ArtCrank... get your engines ready!

ARTCRANK 2010, get ready for it....

For you my internet friends I'll post a sneak peak of the print I made for the show:

To see the rest of the awesomeness... get your tail end down to the ACE Hotel this coming Thursday, Oct 7th from 5-11pm to see the rest of the print and everybody else's (35 or so). Oh, and seeing how this is a bike themed event, you should probably ride your bike there.

Oh and as well.... because this is Portland, there will be plenty of beer there too (now you really want to go, I can tell).

Getting Away...

Getting away without really getting very far away at all....

Its amazing what a weekend in the woods can do to rejuvenate your soul and it was so nice to actually have a weekend in the summer where I didn't get on my bike, even once. By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I actually started to feel a little guilty for being bikeless, but that feeling was quickly replaced by another IRA at my favorite Hood River brewery, Double Mountain.

This is a photo post... enjoy!

Sam and I found a great secret spot last weekend at Mt. Hood off the main roadway that was perfectly perched under some pine trees...

... and right next to a cold mountain fed creek.

I brought old paperwork with me to get the fire going...

in the morning there was coffee by the creek...

and then there was hiking! We went up the Cooper Spur Trail, which is on the "other side" of Mt. Hood, the one opposite of Timberline Lodge and Govy Camp.

The mountain was beautiful that day. It kept going in and out of clouds.

It even snowed for a few minutes.

The trail was a 2,800 climb that took you right up one of the ridges of Mt. Hood, overlooking the Elliot Glacier.

Sam and I brought my dog Anna, as well as an energetic "dog friend" of hers named Riley. Anna, despite not being the most athletic dog out there, was a trooper. She climbed like a rock star but sadly, her legs started bothering her before too terribly long. We made it up a pretty far distance before we realized we might have to carry Anna all the way back down the mountain, and so... puppy comfort in mind, we turned around before we reached the "tie in" apex of the trail.

There were all sorts of cool cairns marking the trail.

And tons of bright purple wildflowers once you got down below timber line.

There are a lot of cool older structures on this side of the mountain. Things like the Cloud Cap Inn, showed here. The Snowshoe Club Cabin and a skier's hut constructed by the CCC.

I love Mt. Hood.

Everyone, including the dogs, was pretty tuckered out at the end of the day. thankfully, nothing is more relaxing than a warm fire and a cold beer.

yum!!

Let the good times roll ya'll...

Cindy: On a scale of 1 to intoxication, where are you Levo?.... me: EIGHT!!!"

Ahhh... it feels as if springtime has finally arrived in our fair Pacific Northwest. I mean, yeah... we will are still guaranteed to have wet and rainy weather for the next four months (interspersed with moments of warm sunny clarity), but the flowers are all a bloom, I've put most of my snowboarding gear in the basement, I'm wearing short gloves on my daily bike commute, I've got softball games now on Sunday afternoons, outdoor soccer on Thursday nights... and it seems as if people are finally starting to come out of their winter hibernation.

Speaking of cycling, softball and winter hibernation.. that is one great thing I love about my little Portland community. While I have plenty of friends that I see week in and week out throughout the year, there are some friends that are simply, more often than not..."sporting friends", meaning... you only really "see" them when you are both engaged in the same sporting activity. Be it telling jokes as you both struggle to crest a seven mile hill climb, congratulating them on a nice hit as they round third, or lamenting over a cold beer about what a bitch the goal keeper for the other team was... you enjoy seeing these folks every new sporting season as it shows that while somethings change (teams, gear, sig others), many things stay the same. You can count on seeing their friendly faces and engage in conversations until the weather turns cold, the skies turn a murky grey, and then the snowboard comes back out. The thing is, you may never get into really deep meaningful life spiritual conversations with these friends, but seeing them out there having fun week after week, is sometimes better than a quick conversation. Just seeing them enjoying themselves and smiling, lets you know that things, life... can't be all that bad for them (or you either).

So, needless to say, I feel as if my summer community is back in the swing of things (literally), and on top of games, races and beers, there is a whole summer of backyard barbecues, cornhole, and camping to plan and look forward to. Smell that in the air folks? .... That's the smell of fun!

