Author: Matt Talley

FV*K#%G Daylight Savings Time

/ Matt Talley

I REALLY, extra, super  dislike daylight saving time, especially come that time in the Fall when I have to set the 20 or so clocks in the house/cars back one hour. It means that my commute home is in the dark and I have to light myself up like a disco ball so that drivers on their way home after a crappy day at work won’t run over me – again.  I don’t care if some Victorian Kiwi (who should not have taken his mind off Entomology) thought it was a great idea that would increase the available light for his bug collecting.  The practice has become unnecessary and annoying in the 21st century.  90% of Africa doesn’t observe it.  China, Japan, and India think DST is bunk.  Most of Central & South America and Australia have let it go, and yet in the USA only the state of Arizona has the foresight to opt out.   First we toss out DST then we adopt the metric system.  My little soapbox rant for the day…

Make sure you VOTE!!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

If you don’t vote then you can’t really bitch about politicians, government, the economy, spending, the environment, taxes, etc…   November 2nd is rolling up fast and regardless of your political affiliation , you need to get off the couch and do your part.

What I have to put up with every night…

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

The following pictures are how every night of my life now goes.  Cute sleepy wife goes to bed and puppy follows her.  I follow mere seconds to an hour later and this is what I find:

Stamps-With-Foot sound asleep, Dog (Brodie) on my side and in my spot.  Wife snuggling dog.  I walk in and without fail this is the reaction I get:

Wife: ZZZZzzzzzzzz….ZZZZZzzzzz

Brodie: “What?! You got a problem monkey? I was here first, this is my spot!    Don’t even think about disturbing me, I’m comfy and set for the evening.  You should have got here first…”

I ignore him, walk around the bed to hop in and turn off the lamp and I am greeted with this face:

Brodie: “If you touch me I am going to EAT YOUR FACE OFF – I swear by all that is Holy (salmon kibble, the stuffed monkey, & chasing kitties) that I will FVCK YOU UP if you…  Hey!…  NO… Stop…  Damn it!!…  Fine, I will sleep on the other side of her, but tomorrow night I am going to attack balls if you try this sh!t again…”

With that pronouncement he then makes a couple of turns, flops down with a huff, snorts a couple of times, may pass some gas just because and then begins to snore like a fat old guy with sleep apnea and a deviated septum.  Modern love with a dose of belligerent puppy.

Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show

/ Matt Talley

I do like me some bicycles.  I really like the ones that some guy welded/brazed in a small dim shop near/at his house.  Tool marks, thoughtful frame geometry, pump bosses, bottle openers, hammered fenders and the inclusion of S&S couplers make me feel all funny on the inside. I never miss a chance to fondle a hand-built frame.

Stamps-With-Foot was planning to drive down to Portland to help a friend out that is an artist/costume designer on a new stage production.  I was on the fence about riding along, as talk of sewing and fabric makes me as attentive as a narcoleptic on ketamine, until I happened upon the notice that the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show was in Portland on the same weekend.  That sold me and I immediately fired off an e-mail to my lovely bride stating that while I was going with her, there would be abandonment for the better part of a day while I alternately drank coffee & beer at the show while groping steel frames and taking illicit photographs of possible two-wheeled mistresses.  Her reply was something like – ‘Fine, but you’re driving and you can’t buy ANOTHER bike…”  Deal.  I don’t have to buy the cow when the milk is free…

I went to the show with my buddy Dave, who doesn’t share my obsession for bikes, but he is a fellow gear-head and also posses a keen mechanical knack, so I knew he would be good company.  The show was small and somewhat pricey to get into, but atmosphere was lively, the people watching was excellent, and there was LOTS of eye candy!  I wanted to put a down payment on an new road frame, but the more I talked to the builder the louder Stamps-With-Foot’s voice became in my head.  I kept getting flashes of me standing outside in the rain with my new frame, no coat, shivering in a wet hat and the dog looking out the living room window at me smugly…

Below is an image gallery of some of the sights and lines that we found there.

...and beer on a bike was the first thing that greeted us upon entering the door!

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Kindle, I Heart You!

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I have made the leap into the arms of technology once again.  After months of internal debate, fondling display models and endless questions & comments, I bought a Kindle 3 this weekend.

My wife gave me the cash and “permission” to buy my e-reader crack of choice for my birthday.  We were in Portland this weekend and since Oregon has no state sales tax, I figured it was the right time to buy.  We did go to two different stores to find one in stock and were greatly assisted by the magic of the iPhone and its ability to look up store locations and phone numbers on the fly.  I opted for the plan-Jane cover and the wifi-only model: I don’t NEED a Cole Haan calf skin leather case, polished with the tears of a busty virgin for $100 and am never joinsin’ for a book so hard that I need 3G coverage.  After loading a couple free books, I bought a Steampunk novel and downloaded a newspaper to take a shake down run.  Results: Matt likey!! It is small, light, simple, and a pleasure to read.

I spent Sunday morning sitting at a friend’s table reading the International Times Herald, drinking coffee, and popping doughnut holes into my mouth.  It made for a really nice rainy Pacific Northwest morning inside.  I will include a gallery below of my e-reader lovely next to the Moleskine medium square-ruled notebook that I use for work

Fresh out of the box in Portland

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Unduly expensive and complicated raised garden boxes

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I have spent something like 40 total hours of labor over the entire summer and spent ~$250 to build the most over complicated raised garden bed boxes within a four mile radius.  I have obsessed over the design & materials, changed the layout and location no more than 4 times and used child labor (my 9-year old son) during construction.  We now have Garden Boxes that can support the weight of our entire house and my wife mentioned that I might need an intervention.

It all started when we decided to grow some veggies and I didn’t want to use treated lumber from Home Depot.  I considered landscape bricks, but the total project cost would be over $700 for three 8X3X2’ beds.  I wanted to use 3-inch thick cypress beams, as that particular wood is rot proof for 50+ years, but that type of wood is outrageously expensive here in the Pacific Northwest ~$1000 for the needed lengths.   I considered redwood, but it was also too pricy to be left out in the yard, half covered with dirt.  The predicament was solved for me when I happened upon a bunch of 4”X10”X8’ fir beams that were end cuts from a beam roof construction project in the neighborhood.  As they were “scrap” I picked them up for a song.

In addition to the boxes, there will be an espalier apple tree and two columnar apples on that side of the yard.  I wanted the garden boxes to mesh with that plan and still be functional, pretty, and to fit in with the style of our house & yard. To help with that goal, I decided to lap joint the corners of the boxes and use hardwood dowels to both keep the joints together and as homage to the period craftsmanship of our home.  I know I have OCD.  Since I was already using dowels, I wanted to marry the planks together (see drawing) so that the whole structure would be stronger and resist and bowing in the middle as the dirt pressed on the sides of the beds.  I felt it might also be nice to add replaceable cedar top rails to shed water and to take the brunt of any abuse.  I may have over-thought the concept and might have been better off just using concrete cinder blocks…

The finished product with espalier apple trees cartooned in.


