Here is it.

1. Where are you from? Birmingham, Al

Here is in the Jones Valley Urban farm about 2 miles from home.

What does your fridge look like?

Think fight club; “full of condiments, no food.”

yes there are bike parts on my fridge

Who is your favourite person?

actually patches is still one of my favorite people

this is from earlier this year

What is your favourite food?

fried chicken and mashed potatoes

1. Part of your daily routine

doing drugs …..YEAH!!!

1. What colour are your eyes?

Brown very brown

1. What relaxes you?

see the drugs….. no but really. the bicycle

1. What does your letterbox look like?

1. What do you have planned in the next 12 months?

dragon-con a big scifi con

Where are you on a Sunday night?

In a questionable bar playing pool

Walking out of the train station I was a just little pissed. I had just found out there would be a 30 some odd minute delay until they would be unloading luggage from the train. Which meant I would have to wait to get my bicycle back. This is why when I travel, I normally never check anything.

I was calling Bobby to change our initial meeting plans when I passed a girl who sounding frustrated as she talked and waved at her cell phone in a language I didn’t catch on my first pass as I walked towards the corner. On my way back I over heard her conversation now with a taxi driver, and found out she and a friend were headed to the youth hostel. Assuming she was a backpacker from Europe and remember how well everyone took care of me when I was over there. I stopped and asked if she needed helped.

It turned out she did. They didn’t know where the youth hostel was, and the taxi driver was attempting to charge them $20 dollars for a half mile rile. Since my plans for the evening were pretty much only meeting up with Bobby who is also a backpacker and going to a bar to complain about women for, I figured we should try and help them out.

We took the girls to their first Wendy’s restaurant for milkshakes and talking about their trip so far before delivering them to the youth hostel. Turns out they just recently gotten out of school in Amsterdam, Holland, and they are taking a train/bus trip all the way around the Untied States. Their pictures can be found here.  The next morning I went with both girls to the Martin Luther King jr. memorial before they caught their next train to Savannah, Georgia.

Mostly…..

So I entered into a race called Wonderkat yesterday. Aside from a headache I felt amazing. So in an uncharacteristic move for me I popped an Advil and got prepped to raced.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2020/2541564248_250f95f512.jpg

I was first off the line and carried the pace for the first half mile or so, but was soon forced to drop back and let several people in front of me who actually knew the way we needed to go. I was one of the first three people to the two check points I made it to. Even though I entered the Sopo parking lot on a sprint and off my brakes and over shot my mark. Unfortunately between the Freedom park stop and the High Museum, I don’t what happened. I am confident I had a had a seizure, passed, out and crashed my bicycle. Several people including the checkpoint worker told me they the heard sirens when I spoke to them later on that night. Unfortunately I have no clue when I went down or how long I was out for, but I was unconscious long enough for them to get me to the hospital and get an I.V. in.

When I woke up, I took stock of my situation, I was in a strange hospital……Again. I at least had my wallet and my cell phone, but I didn’t have my glasses. Looking around I could think of several better places to be. Lots of the people on the beds where wearing blue faces masks and so were several nurses. Considering that not everyone was wearing a mask the problem must have still been endemic, but still fairly infectious. So I made sure I could still walk, got up. And then read my name on the wall chart to see where I fell in the triage rotation. When I saw it was fairly fair down I pulled the I.V. and then walked out.

Looking at myself I saw was bleeding from both legs, my shoulder, and face. The large blood stain running down the front of my jersey came from mouth where I split my lip. Placing a few phone calls I was able to track down my bicycle and my glasses. Just the matter of riding the Marta a few miles and the walking a few more miles to pick them up.

Well happy birthday to me. Looks like a few days off my bike while I rest this time.

My uncle chose fairly late in the day to tell me he didn’t have anything for me to do so I essentially had a free day for a change. I believe this ruins my weekend plans. But I really shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I had felt cooped up lately and wanted to get out, several people had done little for my patience, and this would  be my first time to get out and actually ride my bike hard in several weeks. So I made it a point to try and enjoy myself.

The highlights included the fact I now have a new useless skill. I got called out over the fact I had never ever bother learning how to do “leg over the bar” skids. Which is odd, because I had taught one of the people at the shop I hang out at how to do them. My usual excuse was the fact I ride with bullhorns on my bike, but that wasn’t enough to get me by tonight. So I finally got up and pulled out a few. After learning you are pretty much guaranteed to get your pants leg caught between the bars and your hands if you are wearing wide leg jeans. I revised my strategy and got pretty decent at them fairly quickly. Only later on to hear,“isn’t that hard with bullhorns?” I also proved the fact I can sorta ride in a backwards circle. I just don’t because it is a bicycle and it goes forward.

I also got to watch a bunch of what I am hoping were drunk cyclist play “Lean on me” in a studio. If they were not drunk, they may have been the back up band. But they are good cyclist, and they did call to check up me while I was in the hospital. I left after getting a phone call from Ben,“ we are in the fountain in Woodruff park!” There is a reason I hang out with him.

And on my way home after splitting up with everyone, I fell down a flight stairs I didn’t see while riding my bicycle.The killing part is that everyone else was drinking and I was sober. The take off wasn’t so bad, but the landing sorta screwed my ankle up.

It is one to wake up, not recognize the ceiling, and then look over and see a cute girl wrapped around your arm. It is completely different to wake up, not recognize the ceiling and have a blood pressure cuff wrapped around your arm……again.

I was on my fixed gear chasing one of my co-workers home from work when I had another seizure while riding and passed out. I am not sure how long I was out for or what happened really, but when I regained consciousness I was surrounded by EMT’s and firefighters…….again

The firefighters kept my bicycle due to the fact there was no space in the ambulance for it so I have to go pick it up at some point soon. While filling out paperwork on the side of the ride I had to explain.
“Yes, I ride with no brakes.”
“Yes, it stops.”

