Pizz
Urine God’s Hands
The Flushing Meadows

The problem with having a carbonated water machine is that now I just want to carbonate everything. I want to make my entire salmon and asparagus dinner bubbly. Sam was just telling me about a drink he invented that consists of a 4loko, a Five Hour Energy, and an alka seltzer. We named it the 4lokomotive (or “Crazy Train” if you’re hustling it on the street.) That last time Sam and I worked on an elixer together, we invested the Mimosa 20/20, which was Orange Jubilee flavored MD 20/20 mixed with Miller High Life, the Champaign of Beers.

I really want to add carbonation to all of these things.

But back to the Sodastream. How does it work? Like this: You screw a giant tire inflator into a plastic tower. Then you stick a bottle of water under it and press a big button until the machine farts. Then you have water with bubbles.

Urine sold separately.

I went through this recently when purchasing a Catlike Helmet from the internet. I was obviously excited when the package arrived, but opened it only to discover that these helmets are nothing like cats at all! They’re just helmets! Giro-Like or Bell-Like would be a far better name for this company, because that’s what they are like. Like other helmets.

I did a little research to find out what the deal was.

As it turns out, Catlike is a Spanish company. Being that I study Espanol (Spanish) in college, I had easy access to a diconario (dictionary) and the 500 Spanish Verbs book. I soon discovered that Catlike is actually Spanish for “plastic safety”. So I guess it’s not really a misnomer. It’s plastic and it makes me safer. But it also doesn’t, as I’d previously imagined, softly purr while resting on my head while I ride my bike.

Also, you can’t buy these helmets in the US. I assumed this had to do with those PC losers who don’t want to use a cat as protective headgear, but I guess it’s actually because they weren’t pure “plastic safety”…they actually failed to meet some helmet rule standards. However, word on the street (internet) is that they stepped it up this year and passed the 2010 CPSC impact tests (which I guess doesn’t stand for Cat Protection is Super Cool) and will be coming to the bike shops of the USA this summer.
After wearing my “Catlike” for a few weeks, I am happy to report that as far as non-feline helmets go, this one is very comfortable. It is very lightweight and also seems to have some inexplicable street cred, as several strangers have wanted to talk to me about it.

All I have to say to them is, “sure…you could buy this helmet. But I think you should just buy a cat, because nothing’s as good as the real thing.”

I’ve never used it. I just wear knee warmers. The old fashioned kind made of textiles. Specifically, they’re women’s medium sized knee warmers because I have dainty, girlish legs. And they’re still too small, so they always slide down in the middle of races, bunching up around my ankles and making me look like Olivia Newton John in the video for Physical.

At Alpenrose on Sunday, I was lucky enough to score a sample of some embrocation made my the people at Northwest Knee Warmers. It smells pretty. I would have eaten it right then and there had I not been warned. I’m that dumb. But I was warned, so I put it in my jersey pocket and forgot about it until tonight. Just now. Hours after my race.

My house is freezing and I can’t find my slippers, so I’ve decided to apply this embrocation liberally to my feet and watch some episodes of Mad Men while eating frozen yogurt.

* hours pass *

This may be the whiskey talking, but I’m a fucking genius. Don Draper may have marketed the Kodak Carousel, but let’s see that smug bastard come up with a marketing coup like the Liquid Slipper™.

This shit is like having your feet dipped in Snuggie. I can see the commercial already. “Slippers are so complicated. And socks always just slide right off. But now there’s Liquid Slipper™!” See, the problem with embrocation is the name. If Don Draper had been a cyclist, he would have come up with something better than “embrocation”. Embrocation sounds like a venereal disease, and if I want to have a venereal disease I’ll just buy another mail order bride from an obscure Baltic nation you’re probably never heard of anyway. But if I want my feet to feel amazing and toasty while sitting barefoot in a poorly insulated rental, I’ll buy some Liquid Slipper™!

I’d like to thank the people at Northwest Knee Warmers for the sample. It’s amazing. I plan to buy an extra 4oz at Rainier just to keep on the shoe rack.