Here are the exact steps to take in building raised garden boxes just like ours:
Plan obsessively
Re-design twice
Buy lumber – get great deal
Bring home and cover with tarp
Let sit for a month
Measure and layout each joint with son’s help
Let son drop board on your shin
Try REALLY hard not to say curse words
By son ice cream.
Limp for a couple of days
Carefully cut all end notches with son
Tell him no when he wants to run the circle saw
Tel him no when he asks again every 10 minutes
Lit it all sit for 2 more weeks
Find really expensive combination square your son left in the grass
Smile because you love him anyway
Drill all dowel holes in the middle of the individual sections with spade bit
Let sit for a week in rain because you forgot to tarp it
Assembly all sections dry for 1st box
Realize that the pieces are now warped and twisted more than a bit
Say a LOT of curse words
Hand-fit each joint with a mallet and chisel
Cuss some more
Purchase ¾” X 2’ auger bit
Assemble 1st box with glue and dowels
Get HUGE splinter in palm
Say hurtful, mean things to the lumber & loudly question the legitimacy of its parentage
Cry a little while digging the jagged hunk of wood out with utility knife
Use Super Glue creatively as first aid supply
Spend a full hour getting 1st box square using one hand
Call it a night
Make sure the thing didn’t move while you were sleeping
Drill corners for dowels
Almost burn up drill
Look at sky and count to ten
Run out of waterproof wood glue
Say dirty words all the way to Home Depot
Buy bigger drill, glue, and more dowels
Apply glue and hammer in dowels with wooden mallet
Look over to see puppy chewing on your hat
Say the F-word
Retrieve soggy hat
Clamp box up with 8 huge pipe clamps
Let joints dry/sit for a week
Construct next two boxes with minimal dirty words
Let sit a further week
Ask 15 year old daughter if she wants to help
She will look at you like you are insane for the mere suggestion
Try not to break her phone when she returns to texting
Look up and count to twenty – repeat
Spread out boxes in yard and turn over
Apply two coats of white primer to bottoms of boxes
Get paint on favorite pair of shorts
Let wife help paint over primer with green outdoor paint
Look up and notice that wife has painted halfway down the box…
Take paint brush from wife
Say sweet things to her and laugh about the extra paint coverage
Let boxes sit for two days
Finish painting bottoms green (keep ground moisture out and blends with grass)
Let sit a week
Position in yard where they should finally go
Ask visiting friend for his opinion
Take his advice (as it is better than your plan) and reposition
Let wife see
Move 3 more times to make wife happy
Move back to position friend suggested
Let sit for a week
Get married to wife a second time and almost loose mind to stress
Have house full of guests for a week
Try not to kill Ross when he makes fun of your yard
Drink lots of beer
Buy gravel and hardware cloth for box foundation
Cut sod from under box locations and move to bare patch in front yard
Wife will work hard in front planting lavender and arranging sod
Lay hardware cloth and pour gravel footings
Spend Saturday with wife finally placing boxes
Drink beer and wine until you hurt the next day in celebration of your hard work
Let sit another week
Cut top rail on table saw
Decide to really complicate things by adding hardwood splines to top rail joint
Devise special spline jig for table saw
Cut last rail too short
DO NOT throw anything, close eyes and count to ten
Revert to cussing
Trip to Home Depot for extra cedar
Re-rip and re-miter last rail
Glue joints of rail and try not to glue rail to box
Wait 3 days and cut away spline waste
Find “cute” little ceramic tiles from the 1920’s that wife will love for boxes
Spend 2 nights in shop making custom cedar frames for the tiles
Add corner splines to match boxes just because
Measure twice to find box center
Attach tiles to front of the boxes with proper outdoor screws
Coat top rails with food-safe clear coat
Wait 2 days
Apply another coat and repeat
Show wife your handy-work and wait for her to swoon
Point out the joint details and all the thought that went into the build
Wait for batting of eyelashes and the swoon…
Mention the period tiles and their perfect symmetry
Keep waiting…
Waiting……………

A drawing of the project shoeing some of the detail

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Taking a bit of a vacation

/ Matt Talley

It has been almost two years since we moved from Deutschland and I now believe that I have enough distance to finish my book about our life there and the funny/sad/wonderful/disturbing things that happened to us.  I had maybe 65 pages written, but in but I put the manuscript down for a while because I found that it was overly biting and my sarcastic prose leaned over the hateful line when discussing my former employer.  No one wants to read a travel essay that is spiteful.   I hope to have it done and edited by this summer.  Publishing in the current economy is part luck and part Voodoo so it might take a while (and a couple more re-writes) before it is Amazon ready.

I have promised myself not to rush things and to use a real publisher.  My ego is not so big for me to even consider a vanity press.  If my musings are not good enough for publication using a legitimate publishing house that will be rude to me, not answer or return my calls, edit my work with a heavy hand, and take 80% of the book’s profit, then I don’t want it out there for the world to read and snicker at.

Soooo…  I have decided to slow my blog postings about the ironic crap I find out in the world from day to day, leave my witty observations in my head, and commit myself to using the time I would spend here on crafting my book.  For now, I will continue with project updates, book status, and life events and after I am done with “A Year of Ordered Chaos” I am sure I will have loads of material and opinions to blog about.

Stupid freshman mistake

/ Matt Talley

I feels extra-smart… Like i gots me some real serious book-learnin’, whew-ee!

My wife, Stamps-with-Foot, went online last night and tried to comment on my Kindle lust post.  She gave me a wry look and said that the comments weren’t working.  I glared at her with the same suspicion your IT guy at work gives you when something is supposedly “wrong” with your computer.  I issued the “move over” command – I have been studying how IT works and nerd-bravado is something like 72.61% of their technical skill set –  and took her laptop.  Sure enough, the comments were off.  Huh?  I turned them back on and in just a minute the very same thing happened with the next post that she wanted to make some witty quip about.  I then spent close to an hour, hunched over her netbook, figuring out what was up…

It would seem that when I updated the appearance on my blog template a month or so ago, I somehow turned off all the comments on all my posts.  I have had swarms of e-mail lately and zero comments, so I wondered what was going on; now I know – I clicked the wrong check box and that was that. I feel extra-smart.

