natbikes.com

Welcome back. So I have been working. Yes. I, work, appeared in the same month. Back in Ottawa area, a place that I really enjoy, walking the dogs.

Not arrested, but then I still have time. I did get warned for swimming in pink lake. Apparently it’s forbidden. Since when the ranger approached me, I was wearing swim trunks, flip-flops and a towel around my neck (and the ranger said… I saw you swimming for an hour) I didn’t bother to protest. Plus neither she, nor the dozens of tourists present commented on the clothing optional part. She also mentioned that the gates normally were locked at 9pm and it was now 10 after. Overall a very pleasant experience with the ranger.Otherwise I got measured and paid for the suit for little-Toad’s wedding. Bride-to-be (young Kelly) made me promise that I won’t say anything ’stupid’ during my speech. From some people’s perspective, probably 90% of what I do is stupid, but form mine, it’s all just funny stories and lessons learned.

Part 1 is getting to the Bachelor party (unable to find an appropriate PG link here). Any road suggestions/ feed stops are welcome - natbikes at gmail.com as usual.

I think that I have my next two bike tours planned, I’ll be covering 1/4 of the width of Canada (can you guess what that’s foreshadowing?). I have TT bars on the cross bike, and am planning on riding 300km a day. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Otherwise fall plans are falling into the usual spaghetti fest of no-sense planning:

a) California, race cross, e-bizzl, RAAM (not an entirely new concept)
b) fly to the Yukon - work as a ‘bush rat’ getting dropped off far far away from anything by a helicopter and dragging around 50 lb bags of dirt
c) walk more dogs
d) bike tour i) eastern Canada ii) eastern Europe iii) South America
e) other ideas from Halifax, home renovation/ building to Colorado and mountain bike racing are floating around
f) Canoe trip
g) something more random

On one of my dog walks yesterday I got talking to a German fellow, and he remarked, that today where he is from is Germany, but before that it belonged to Roman, Austro, Empires, and was twice taken from Germany by the ‘Allies’, and then returned. It’s still the same dirt, but a lot of young people made their time on earth shorter to be buried there. Now he’s in his 80’s and tends to an extravagant, and immaculate garden in the hills above the Gatineau river.

Does this make him a hippie?
Hippies: so I was with my ‘hippy friend’ the other day, swimming naked, and was wondering: what makes someone a hippy? Back in the day it was easy, you smoked pot, wore flower prints, protested ‘Nam, and it was cool.

But today everything seems to be a gray area. Heck, I was talking to one person the other-day who was convinced I was gay (I wasn’t in the super-fag costume at the time either). I am quite convinced that I’m into girls, but this, ahem, girl thought otherwise, vehemently. Mom, Grandpa, I swear I’m straight, just because I’ll kiss Justin on the lips at his wedding… straight.
Because I ride my bike, not drive, recycle, and don’t buy new clothing, yet cook from scratch, am I a hippie? Or do I need to own a matted dog, date (or have) a girl with hairy armpits, and wear old thread-bare clothing? I don’t smoke pot, but I do travel light.

-Check out the stages 2 and 3 links from the NWT tour, I updated them

-I’ve been running 4 minute kilometers - up to 16 a day, training for that 3h marathon.

Name this Costume

a) Silver Lightning
b) Purple Flash
c) Super Fag
d) is this the modern metro-hippie garb
e) …..

dopage… if anyone is still paying attention to sport
-Alex Vinokourovs teammate Andy Kashechkin also tested positive for having someone elses blood in him. If the check the DNA of the ‘other person’s blood’ I’m sure that they will find it’s Vino’s and they were dumb enough to mix up the two blood bags in the team fridge before the stage.

Same deal as Tyler ‘I’m innocent’ Hamilton & his teammate Sandy Perez 2 years ago. Amazing.