You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice).
“And friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is ’cause you may know somebody in a similar situation — or you may be in a similar situation — and if you’re in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do.
“Walk into the shrink, wherever you are, just walk in and say, “Shrink, you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” And walk out.
“You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it — in harmony — they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three — can you imagine, three people walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? And friends, they may think it’s a movement.
“And that’s just what it is — the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement — and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar! With feeling.”
So sing it, y’all. I’ll be singing right along with you. See you after dinner.
With the holidays bearing down upon us like a doped-up masters racer, a cat’s life is simply overflowing with anticipation.
“When will Jesus bring the pork chops?” wonders Turkish, a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Mighty Whitey the Blue-Eyed Bully of Bibleburg, Big Pussy, et al. He suspects that something wondrous is taking place on the other side of that door and has asked Santa to bring him a pair of opposable thumbs so he can work the knob.
He’s actually pretty damn’ close to getting the door open without thumbs — he certainly doesn’t have any trouble grasping the knob, which sits 36 inches off the ground. Wrap it with something he could sink his claws into and he’d come and go as he pleased.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see an unwary Turk’ ambling past her grocery-sack spider hole en route to the feed zone so she can whip an ambush on his big white ass. A half hour ago she was merrily flogging him around the house — through the living room and into the bedroom, then through the kitchen and down to the basement. Repeat until naptime, which has just arrived.
Herself is making banking noises out there in the living room, moving money around from one account to another to balance my extravagance as I await delivery of my new Voodoo Nakisi frameset. I’ve found most of what I need to build it up gathering dust in the garage, so naturally the purchase is justified by the crisp sense of order its assembly will bring to a presently cluttered space.
It will use Salsa bars (either flared Bell Laps, Pro Road or Moto Ace); some unlabeled off-brand stem; nine-speed Shimano drivetrain (bar-end shifters, Ultegra derailleurs, XT triple crankset, 11-28 cassette); a pair of moderately scarred Shimano 600 aero brake levers, plus cantis and top-mounted brake levers from Cane Creek; a Thomson seatpost and maybe the old Avenir saddle that came stock on my Nineties road bike.
Miss Mia knows that sooner or later someone will be passing by ... and she's gonna get ’em.
I don’t have an actual 29er wheelset, however, so I’m gonna make do by pulling a pair of wheels off one of the ’cross bikes and slapping some 700×45 Panaracer Fire Cross tires on ’em. That should be burly enough for my mild purposes until I can get Jerry down at Old Town to build me up a set of righteous hoops using a leftover pair of Hügi hubs and maybe some Alex Adventurer rims, which come recommended by tech editor Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Matt is the generous gent who is ferrying the frameset from BTI in Santa Fe to Your Humble Narrator in Bibleburg en route to Turkey Day festivities in Denver.
So, yeah. Christmas beats Thanksgiving to the DogHaus this year. But then we were never traditionalists. And if you’re hanging around here, you probably aren’t either. So I’ll leave you with the words of Robert Downey Jr., from “Home for the Holidays”: “That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird.”
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein rests up for his next campaign against The Enemy, just as soon as it warms up and he's had a little nosh.
Phew. Another day of supervising home improvements instead of riding the bike. Why does the Lord wish me to serve him in this fashion? Beats me. You’ll have to ask Him. I only work here.
In the past few days we’ve had the solar collector off, the roof reshingled, the solar collector reinstalled and the attic bespooged with insulation, all in the name of tapping into various socialist schemes for denying the Heat Lobby its obscene profits. Herself did all the heavy lifting as regards setup and follow-through, of course, but I had to watch, and frankly it was exhausting.
After the last tradesman hit the door running, I felt I deserved a new toy for my troubles, and so I bought one — a Voodoo Nakisi. A track bike and a 29er are about the only machines missing from the Mad Dog fleet, and soon I will be lacking only the former, a condition that will persist until I am safely dead. Life is too short to spend it making left turns only.
What the hell, I had all these old parts cluttering up the garage and the thought of building up a MonsterCross® machine with them captured my imagination the way the Turk’ does anything smaller and slower than him, which covers a lot of Darwinian waterfront, believe you me.
This Voodoo is going to wind up looking something like Brent Steelman’s late, lamented CC cyclo-crosser, which he once described as a 700c mountain bike. I think Dr. Mikey von Schenkenstein still has that hand-me-down, and if so, I’ll grab a photo of it for posterity. It remains one of my favorite bikes, and (dare I say it?) must be an unacknowledged ancestor of the 29er all these crazy kids keep going on and on about.
It ain’t a cyclo-cross unless you get off the bike at some point and run, son. Sorry, but them’s the rules.
Still, today’s Superprestige Gavere was a great bike race. It’s hard to judge the quality of the surface when you’re watching streaming Internet video in an itty-bitty window, but that said you wouldn’t have caught me out on this course without a mountain bike. Maybe a double-boinger, too. It looked like one hell of a rough ride.
Sven Nys just squeaked past Kevin Pauwels at the line. Ten more meters of pavement and the kid would have punk’d him again. It was that close. Poor old Niels Albert looked like Death eating a cracker when he rolled in for third.
Tim Johnson scored a fine 12th-place finish after a rough start — “f’d the first few corners and paid the price big time,” he noted on Twitter. Jonathan Page, who in contrast had a great start, rolled in a couple places behind Timmy J; VeloNews‘ man on the scene, Dan Seaton, says Page spent a bad night with the gut rumble, then cramped up on the bell lap.
No mud at today’s Belgian ’cross. Booooo, hissss. Klaas Vantornout treated the crowd to a really spectacular get-off at the start, though, and the race was run at just short of the speed of light, so my morning did not lack for human suffering.
You have to have stones to ride these rocks.
Sven Nys worked his ass off only to get punk’d as Kevin Pauwels jumped him and Zdenek Stybar going onto a flyover and then left both of them behind in the final sand pit.
More of the same on tap for tomorrow’s Superprestige, according to VeloNews‘ Brian Holcombe, who has crossed the water to chat with Stybar and catch a little racing action while he’s at it.
As for me, after logging a few billable hours, I hopped on the mountain bike for an hour of playtime in Palmer Park. Lord, do I suck. Worst. Mountain biker. Ever. Maybe if I swap the old Easton stem for something a little shorter and steeper?
Naw. I’ll still suck. I’ll just be sitting more upright while I stink up the trails.
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