More Signs. More South Omaha.

A dreary day in the cold, at least it was in one of the more interesting parts of town.

Your traffic signs of the week.

All of a sudden this job has gotten kinda riduclous. If it keeps snowing, I'll be on social security before we get this thing done.

NO SWIMMING: MAY CAUSE EXPRESSIONISM

Edvard Munch would be proud.

Happy Thanksgiving.

From me and the least photogenic dog I know.

OBVIOUSLY.

The things you see/this weeks graffiti.

Well, Im gonna start blogging about work. Sounds boring, right? No, I spend the majority of the day on the streets of Omaha, and every day is an adventure out there. From now on I'm gonna shoot for one weekly post+photos of the crazy shit I see out there. To start things off here is a double shot of funny/fucked up sign graffiti. These are signs that were removed and put out in the sign yard for recycling. Dicks, fuck obamas... you don't know how many swasitkas I've seen out there.

in the spirit of "stupid bikes"

these are the dorky new google bikes people ride around the Mountain View campus..



i think i like the old dorky ones better:

high five new york city

A guy on a bicycle high-fiving people hailing cabs in NYC. AWESOME.





on another note.... this reminded me of my favorite song by the band Local H.

Dakota 5o

I didn't even consider racing the the 5o this year. I'm in decent shape, but no where near good enough condition to have fun riding that race. I emphasize have fun. Ive done alot of traveling this year but for various reasons I wasnt able to have fun or relax on any of the trips Ive taken in 2009. Traveling while collecting unemployment checks is about the best thing you can do while unemployed, but each trip was a temporary escape from impending doom back in Nebraska. With my employment situation finally resolved, I was able to relax and and enjoy the biking, hiking, fishing, drinking, and eating in Spearfish. FYI you gotta ride the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway. 30 mph hairpin turns on a Long Haul Trucker is a good fucking time on bicycle. Speaking of employment, the new job with the city is pretty cool. All you need to know is Friday I got to listen to a bearded lady complain to a 911 operator about what an asshole I am. No joke, it was absolutely one of the more awesome things to ever happen to me. GIS can be a hazardous business.

Here is the link to all of the photos on Picasa

Stupid Bikes.

It's been awhile since Ive steadly posted on steady rollin and even longer since Ive checked the Google Analytics account, but Im happy to report that the number one search keyword used to find this site is "stupid bikes".

back from the 5o

The fall trip to South Dakota was awesome. Spearfish Canyon was definitely the coolest biking I've ever done. Full post and pics coming later.

Oh shit

three days of work then off to the black hills for the 3rd time in the past year. I predict bob finishes in the race 9 hours and i manage to catch a trout on the fly rod in spearfish creek.

The Crack'O Dawn.

New commute, through Mutual, then down the Field Club before I hit F street. If the F.C. ever gets completed (it may not since parks & recreation basically got shut down this week). Ill be able to take the trail to the front door of my office in the Traffic Maintenance Building on 50th and G.

The view from Ponca

Live from the mean streets of the Quad Cities.

She canna go any faster Captain!!

5 hours to Davenport. SLLOOOOOOOOWWWWW.

click to embiggen

Full res panoramas

Harney Peak

Bismark Lake Campground


Click on the photo for the full size. Havent had much motivation to discuss the S.D. trip, but it was awesome. Harney Peak was cool, but French Creek was better. We only hiked about three miles of the 12 mile out and back trail, but it was still an adventure. We started off on the Centennial Trail for two miles until we met up with French creek and then proceeded to hike until we got hungy and turned around at the FIFTH creek crossing. Some of those creek crossings were tricky, I managed to get through with only one soaked foot, but I think Jeff got a little bit wetter. Unfortunatley I was too immersed in the hike and too busy trying to stay dry to take very many photos. Heres the few Ive got.

One of the easier crossings and an inadequate shot of the canyon.

Hope you got a big monitor.

Finally gettin around to stitchin together the panoramas I took in South Dakota. Heres Harney Peak and Bismark Lake in 6000x1200 goodness.

Edit- blogger is reducing the size of the phots by a 3/4ths when I upload them.. wtf. Blogger has a 1600x1600 size limit.

YO

Number of blog posts directly related to amount of boredom in life. May=Zero blog posts. I even deleted my livejournal account. Ill get some SD photos up eventually. The adventure continues in June. Thursday I'm off to Davenport Iowa for a campus tour and a complimentary two night hotel stay thanks to Palmer Chiropractic College. Doctor Clowers has a certain ring to it.....

Its that kind of day.

Damn rain, no biking, no workin.. just hangin out and listenin to music. I don't usually get into "pop" music, but the new Bird and the Bee album is completely awesome. If you've never seen any of Eric Wareheim's music videos, prepare your self for the greatest choreography ever.