Anyways, my softball team the Brewhers, is sponsored by local microbrew giant Rogue. And, in return for their generous donations to our program, we've agreed to volunteer our time in events that they also sponsor. Which means, throughout the year, you can find your friendly Brewhers Softball team manning taps at beer fests all over the city. Not only is that in itself a reason to shell out a few pennies... but, there is beer involved!!! It's pretty much a win win for everyone, especially the volunteer pourers! Pretty much after our shifts (as licensed OLCC servers) end... we are given beer. Free beer, lots and lots and lots of it. Take for example this past weekend my teammates and I volunteered at the Firkin Fest, which was held at the Green Dragon. Pretty much, the room was full of 20 or so kegs from various Oregon Breweries; HUB, Double Mountain, Rogue, Lumpoc, Pelican Bay, Bend Brewing, Bridgeport, Nikasi, Deschutes, Laurelwood, etc... to name a few. (Excited about seeing Double Mountain IRA as a keg, I immediately ran over to pour that all afternoon, and let me just say... I was pretty popular!!!)

After my shift was over, we were given our tickets and it was almost as if your eyes glazed over with choices... oh, where to begin? First of all... let me preface by saying I had gone on a nice little bike ride that morning and had a little snack before I ran off to serve at 3pm. We were also promised food during our shift, so I didn't feel the need to really eat prior. However, during our shift they ran out of the "promised food" (hot dogs, make that kobe beef hot dogs)... So, not only were we thirsty for the beer that we had been pouring for the past three hours... we were hungry too. However, the drinking started before the consumption of food did and by the time my half of mac and cheese finally arrived, I think I was already three 8oz servings of room temperature Black Stout/IPA's into the wind (aka... getting drunk).

I had a great night and the warm beers kept flowing for as long as I had free beer tickets (thanks to my friends who kept putting them in my pocket). Somewhere along the way I lost a few games of shuffleboard, met some nice folks from Seattle and talked bikes, ran into one of my Bridgetown Velo teammates, peed in a parking lot after hopping some railing, and left with all intentions on going dancing... but alas... ended up in my nice warm bed some how at the end of the evening. Apologies to my gf for any amount of PDA she had to endure and to my full time friends and teammates who graciously, keep me laughing all the time (and also to the Green Dragon, I'm sorry for not cutting off that guy sooner who ended up knocking over the keg of Pelican).

Let the good times roll ya'll, spring has finally arrived!!!!

I love people making fun of Portland

If there is one thing I love, it's Portland. If there's another thing I love... it's people making fun of Portland.

I say this because in order to make fun of something well, most of the time you have to love it enough to understand how you can make fun of it. And, most of the time the joking is true, based on fact, and well deserved.

New York City, the center of the world

I find that New Yorkers especially, have a love hate relationship with Portland. Take for example, on any given day you can find an article on Portland in the NY Times. My brother, who lives in Manhattan is frustrated by this "Portlandness" and how all anyone ever seems to be talking about is Portland. I rack his frustration up to all his life, he only wanted to live in New York. And, he shared this dream with many people.... it was THE DREAM. To move from small town USA and go to the Big City, the Big Apple, the Center of the Universe and make it work. So many people have shared that dream, so many people have lived that dream, so many people have been disappointed by that dream. But, New Yorkers ... love New York City; even if they hate it, they love to hate it. They have such pride in their city. Everyone in the world wants to come to New York. New York is the shit. So, to seemingly wake up one day and have everyone in New York talking about this tiny little city on the outskirts of the country is laughable. "Where are their tall buildings?" New Yorkers ask. "Where is the culture, the diversity, the subway, the commerce, the industry, the Yankees? It is no where to be found in Portland. Pfft!" So, they brush it off. But still, the talk continues and next thing they know their friends are talking about Portland. Oh, how much everyone loves Portland and wants to visit or even worse.... move there. And, this confuses and frustrates the New Yorker. Suddenly, it seems as if their has been a cultural shift and the world is changing? Since when did people pick tiny rainy Portland over New York? Everyone wants to come to New York? Right guys? I'm right with this? Aren't I?

The thing about Portland is that we have pride in our city in the same way that New Yorkers have pride in their city. However, unlike most of America, we don't want the "bigness of it all" and we don't really want to be in NYC. New Yorkers have a hard time understanding why anyone living in a metropolitan area would not strive to want to be like New York. New Yorkers do not understand where this love comes from. So, they visit. And then - they see. They may not fully understand since we don't have a huge baseball team like the Yankees or buildings over 33 floors high, but...they see we have our own culture and out own things we get excited about in that same fashion. And - then they get jealous and then, they make fun (cause that's what New Yorkers do). And, that's okay with me.

Portland, not the center of the world but that's okay with us.

