achieving results

The beginning of a really good idea sometimes looks like this:

If you're lucky, it'll continue along these lines...

...most likely ending up somewhere around here:

Anyway. No harm done. 'Course that could be because your heroine reverted to audience mode before events reached this stage:

Yep.

This weekend was the annual SFRC Alley Sweeper ride, in which about 106 motorcycles slowly and gently terrorized various parts of residential Portland by ripping through the city's many small unpaved, unmaintained and mostly mud-bogged alleyways. (This is legal!) I hadn't realized, but the ride doubles as a large-scale dog-tormenting endeavor; those poor chain-link-runnin' suckers hated us. Plus I pruned some hedges for some people who will probably never get around to saying thanks. That's okay. It was nothing. I enjoyed it. I've never had the right bike for the alleys before, but this year I took the little DT-175 out and it couldn't have been more perfect.

Then, having annoyed the peaceful denizens of three city quadrants, a few intrepid souls dragged the party to a friend's back yard (and kitchen and living room and various couches...eesh), where those of us who hadn't been thoroughly slimed in alley-swamp mud corrected that oversight. I crashed a CT-90 into every stationary object in the area, and the ground. Those things are really hard to steer. We set a bunch of stuff on fire and threw gasoline at it and people jumped over it on motorcycles (see above), and Thor dragged a willing victim around the block in a Radio Flyer at 40mph or so (see below), and all in all it was pretty much your typical Saturday night. Rule of thumb: bruised knees = probably had a good time.

And it's only March!

The Point!

Probably not something I should brag about, or even admit, but this movie -- more accurately, the album, by Harry Nilsson, my parents' copy of which was illustrated in needlepoint -- was crucial in defining my worldview as a tiny kid (along with Flat Stanley and a Daniel Pinkwater book called The Big Orange Splot, plus suicidal lambs and rabbit mothers who chronically ate their young -- but that's getting into the dark side). Ringo Starr narrates. The animation looks like it was all done in crayon, and it's clear that everyone involved was stoned to the bone, but the songs are pretty great, and you can't argue with the moral of the story, man. Dig those wacky flying stars and big ol' bouncing ladies!

Anyway. The Clinton Street Theater is showing the whole movie next week (March 24). I'll be going.

Tony Tony Tony

I think I'll be waiting a good while yet, but I'm unreasonably excited about this:

very important work

Some of my friends are, like, engineers and stuff! This project has been years in the making.

On an unrelated note, I saw Animal House on Friday night (it was the Cort & Fatboy midnight movie) and was struck by how deeply certain parts of it resembled certain elements of the SFRC. Coincidence?