Scarefish

Sometimes you hear people complain that nowadays food doesn't look anything like what it was made from. Examples that are customarily given consist of French fries, hamburgers, and so on. Although I do agree that a ground beef patty that looks nothing like a steak, even less a cow, can be considered, at least by some, edible, I am compelled to argue that if bread resembles flour, wheat grain or the actual plant, something wrong gone down during the making process. This is especially true for animal-based food. Even before I became vegetarian, carbonised carcasses of chickens roasted entirely never looked very appetizing to me. There are warrior-like gourmands, who like to stare their dish in the eye while they are consuming it. The picture below, that I found on the kitchen counter today, confirms it. 

Unfortunatly, I spent the night before playing Silent Hill, and the gruesome image of a disembowelled caged fish, with its white eye, mouth full of teeth and vegetables sticking out of its gut had distinctly ungastronomic effect on me. The dark wood background also matched the color of rust-covered walls of the "hell" levels of the said game. Also, once I noticed that the cage is not merely fish-shaped, but has a decorative fin and eye, I couldn't help but wonder, where do such peculiarly made objects come from. A giant, with a grim smile wielding a hammer over the furnance and a gloomy cold hall with blue-grey walls filled with cages of all sizes and shapes turned up in front of my mind's eye. Even if I slept fine the night before, today I will probably be dreaming about being squished between the two layers of bars, on which someone's dark humor produced the images of hands and added metal rings in front of the face; a fish with sharp claws from Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland will be creeping up, with quite clear intentions...

Crossroads

The more I ride in Montreal, the more a thought of getting a cyclocross bike becomes appealing. We got it all - climbs, mud, holes in the ground, obstacles, you name it. All the pretty leaves lying around make it rather difficult to detect the irregularities of the road on time, forcing you to demonstrate the miracles of maneuverability and expand the lexicon of curses know to mankind, all while praying to the cycling deities for that last cling not to produce a pinch flat. Leaving the house at noon and coming back after sunset also requires you to carry 2-3 extra articles of clothing, to make sure that you are prepared for the temperature to drop from +17C down to +4C.
Another interesting observation is the increasing annoyance of drivers. In summer they seemed to just accept the invasive cyclists and clinch fists in silent rage inside their AC-ed vehicles. In winter drivers are the nicest - take up the whole street and nobody will honk. My theory on that is that they just don't want to mess with "crazy" people; oh well, their loss. The fall time, at least this year, seems to be the polar opposite - our sworn enemies seem to be vexed by us not being in a rush to hang those Raleighs and Giants on the garage wall, especially when the weather is absolutely summery. Honking and overtaking with revving engines seem to be the new... well, new honking and revving, just the number of the incidents has increased recently. Or may be I just ride less carefully.
It seems, however, that a number of cyclists take the dangers of commuting rather seriously. Lots of pedal-propelled commuters live with the USSR Pioneer motto on their lips - "Always prepared!" Thus the observed increase in the aggressive driving behavior is supported by the surging preparedness of the cyclists:
It's great to see the dedication. Ride no matter what!

Once out of the streets, end of October is probably the best time to ride. The "urban mountain" that us Montrealers are so proud of, but that we so rarely visit, is something worth having a one-day pilgrimage to. Once out of the wide gravel road and a hundred meters into the "woods" you can actually forget, only for a couple of minutes, about the civilization that is about to jump on you from around the corner:
If you care for geology, the Mount Royal actually has a couple of fun rocks to look at.
Here's an igneous rock, formed by magma solidifying underground, with a xenolith (from Greek: xeno: alien, lith - rock) - the white spot in the middle. When magma was moving under ground, a piece of the vent broke off and entered the flow, but did not melt. When magma solidified, the rock remained imprisoned in it:

On the picture below, in the left top corner, the coarse-grained igneous rock that cooled from magma underground, is neighboring the preexisting sedimentary rock (bottom right). Along the border traces of contact metamorphism can be seen. There the hot molten magma came in contact with sedimentary rock and changed its mineral structure.
The cemetery is also a great place to visit. The background is rather peaceful than grim, so you don't have to be an adept of black humor to enjoy the tour. For the sake of style however, here is a color-accented depiction:
You can also witness such marvels as snow at +14C and a rural scenery. The latter I suspect is some kind of specially designed decoration, something like a Christmas village:


That, amici, is all. Now get out there and see what can you find yourselves!