BOOK SALE P0RN

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

Some people collect books out of compulsion: odds and ends, with no order to their accumulation.  We have our issues, but to call it a compulsion is a stretch.  Unlike many of our bibliophilic brethren, we can actually sell a book from time to time and are somewhat choosy where and on what we spend our money on.  I think that our current library sits at about 1,200 volumes, equally split between history and fiction.  With the purchase of our home and my subsequent attempt to return all the period architectural details and furnish the living room as the original owners might have done, I have started to gather a few editions that could have been found in our home that first Fall.  I have 1928 editions of:

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,
Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf  (German edition)
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Virginia Woolf – Orlando: A Biography
Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa
Agatha Christie – The Mystery of the Blue Train
The Common Book of Prayer
Felix Salten – Bambi: a Life in the Woods (Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde)
Herbert Asbury  – The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
André Maurois  – Disraeli
T. E. Lawrence  – Revolt in the Desert

To add weight to the our pre-stock market crash collection, I been on the search for a complete set of 1909 Harvard Classics, the 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, and a set of the 1910 11th edition set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, as this is THE edition to have (for the Über-booky folk).  All taken together, this will give our parlor a true sense of period nerdiness.  None of the above volumes are particularly pricey ~ $6 each in decent condition and ALL of them are available for download since enough time has passed that the works are in the public domain.  The wealth of information contained in them isn’t the sole point for wanting them; it is also their tangible quality – the faded bindings, the smell of their paper, the care taken with the block-printed illustrations…  These are all books that have witnessed the same history as our little home and deserve a safe and revered place there.

This past weekend we attended the bi-annual Friends of the Seattle Public Sale, where we usually pick up some Travel Lit, a few mountain climbing related tomes and the odd cookbook.  Well, on this trip I hit the motherload!  I found 14 mountaineering books that are on my “List” and in the Sets and Rare Book Room I happened upon a complete set of 1910 of the EB.  I may have swooned.  I snapped up those bad-boys faster than a lawyer cashes a check.  The set is of Ex-library stock and there is some serious shelf wear on a couple pieces, but nothing that would keep them from being used for another 80 years.  For a grand total of $33, I walked out a very happy little hobbit.  I will work on the rest of the list as further opportunity presents and as time and money are available.

A few notable biblio-quotes:

“Anyone who has got a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.” & “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den”
-Phillip Adams

“I cannot live without books.”
– Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams in 1815)

“With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person’s character. “
— Nicholas A. Basbanes

One bad-@ss little kid!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

You know his dad was the videographer/director.  It is a cute and slick short film that makes me want to bribe my kids into doing something half as cool:  A Star Wars film short using our dog as Yoda (some CGI green will be needed), my son as Luke and daughter as Leia.  Oh the sibling light-saber battles that we could have!  Stamps-with-foot (my wife) and I will have a cameo: I will be Chewy and she can be one of those saucy blue dancing girls with a thing for wookies….

What would you take?

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

You don’t really own anything you can’t carry on your back at a dead run
~Daniel Keys Moran

I have a work acquaintance who sends me (and about 50 other co-workers) all sorts of right-wing, end of times, liberal government=evil sort of crap a couple times a week.  Last week, we all received a forward telling us how to prepare (lists and such) for “the coming breakdown of society.”  Really, she sends this sort of ranting dribble all the time.  I haven’t done anything about it because it makes me laugh AND I pick apart her forwarded ramblings and use their lunacy, lack of factual basis, and flawed rhetoric to verbally beat the proverbial sense into her on breaks.  I haven’t figured out if she just likes the debate and that is why I am included or if she has a humiliation fetish and waits with glee after sending me Sarah Palin quotes or a comic declaring that the Health-care Bill is the same as a 1930’s National Socialist agenda come to pass.

Her “run while you can” e-mail  got me thinking about what we would do if the wife and I had to escape a Tea-party  horde.  If you had to leave your house RIGHT NOW, what would you take? I mean now and you were never coming back.  Where would we go?  Why are you going? Are you running from the Feds?  Has the zombie apocalypse come? Is there a crazy red-headed woman at the door with a chainsaw? What if the house was on fire?  Natural disaster? Mafia hit? Terrorist attack?  Plague?  Famine?  War?

Could you walk/run 100 miles with all that stuff?
Where would you go?
How would you get there?
What would you do for food, money, shelter?
Why this stuff and is there anything I would cull?

In most of this cases I would like to stay at home, dig in and wait for a sunny day, FEMA, a Presidential pardon, the 82nd Airborne, etc…. But sometimes one has to run like a chimp whose balls are ablaze.  If given a few minutes to gather and run what I would take?  All the technical clothes I can fit in my bag (down jacket, rain gear, synthetic shirts and pants, hat, trail running shoes, hiking and running socks) my S³ kit, mess kit, external hard drive, laptop, couple of t-shirts, a pair of jeans, my dad’s favorite pipe, wallet/purse, passports, birth certificates, every bit of cash and coins we had, the 12ga, every 12ga shell I can lay my hands on, pocket knife, sleeping bag, all the coffee in the freezer, I would wear hiking boots out the door, carry a charged phone, assorted cables, lots of extra batteries, five or six yard waste garbage bags, lighters, and I would throw the bike in the car – I could ride my bike till the wheels fell off  once the gas is all gone {throw in the spare tubes and maintenance kit that I always ride with}. Lastly, I would take with me a plan of where we are going and have an alternate destination – just in case.

The wife would be toting similar, but I would load her down with camping and non-perishable food, a couple rolls of duct tape, and all the meds and bandages in the house. We’d throw her bike as well. The Mrs. would take the dog. Yes, there are reasons to leave him, but she would not listen to a single one.  Mentioning the words BBQ/starving/alternate plan/him or us/tastes like chicken and looking over at the dog, within 24hours of said words, would get me shot and castrated in reverse order so we won’t be going there…

The sleeping bag and tech gear will get us where we need to go in the best shape possible no matter the weather. The bikes will get us there faster than our own feet. Cars run out of gas – bikes don’t. The trash bags would keep us and our gear dry. The coffee is included as possible currency and because I have an addiction. The shotgvn and shells are to keep us safe or fed and Daddy’s pipe because one must not forget the past. The hard drive and computer are so that we have records (personal and financial) once we arrive where we are going. Could I cull any of the above… Nope.  Can I carry it all across 5-6 states?   Yep.

This was just off the top of my head and I figure I could gather all this stuff into a pack in less than 4 minutes for a really quick departure and we could get just about anywhere with it. Give me some time to plan and it may look a little different.  Also, if our place was going up in flames the list would be a lot different.  First I would make sure Laurel was safe (she would already have the puppy) and then I would just grab papers, computers, photo albums, keepsakes and run out into the street and wait for our bad-ass Seattle fire department to douse the flames and prey that some of the rest of our crap was salvageable.

So what about you?  What does your list look like?  Why are you running?

