Thought Sausage

So I oozed over to the Apple store to tinker with the iphone. It's about what I thought it be. You gotta dig how, i dunno, smooth? everything is. The OS isn't clunky and the animations are as smooth as one would expect them to be with an apple.

Having said that, I wouldn't be suprised in the least if Apple starts playing down the web-surfing capabilities of this thing cos that Edge network is a crock of slow-moving bullshit. Granted this is only the first weekend out of the gate and its hard to judge the whole schbang on the merits of the weekend alone. Be that as it may, I think it is safe to say anyone who is expecting anything that resembles a broadband experience is in for a shock.

Turns out Ian picked up one of these last week too, so we'll see what he has to say about it. But my opinion so far is that all the features of the ipod, maps and the actual phone itself are all they are cracked up to be...however we are still a ways away from "a fully functional mobile web-surfing experience" (or whatever catchphrase bullshit Steve Jobs coined it).

I don't speak Japanese but i can only hope this isn't a schoolboard summit or a serious political debate going on.

Just go along with him....

No matter how your day is going, this is going to make it.

So I watched that Michael Moore movie Sicko tonight. Aside from the fact almost all the sob stories of people with no insurance reminded me of somebody I knew from Iowa in some shape or fashion, I guess I'd get it a "meh". Don't get me wrong, Michael Moore has all his usual devices @ hand. And I'll be the first to admit the health care system in America is properly fucked (although I'd also admit I'm not convinced social healthcare is the way to go, funny how everyone thinks it has to be one or the other, but I digress).

He definitely pulls some hard punches in this. You see cases where people lose their spouses and children because their HMO's wouldn't cover treatments the movie says would have saved them.

But like all things Moore, you gotta take it with a grain of salt. He inspires passion and gets ya mad (and more's the pity if you watch it and don't happen to have health coverage). But in the end, while he hits some cookie-cutter talking points, it isn't very realistic.

I submit to you Greg Solomon. This man has made numerous videos like this which appear on his page. Greg Solomon is without a doubt the loneliest youtube member in existance. 100 bucks says this guy is an economics professor at some shitty little college somewhere who gets pissed when his students wear hats into class and all the chicks find him "off-putting".

Heading back from a cycle last night I snapped some pics of the upcoming Batman movie set. Unfortunately the really cool pics of the buildings all lit up didn't turn out, but these kinda did:

Gotham City police SUV

Closeup of the Police logo

Gotham City taxi

That's a Gotham police car in the back. I presume the silver one was used for a prop too unless some FBI dude decided to hang around the movie set.

Our internet is down in the apartment because apparently OnShore no longer has the same mac address for our modem that it has had all along. So I'm sitting in the business center of my building (which is a polite way of saying 'asian college kids playing Second Life all night long" center). OnShore is making its way to my shitlist. I've had close to a dozen ISP's in my day and this one by far has the most problems and downtime. I can understand downtime happens and shit breaks down, but these people make a bi-monthly occurance of it. Their support staff is as helpful as they are able to be I suppose, but WTF ya know?

This shit is on. This weekend is my first triathlon of the season. This one takes me to Lake Geode in Burlington Iowa. I'm pretty well equipped I think. Had a 30 minute time trial @ practice tonight. This is basically like it sounds...we swim for 30 minutes straight and go as far as we can. I felt pretty good (and am still basking) as I ended up with the farthest distance for the mens (2250 meters). So the swim portion is solid. The cycle feels good but thats' always a wildcard, and the run will be without a doubt my weak point. I'm going to pad up on the socks so that should keep my ankles from shitting out (which is my common problem). All in all though it looks like a good course so here's to it.

Take a fat bastard sitting in his mom's kitchen giving lessons on how to squeal like a fucking pig and what do you get? The audio equivalent of stabbing yourself with a fucking brick.

At what point do I say "I'm getting older and can't relate to the younguns music" instead of "This sounds like an open can of ass and you're a retard fatso"?

Nameless tubby pig-squealish dude, let me help you out here: You're already a dorkus malorkus for listening to that shit, let's not beef up your certain-to-be-a-virgin-when-your-50 chances anymore with monologues on the issue. The pig squealing lessons broadcasted over the web ain't gonna win the girls dude. Just tryin to help...

The sad part is that Obituary probably outsells Drive-By Truckers albums 2 to 1 so just shoot me in the fucking head right now.

Don't blame me, blame Chris for this fat-boy fustercluck.

Welp, that's another triathlon down for the books. Exceptionally good swimming (2nd overall), alright cycle but boy howdy did I choke on the run. This bitch was HILLY and it took a toll on my ankles. I shaved a good 15 minutes off my Chicago time from last year (hovering @ 2:40 now) which is good. But we got a ways to go.

....waiting for Photobucket to refresh so I can post pics. Lordy this connection is slow. No doubt to some fucktard hogging our throughput playing World of Warcraft up in this building. I've noticed a sharp lag in our connectivity between 6-7pm ever since we got new neighbors. I'm at a loss for a way to verify the correlation short of confronting said neighbor because if he affirms it, I'm gonna roundhouse kick him in his pussy for fucking my shit up and that certainly won't bode well with the building management.

...Aight here goes:

Me driving down Snake Alley (which is sort of the Lombard Street of the midwest)

Hi mom

Transition area

View of the Burlington Mississippi bridge

Well we are a mere 3 clicks away from departing for RAGBRAI 07 (or "The Lance Armstrong Show" as Cedar Falls would like every man woman and child to believe). I'm particularly excited about this outing because this really feels like we are a team. Spokeeasy is about a dozen deep now which is formidable-considering those riding will be in full jersey regalia.

Barring any unforseen circumstances, the plan is to depart Chicago around 2-ish for Cedar Rapids Iowa on Friday. Of course this time is particularly sensitive right now for two reasons. First, we don't actually _have_ a bus here. Second, it's looking more and more like people don't actually _have_ this Friday free, which would push our arrival to Cedar Rapids well past the midnight mark (where we meet up with the Tallywackers). Despite being marked on your calendar since, well, the last RAGBRAI, the ride has an uncanny skill for creeping up on you. This phenomenon is directly responsible for Spokeeasy's lack of tats or stickers this year. It would also seem to be contributing to the fact we never managed to get the bus here to Chicago. It's sitting in Cedar Falls, and a dozen people (of which myself, Travis and Angie actually have cars) with bikes are here. I ain't gonna lie, we're down to the wire on this with people that are supposed to drive the thing here. As you can imagine, finding someone capable/willing on such short notice is trying. Said person has to be someone we can reasonably trust that isn't going to get to Rockford and sell the bus off for some magical beans or crack. Or worse yet, go drive it into a ditch. We've got a short list of three people I know of that may be up to this task and as far as I know, we will know which (if any) will be carting the bus this way. If none work out, welp, that basically is going to mean Ian myself and an unlucky (probably Irish) soul will be driving back to Cedar Falls Thursday night, retrieving the bus and then making an overnight cannonball run style drive to Chicago with it. I've decided if I _HAVE_ to drive this bitch into the city, I'd just as soon do it around 3-4am pre-rush hour. You can imagine my excitement of taking in the wonderous landscape that is the Iowa/illinois countryside not once, but twice in a 10 hour stretch. But needs must when the devil drives I guess so there ya go. I've pretty much resolved it to myself that come tomorrow, that's either going to happen or it isn't. But be that as it may, the less moving parts involved in getting that thing here, the better.

Welp, looks like no asanine 10 hour marathon drives are in store for me. We've secured a driver to get the bus from Cedar Falls to Chicago on Thursday afternoon, and I couldn't be happier. It's probably the years of being in a band that wandered around the midwest talking, but I'm still of the "I'll believe it when I see it" mode because between now and then, a million things could go haywire. Nevertheless, this is progress and that is good.

...back to worrying about other non-consequential things

Boy oh boy this just gets better and better. We find ourselves not only in the midst of attempting to cram 3 months worth of planning into a 12 hour window, but meeting some new unforeseen challenge at every juncture. Seems as though Ragbrai 07 is going to put up a fight as much as humanely possible. Ian and I have been pouring over Google maps, and Ian has been coordinating with a handful of people to keep our schedule in order. More than once, the words “fuck it, Ragbrai is off” have been IM’d today. Here’s a chronological breakdown of the various conundrums that have emerged today:

-First thing today, we were supposed to email the driver A.the location of the bus B. Who would be the contact when picking up the bus C. Where the bus needed to be driven to and D. Who would be the contact on that end. Said driver (who is a professional I might add) added last night he would prefer to meet somewhere outside the city so as to “cut down on mileage and avoid tolls if possible”. Fair enough. Last night on the phone he began dropping some highway numbers to me in a brainstorming session as to what would be the most efficient means for transporting said bus. We decided since Ian was coordinating some last minute construction on the bus, he should email Tom these logistics.

-I IM’d Ian this morning to see if he sent the email off. He hadn’t yet, but this spawned a conversation revolving around what would be the ideal route for the bus. After a phone call, it became apparent that the highway numbers driver was throwing at us would not only send the bus into the nerve center of Illinois tollways, but thrust the bus onto the Edens Expressway and right into the thick of traffic. Odd…

-Ian puts a phone call into the driver to inquire about the possibility of simply driving the bus to Pressure up in Edgewater (northern neighborhood) which is where it would be parked. Driver informs Ian that to him, Rockford was a suburb of Chicago. Calling Rockford a Chicago suburb makes about as much sense as calling an aardvark a effective steam-shovel operator. That is, it makes zero sense. Driver also informs Ian that not only does he harbor a serious disdain for tollways, but he’s also quite averse to driving in anything that could be defined as “heavy traffic”. So basically that eliminates any normal driving route into the city. Oh what a bundle of joy…

-It is determined that driver could theoretically take highway 20 all the way into Chicago if he really wanted, thus eliminating tollways and any real severe traffic. Good enough. It is determined that he will drive the bus as far as Bloomington, where we will meet and drive the bus the rest of the way to Pressure. Timing of this transition is on a hair-trigger because the absolute EARLIEST we could leave the city is 5:30, and that’s assuming nothing goes haywire. We agree to get there between 7:15 and 7:30 (26 miles swimming upstream in rush hour? Sure why not)

-Driver agrees to the terms of our meeting juncture and informs Ian he requires a pdf or some sort of copy of insurance. This launches a myriad of problems, the least of which is that nobody actually knows where the insurance papers are. This is a deal-breaker for driver, because if driving with an iota of traffic around sends him off, doing it without insurance is a recipie for a full blown conniption fit. A mad dash is made to retrieve papers that culminates in a physical meeting @ the insurance office. All seems somewhat resolved.

-The driver for the week discovers that while he has his Illinois state ID, his actual Iowa driver’s license is missing. To complicate matters Iowa and Illinois’s DOT’s don’t play nice and one cannot simply have an Illinois license printed on a moments notice (why would they?). As of right now, the plan is to get driver to a Davenport DOT sometime tomorrow to get a license printed. This problem as of right now is not rectified. If it isn’t rectified, week-driver seems very un-keen on driving while in Illinois and not exactly warm to really driving at all. While this certainly poses a multitude of problems (mostly in the way of preventing concerned parties from being drunk all the time), I take solace in the fact that the seriousness of our problems have gone from piling people into the back of a Uhaul and going across Iowa to ensuring proper alcohol consumption takes place.