I used to purchase One Whole Chicken In A Can whenever someone I didn’t know (or like) would invite me to a birthday. I’m not very good at gift shopping. Or talking to people. Or making friends. Or math. But I love birthday cake. So I would give them One Whole Chicken In A Can, which required little thought or money on my side. And in return, I would be allowed to eat their party food, which often consisted of bread and cookies and ice cream. Or “gelato” if they were feeling fancy.

Everyone wins! Except the person who just got One Whole Chicken In A Can for their birthday.

I think that I’ve probably purchased around ten of these in my lifetime, but I’ve never seen one open and the contents are a total mystery. But this is what I know from looking at the can:

- One Whole Chicken In A Can is fully cooked. The sounds coming from inside the can, however, lead me to believe that it is actually still alive and attempting to mate with itself.

- One Whole Chicken In A Can does not contain gibblets, but does contain bones. And skin. And beak. And brain. I don’t know what a gibblet is, but I’m awed that they took the time to remove it and left all of the other shit. A gibblet must be really awful.

- One Whole Chicken In A Can weighs 3 lbs, and I’m left to wonder if the chickens are selected for can-hood based on their size or their weight. Is is possible that a climber chicken weighs 3 lbs but too tall to fit in the can? Or that a sprinter chicken fits nicely, but but weighs too much for the label? Perhaps One Whole Chicken In A Can selects only General Classification contenders.

Here’s a video of Sarah Palin talking about something while they throw turkeys into a wood chipper behind her. You betcha.

Vision Quest: It’s about a high school wrestler who’s trying to drop weight and sleep with the girl from Bound. He talks about his erection and gets bloody noses a lot. Then Madonna sings a song in an 80’s redneck bar while doing that awesome 80’s dance that people did in the 80’s. Then she sings “Crazy for You” and IT’S ON. The wrestler sleeps with the girl from Bound and then wins his wrestling match in slow motion because he doesn’t have a boner anymore. Boners hinder wrestling.

Cool Runnings: Some Jamaican runners become bobsledders because John Candy threatens to eat them if they don’t. The team plays up stereotypes about Jamaica before losing in slow motion and earning the respect of the Nazis. I actually cried the first time I saw this movie. For serious.

Thrashin’: Josh Brolin plays a skater with foppish hair and a small deck. He hangs out in LA and watches people skate with his mouth agape. Then he goes on a date with Sherily Fenn while wearing a completely unbuttoned shirt. Then I think he’s gets into some kind of fight with the bad guy from Weird Science, but I’m not sure what happens after that because I went home. I assume it happens in slow motion. 

Ed: This is a movie about a monkey that plays baseball and stars Matt Leblanc. I’ve never seen it. But the themes are obvious. If your sports team isn’t playing well, you should get a monkey. Because it will bring fans to the ballpark and teach you important life lessons. Like don’t star in a movie with a monkey that plays baseball.

Karate Kid: The Karate Kid doesn’t know karate, and a bunch of blond guys beat him up because they don’t like the misrepresentation of his name. Then he meets a kid named Freddy who wears an amazing shirt with a picture of two pigs having sex with the words “Makin’ Bacon” in glittery iron-on. Freddy and the old Arnold from Happy Days beat up the blond kids while the Karate Kid has sex with the hooker from Leaving Las Vegas.

Teen Wolf: Michael J. Fox wants to have sex with a blonde girl so he gets really hairy and learns to play basketball. They do the Thriller dance together at prom. But then a brunette girl named “Boof” says that she likes him better when he doesn’t have hair. So he shaves and wins a basketball game in slow motion. At the end of the movie, one the extras visibly pulls out his penis in the bleachers. Here is an animated picture of that (maybe NSFW)

12 Bridges gin tastes like cucumber. I like to drink it over ice and pretend that I’m at a country club. And that I like golf. And that I wear white Sperry top-siders without socks. And that I snap my fingers when I need something, and someone brings me that thing immediately. And that I wear my sunglasses on my head and my sweaters tied around my neck, as sunglasses and sweaters are meant to be worn. This is what cucumber drinks taste like to me.

Gin is best consumed in Summer. Or Winter. Fall and Spring are okay too.