Crap I gave up to be an adult:

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Afternoon naps
eating just the frosting
sword fights with sticks
Nu-Grape Soda & Kool-Aid
being Chuck Norris
wearing Super Man Underoos
sneaking out
believing in Santa Claus & The Easter Bunny
skateboarding
#2 pencils
closing eyes when brushing teeth & washing hair
building Lincoln Logs, Legos, and erector sets insomnia before the first day of school
action figures
Penmanship
sneaking a peek at a copy of Playboy
wearing a backpack with both straps over shoulders
Trapper Keepers
just kissing a girl
not wearing sunglasses
jaw-breakers
playing Army
afternoon back-lot baseball
ugly church shoes
curfews
the violin
being a stuntman when I grow up
cheap beer
believing everything parents said was true
indifference to coffee
poor craftsmanship
casual friendships
smoking pot
wearing a cheap watch
fleeting crushes
unplanned nakedness
my own invincibility
a 1971 GMC Truck
having people notice when I did something cool or right
thinking I was a genius
counting irony as an emotion
having a really fun  job
delusions of being a professional climber & cyclist
dismissing the wisdom of teachers
English being the only language I’d ever need
having nothing to lose
indifference to insurance coverage
idle weekends
nonchalance about money
an uninterrupted night’s sleep
riding motorcycles
drinking a 12-pack of beer
ignoring news and politics
clothes with the names of pro sports teams on them
crappy fiction
20/20 vision
eating over half the pizza by myself
peace in the Middle East
linear thought as a rule
Not knowing what the IRS stood for
a full head of hair
watching the Three Stooges after cartoons on Saturday morning
reliving that which I supposedly left behind
plausible deniability

Dog walker review

/ Matt Talley

Apparently we are now effete bourgeoisie snobs: we have a house cleaner and a someone who walks our puppy when we are not home.  Well, we are between house cleaners right now (message me and I will tell you who NOT to use), but we have found the greatest dog walker in Seattle: David the Dog Walker

Stamps-With-Foot, my lovely bride, loves her puppy more than me: He eats better, gets constant scratching and cuddling, is offered the premier seat on the couch during TV time, and gets snuggled like a baby all night.  I have accepted it, moved on, and I am better now.  Anyway, we both work and while Brodie is the most chill dog you will ever meet, sleeping 20 hours a day, we (especially Stamps-With-Foot) feel bad about leaving him in his kennel when we are away at the J-O-B.

Right after moving to La Maison Du Talley, we got a recommendation for a walker from the West Seattle Blog and while the service was fine at first, she went downhill fast: forgot to walk him sometimes, would come just before 5:00pm, took off with no notice and we would have to scramble to find an alternative.  We happen upon David and his wife, Angela, also through  WSB and we clicked immediately.  They run a real business:  certifications, a website, insurance, everything.  They are both incredibly consciousness about what they do, have a back-up when they go on vacation, they let us know right away if there was anything out of the ordinary, AND Brodie loves them.  David and Angela have worked with Brodie for almost six months and I cannot give them or their service high enough praise.

Fall is here – Riding and running in the rain

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

My ride home on Wednesday was a soggy one.  I had planned on a little drizzle, but what I got was a downpour.  I forgot to put on the fenders so I had water, mud and road grit striped up my butt and bag.  It made for an annoying commute, but it was a self-created annoyance.  I should have dressed for the worst and fendered-up.  On the positive side, all the cyclists who clogged the Interurban Trail last week in the sunshine were gone and there were only a hardy few, sporting full rain gear, lots of lights, and waterproof panniers.  Last night I came home on my normal apres-work 3-mile loop.  By the time I got home, my shoes were water-filled and heavy – let’s call it resistance training.

Yep, fall is officially here.  My strawberry plant’s leaves are turning red, the heirloom tomatoes that I have fought to save all summer are finally turning from green to red, and it is now time to install extra lights and the fenders on my commuter.  This time of year is both comforting and scary for us lovers of the two-wheeler.  The trails and paths are free of our spandex clad brethren on their first ever “road bike”,  there are very few kids on big-wheels to dodge, the ladies after-work-walking-club (the one that walks 6 abreast on the trails like a Spartan phalanx) has retired to the treadmills at LAFitness.  I find that my ride is quiet and boring and drama free…  Except that drivers tend to lose what little ability they had to see cyclists.  Even with three blinking lights attached all willy-nilly, fall and winter commuters are spooky around intersections and shared roadways.

The Sweetener Formerly Known as HFCS

/ Matt Talley / 7 Comments

Forgive me, but I am going to rant a little here…  Yesterday, the  New York Times reported (also picked up by CNN) that the Corn Refiners Association petitioned the United States FDA to “officially” re-label high-fructose corn syrup as “corn sugar.”  Thinking that the name change will improve the image of the “much maligned sweetener.”  Yeah, and Stalin was a cute teddy bear with a heart of gold…  Oh! Corn Sugar, well that is a different story, pour some more of that on my snowcone!  Mmmm, coffee with Corn Sugar is just like coffee with REAL sugar…  Fvck that.

What I really like is the new TV commercial ad campaign (Laurel told me about it this morning and I spent lunch watching the ads and parodies on YouTube) promoting HFCS as a “natural ingredient” made from corn.  HFCS is NOT a natural substance.  It does not occur in nature.  That is like saying Einsteinium or Americium are natural substances.  Fvcking lobbyists.  Apparently, according to the ads, it is fine to consume in moderation.  Hell, I can ingest Arsenic in moderation as long as I know what that quantity is.  What is the correct daily consumption amount for corn syrup?  How do you calculate it?

HFCS is in everything from bread to lunch meat, coke, the honey at KFC, and something like 9 out of 10 prepackaged foods found on your grocer’s shelves.  Americans are fat.  HFCS is in everything…  Brits and Germans are getting fat and HFCS is quickly gaining ground in their packaged food.  This is not differential calculus – it is simple math:   HFCS+you=lard ass.   Changing the name will not make us any less fat.  I quote from an industry source:

“The ingredient is a favorite of food makers for practical reasons. Compared with sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t mask flavors, has a lower freezing point and retains moisture better, which is useful in making foods like chewy granola bars. And because the corn crop in the United States is heavily subsidized, high-fructose corn syrup is also cheap. As a result, it’s now used in so many foods, from crackers to soft drinks, that it has become one of the biggest sources of calories in the American diet.”

Cheap, easy to use, & government subsidized…  There is a lot more wrong here than just a product with a bad image in need of a name change!

Traveling light is the key to airport happiness

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Have you flown anywhere recently?  It SUCKS!  Getting through security means stripping, flights are canceled, there is no free food, getting a seat in an exit row or behind a bulkhead now costs extra, rental car rates are insane, lost bags are the rule, everyone is pissed off, and I recently paid $30 hotel tax on a $120 a night room.  I can’t throw my hands up and stay home – I work in the aircraft industry and often fly on business trips with NO notice.  Instead of just bitching about it all and suffering through, I decided to see what I could do to make the experience better.