God's Little Creatures

I've read this phrase on the BSNYC blog comments: "mimes make a careful study of the way things are done, and then they do them in the correct way." For some reason, it really caught my attention; may be because mimes are so mesmerizing, moderately creepy and seem to be completely out of place no matter the circumstance. In any case, I've caught myself trying to analyze the way people do things, but soon drifted into trying to figure out WHY are they doing all these things. Unfortunately, this thought is not at all new, and already a while back I've established that making sense of people's movements is hopeless, and that the only thing to do it to take things for face value.
One thing still bothers me though. Child shows. Muppets. Passpartout. Sesame Street. You name it. Think about the concept itself, think slowly. Adults produce an unnaturally lit space in which half-paralyzed, disproportional figures move as epileptics in a rave. These furry relatives of Chucky are presented in quasi-normal setting doing seems-so normal things. However, any time I see one of these shows I feel somewhat disconnected from reality, and not in a good way. The kind of disconnection you get when you are standing on the edge of a cliff or a tall building, and a sudden gust of wind takes you by surprise; and for a split second you have this double vision - in one you are still standing, and in the other already falling. I don't know if kids actually enjoy that kind of thing, but I clearly remember how I was afraid of the dark for an entire two weeks after I watched 5 minutes of the Muppet Show when I was about 4 or 5. Seriously, I just fail to understand how can somebody like red fuzzy big-mouthed frogs lip singing out of sync!
I think what freaks me out so much is that the life of all these creatures, anthropomorphic or otherwise, is grossly oversimplified; since it refers to the common actions that we perform on the daily bases I inevitably end up putting myself in the shoes of a clumsy, chubby, shaggy creature squeezed into a theme park created by a group of college design students on acid, who forgot that centi- and millimeters are not the same thing. Subjective? Yes, no denying. I'm just tired of people turning on the nostalgic look in their eyes and starting to sing whenever they see one of these things.
Don't get me wrong though, I don't hate all kids' stuff. I love cartoons. I adore some of childrens' literature. But childrens' music and shows are, and always were, beyond my understanding.
What triggered the rant above is that when I mention the word passpartout to some of my friends, they instantly think of the show. Not the master key, which is actually what the french word means, not the character from the classic "Around the world in 80 days," but the show. Of course, there is no shows' fault in it, and plenty of other references to world-wide classics go unnoticed, but... that is already an all different rant on the North American popular education and common knowledge, into which I don't want to get once again.

I is...

A new style of autobiography is emerging - life described by the facebook status updates. Once you take a bunch of updates, even your own ones, and read them one after the other, you will find yourself building an intricate psychedelic picture. Like Alice in Wonderland was suddenly written by Kurt Vonnegut, then made into a movie by Luis Buñuel which was finally summarized by a college student the night before its due and during their first trip on acid.
In some distant future, digital archaeologists will crawl all over old facebooks' memory, trying to extract those lines and construct a picture of our lives. If you make fun of the people in medieval games, fighting with plastic swords, just imagine how twisted will our, overall uneventful, lives seem from such perspective.
Here are, apparently, the last couple of months of my life. I reversed the order, so it's chronological going down:
Jun 10: Filipp is in the heart of a bloody conflict between flip-flops and toe clips. one used chemical weapons on the other
Jun 16: Filipp is brought back to childhood by a caliper. Only they weren't digital before... don't you just hate when they remake old toys with new materials? like in this joke: beware of fake christmas decorations. they look just like the real ones, but give you no joy whatsoever
Jun 18: Filipp is bicycle deconstructionist in need of tools.
Jun 25: Filipp needs a fockin' 15mm socket wrench. Why is it so hard to find?!
Jul 1: Filipp is planning to bike to Quebec City for the free Paul Mc. free paul mc from unjust incarceration
Jul 2: Filipp doesn't seem to get along with bottom brackets... nasssstysss, they are nassssttysss
Jul 5: Filipp did all he could without a truing stand.
Jul8: Filipp is using thermodynamics to combat the heat.
Jul 9: Filipp thinks it's a grreat grreat day forr a crrankset overrhaul! arrrrrg
Jul 11: Filipp never slept better then after this energy drink. Marketing error? nope, reverse psychology
Jul 16: Filipp finished building his first wheel. bad news for whoever will ride it
Jul 17: Filipp 's kind is only good for bad behavior.
Jul 21: Filipp has the sinister cats of entropy. you haven't seen what mice are like around here
Jul 22: Filipp extracted the square root of all evil. and planted it near the geranium-371
Jul 25: Filipp is not too sure, but is still going to try.
Jul 26: Filipp 's bottom bracket is toast... Looks like the frame is next on the damage list. toldssss you theysss are nasssstyssss
Jul 28: Filipp is... is not... is... is not...
Jul 29: Filipp is what he is not. at least that's figured out
Jul 31: Filipp got a gi that sits like a bathrobe... wet and slippery martial arts in small spaces
Jul 31: Filipp now knows exactly which muscles he does NOT use while cycling. anatomy 101
Aug 2: Filipp gettnig some old skills back; and discovering new and unusual things about his body. anatomy 102
Aug 3: Filipp settled for semi-pijama gi. extreme violent sleeping habits
Aug 4: Filipp is no longer listed.
Aug 16: Filipp found a point at which martial arts and cycling don't meet. anatomy 103
Aug 18: Filipp is a twisted firefighter.
Aug 20: Filipp has resolved to build an entirely black bike.
Aug 25: Filipp is at war against the foot-injuring couch.
Aug 28: Filipp is in the kitchen talking to the winged person.
Sep 3: Filipp is working against entropy. good luck with that
Sep 4: Filipp is on the quest for a physics book. epic
Sep 13: Filipp is defending against physics. looks like the book was found. are you sure you needed it?
Sep 14: Filipp is bought another bike. And realised that there is no more space to store em!
Sep 19: Filipp needs to figure out a new spoke pattern...
Sep 22: Filipp has built a cross-four fixed wheel; and it is NOT pumice! in-fuckin-credible!
Sep 25: Filipp is living early, no. no...
Sep 27: Filipp has built one pretty bike...
Sep 27: Filipp is out of parts...
Sep 30: Filipp is geoace. coming through! open the main vent!
Oct 1: Filipp is flowers/bees.
This just in: Oct 8: Filipp has just wasted a bunch of time copy-pasting.
Looking at this stuff, it seems that all I do is take hallucinogens and think about bicycles. Life well lived, indeed. I hope that when I'm going to be famous and will be writing an autobiography I won't forget to use this list as references. For now I just added the little comments in italic to the updates of the origins of which I have absolutely no recollection.

