Freshmen

Tomorrow marks the first day of the year for students at UCD, which means a number of things. The roads and eateries will be packed, the bathrooms on campus will once again become disgusting and unusable, furniture will go missing, and not-very-clever messages will be left on our chalk boards. More importantly, though, there will be 6,000 freshman trying to stay upright on bicycles. Davis is a biking campus and a biking community, but if you zoom out beyond that you quickly find that we, the people of the United States of America, are not a cycling culture. Maybe we are between the ages of 6 and 10. So basically what you've got is a bunch of 8 year olds (with rusty bike-handling skills) trying not to run into one another. Stanford is also a biking school, being enormous, flat, and mostly paved, and has similar troubles. Everybody is back on a bike for the first time in years and waaaaaay too confident in their abilities to maneuver past trouble with their superior intellect and life skills. I heard that the average Stanford student gets into two bike crashes a year. I only managed two* during my entire stay there, and I was considerate enough to not take anybody else down with me.

Stanford has an Intersection of Death, which is basically what it sounds like - an unmarked intersection that nearly everybody has to ride through on the way to and from their classes. There are a few conveniently placed benches right on one of the corners of this intersection, and if you can get over being a bit of an asshole, its some terrific free entertainment to sit and watch people do stupid things. Extra exciting when somebody goes flying though late for class or if somebody on a skateboard doesn't know what they're doing. Davis seems a little more self-aware, on the administrative level at least, because they've installed traffic circles at all of the major bike intersections. However, I'm not confident that everybody knows how to use a traffic circle. Shit, I'm pretty sure not everybody here knows to ride on the right and don't stop abruptly and start talking on your cell phone in the middle of a busy street. But anyways, if I'm unavailable tomorrow, try the traffic circle by the silo. I could use some company.



*Crash number 1: Riding down a short hill, over a plank across a stream, and then up another short hill on Nic's bike. Nic's bike has no brakes, no seat, and no clamp to prevent the handlebars from rotating freely. It is orange, though.

Crash number 2: Attempting to take a turn, wave, and switch on my bike light while going over a curb and carry several large pieces of aluminum roundstock for a project. It's also worth noting that I can't ride with no hands. I crashed right in front of the side of my dorm with all the windows, a dismaying number of which produced familiar faces. All I could think to do was make a gravel angel and try to play it off.

NPPL Kansas City, Update 1

All seven guys arrived safe and sound in KC, despite a missed flight and some last minute scrambling. We spent Thursday walking fields and figuring out game plans. We also spent a good amount of Thursday lost in various parts of Missouri and Kansas. Everything is under construction here, and every time we think we can see a straight line to our destination, we're blocked by half a building or a city-block sized pit. What else about Kansas...For some reason, its cool for people to randomly park in the right and left lanes. There don't seem to be any signs saying its ok during certain hours or in certain areas, people just do it, parked right in the lane. You'll be cruising along and every couple blocks there are a few cars right in your way. Also, it looks like people have trouble turning right cleanly. Most of the corner curbs have been pulverized by constant curb integrity checks.

Preliminary round consists of 8 games, 5 on Friday and 3 on Saturday. We went 5-0 today, which is an excellent start, despite some sloppy closes. I think at least two or three of us shot JT at various times. JT is on our team, so...not the best person to shoot. As for the venue, Hello staph infection! We play on astroturf, which they reuse and bring to each tournament. Problem is, they hose down the turf after each event, then roll it up wet and let it sit for two months. There's this funk nasty smell that I can't really recommend.

Check out nppllive.com on Sunday if you want to maybe video of us playing. No idea when and if, though. More soon!

Kansas City

Just a few hours until we fly to Kansas City MO to do or die for our season. We started this year strong, with a win and a 2nd place finish, and tanked hard in our third tournament in Boston. From the way we practiced between our second and third events, we had it coming. For the last month and a half we've been struggling to get it together again and rediscover the drive and intensity we had at the beginning of the year. To tell the truth the lead-up to this one has been a goddam mess. Every week is a fight to get a good practice together, to get enough guys to drill or scrim, to find paint for everybody, and to find money for all of this. Three days before the tournament we still didn't have a full seven to bring to Kansas City, and were asking ourselves what happens if we actually have to go with five or six. Devin wins quote of the day with his response: "Fuck it, we go in brawling. That's what we do."
Despite all the confusion and logistical trouble, I'm cranked up for this event. We have a strong squad and a pretty decent draw, and we're hungry to come back from the wreck in Boston and shoot some people.

I've tried a couple times to write about the chunk of life devoted to paintball, but each time I end up sounding like I'm biting hard on Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." So, here's Matty Marshall in "Sunday Drivers." I've got some stuff to pack and a flight to catch.

"It happens on a random Monday, coming back from an event, or late on a Sunday night, right before you get on the plane and you're about to be frisked for the third time. You're driving, you're flying, you're sitting in an airport seat with boys from the team. You're drinking stale coffee trying to stay awake. You're explaining the fat welt on the side of your neck to a confused stranger or a best friend. You're coming back to the other life, the one without paintball, where no one understands why you do it. You're tired, you're working off little sleep, and the question creeps up and you try to ignore it "Why do I do this? Why the travel, why the losses, the missed work, the missed school, hours of practice and the complaining girlfriend?" Because the lure of living a paintball life is just too potent, and the products of the road, the travel, are memories forever in trips and strange lands with stranger people. At tournaments, it feels like, for once, you actually get to live as loud as you want. It's worth the sacrifices, its worth all the bullshit, because if you work hard enough, a Sunday will roll around, and you'll be in the huddle, screaming, with your hand in, one among ten, playing for the world title, and suddenly all those cliches that you ever heard make sense, and you, are defined. You say it to yourself, and it means everything "I am a paintball player, and this moment, right here, is my life."