I have drastically cut out the amount of crap I carry.  I used to travel in a suit, carry my laptop, assorted files, my running shoes, a couple changes of clothes, a couple books, my notebook, a camera, S³ kit, extra batteries, pens, noise-canceling headphones, etc…  For an overnight business trip now, I travel in running clothes, fold my work clothes flat next to my laptop (sometimes I leave the laptop and just take a Bluetooth keyboard for the phone), never check a bag, pack a couple of Clif bars, take one book (soon to be an eReader), one Moleskine notebook, an extra dress shirt, 2 pens, my iPhone, phone charger, 1 set of extra socks, small apple earphones, undies and undershirt, tooth brush, deodorant, toothpaste, and floss.  I use the soap and shampoo in the hotel – that is what it is there for. I grab a coffee in the terminal before the flight, pick up some fruit, and I am not beyond some social engineering to get a better seat: ‘Excuse me, but I am feeling really ill.  Is there an aisle seat near the bathroom?’

I pack just as light if I am flying to see the kids or as a tourist.  Couple shirts, flip-flops, extra jeans, hat, S³ kit, and I refuse to take a laptop on vacation.  It is not worth the security hassle and I may be tempted to work instead of relaxing or enjoying myself.  I have also been graced with a wife who does not pack a steamer trunk full of shoes for a weekend getaway.  It feels really freeing not to have to wait at baggage return or lug a heavy weight suitcase around.

I addition to the above, I have spent years (and lots of pain) developing Talley’s Rules of Travel.  I hope it helps someone:

Horrors of horrors! I dropped my iPhone in the toliet at work!!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Son of a… How has my life turned into a sitcom? Crazy relatives show up at the house, I have hillbilly neighbors, my dog is cuter than me, and now I have dropped my iPhone in the fvcking toilet. It is like NBC has the cameras rolling on my life (could be worse – it could be a Soap opera: lying, cheating, poison, jail, drama, bad acting, eye-patches…). My company’s CEO just happened to be in the stall beside me (how does that occur in real life??) and giggled like a little school girl as I exploded with hateful curse words and looked on in horror as I had to fish the damn thing out. I turned it off, ran to the sink and washed it with foaming soap. I them wrapped it in towels, ran to the production line and put it in the heated epoxy/potting chamber. All was good for the first 10 minutes and then it turned itself back on?!?!? I turned it off again, but noticed that there was some color run in the screen. SH!T My company provided the phone and doesn’t have iPhone insurance, so if it doesn’t turn back on, I bought a new iPhone…

I just got through making fun of Adam Brown for his super-nerdy waterproof phone case. I really wish I was that geeky! This would be more funny story than possible expensive tragedy. I just e-mailed him for info since if the thing does turn on, I need to protect it. If not, then I will need to encase my “new” phone in a potty-proof wrapper.

Update 9-17-10:

The phone did great with the drying out process.  I turned it on a couple of days later and everything worked fine.  Two days after that, I hooked it up to my computer to sync and I was asked if I wanted to download the latest and greatest software.  Sure, why the Hell not?  After the download, the power and home buttons, stopped working if the phone was disconnected from the computer, but worked fine as long as it was plugged in.  I am sure it was some sort of weird latent damage caused by the dunking in the potty that showed up later because of the diagnostic check and cycling that accompanied the new download.  The phone is now a brick and after a HUGE rigmarole at work, I was given a new one, though it wasn’t free.  It looks like I get to share the cost of the new unit.  I guarantee that this one will be covered in layers of protective geeky love.

Our Second Wedding

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

The ladies

Image 1 of 55

While most people wait until their 20th anniversary to marry their spouse again, we decided to move the time-line up a bit and do it on our 3.75 year anniversary. We is just sort of roll like that… No really, we eloped those long many years ago in Southern California just before our move to Germany. We had planned to have a get-together for family and friends the next summer, but life got in the way. Life kept getting in the way. There has been some increasing pressure from a couple of friends and my mother-in-law to get it done already.

During a visit at Christmas last year (I was still heavily medicated from the latest shoulder surgery so I was in an agreeable mood…) my father-in-law and I went running at Camp Long and happened into the lodge, a WPA built stone and timber craftsman beauty. Donald and I talked about it being a perfect place for a wedding reception and then enrolled Laurel in the idea of having our “DO” close to home (the park is 1.5 blocks from La Maison du Talley) this would simplify planning and logistics and with the rental of all ten cabins on the site, there would a place for everyone to sleep off what promised to be a beverage filled evening. Simple was the plan… Stress was the eventuality, but to see Laurel dressed in radiant white, surrounded by our family and friends was worth every hypertensive moment.

With the amazing help of those gathered, the day of our ceremony went off without a hitch. Our caterer was GREAT, the beer was cold, wine flowed, Donald made killer appetizers, Herbert was on flower and wine delivery duty, Matthew delivered the Nana and was a terrific MC, Henrik was took more pictures than Matthew Brady and Annie Leibovitz combined. Michael delivered the beer, Dani played the violin as if she were truly an angel, Beckie made the cakes beautiful, Gin read the poetry with great flair, Emmy arranged the flowers was Laurel’s rock, Sarah remade the dress, Miguel added the sweetness, the Aunts decorated the hall, Jan was maestro of our crazy little orchestra, Bob the photographer was on time and worked it, Leif was the official dog walker extraordinaire, Brodie was an awesome ring bearer, Nick steamed dresses, Nana folded programs into the wee hours, and the entire Brezynski family was the oil that made it all run smoothly.

The ceremony was held outside in the large meadow and an old Burton family friend was the officiant. I saw my beautiful bride being walked by her father and I cried like a little girl who had her Princess Pony taken away. She looked amazing and graceful and so happy. We said our vows, everyone cheered and at some point I stopped crying. Pictures were taken and we all retired to the lodge for drinking, eating, speeches, dancing, and laughter. As the evening closed, I gave my bride her wedding present. A gift that will always remind her of me and will speak to our journey through life together: a restored 1967 red Schwinn Twin tandem bike. She wanted to ride it in her wedding dress – one of the 10,000 reasons I love her.

schwinn-twinn1-1966

Minimalist self-rightousness

/ Matt Talley / 4 Comments

With a transcontinental move a few years ago and two international relocations in the last four years my lovely bride and I have done a fair job at parring down our worldly goods and keeping our propensity to collect superfluous crap in check.   Tyler Durden from Fight Club was 100% correct when he stated “the things you own end up owning you.”  When you have mountains of crap you have to first pay for them, then maintain and replace them when they break, and you must immediately run right out and buy the latest and greatest version.