We’re within 48 hours of departure and clearly not everything is in order. After attempting to launch numerous tours and this being my 3rd Ragbrai, I’ve come to pretty much expect that nothing will actually go according to plan. That won’t stop me from stressing the details all the way up until (and including) that point where I’m sitting on the bus and my bike is affixed to the roof. If I had to nail it down, I’d say we’re 60% out of the woods in this thing “going smoothly”, but it is clear the vacation gods are not smiling on us this week.

To top matters off, I come home from work today to find that OnShore has one again fucked up and our web is down. They say they can't fix it until tomorrow when a technician has to come into the apartment and "fix something" (what I don't know). Then the storm seems to have knocked the dish out of whack so I can't even watch TV. So here I am, sitting in the fucking business center. I'm so happy I could just shit.

Dude...seriously...this shit has gone beyond "holy shit I'm livid" levels and graduated into "this is so fucked up its funny" territory.

How so you ask? Well weeklong driver (aka Ben) works @ a bar where the other bartender (I assume there is only two because these circumstances could not possibly occur any other way) was fired this week (for whatever it is bartenders get fired for). Apparently Witt's (yes i'm name dropping cos it is my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want) only recourse was to force Ben (who had this week/day scheduled off for a year now) to work Friday. I'm assuming there was some conversation along the lines of "What happens if I can't work" and the answer was nothing short of total human annihilation because that is basically the only thing that _SHOULD_ be accepted (and even that's me being generous).

The net result of this is that we find ourselves without somebody to drive the bus from Chicago to Lisbon Iowa. Worst case scenario, we all take shifts, but that would mean we can't drink, and that there is just plain crazy talk. So a network of about 50 people have been scrambling to find somebody willing to drive a bus from Chicago to Lisbon iowa (about a 5 hour Jaunt I'd guess) and then drive the car Ben will be driving to Lisbon around 3am back to chicago. Yeah...it's that much of a clusterfuck now.

The good news is that we actually have the bus here in Chicago now. It is firmly ensconsed in the Pressure parking lot and I'm about to motor up there and start filling it with supplies. It sounds like Ragbrai 07 will be yet another year without a toilet on board because teh original plan was to build one off the AC drain this morning (well Ian and Paddy were going to do that). As of right now Paddy is at work and ian sounds naked and painfully hungover. So there's that.

the bus ALMOST didn't make it here for typical bus reasons. First pro-driver called to inform Ian that the brake lights didn't work. Joy-de-fucking joy. Turned out the culprit was a blown fuse. This was fixed in short order (pro driver laboring the point that we now owed him $303 dollars because fuses are 3 dollars). Fast forward and hour and the driver calls to inform us that the "overheat light" is coming on and said light was "off-putting". After a 3 way conference call with the A1 Vacation Land (where apparently the mafia buys all their RV's and supplies of a vacational-nature), pro-driver was reasonably convinced the overheat light was actually broken (common in large trucks) and he wasn'tgoing to blow up. He went on to meet us in Bloomingdale where Paddy Ian and myself met him. Ian then successfully drove teh bus into the city through India town (where citizens have no regard for street signs or designated pedestrian crossing zones) and to Pressure.

We were almost short another man as of last night when Drew apparently ate something that made his bodice do comedic things like run a fever, piss out his ass and cease all ability to think in a linear fashion. Food poisoning sucks. But he seems to have recovered sufficiently to where he's a few beers away from his old self.

In short, I have no clue what the driver situation is, I am packed and ready to go...the Irish have all arrived from their various locations around the country and this thing looks like its actually going to go off. WOW

To everyone...yes I 'm still alive. We put away another year of RAGBRAI without sending a single person to the hospital (we've got a .300 batting average on that).

I still need a day to unwind before I coin a blog about the events. Suffice to say, I think we hit a new high (or low?) and I'm thoroughly convinced we have made a host of new friends who we will most definitely see again and a not-too-small army of detractors who will go to extended efforts to not be in the same zip code as us.

In short, holy fucking shit.

more to come.