Take for example Portland and our love for all things bike related. A lot of people love to make fun of this obsession, and one of those people is the guy who runs the infamous blog, Bike Snob NYC. The Bike Snob, who's true identity is unknown, writes an almost daily review of personal rants of the cycling world. Most of these jabs attack hipsters, Portland, wanna be hipsters, celebrities, naive commuters, Portland, Lance Armstrong, fixed gear riders (see hipsters), and Portlanders. Some folks get their panties in a wad and wonder where his hate comes from or what short fixie handlebar is shoved up his ass.... but mostly I just laugh. For the most part, he's right about a lot of things when it comes to Portlanders and our bikes.

Take for example, he made fun of us this summer when the Flaming Lips came to town to shoot a video featuring naked cyclists (watch that video here) which was also about the same time that Michael Jackson died, the Bike Snob said that only in Portland: "people sit poised and ready to mobilize the second anybody needs anything ridiculous and cycling-related to be done. As I understand it, it works like this: Let's say, for example, an aging rock band needs to draw attention to itself inexpensively due to both the moribund state of the record industry and its own increasing hoariness. Well, this is easy to do if the band knows four things: 1) Hipsters pay attention to anything having to do with bikes; 2) Nudity always gets attention; 3) People in Portland love to ride bikes; 4) People everywhere will do anything to get attention. So what the rock band then does is notify the cycling authorities in Portland, who in turn sound a giant air raid siren that can be heard for miles on both sides of the Willamette River. Then, everyone reports to a designated area with their bicycles for debriefing. Orders can range from "Ride your bikes around dressed as Michael Jackson," to "Let's help someone move to a new apartment," to "Let's get naked to help The Flaming Lips sell music." (In this case, they were quite literally "de-briefed.") Whatever the cause, these ever-agreeable Portlanders are happy to oblige." Which, is actually very close to the truth as to what goes on here.

Also very close to the truth for Portland as well... is how he so vividly explains our love (as we are mostly hipsters and cyclocross racers here) for beer. "Like any moody and insecure person, I enjoy consuming alcoholic beverages to assuage my angst, facilitate my social interaction, and enter into a pleasant state of intoxication. Even so, I'm not sure why cyclists--in particular "hipsters" and cyclocross racers--get so wildly excited about beer. "Team Beer;" beer hand-ups; beer hand-downs; PBR; references to PBR; waxing poetic about "craft ales;" incessant Belgian beer references; and so on. The way people act you'd think beer was something that was around only a few days a year, like cherry blossoms, as opposed to something you can buy and consume whenever you feel like it. (Sure, I suppose some fixed-gear riders are underage, but most of the people getting carried away about beer are like 35.) Again, I like beer, but I like toilet paper too--in fact, you often buy it in the same place you buy beer, and like beer you feel good after you use it--but you don't see people whooping about it and handing rolls of Marcal (the PBR of toilet paper) to people on run-ups."

It doesn't take someone more than to go to one cross race here to see that this is indeed the truth, we do love beer and we like making things that make beer easier to consume. But Bike Snob.... you are not the only one with a shared love and affection for toilet paper, I too share that view which is why most of my family are getting the Charmin Double Ply Biggie Roll 12-Pack this holiday season. I mean, it's the gift that really does keep giving.

And, cross. My goodness, we Portlanders seem to be obsessed as much with our cross races as we are with our beer - true true true. Why, if halloween dress up cross crusades weren't enough, if single speed cyclocross world championships and the thunderdome weren't enough.... this week you can even enter the dog cycle cross races. See, that's another thing we're obsessed about, our dogs. True story, before the upcoming cross races out at Kruger's Farm this Sunday will feature a race prior to the other races where owners will race with their dogs on the course. There is even a special category for "carry-on and lap dogs as well as clydesdale".

And, not surprising, Bike Snob had this to say:

"Proving once again that they are far more advanced than the rest of the country when it comes to anything involving cycling, they are now augmenting their cyclocross with actual dog racing. This is great news for Portlanders and their dirty, hairy, smelly sidekicks (as well as for their dogs), though it's awful news for the rest of us. Portland cyclocross racers are already smug enough about how much muddier their races are than everyone else's; now on top of that they're going to start feeling superior to people who aren't forced to race through post-dog race waste. Soon struggling though knee-deep mud won't be enough to qualify a 'cross race as "epic;" you'll also need to face-plant into the feces of a Great Dane... This should mean every cyclocross-related forum on the Internet is going to be hijacked by "epic" threads about the proper technique for "portaging" a Yorkie.The only real winner here is the pet industry, since dog ownership in Portland will surely double when everyone rushes to acquire a spare "pit dog." (Pit bulls, incidentally, make excellent pit dogs.)"

Nothing says cross better than boots, beer, and dogs. This is an ironclad pup.