This group realization for the need downsize is now in full swing (could it be… the economy??)  and you see more and more minimalism in both furniture design, production staging, fashion, bicycles, computers, etc…  I see the occasional article like the one recently about a guy who has whittled down his life to 57 things and he is super-smug about it – 57 things?  Really‽  I NEED a lot more shit than 57 things.  Go through my SSS kit, thrown in a spork, bowl, pocket knife, thumb drive, soap, shampoo, camera, a few cables, watch, wedding ring, glasses, computer, notebook and a couple of pens and I am standing there naked with over 60 things.

I can identify with his hypothesis that “we’ve been duped into buying things by an advertisement-dominated society for the last 50 years.” However, I need some of that stuff that I was brainwashed by the media to run out and purchase: iPhone, eReader, Global kitchen knives, my bikes, the super-cool Freitag messenger bag sitting next to me right now, etc…  One has to weigh true need, want, and desire for themselves to determine how much is too much and how much is enough.  I feel that the wife (Stamps With Foot) and I are doing fairly well, but we could still stand to par down some, (do we really need 4 computers, boxes of long-canceled checks, and my 4th grade notebook rantings?)

For years American suburban life has been all about keeping up with the Joneses: Big house, fast car, big truck, boat, HUGE TV, toys, toys, toys… The glut of articles and blogs and books about moving to a more minimalist life style is a sure sign that the Joneses may not be as important as they once were.  However, moderation in any movement is the key.  If I lump all the stuff I have read about making life simpler lately, it feels as if there is a thread of one-upmanship that pervades: “I can live with less shit than you…”  Some of the authors are crazy-smug (like the 57-things guy) about living on friend’s couches and having all their world possession in a backpack  (padding their $3000 laptop…)  Instead of the Joneses, there is now the Schwartzes: a section of our proletariat, riding fixed geared bikes, sporting skinny jeans, typing away on their MacBooks, drinking expensive coffee, texting away on $500 smart phones, getting ironic tattoos and swapping stories about how little they can subsist on

To my mind minimalism today is less about freeing yourself of all your crap and more about your attitude towards the stuff you have.   Do you NEED that new Blu-Ray player or do you WANT it?  Are you buying that to last forever or just until…?  Does it have a life-time warranty?  Are you actually going to use or wear it enough to justify a high initial price (price per wear principle). Can you rent it, borrow it (books), or do without it?

Now, before buying something new, I try to have the need vs. want conversation and while mildly successful, there are still some things that I just have because the are cool toys and I like to either play with them or look at them.  Would my life be simpler without ALL the bikes, 4 snowboards, a book press, 2 TVs, and a competition pellet gun??  Yes, it would, but that life wouldn’t be half the fun.  For me and for us, I think the trick to not falling into the pit of conspicuous ownership is to be careful with what we spend our money on, and whether it is a need or a toy we should buy the best quality available so that we get years of use and enjoyment out of whatever it may be that our hard earned greenbacks are being traded for.

The salmon are running

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

This announcement was made over the intercom at work: “Please do not leave your work area to go fishing.  You may fish only after your work day is complete.  Thank you.” I work in an aerospace engineering/production facility in the Seattle suburbs.  Fishing and fiber optics do not normally go hand in hand…  I actually thought it was a joke until I went outside for a break during production shift change.  There were fishing poles and waders everywhere.  Our building is tucked  into a tight bend of the Green River and is surrounded by water on 2.5 sides.  The pacific salmon are now swimming upstream to spawn and the river is thick with them – I mean there is a river of fish in the actual river.  They are huge – most between 3-4 feet

I was awestruck.  It was like a scene from one of the old Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom shows from the Alaskan wilderness where host Marlin Perkins would describe what a bear was thinking as the bruin stood on a water covered ledge in a snow-melt river swiping 4 foot salmon out of the water.

I believe that this afternoon I will be going to Big5 and to get my fishing license so that I can attempt to BBQ some fresh Salmon this weekend – I saw attempt due to the fish repelling pheromones that I seem to produce.  Just in case I do either get lucky or am able to steal a fish from a true angler I am thinking of using my father-in-laws ceder plank salmon recipe.  YUM!  Again, I am amazed almost everyday with the place we have chosen to live: The people, the culture, and the natural world that surrounds us.

Full disclosure:  I took NONE of the pictures above.  I swiped them from the interwebs

La Maison du Talley

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

lamaisondutalley 1957 copy

This is what La Maison du Talley looked like in 1957.  It was bright and sunny, there was no Compton-grade chain link fence, hedges or trees.  You can see just the top of our now huge vine maple growing in the back yard. The neighbors’ homes looked neat, well cared for, and the houses share a cute little white picket fence.  Our cute little home is almost 83 years old and has changed little in that time – porch made into a mudroom, new windows, siding, some paint…  The original owners would have no issue at all in recognizing their home all these any years later.  God only knows how many children they raised in our 2-bedroom 1-bath Seattle box.  By today’s suburban standards it is a starter home that is meant for a young couple with perhaps their first child.  To be sold to the same as the infant grows into preteen or before the birth of their second bundle of joy. Our home was built in an era when an entire wardrobe would fit in a suitcase, a double bed was just right for two people to sleep in, and a middle class family had one car – maybe.  A time before mass consumerism and container ships made closet rooms, 5-car families, walls of shoes, man caves, and massive Barbie collections possible and attainable for a working family.

While I am grumpy with at least one of my neighbors, my current heating costs, the basement stairs, and some of responsibilities that accompany home ownership, I do have a genuine love for our house and yard.  What I love most about my house and all old houses are the stories that have been told, written, and lived under their roofs.  I love being a part of something greater than myself, adding to it lovingly, and having the knowledge that it will eventually pass on to another who will also add to the tale of a little old house.

We plan to live in our home for a very long time, raise some vegetables, have a couple of kids, live there, work there, relax in the yard, etc…  With that in mind we are planning a few upgrades and changes that won’t change the look and feel of the place at all – they will, in fact, enhance its appeal, sense of time and place, and functionality.