Actually, one of the coolest parts when I answered the phone while en-route to the hospital and it was one of the local bike messengers calling to see if I was ok because he had already heard what happened.

After three hours in the hospital I got the same thing I always get.
“You seem fine, give us money, go home.”
I didn’t pay, but I did leave.

News of what happened got back to family fairly quickly. Several of my family members want me to give up cycling until my medical issues are sorted out. Considering that it has been 8-9 months at this point with no resolution, and I value what little personal freedom I have. I didn’t take the request all that well. I am more than a little depressed right now and I have had a very long day.

Really, should the kid with the seizure disorder have front row at shows two days in a row?

While standing outside of Starbar in Little Five Points trying to figure out how to lock up my unicycle. I realized that in that more or less in the past two days I seen no less than seven smaller indie bands play, and while some of them put on some really great acts. Some of them just killed off what few brain cells I had left. The act from tonight with the motorcycle helmets and dueling drummers were jaw dropping.[newline]

[image:1338:c][newline]

It also dawned on me, I have eaten lunch with two of the bands I have seen. Cooked and feed the homeless with members from two others bands. That I have managed to offend the members of one band, and fix the bicycles of some guys who are in a band I have never even heard of. All in all, not a band way to end my week.

[image:1339:c]

Now if i could just find that girl with the cowbell.

So since I have gotten here to Atlanta my seizures have gotten a lot worse. In both severity and frequency. Mostly is has to do with the amount of stress I have put myself under without appropriate amounts of release. Basically I have run non-stop since I have gotten here. Constant projects and commitments and what not. For someone who isn’t getting paid to do anything, I was sweating a lot of deadlines last weekend. I have just as many this week, but I have made it a point to accept a few less projects.

I still intend to attend Food not Bombs next week, The Public art bike tour on the 6th , and allegedly there is a bike race on the 12th at octane that no one seems to know about. I had to drop the hand made vendor fair and a few other things on my plate unfortunately.

So I just scheduled to return home to Birmingham to spend 2-5 days in the hospital being monitored and hooked up to machines on the 22nd. They are making me find people to stay with me the entire time I am there to push a button in case I pass out since they are taking me off my medicine, and that almost guarantees withdrawal seizures.

Over at an Atlanta cycling based web forum. Faster Mustache. There was an interesting point/counter point discussion on the Critical Mass that occurred Friday. I spoke with my dad who witnessed the San Fran Critical Mass the same day. He spoke of the herd mentality, and how these things can go either really well. or really badly.

First off I love the variety in the cycle culture found in this city.
I just moved here to atl recently, and I have been on my bike every day. Talking to people, riding with people, and visiting bike shops. One thing I have learned is a lot of people have a generally different cycling/more aggressive style than I am used to seeing in other parts of the country. At first when everyone I met had a, “I have been hit by a car,” story I thought it was only drivers, but after a little observation I learned it was just as much our fault as cyclist as theirs as drivers.

The Atlanta CM was an interesting experience for me. I have ridden in cm’s in several different cities and countries. And have gone so far as help organize one, but this was easily one of the largest I have been involved in. Of course when you have this any people on bikes in a herd you have issues. I tried to do my part to do what I could when I could to help cars that were lost in the pack make it to a safe exit point, but with communication being at a premium it proved difficult. Plus the fact I didn’t know any of the other riders it also proved to only make it more difficult. Only while blocking intersections was I able to learn who to talk to to help things flow a little more smoothly. While CM’s don’t have a leader there are those who provide a sort of back bone and structure. I thought while riding some of the side streets that this mass was going great, but once we got to Ponce de leon. It did become painfully obvious why a lot of cyclist say they can’t ride down Ponce alone. And I was able to see just how a large Mass can be harmful to the cyclist/driver interaction in a city. The angry reaction from drivers at the intersection near the Majestic was a perfect example considering the fact we blocked traffic for nearly seven minutes or about 3-4 traffic light cycles.

I noted from several people that this one was a lot more spread out than than usual as well. But watching some of the cyclist involved it would have made me uncomfortable to ride a lot closer to some of them given their skill level. After announcing in a clear loud voice, “On your left,” several people didn’t look or check their blind spots.

Though riding is healthy for the human psyche it cannot cure all ills. All riders carry some weight of diseased spirit. Still, better we ride than vegetate.

A few members of the Atlanta Sedition Orchestra invited me to ride this months Critical Mass with them on Friday. Not being one to turn down a chance to act silly in traffic I gladly accepted and rode with them.
[image:1337:c]
They warned me before hand that the Atlanta mass was a lot bigger than any of the others I had ridden before, but even being told that did little to prepare me for a park that was just bursting at the seams with bicycles.
[newline]
[image:1326:c]
As I took a moment to let it all sink in, someone asked me. “You aren’t from around here are you?”
“Nope.”

Apparently it was obvious that I was not used to seeing that much random bike culture in one place. Fortunately I am already familiar with what goes down at a Critial mass just not exactly on this sort of scale. I am sure there were over 200 people in attendance. Before the mass got started someone who watched me ride up asked me to give them a wuick course on “Power sliding for dummies” according to them I make it look easy. I felt honored almost.

Then the mass got underway. There is something about a tidal wave of bike several city blocks long thats just amazing. It was a wonderful thing to be a part of.
[image:1324:l][image:1323:r]

I got commissioned to make a [tag]messenger[/tag] [tag]bag[/tag] next month for an upcoming Earth day raffle!

To make it even more interesting I was also given full creative control.

I also have the idea for my next personal bag out in my head which means I may be giving one of my bags away soon.

It will probably be the Star bag
[image:1124:c]