well, joeball and i hosted our first .83 race this weekend. it was called “the alley rally” and a smashing success if i say so myself.

over the summer andre and i participated in a few different messenger alleycats. my first, you may recall, was the .83 poker challenge. the wonderful folks over at morrispost and re-load bags put on a few more races, but after the massive amount of internet drama in august, .83 hadn’t contributed any races to the scene beyond the monthly greenlake race. seeing an opportunity in the cold months of winter, we decided to have a north seattle race of some kind, and in the interests of trying something new we made it an informal alleycat cyclocross race.

the route was in ravenna-cowen park, taking advantage of a bit of local terrain that i knew most of my fellow cyclists wouldn’t be intimately familiar with. the race started at the 20th ave pedestrian bridge, proceeded down the alley towards the park. at the base of the alley we set up a couple logs as barriers, then a few flags along the grass led the racers down onto the main trail through the park. from the bridge above we could see and hear the racers grunting and hollering as they rode up to the top of the park, where they cut across the grass before crossing the 15th ave bridge and coming back down to the start line.

we spent saturday afternoon getting the cowbell trophies, spoke cards, and liquid prizes ready and then headed off to meet the crew at red square. temperature: ass cold. to our surprise, folks started showing up promptly at 7pm. and then kept coming. we were pretty impressed, all in all over a dozen folks had come for our cold and dark race. then, just as we were leaving, joby showed up with two others in tow. they’d flatted out on the way in from west seattle and had rushed home to get the suburban so they could drive out and meet us. it was a christmas miracle!

our huge group rolled over to the bridge to get the race started. we waited a little bit to make sure the path was relatively clear, and then with a shout the race was off. less than 45 minutes later everyone had rolled over the line for the third time, and we handed out the first and second place prizes to daniel and denny respectively. then it was down to the cip for some well-deserved nachos, beer, and celebration.

my verdict: a success! now to start planning my next race…

photos of the race and post-race tomfoolery are available here!

an email i was dumb enough to write, smart enough not to send.

subject: i miss you.

dammit girl, i miss you. every time i have set my mind upon it and settled that i am over this, that i am no longer looking back on that point in my life with sorrow, but striding forward into something new, it seems like you show up. inevitably you catch my eye, and i wonder what the hell happened. somehow my jokes are still somewhat funny, and perhaps i am a little interesting but yet there’s a disconnect, a lack of engagement that remains polite but yet feels dishonest in it’s shallowness. the weather? it sure is cold.

i don’t know what i did, not really. i know that i failed and the stupid things i have done have become regrets i live with daily. ultimately i don’t know what it was that finally drove you away, but i do realize that it’s not really possible to make things right at this point. regardless, i make an effort even though i am a fool to think it will end in anything other than failure.

so instead i sit across the party, talking with friends old and new, telling tales and getting to know others. all the while my attention is divided, wondering what is going on in the mind and heart of one who already knows me, someone who understands what i am about and has chosen to push me back outside her boundaries, building walls to keep me out even thicker and taller than those that came before.

it’s a sort of feeling – pain really – that i don’t quite know what to do with. eighteen months later you’d think that any reasonable person would have moved on, found someone new and tossed away their old beliefs and feeling as errant and misguided. but i haven’t. i meet people and they are nice enough, but even when they quite literally throw themselves at me, i step back and have to point out that i’d rather be hanging out with someone else. harsh though it may be for them, there’s somebody else i’d rather be spending my time with and it is wrong of me to imply otherwise. that somebody, yeah, that’s you dude.

anyhow, i know that this email is ill-fated and the mental state of the author dubious, but i send it to you hoping that it somehow slips through your defenses and falls on open ears, ears willing to give me a chance of some kind, meager as it may be. but of course my hope for that is only a fool’s hope relly, and i ultimately pray that this email simply doesn’t cause any further strife between us.

yours,

Lee

as the year two thousand five draws to a close, i think we can all remember the amazing things that happened this year, the things we experienced, and especially the people that touched our lives. of all the famous and heroic that passed from our lives this year arguably the most directly influential to me was a great leader, a simple man who fought unceasingly for the side of goodness.

i’m speaking of course of optimus prime.

it is the year 2005. the treacherous decepticons have conquered the autobot’s home planet of cyberton. but from secret staging grounds on two of cyberton’s moons the valiant autobots prepare to retake their homeland…

as a child of the 80’s, optimus prime was a huge part of my childhood. the transforming red semitruck was one of the first transformers i owned, and sadly the first to be broken. in the cartoon, optimus was the ultimate leader. self-sacrificing to a fault, he always led the autobots with an unerring integrity and respect for life – even that of the decepticons who sought to kill him. so you can imagine my reaction (and that of my peers!) when in the first act of the motion picture, optimus is fatally wounded in battle with the evil megatron. it’s the first time i remember tearing up at a movie, and optimus’ last words still move me.

optimus prime vs. megatron (16mb mpg)

the death of optimus prime (13mb mpg)