Current planned projects:
Rebuild of Basement Stairs
New heat pump installation
Garage/Mother-in-law build
Egress window in basement bedroom
Master suite in the attic
Rebuild of back stairs
Three fruit trees in the back
Half bath and kitchenette in the basement
Rewire of kitchen and main floor bathroom
Extension of front yard to sidewalk
Removal of chain-link and addition of wrought iron fence
New interior paint
Misc. cabinet and trim installation

Account Ledger Book

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I am by no stretch of anyone’s imagination a Luddite.  I love me some gadgets and gizmos.  New tools that make life easier or faster or better make me feel all fuzzy with want and excitement.  My miter-box-saw in the garage has a laser cutting guide, I waited for iPhone OS4 like a kid waiting for Santa, and I am currently in the throes of in internal struggle trying to decide what e-book reader is the best for my needs vs. which one is the shiniest…  By those standards one might perceive that I always turn to technology for everyday solutions…  Not so.  We are in the middle of divesting our budget and payment tracking from a super-over complicated spreadsheet (yes, I made it that way) and switching to an old fashioned 12-column ledger book.  We are taking a step back in time so that we can see every day where all the money goes.  It won’t be hidden in 1s and 0s inside a notebook computer or on a USB stick – it will be a tangible and easily consulted record when we want to see if there are funds for a new e-book, wheels for Matt’s road bike, the latest fiction must-have at B&N, or cash for Laurel’s shoe lust.  A ledger keeps all of the information RIGHT THERE and there is no clicking between screens or scrolling down, etc…

Manual record keeping has been around since man started making beer, selling crops and I am sure that a ledger was involved in the early days of the world’s oldest profession…   The new way isn’t always the better  way – GASP! (full disclosure: we will be taking hi-res pictures of the pages every month and including those images on our external hard drive for back-up purposes)

I found a 150 page, acid free paper version on Amazon that we are currently looking forward to filling with notes of bills paid, confirmation numbers, etc, etc…  It should last a good long while.  Many years from now our grand children with either lovingly peruse the yellowed pages after the last of us passes from this earth, wondering aloud how things could have been so cheap in 2010 and how cute it was that we had a “Book Budget.”  Well, either that or they will throw it away in their attempt to deal with the clutter and possessions from the years of our lives in the couple of days they have allotted to “deal” with our things.  I hope it is the former.

Wedding Stress

/ Matt Talley

Why in the Hell would anyone choose to get married?! Not the commitment/loving one person forever part, the actual wedding part. The logistics of the thing are as complicated as planning an invasion of a small island country. Stressful is not the word for what this “little party for our family and friends” has become. Budget – long gone.   Nerves – frayed.

My lovely wife and I have been married for almost four years and are just now getting around to having the reception. We booked the event hall just after New Years and have spent the last 7 months planning, deciding, rethinking, deciding again, spending, organizing, finding a caterer, picking a menu, herding cats, applying for permits, cake tasting, choosing the proper glasses, wedding dress alterations, finding flowers, writing checks, wine tasting, finding a new caterer, buying kegs of beer, tracking down a violinist, making invitations, finding 7 matching ties in one place, forking over the credit card, DJ – band – or iPod?, finding rooms for out of town guests, writing vows, buying gifts, soothing ruffled feathers, renting suits, keeping feuding family in their respective corners, dealing with lost bridesmaid dresses, etc, etc, etc… It never fvcking ends.

I am at the point where I want to run screaming from our cute little house – abandoning my green yard, letting my tomatoes wither and set up a tent in the mountains where I can live like a hermit until all this is over! After all the wine and beer are gone, after everything has been cleaned, and after all the guests have all flown back to their respective cities and towns, I am going to stay home every weekend for a year, read my Sunday paper, work in the shop and on my yard/garden. I am not going to plan one single fvcking event, outing, or trip. I am going to church on Sundays, yoga on Saturdays, visit a few galleries, and go see a film or three. I am not going to take on any more projects and I am going to spend my off hours reading, writing, making love, cycling, running, climbing, and building cabinets.

When my kids and grandkids decide to get married, I am going to do my dead level best to bribe them into eloping and will give them a lump sum of cash that would have been spent on their wedding/reception as a down payment for a home.

post written on and uploaded from my iPhone

wine tasting

/ Matt Talley

We spent last night testing the three reds and one rose (the white, a fresh little German Riesling from the Mosel River Valley, is already picked and ordered) for our wedding reception. In hindsight, the night before I was to fly out on a business trip might not have been the evening to take on such an endeavor, though I didn’t realize it until I was running for my gate at 6:00 this morning hoping to catch the one available flight after hitting the snooze button no less than six times…

The rosé is Portuguese and the white is German. We wanted a local red that would work with the chicken pasta and stuffed mushrooms that we are serving. After much swirling, sniffing, drinking, and repeat, we settled on the Wood Bridge 2007 Two Vines.  It is a Merlot and Cab Sav blend aged in oak that will go well with the food and desert for those guests that don’t like beer or white wine.  Good booze is a key element to any successful party and while people forget bad music, the drunken aunt, weird venue, and ugly bridesmaid dresses, no one EVER forgets bad food or booze at weddings! Serve lil’ smokies with a side of mac and cheese on paper plates and PBR at your nuptial do and you & your partner will forever be saddled with the shame of being poor hosts. There will be whispers behind you back, you will be used as an example of what NOT to do when friends gather and your can forget brisk attendance at any birthday or anniversary party you will ever have.

post written on and uploaded from my iPhone

Cleaning and organizing the shop

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

My garage is actually condemned and we knew it was a tear-down when we bought our house.  Half of the bottom sills are rotten, there was no power,  and it used to move a little when hit by a strong gust of wind.  I have planned some projects in the house that require some saw and painting space, so we decided to leave the garage up until we completed the wanted updates to the house and then replace it with a somewhat larger, yet period-appropriate, garage/shop combo with a studio apartment above.

Right after we moved in, I scrubbed the place, applied some leverage to the walls to square them up as possible, reinforced the roof trusses, glued and screwed 3/8 plywood sheathing to two of the interior walls, installed florescent lighting, installed 9 bike hooks in the rafters, added garden tool holders and box storage shelves, built a narrow stout plywood work bench, and partially wired 5 outlets.  I did most of it with lumber, wire, and lights that I already owned, so my total outlay was less than $200 and the structure is now solid as possible given the years of neglect and will usable for the next couple of years.  I was going to do a little more – rebuild the barn doors and finish the wiring, but a surprise shoulder injury and subsequent surgery put that off indefinably.  I now have more projects than time and can’t fit it all in.

The little bit of work making the garage usable has really been a blessing:  In the six months that we have owned La Maison Du Talley, I have built our compost bins, the three huge garden boxes, two window flower boxes, a mason bee house, refinished a massive hutch, built a rolling utility cabinet, stripped and repainted furniture, built stuff for the kids, stored and serviced my fleet of bicycles, rewired a couple of lamps, etc… all without filling our house or basement with noise, sawdust, or fumes, which keeps The Mrs. happy!

For the last couple of months my kids have been here and cleanup and organization after this or that project was minimal.  Crap started piling up.  I got some new lumber and supplies dropped in my lap and they were just sort of tossed in.  There were semi-emergency house and bike repairs that left tools splayed about, my larger table saw (every proper joiner/cabinet maker needs two…) is in pieces as I am rebuilding the fence and adding a router table to the side leaf.  I had to crawl around and under bikes, push saw horses out of the way, step over a wheel barrow, and move the drill press to get a set of micro pliers to repair a necklace for my happy wife.  It was starting to look like Godzilla ate a strip mall containing a furniture, garden and bike shop then pooped in my garage.