Way Down Below The Stars

With the below +20 C temperatures being establishing at 45°30’ northern latitude and 73°40’ western longitude the Autumn Spirit have arrived a bit early this year. The sweater-weather lovers rejoice to hear the cracking of dry leaves under their feet and tires of their bicycles, the nigth rides accompanied by chill wind smell of burnt leaves, and the puffy-tailed squirrels accelerate their run to find and hide as many used muffin papers as they can, looking something like this:
The Spirit, that in my day-dreamy world appears as a melancholically ironic and mildly transparent lady walking around the dark alleys and parks in slight confusion. Some fear her, some desire, some envy. She can easily do things we cannot even imagine, travel the realms that she unknowingly creates. Now I catch myself staring at the black board, like the ram at the new gates, while the professor is going on about the electrical fields; I don't understand any of this, so ride off to smell, see, and hear, all this spiced with a hint of guilt of missing another class.
Some time ago, I have observed a trend, that whenever I say that I'll never do a certain thing, this very thing seems to be doomed to happen. Any person who knows me, also knows my unappeasable hatred for tomatoes. It is easier to make me quit smoking cold turkey rather than make me eat a tomatoe, even if it is integrated in a sandwich. Well, behold! Recent experiments demonstrated, that integrated tomatoes are actually consumable. With awe I await the moment, when my restless experimenting mind will push me to try an unintegrated tomatoe.
Unfortunantly, before I realised the destructive spellpower of the word "never," I've made a bunch of hasty statements, one among which was that I shall never marry. Unsuspectingly and singlehandedly, I forged and placed a sword in the hands of Nemesis. However, the Great Creatures of the North *bows three times* have sent an omen, that the strike may be escaped...

Project Mickstee: Episode V: Finishing Touch

Finished! The chain is in place (since there is only one chainring it had to be made 2 full links longer than the usual large chainwheel/large sprocket combo, and could probably even be fine with one more link); minor derailer adjustment, and off for the test run!
Parts replaced and/or added:
- Spokes ($35)
- Tires ($30)
- Cables and housing ($20)
- Chain ($10)
- Front axle nuts ($0.14)
- Horn ($10)
- Spoke reflectors ($5)

Project Mickstee: Episode IV: Build-up

Wheels proved to be a real challenge, taking almost two weeks to complete. First of all, they were mighty rusty. On the outside they didn't look too bad, but inside, right under rim tape, reigned the formations of rust almost millimeters thick. It stuck to the tape as well, so cleaning it took a while (yes, I reused it. Didn't have the right size on hands to replace, plus there is nothing wrong with it). Structurally, wheels were in pretty bad shape as well; some spokes were way too loose, some too tight, the rims (steel, heavy and shiny) somewhat bent; spokes and nipples were rusty and stuck (some had to be cut out). Bottom line, the wheels were to rebuild. The hubs, despite some rust were in reasonably good condition. New spokes, that cost about $30, ended up being the biggest investment in this project (total cost is probably about $60). This was my first wheel building job, and taking in consideration the condition of the rims I'm somewhat proud of it. The tension never worked out right - it is way uneven; this was the only way to get the wheels trued. This will probably require some touch up truing later, but I doubt I could do any better at the moment.

Finally, all that could be cleaned is clean, wheels are built, and it's time to put the whole thing back together. Brakes, derailer, levers and the shifter all go on nicely; cables and housing are measured, cut, and snugly routed in between the lateral stays. Zip-ties as the means of attaching cables to the frame have certain advantages - they allow you to pass the cables anywhere you want, and eliminate brazed stays, thus making the frame a singlespeed (i.e. coaster brake or fixie) friendly.
There is only one part missing to make the bicycle ridable - the chain. Knowing that I have a few lying around I didn't even think of picking up a new one. The catch - they are all too short, being used on singlespeeds previously. Since finding a new chain at 1 am is out of the question, this finishing touch, along with the derailer adjustment will have to wait till tomorrow.
This doesn't prevent however, putting on all the "decorative" stuff - reflectors and the horn, that is the best thing ever appearing in the Canadian Tire bike department. Infernally loud and shiny, I've been looking for an appropriate project to put it on for a while, and here is the opportunity!It actually looks quite in place where it is, making a nice complementary to the "vintage" shifter.