Status

Burner: Burning
Lid: On order
Lab: Evaporating
Cranks: Pulled
Team: Registered
3 1/2" x 1 1/4" 304 stainless concentric reducing cone for butt welding, in stock in either 10s or 40s: No
Rage at above: Building
Weekend: Imminent

really amazingly small talk

This morning found me at the coffee cart, pondering the various donut options to go with my french roast, and I saw that they had cups of carrots and celery on offer. The part of me that thinks I'll have cardiac problems in later life liked this idea, and the part of me that would like to be in better shape also applauded, and the part of me in charge of the digestive tract and regularity probably also said something, but all I heard was a sort of gurgling sound.

A ten ounce plastic cup of carrots and celery evidently runs $2.49 + tax. I'm not that hard up for money that this killed me, but what the fuck Davis? This town really is rich and green. Almost makes me want to bring a lunch, if I weren't so damn lazy.

What the hell, Ads by Google?

I will never understand why 'ads by google' thinks I'm a mom. "Are you a slacker mom" and ads for daycare keep appearing next to my paintball team emails. Perhaps it's the universe's attempt at entropy within the organized technical wonder that is google. To be fair though, if I am a mom, I've certainly been remiss in my duties to whomever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be mothering.




Another winner, amid a sea of useless but at least relevant paintball ads:



The real winning ad just came through. No commentary of mine could do justice to it. Here you go.

The Game

The Game. Do not question it. Just play.

Rules:

• Rule 1. If you think about the game, you've just lost the game.
• Rule 1 1/4. If you lose the game, you have to tell somebody, preferably somebody who plays the game.
• Rule 1 1/2. Once somebody loses the game and announces it, there is a 15 minute grace period for everybody around to forget about the game again.

....aaaaand GO! If later today you should find yourself wondering "what was that game?" or "I wonder if anybody else plays this stupid game" or "How can I make Joe lose the game?"....too late sucka, you lose. And the more you play, the easier it becomes to lose. So yeah, good luck with that.

Ok, so maybe some ground rules...

In the first post of the new blog I declared that I'd just write whatever. Three posts in I'm chickening out. I feel I need to steer clear of certain things, or this little neck of the web is going to disgust even me.

To avoid:
-Overly detailed accounts of what happened today with the intent that if the world goes ape and this blog survives, future generations/aliens will have a glimpse of our daily lives. Tourists with cameras, take note here.
-Detailing the "why" of this and that.
-Expressing feelings other than amusement, incredulity, or irritation.
-Rambling introductions. Sort of.
-Predictable formatting.
-whizzing on the electric fence.

That is all for now.

More bikes!

I almost got smished in the road yet again today by a dude in a minivan. It always seems to be minivans and SUVs piloted by the oblivious and the super-aggressive. I'm becoming much more liberal with the finger these days. For everyone's betterment, I hereby impart the following knowledge: If there are 3 lanes going the same way and no bike lane, the right lane is mine as much as yours. It is not, however, both mine and yours at the same time as you try to wedge by me and either risk running me over or running me into the line of parked cars. If you're only going 2mph faster than me, would it kill you to change lanes if you're hell bent on passing? If you risk running me down because you're too lazy to check over your shoulder, I'm eventually going to catch up with you at a light and do something awful. Nya-nya-nya.

The gods of craigslist smiled upon me today and I snagged an old school Schwinn road bike for $40. Actually I grabbed 2 bikes at once, bringing my count up to...too many. One for riding, one for riding fixed, one for leaving at work, one for the rain/locking up around town and not worrying about. I also still have my first bike that came with training wheels and red and white padded checkered things. We're going to need more real estate soon to house this farm.

Ya gotta accessorize! Buying a good $30 set of lights and a $25 lock makes sense for $400 bike. In fact, they're pretty much mandatory if you're going to be riding at night and leaving the bike anywhere with the expectation of coming back to it. On the other hand, those little things more than double the cost of a beater. Its still relatively cheap, but its the most sting I've felt from a small purchase since I bought that free-range scorpion farm. Too much?

Then there's the tires. The tires are just about as old as me, but tire years must be akin to dog years because at the ripe old age of 25 the tires are disintegrating and covered in cracks, whereas I still have yet to lose any parts and am equipped with just the one crackola. badum-ching! Bad crack jokes aside, blowouts are bad news, and new tubes and tires need to happen soon. Damn you, obscure 27" x 1 1/8 sizing!

The second bike purchase today was totally on impulse, since it wasn't actually advertised. While checking out the schwinn I spotted a blue Nishiki Riviera leaning against the wall and grabbed it too. Total shit show. The frame is in great shape though, albeit maybe a size too small for me. If all else fails I can steal the cranks and put them on my fixed, if I can figure out how to get the stripped ones off. grr