Burn Girl Prom Queen.

pineapple hill road race. july 24, 2011.

goodness gracious that was bloody brutal. four laps: fourteen miles each - including four miles of ascend known as pineapple hill, forty-five mile per hour downhill descends, and the glare of the summer heat. hawaii has never been so miserably beautiful.

Be A Bright Blue.

in our bedroom after the war was not the latest album by canadian band, stars. spotify informed that the band has produced an album each year since 2007, then spotify encouraged me to listen to them all - in their entirety. the swedish have invaded, and their version of pandora is bloody amazing.

both seth goodnight and jeremy pang recently procured road bicycles. two years ago I would have never seen this day coming as we all rode fixed gear bicycles exclusively. variable gears were viewed as unnecessary and sheldon brown was our one-gear god. but we all kind of grew up (seth finished graduate school, jeremy got married) and road bicycles with their promise of prolonging rides gained appeal.

it was humorous to see how each party went about acquiring their bicycles. seth went on craigslist and locally found a salvageable bianchi that had been relegated to a garage decoration. jeremy went on ebay and bid several paychecks for a gorgeous colnago shipped from europe. both bicycles are equally beautiful with subtle signs of aged steel.

over the past weekend seth and I saw the google maps bicycle - or tricycle, as it was on three wheels - at mccully warehouse. apparently google had not anticipated the rough streets of honolulu and its employees needed new wheels, tires, and tubes. seth and I asked to take photos with the google maps tricycle but one of the employees was throwing a fit and forced a prompt departure.

still, we learned from warehouse old timer bill that the employees had no control of the google maps tricycle’s street view camera(s). apparently a GPS in the cockpit of the tricycle told employees exactly where to ride the bicycle and all the equipment was controlled from somewhere at google headquarters. crazy stuff.

this upcoming weekend the pineapple hill road race will be held in wahiawa. I honestly do not think I am prepared for it, so a physically painful sunday morning is scheduled to occur.

"maybe one day our dreams can merge together."

“friday night lights” began as nonfiction book, became a film, and for the last five years the best television series ever made. america lost one of its greatest stories with the end of the television version of “friday night lights.” because that was what “friday night lights” was: american storytelling at its most visual. the series finale -entitled “always”- shall invariably be remembered as the single most momentous moment in american television.

as blogger doug norrie wrote: "'Friday Night Lights' is a story about very simple things that remain decidedly complex at their cores. Family is simple. Family life is complicated. Friendship is simple. Relationships are complicated. Football is simple. Football teams are complicated. Small towns are simple. Dillon, Texas is complicated. And while in that pilot episode, in that first half hour, we’d have loved to think everything would turn out for our heroes, the writers of 'Friday Night Lights' drove home, with crushing clarity the idea that life, in its simplicity, is incredibly complex."

it was never about winning, it was always about graciously embracing the odds.

Since Forever.

summer will always be my least favorite season - it reeks of consistent heat and general temperature discomforts. honolulu’s ability to drag out summer eternally is rather obnoxious.

jeremy pang and I received our fyxomatosis jerseys from australia. it is jeremy’s first bicycling jersey as he slowly takes the plunge in the world of variable gearing. with the tour de france (or as greg refers to it, “tour de crash”) broadcasting on television, I have noticed many more people dusting off old road bicycles with flat tires. there has been a consistent stream of cycling enthusiasts whom come to mccully warehouse’s with flat tires from bicycles that they “haven’t ridden in awhile.” it is rather humorous to see what types of relics -that should be retired- and treasures that emerge on one weekend afternoon.

I am happy that more individuals are riding bicycles in public...or attempting too. whatever the reason: the tour de france on television, health or attempting to ween off foreign oil, the more cyclists on honolulu’s streets the less automobiles there are.

When Our Costumes Were Prepared.

j atencio informed me that he had to leave the conversation because “the mac-n-cheese just came out of the oven.” was it true, had my favorite vegan punk fallen to the deliciousness of dairy delicacies? j atencio politely informed that the cheese was actually excessive amounts of nutritional yeast. to which I retorted, “nutritional yeast is a poor substitute for actual cheese.” needless to say I was happy to hear that j atencio was still vegan to the core, there are some things in life that should never change.

the mac-n-cheese conversation did incite my desire to consume a cheesy meal. with nimz conducting monk seal research on kure atoll and my laziness to pick up a pot, I bought a microwavable serving of mac-n-cheese. truth be told, I have been microwaving nearly all my meals with nimz away. I would like to think that I am progressing the art of microwave cooking.

annie encouraged me to cheat on my diet by informing that there was a real fruit syrup shave ice shop in town. most shave ice in hawaii is made by a colorful assortment of artificiality. this particular shave ice shop made their own syrups and used “filtered water” to construct their shave ice mountains. while it may have been a healthier alternative to the conventional method it was still a heaping serving of sugar. good times.

about two weeks ago I saw a group of sign-wavers on king street in mccully that made me groan - it is too early for political sign-wavers, I thought. as I got closer I noticed there were a lot of police officers also waving signs. then I noticed the signs were encouraging motorists to “please slow down” and “watch for pedestrians.” I was ecstatic...a bunch of grassroots community members taking the cause to the streets? sadly the whole event was orchestrated by farmer’s insurance company.

I bumped into jeff barkow and his gal alyse at mccully warehouse recently. jeff is the master of craigslist - amongst his finds: an 80s schwinn with full columbus tubing and campagnolo wheels, a quintana roo with full duraace components, and his most recent: a 80s KHS with tange infinity tubing and shimano 600 components. the KHS bicycle was bought for alyse as her previous bicycle was stolen (bicycle thieves suck). all of jeff’s craigslist bicycle finds are stupidly gorgeous.

it is july in honolulu now and the weather is edging towards unbearably warm. there are two months before the dick evans memorial road race...it should be an interesting two months.