The Bird and the Bee - Polite Dance Song from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Camp Camp Camp

So everyone is agreed that its time to do some camping and a warm up camp before the big SD trip sounds like a pretty good idea. So by request here are pics of the three camp sites at hitchcock.

Campsite #1



Neat place, easy to sit around the fire, but lacks the one feature the other two campsites have, a view.

Campsite #2



Ahhh thats better, sweet view, cool little place, but little. Only room for two tents.

Campsite #3



Booyah, the pics are pretty non-descriptive but the third site is a big flat area on the ridge looking over the Missouri Valley. Tent pad for about 4 tents, but enough space to put as many as we need to hang out and do some drinking while surveying the valley.


Hitchcock is a pretty cool place. Planty of fun hiking and it's only 15 minutes from Omaha.

Taco ridin with the Hazard.

I still regard the decision to trade the instruments for bikes as a pretty good one.

Thinkin bout Texas.

I came back from California with about 100 photos. I came back from Texas with 7. I think the reason is because I did California on foot, bicycle, boat and airplane. Texas was in a rented SUV. 1977 miles. It was nice having the car in Texas cause having a car is like having a mobile comfort zone bubble, everythings ok once you get into it. When I was riding that bike in Marin county, 60 miles away from the couch I was sleepin on, that was about as far out of my comfort zone as I could have been and not been in the wilderness somewhere. So heres the last of the Texas photos. Why is the one picture I took of Kristen infront of a wall in San Antonio? Least I could have done was make her stand infront of the Alamo.

Drank.

So my search for Brawndo:The Thirst Mutilator came up empty in Texas. Not that I searched very hard but when I saw this stuff I thought It'd be ok to Settle.


Drank - the extreme relaxation beverage. An herbal approximation of real drank which is a combination of prescription cough syrup and soda which is apparently popular with rappers from Texas and people who wish they were rappers from Texas.

Inspired by Bill Latham's drank test, I sat down with Joe, a case of Miller, two cans of Drank and season Two of Human Giant.

After six episodes, the two cans were gone and I estimated that Joe had drank about 8 bottles of beer. One can made me want to take a nap, two cans and I dont have any idea when I passed out. And oh did I pass out hard. I woke up around 6 am this morning (I probably passed out around 11 pm) and gave Drank the thumbs up. I just wonder what three cans would have done.

San Antonio blows.

So I've got about two pictures from Texas. 1977 miles, 34 hours of driving. Seriously, almost Two Thousand Fucking Miles. And I hate cars and driving in general. This trip was the opposite of the California trip transportation wise. Made it back to Omaha today in under 12 hours. Had to come back a day early for a job interview. Im tired as hell. Too tired to write anything very sensical. And Austin is as cool as its supposed to be. The rest of Texas is as bad as its supposed to be. Oh and why didnt I grab my camera Friday night.....

Texas can't hold em.

Austin has been pretty awesome so far, but we've managed to leave our cameras at Bill's the whole time. Your just gonna have to take my word that the Mexican karaoke bar in East Austin that we went to was totally awesome.

Santa Cruz / Wilder Ranch

I'm completely embarrassed to say this, but I'd never seen the ocean until I went to California. The Pacific, and California in General did not disappoint.

Wade and I standing on opposite cliffs taking pics of each other.

It was the headline that caught my eye.

"While riding bike in Bethpage, man catches fire, dies."


Sad story but I think 50% of journalism these days is in the headline. Another reason for you to quit smoking Bob.

San Francisco

As bike rides go, it wasnt anything special. But the whole trip from San Jose to Sausalito was pretty epic. When I was sittin on the train back to San Jose after 10 hours of travellin I just thought wow.. I just did that.

Wade dropped me off at the San Jose train station. Train from San Jose to San Francisco. Rented a bike in San Fran. Rode across the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito. Took a boat back to San Francisco. Multi-modal transportation epic win.

Bridges/that f'n hybrid



Sausalito/What is that look on my face? Wheres the damn boat Im cold.

Japantown (wade's hood)

I now appreciate digital cameras. I think a digital slr is in my future. Its been a while since I tool out ye olde film slr and well, the pictures from Cali turned out pretty good, but Walgreens processing totally sucks. Color is off, all kinds of artifacts, very grainy and the images on the cd arent even close to the prints. Oh well. Im not gonna bother scanning the prints even though they look much better than the digital copies they gave me. Here we go with the pic posting.

Home base for the trip was Wade's apartment in Japantown. Pretty sweet.



Japantown was pretty cool, nothing too exciting to take pictures of but it was a real nice little pedestrian/downtownish area with all kinds of crazy sushi and asian cuisine places. Im not a big fan of sushi, but the place we went with the sushi boats was pretty awesome. Here is the cool budhisht temple a few blocks from Wade's.