adrian is rad

Heading to lunch the other day with Dug, I saw a newly opened store front for My Dutch Bike. I thought it was pretty cool. After all, I think these solidly built, three speed utilitarian bikes are great. I had one in Germany and enjoyed it. And I think for a lot of the populace, they’re a good option.

But then I looked at the price. $1600? What???

I saw similar bikes in Asian: China and Taiwan especially. The one here, by Phoenix, I found in Jakarta where it was for sale for, I believe, $75 brand new. I think it was a single speed, but it’s absolutely bomb-proof and is really classy to boot. Note the mechanical linkages for the breaks instead of cables. For that price I should have gotten one and shipped it over here.

I’ve done college radio for a long time now, starting September 2002 on WMBR and moving to KZSU shortly afterwards. But it’s coming to an end. Tomorrow (Tuesday June 23) will be my final show (for the foreseeable future at least). If you’d like, you may listen online or on 90.1FM in the Bay Area from 3-6pm PST.

Here are a few links I go back to time and again and tell people about, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted:

• The LA Times had a really interesting article about a large ship repo man. Things get complicated when you have to repossess container ships.
• A Dutch guy did a series of photos of soccer fields in Europe (starts a couple images in–no direct link). There are some spectacular backgrounds. It has inspired my own photos.
• Some people play old-time baseball in Golden Gate Park. Pitchers are called hurlers and they’re not allowed to throw any pitches developed after 1886.
• Baby Evil Eyes is one of the funniest videos on youtube:
  

A person must be display at least four of the following to have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder:

• Is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost.
• Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
• Is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
• Is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
• Is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
• Is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
• Adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
• Shows rigidity and stubbornness

Sounds like a lot of Germans, at least for some of those. I didn’t realize cultural traits could be qualified as a personality disorder.

So there are books that are made into movies. Quite often the original book is worth reading (though not always–Forest Gump the book isn’t great).

Then there are novelizations of movies. These are cheap and basically involve someone watching the movie and writing down what happens. For some reason my brother and I used to get a fair number of these things when we were young. I remember Back to the Future (and perhaps the sequels). They were not very good.

I had an eye exam the other day. I went wearing a t-shirt, a track jacket, sneakers and some pants. The doctor made small talk.

Dr.: Did you have today off?

Me: No, I worked.

Dr.: Do you work at home?

Me: No, I went to the office like this.

Dr.: Wow.

It happened.

I had people over for the game. We had pierogies* and kielbasi from a Russian deli in the Outer Richmond and finished off with Klondike bars (originally from Islay’s). Good times.

*potato and cheddar–among the best pierogies I’ve had.

I just realized that I’ve often lived and worked in different places where I had to cross water and boundaries to get there. Examples:

• Lived in Boston, Ma; went to school in Cambridge, MA
  I crossed the Charles to get to school, crossing town and county (from Suffolk Co. to Middlesex Co.) boundaries in the process
• Lived in Menlo Park, CA; went to school in Stanford, CA
  I crossed the San Francisquito Creek, crossing town (actually going through Palo Alto briefly) and county (from San Mateo Co. to Santa Clara Co.) boundaries in the process
• Lived in Menlo Park, CA; worked in Palo Alto, CA
  I crossed the San Francisquito Creek again, crossing the same boundaries.
• Lived in Songshan, Taipei; worked in Neihu, Taipei
  I crossed the Keelung River to get to work. I’m not sure what, if any boundaries I crossed.

I don’t know why I noticed this, but there it is.

[click to see it larger]

I found this while I was home. See if you can pick out my dad.

I was a bit surprised that while there are some Johnny Weismuller types in the photo, there aren’t the Michael Phelps-like triangles-on-top-of-legs that you see in every competitive swimmer today. And the people in the photo weren’t slouches–some of these people held records and beat international competition.

Fact #4: The Pirates’ front office actually knows what it’s doing.

No. Really. And trust me, that was a hard sentence for me to write. The Microsoft Word paper-clip guy even popped up and said, “You appear to be talking crazy. Need me to contact the psychiatric hospital?”

There are some other funny lines and there are even some insightful lines in this Page 2 article about the Pirates.

I guess it’s almost a month ago that I went to Yosemite for the first time. I went with my friend Dave and his girlfriend Sarah, who’d just gotten off the plane from the UK.

Dave has gone multiple times a year for many years, so I just let him say what we should do. We went hiking from Glaciar Point down to the valley floor. We ate and drank. We lay in a field and tried to pick out climbers on the face of El Capitan. We found a grove of Giant Sequoias. We did a midnight hike up to Mirror Pond and saw it again in the day time.

Photographically, I brought my D80 and my ’60s-era Yashica A TLR. (I ran Velvia 50 through the Yashica.)

More photos after the jump

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