Read about 12 Bridges gin. Here are some pictures of the fancy bottle:

First off, I’d like to commend the company for having a name featuring some consonants that don’t usually go together in the English language. I have heard it pronounced, “sram” and “shram”, but I have yet to hear anyone say it the way I do: “S-Ram”. However, everyone knows that SRAM isn’t really a word, but is in fact an acronym that stands for Shifting Really Awesome Momentum.

During my recent journalistic endeavor, the hard-hitting expose of Team High School, the topic of the SRAM shifting system was discussed. Somehow the topic of bikes and their many parts came up and this conversation transpired*:

Jerome: SRAM is the best
Me: Why?
Jerome: Double-tap system.
Me: Explain to me how that is better than the Shimano kind.
Jerome: You tap once to shift up and tap twice to shift down.
Me: Is that better?
Jerome: Yes.

As far as actual shifting goes, I’d rate it as “sufficient”. I click them a little bit and one thing happens, I click them more and something else happens. I have also used the Shimano STI and Campy Ergo shifter styles, and I can give them both the exact same review.

Different clicking, same shifting.

Despite my gut feeling that SRAM and Shimano and Campagnolo all make fine shifters, I have been racing better since I got the SRAM bike. I don’t know if it’s that because my new bike weighs 15 lbs less than my old one. Or because I am one race-year older. Or if (as I am being led to believe by my peers and high school associates) it’s the SRAM.

The details below of a CMOS SRAM sensor I found on Wikipedia make me think that it is the SRAM. Because it looks complicated:

* I don’t really remember the exact conversation.

ISIS? Giga-X-Pipe? Hollowtech? Ultra-Torque? These aren’t bike parts; these are names of American Gladiators dressed in star spangled leotards. And I can only guess at the number of thrown wrenches by people discovering that they needed to specify English of Italian or French threaded. What it wrong with you, Italy?! Why the fuck did you need new threads? Oh jeez, this is about the war again, isn’t it? It’s OVER. Tom Cruise killed Hitler while wearing an eye patch.

I initially wanted to compare the bottom bracket to the human coccyx, as an example of a component that has been made useless through evolution. But it turns out that you can’t build a bike without one (and by “one” I mean bottom bracket, not a coccyx.) But you CAN win a Scrabble game with one (and by “one” I mean coccyx, not a bottom bracket.)

Really, the bottom bracket is more like a spleen. Buried deep within the system, and totally unnoticed until broken or missing.

Just like the stem, the cost of a bottom bracket is based primarily on the name that it printed on it. The best ones have mens names (like Phil and Chris) because they help a cyclist develop a personal bond with the bottom bracket. But unlike the stem, you should buy an expensive, high quality bottom bracket right off the bat. Because you will most likely forget about it once installed. Sure, people can’t see it. But having a cheap bottom bracket will be a dirty little secret that weighs on you until a mechanic discovers it, just like the secret porn stashes that IP professionals find on 98% of work computers.

You’ll blush and turn red and talk about how your son was playing with your bike, and you’re not sure how that Nashbar BB got in there. But it’s there, and everyone will know about it eventually.

Unlike traditional cycle computers, I can move it from bike to bike using a little bit of technology that the Amish call “hook and eye”, and I can do it as simply as raising a barn. Sometimes I use it on the rollers, just to remind myself that I’m not actually going anywhere (on my bike or in life). And that riding rollers is dumb. One time I brought it with me on a flight, because I wanted to boost my average speed stats. And because I thought it looked cool on a map. On that particular trip, I averaged 500mph but kept my heart rate in the 80s.

That, my friends, is fitness.

Yes, having a GPS unit velcro’d to my handlebars makes me look like an idiot. But just add it to the litany of things that make me look like an idiot (examples: the vacant look on my face when people are talking about “smart things,” my inability to finish grad school, the way I squeal with glee everytime the Road Runner gets away).  Sometimes at races people will make sarcastic remarks about it, implying that I am someone sporting more technology than my miserable results justify. Which is true. So then I have to try and think of something funny to say, but it usually just comes out as “we…I… but… th…. have you…. er….” and then I walk away deflated. Because I’m shy and I deflate easily. And because I don’t really care about all of the speed or heart rate stuff. I just like to look at maps. That’s what nerdy people do. They find joy in the things that other people find stupid. Like maps. Or Rambo movies. Or the Roomba.

Here’s a video of a cat riding a Roomba: