericks, and a Dark Horse

I married will and kim this summer. Then I wrote a draft Blog post, but failed to publish it until right now. Its incomplete, so maybe i will finish it someday. Here’s the lowdown:

My good friend Owen rolled into NYC late Friday. We met up at Penn Station, but had about 2 hours to waste before our train to Connecticut. We walked around the city a bit to pick up some refreshment’s, then it was back to Penn.

At Penn we met up with Ben. Ben was the third of four stalwart occupants of 12 Dearborn house, in the year of our lord 2001.
The three of us needed to mentally prepare ourselves to give up our fourth brother in arms, Will.

Fortunately, Ben came prepared with strong drink.

Tags: awards, bear trap, chupah, loose cannon, nut rag, wedding, welcome to the grundle, wildcard

Holy Fork!

Saw a sketchy looking dude selling a fork on WBB this morning. I asked him what happened, and he showed me a picture of a gruesomely mangled bike. The head tube was cracked completely open and he popped the fork out as is.

I told him it was a very nice fork, but I was concerned it “might have structural issues.”

Tags: bike carnage, cellphone pics, fork, williamsburg bridge

Drama at the Laundromat

i was doing laundry today, and an old lady accused me of stealing her bras.
i’m usually pretty good with crazy people, but i guess my brain wasn’t firing properly.
instead of calmly explaining that i had no interest her old lady undergarments, i just said the first thing that came to my head: “Are you a crazy lady?”

not only was she crazy, but she was pissed. she yelled at my for fifteen minutes while i waited for my laundry to finish drying. i didn’t hear a word of it thanks to my Shure earbuds.

nice one shure.

Tags: bra, crazy, dryer, earbuds, ipod, laundry, old lady, shure, stealing

140 on Fire

yesterday was a normal 140 afternoon. Michael was playing with his medium format camera and making some pims (british sangria?), I was playing banjo in the living room, Zoe was chilling with her hamsters. Ralph was doing whatever he does in the basement.

at around 5:30, I thought i smelled smoke somewhere in the building. My first thought was Michael’s room. his wiring had caught fire a few weeks ago, and i assumed it was happening again, so i checked through his room but couldn’t find any fire.

I called in to Zoe, and asked her if anything in her room was burning. She was startled and looked around, but couldn’t find the fire. The smoke was getting thicker, and now everyone was smelling it.

I called Michael in from outside. By the time he came in, there were visible clouds of smoke filling the apt. Michael was quick enough to realize the smoke was coming up from the basement, and then it all came together. Ralph’s basement is an incredible fire hazard. He is blind and crazy, and he spends his days filling our basement with all manner of combustible garbage and electronics.

As we walked down to investigate, Ralph was walking up the stairs to ask us to borrow a bucket.

“Is there a fire in the basement Ralph?”
“I just need to borrow a bucket.”

against my better judgment, zoe and i started filling buckets of water and handing them to ralph, but smoke was really billowing up from the stairs at this point, and michael and i agreed we needed to call the fire department.

I told zoe to get her hamsters and her computer, I grabbed my bikes, michael saved chicken wing, and we met up out front. smoke was now visible from outside, and was leaking out from the basement onto the sidewalk.

michael went back inside to save the pims and get more ice. chicken wing jumped back inside, because she is a afraid of being outdoors.

the fire dept showed up in less than a minute. really impressive, totally professional, put out the fire, cleared the smoke, no problems. they had to brake down a few doors upstairs, which will be expensive to replace.

Michael saves the Pims

I’ve always known 140 was a bit of a fire trap, so i had a mental plan of things i would save in case of a fire. I pulled serotta and long haul trucker off their hooks and stacked them outside. i wanted to get RB-1 out as well, but it was getting kinda smokey, so i wasn’t sure if that was smart.

things i saved from the apartment

ralph can usually pass a normal friendly guy, but in stressful situations, his crazy starts to show. he mentioned a few times how he owned the building, he blamed peter on the 6th floor for starting the fire (despite the fact that peter wasn’t home, and lives on the 6th floor, while ralph was home and in the basement at the time the fire started). he kept dancing around and saying how he saved the building, how he was hoping certain people got kicked out of the building, etc. I’m not very happy with him at this point.

Anyway, a hot water heater appeared in out living room. i can’t really say where it came from. we lean bikes against it now.

Also, during the fire, I met a lot of the upstairs neighbors. they all seem really cool. people can bond really well in stressful situations.

Tags: 140, bicycles, chickenwing, fire, hamsters, long haul trucker, michael, pims, ralph, serotta, smoke

Nyack and Grub Sunday

This weekend was super nice, so I did a ride up to Nyack with drew and kelsey. its about 60 miles round trip with some good hills towards the end. it feels great to go over the George Washington bridge and get out of the city.
We weren’t the only cyclists who realized the sun was shining. Hundreds of roadies were out on 9W and made for a pretty good traffic jam on the bridge.
Drew was out on his Fuji Track Pro and took nice long pulls. Kelsey took her new Van Dessel (“Boy Named Sue”) out for its maiden Nyack voyage. It had some derailleur issues, but otherwise seems like an awesome bike. I brought out Serotta, which is super dreamy on long rides out of the city.

when we got to Nyack, we bought a sandwich and bunch of cliff related food products.

The ride home was fast and easy. Wind to our backs and mostly downhill. It was a little sad to cross the GWB back into city traffic, but Riverside Drive to Prospect Park Transverse to 59th st bridge is pretty tolerable. I think this will be my new route home.

When we got back to Brooklyn, we put away a pound of pasta and all kinds of veggies. a few hours later I went to grub to eat some more. They had made a pretty epic cupcake tower. It was the last first grub. Jeff Stark, Lauren No Rules and their crew were moving on to a new project, but thankfully In Our Hearts is taking over First Grub.

It was nice enough to have grub on the roof! this is the best part of spring in brooklyn.

Tags: bridge, clif bars, cupcakes, fuji track pro, grub, nyack, road bikes, serotta, van dessel

Schhhhhwing. First Saturday

The Brooklyn Museum is free every first Saturday of the month, and they throw a fun dance party. I heard the DJ’s were spinning Fela Kuti and James Brown, so i tried to gather a posse. No one else was that excited, but I managed to convince Jamie, so we met up at the WB Bridge and rode down to first Saturday.

First Saturday trips used to involve big group rides and hang out outside on the hill with a little picnic and some music. But today was the February First Saturday. There was no outside picnic dance party. By the time we arrived, the dance floor was too crowded to walk, let alone dance. We were pretty sober anyway.

We moved on to Plan B, drink vodka.
We wandered around upstairs while sipping vodka and checking out the feminist art exhibit. We bumped into Bill TimesUp and Margot, then found Leah, then Ethan and Adrianna. Everyone had seen the exhibits before, but it was fun to have a few friends around.

Jamie and Emily Dickenson

Afterward, we made an excursion out to queens for a Swimming Cities benefit party at silent barn. it was a crowded, hot sweaty show. Stachemaster and Dirty Finger were spinning and everyone was dancing and getting rid of clothing. It was a little too loud and smokey, but otherwise a great time.