Tampa Bike Co-Op

This past monday I finally made it back out to the Tampa Bike Co-Op's Bike Night after a two month hiatus. There was free beer, a ton of nachos, a lot of scene-lings and a even few bikes. There was a couple classes given on bicycle related things, and a few bikes were worked on. I was helping grizzly adams adjust his deraillers as Lily took some shots on my A590IS.
There was a meeting to determine the future of the Co-op and it looks like there are some big ideas and some good things coming besides just the monthly bike nights. Stay tuned for more on that.

Brian Rides Bikes Too!

I wish I could say i found him first but Brian emailed me this week and told me about his blog.. as it turns out he rides bikes too(this is his bike).. so there are two of us! His stories are quite inspiring and the pictures are great as well.. here is the link to his page.

http://briancommutesbybike.blogspot.com/

enjoy. Brian is from Birmingham, Alabama.. it is neat to get a perspective of what its like to commute in another city. I think I may search for other cycle commuter blogs.. look for more.. and sticking with the theme lets see how many Brians we can find! Brian.. help me out a bit?! :)

Project Cafe Racer/Pub Crawler

My cousin Ashley recently moved to the down town St. Pete area and needs a way to bar hop. I found this 3-speed Schwinn Varisty at the Flying Fish and decided... "beer cruiser!" Me and my bro stripped it down and I got some single speed coaster brake wheels for it. The bro painted it taxi cab yeller.. with pin striping. It needs a chain, some grips a seat collar, and a good lock.

Lesson Learned

Ok so lesson learned.. always have the right sized spare tube with you.. in this case I had the wrong valve length on the spare tube I had with me. oops. I got a flat on my way home from work.. couldnt figure out what it was.. it was like a hollow pygmy dart shot from the grass pygmy's blow gun.. who knows. but here I am about 15 miles from home in south Tampa, flat tire, wrong tube, shit. I start thinking to myself, im not going to walk home..damnit. all I had was the old tube, the new tube, a co2 cartridge, and this.. thing.. in my tire. im thinking to myself.. I need a valve extender.. well, that old valve looks a lot like a valve extender, hmm.. so. i bit off the old valve and shoved it into the co2 inflator.. pressed it into the rim onto the new valve, let co2 fly and voila full tire. WOO HOO! so theres my story. :) i made it home and learned how to make a valve extender on the fly.

Blackle

You've probobly noticed that I changed my background color back to black... Well I did some reading recently on Blackle.com about how it takes more energy to run a monitor with a white or light background color than one with a black or dark color. I found this very interesting so i decided to keep my background on my computer at home on black, change my blog back to black, as well as using blackle instead of google. So im saving you some energy while reading my blog. I've also noticed it really makes the photos pop! check it out.

http://www.blackle.com/about/

Garden Update

Egg plant, brocolli, tomatos, and peppers are now in the ground. The corn is growing very rapidly, and the spinich is finally starting to sprout up. The hump there is where the water mellon seeds are planted. Now its just weeding and waiting.. though i need to research organic pest control as well. but its lookin good.

Play Group

I have been throwing around the idea of joining a play group for a few years now but I just couldnt find anyone I was willing to go to. Well.. this time one found me, and kind of by accident. I met a girl the other day who has kids and we got to chatting about getting together for the purpose of interaction... on both levels.. kids and parents. Well tonight thegroup met at Keneth City Community Park and My friend invited me to come. Caleb made some friends, and I did as well... great combination.. and most importantly it gave this bored, lonely soul some thing to do. And most importantly it gave me some new friends I took some pictures here they are run on sentence. Caleb actually took the shoes picture.. which i thought was a great shot.