True, true.... all true. We are smug about most of these things and I think that as long as we stay on our bikes and help push that forward thinking momentum to create, innovate, and envoke change... that we can still stay on top of our game. I mean... look at this breakdown on urban cycling from GOOD Magazine:

And, not to make this post go on longer than it has already.... but, while we're on the much beloved subject of "hipsters", I love the Bike Snob's description of them: "the essence of the "hipster" lifestyle is doing everything that real rock stars do except for actually being creative and having talent. Sleeping in, dressing up, getting sleeve tattoos, drinking heavily, doing drugs, making videos, and keeping your followers abreast of the minutiae of your day are all a lot easier when you don't actually have to produce anything. This is not to say it's completely effortless, though. Maintaining your image can be a full-time job, as can staying abreast of the trends".

Which brings about this video which has been making the rounds on the internets this week:

Anyways world... when it comes to making fun of Portland... bring it on.

that's the best news I heard all week!!!

(even Obama is a fan!)

The best thing that I read this week was a study by some researcher who discovered using data from a Government health survey of American Adults, is that people who drink regularly seem to exercise more often than those who shun the "drink". It also determined that folks who average more than a drink or two a day may be the most active. As well, the researchers found that in general, the amount of time people devote to exercise seems to correlate with the amount of alcoholic drinks they have each month. Compared with those who 'abstain', those who were considered "heavy drinkers" (46-76 drinks in the past month) exercised for an average of 20 more minutes per week while the "moderate drinkers" (15-45) averaged an extra 1o minutes more each week! And when those drinkers exercised, they usually were more cardiovasculary intense than the light drinkers and abstainers.

The lead researcher, Dr. Michael T. French had this to say about the results:

"We certainly would not advocate that abstainers should start drinking or light drinkers should start drinking heavily as a way to increase their exercise," lead researcher Dr. Michael T. French, of the University of Miami. But, he added, the fact that people who drink, at varying levels, are all generally more active than non-drinkers is a finding "worth exploring further." One potential reason for the link, French noted, is that some regular drinkers use exercise as a way to counteract the calories from alcohol. It's also possible that drinking at "responsible" levels is a maker of a generally healthy lifestyle, the researcher said. For its part, relatively heavy drinking might be part of a "sensation-seeking" lifestyle for some people, French and his colleagues speculate. Some heavier drinkers may, for example, be the types who tend toward more-adventurous outdoor activities like skiing or rock climbing. Others may play team sports, which often includes a trip to the bar after a game. French pointed out that excessive drinking and alcohol abuse — any drinking habits that are harmful to a person's work, relationships or health — are well known to have "serious psychological and physical consequences." Moderate drinking, on the other hand, has been linked to potential health benefits, including a decreased risk of heart disease. While part of that might be attributed to moderate drinkers' overall lifestyle — which, based on this study, includes higher exercise levels — research also suggests that alcohol has some direct benefits, like elevated levels of "good" HDL cholesterol. -msnbc

Well then, it looks like I'm not the only one who's motivation to work out is fueled by beer. And, that's good to know but not really that all surprising since most of the folks I'm involved with in playing sports are also the same people that I'm involved with when it comes to drinking. I guess it's just nice to hear some truth and facts behind what I've known all along. I just want some kid to bring up this study to his health teacher when they talk about drinking leading you to lose all ambition in life. Drinking, just kinda lubricates it I've found.

Also in the same vein... was this study by Spanish researchers who discovered that a pint of beer post workout or match is better at rehydrating the human body than water. It's believed from the tests that were conducted, that the sugars, salts, and bubbles in beer may help the body absorb fluids more quickly than flat water. I mean, yeah... gatorade probably does the same thing... but it's not as much fun as grabbing a pint at the pub with your teammates after the game. Of, if your on my soccer team.... why wait till you leave the field?

And... while we're on this delicious topic, tomorrow in Portland is the one day Biketobeerfest at Hopworks Organic Brewery. What is biketobeerfest you may ask? Well, it's a totally carfree and free event for everyone from noon to 10pm that features things like a huffy toss, marching bands, live rock bands, bike crafts, handbuilt bicycle show and tell, bmx trick riding expo, roller races, bike dancing, and a rodeo for bike shop employees -whew- and that's just one day!!!! And... what event at a brewery would be complete without beer? Yep, Hopworks has even brewed up two limited edition beers for the event.

So, it looks like with all this beer laden news, most likely I'll be doing what i mostly do on the weekends and everyday during the week... engage myself in heavy exercise and then have a beer afterwards. To health, right?

prost!