After dropping my daughter off at the Airport the past Sunday morning at 5:00am, I went home, snuggled with the wife and the puppy for a couple hours, spent the rest of the morning in my bathrobe reading part of a book, consuming a large amount of coffee, and had a leisurely lunch.  I then spent the entire afternoon cleaning and reorganizing the garage so that it would again be usable and so I wouldn’t brain myself every time I opened the door.  I was super-productive:

Completely cleared and cleaned my bench top
Hung all the bikes on their assigned hook
Worked on stripping “new” Schwinn frame
Unpacked two boxes of refinishing and painting supplies
Sweep up a summers worth of saw dust
Emptied trash and recycling bins
Got the Tug-a-bike trailer ready to sale on Craigslist
Completely reorganized my tool chest (All the bike tools now have their own drawer!)
Put some labels on the nail and screw bin
Organized bench tools
Worked on a secret project for Laurel
Hung up First Aid Kit
Reinforced a wooden table
Made up a complete took kit for the house (no more in and out for little repairs)
Moved drill press to better location
Worked on finishing table saw fence

In addition to my sometimes compulsive need for organization, there will be a number of Engineers and builders staying at or visiting my home in the next month and it would kill me if my work space looked like that when they showed up.  When I shut off the lights at 10:00 PM, it was a whole new space and ready for inspection and for me to jump into a new project that I have planned for  September.

a few pictures of the building and the organization spaces/racks from earlier this summer.

The “Bike Thing” MAY be getting out of hand…

/ Matt Talley

I acquired another bike a couple weeks ago and just found out that I am inheriting a new Cyclocross bike from a family member who also has a bike fetish, but who’s wife is not as understanding as mine concerning all the hunks of steel, carbon and aluminum in his basement.  Though, I may be at a tipping point.  One more and I might officially have a substance abuse problem – bike frames CAN be an elicit substance if not consumed in moderation.

As for my latest acquisition:  My Hellbilly neighbors had a yard sale a week or so ago and due to the blaring death metal and the drunken lawn party atmosphere, the sale was lightly attended.  One of the unsold items was a classic Schwinn Varsity that was somewhat beat up and missing a rear wheel.  While walking by on my way to Walgreens, they offered it to me, so I HAD to check it out.  It turned out to be a lime Green 1973 10-speed that was in good overall shape and had original bike registration stickers from Walla Walla, WA (1974-1976) and the negotiated price was a case of PBR Tallboys.  How could I pass up a frame built in the year I was born?!  Such action would border on sacrilege. I paid up and carried the thing to my garage/shop and started stripping all the old parts from the frame.  I am not 100% sure what I am going to do with it just yet – maybe a 3-speed internal rear hub and conversion into a sometimes-commuter and basement trainer?  For now the frame will hang in the garage awaiting time and spare cash for the build-up.

The coming CycloCross bike is a 9-speed Specialized with a beefy tig-welded aluminum frame.  I have to swap the bars and shifters (already have a set from an old bike waiting to be installed) and give it a tune up.  I plan to make her my primary work commuter AND my CycloX race bike come fall.  This will allow me to forever take the commuter wheels/tires off my carbon bike and tune it for solely training and racing.

I am running out of space in the garage rafters.  It is a web of wheels, gears, cables and seats above my workspace.  Since they are all out of the way, I don’t know if my cute little bride understands the full depth of my “collection”  and if any more two-wheeled “ladies” show up she may do some snooping in the garage and the poo will hit the fan – I hate when we “have to have a talk…”   That said, I would still like to have a couple more: a downhill 29er and a folding single speed for the train/travel, but I feel that the physical and financial impact of any cycling purchases in the next couple of years will have a detrimental effect of my love-life and corresponding sleeping arrangements.   I REALLY like my bikes, but I like snuggling up to a warm happy wife a lot more.  I think that I am going to have to start practicing cycling moderation.  That realization hurts a little.

Having the Kids for the Summer

/ Matt Talley

I know have had the pleasure of accompanying  both of my children on their very first airplane flights.  It is a great big deal to me since I have spent hundreds of hours on an different aircraft in flight, I make my living in the industry, and my children’s college fund only expands because of the security of the aircraft business.  It is also a point of pride that I was part of an experience that they will remember for the rest of their lives.  In a small way I also hope that I have planted the seed of wanderlust in them.  I want them to travel to the ends of the earth and experience all that goes along with travel; learning self-sufficiency, broader views, a second or third language, cultural experience, etc…

When my daughter visited last year I accompanied her on her first ferry ride on which we crossed the waters of Puget sound for a Day trip on Bainbridge island.  This summer I have have the great pleasure to not only take my son on his first ferry ride, but to also be with him on his first train trip and his first experience on a wooden sailboat.  He loved the boat, I think, most of all and I can see a little spark of adventure travel starting to glow in his eyes.  My daughter will take a little more work – right now she hates to travel, hates cities and hates making decisions, but who knows, I may get to visit my grandchildren in their 300 year old French farm house surrounded by fields of lavender along the southern portion of the Route Du Napoleon…

This year, the only real first I got to experience in the company of my presently-surly 15-year-old daughter was to take her to her first professional sporting event.  We went to the Mariners vs. the Royals MLB game the night before she went home.  There is something about being 15 that make one hate almost everything, but she seemed to have a genuinely good time.  It didn’t hurt that we had AMAZING seats on the first-base line, eight rows up from the grass.  Baby steps: a new experience close to home, a cool new sight here, some exotic food there, a fine novel set in a far away place, and BAM! I am getting postcards from Japan.

Gun Nuts

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Why am I surrounded by Gun Nuts? It is not just the ones with “…out of my dead cold hands…” tattooed somewhere, the other side of the spectrum is very well represented as of late. Three weeks ago I bump into a guy running for city council. I talk to him a bit, he seems to be on it concerning local issues, appears to listen and think before he responds, and I am starting to like the guy. Then, he notices me noticing his very poorly concealed pistol. I mention that he should get a better holster, like a Kramer, so as to blend better with the non-pistol toting folk. At that precise moment, he stepped on the express train to Crazy-Town!! Immediately he perceives that I am also a member of the lunatic fringe who thinks that our current President (you know the one I voted for and love) is trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment, that Hillery Clinton is secretly running things, and that we are on the brink of a conservative proletariat revolution. He went so far as to use the ‘Tree of Liberty…” Thomas Jefferson Quote. I smiled, nodded, took his literature and walked briskly away.

Not two days after my run-in with Candidate-in-need-of-a-straitjacket, I am in Big 5 buying pellets for my son’s air rifle. The checkout lady asks me if I’m going hunting. I smile, gave a little chuckle and said no, that they were for a small pellet gun and that I was teaching my 9-year old the basics of proper marksmanship. A nano-second after it comes out of my mouth the lady behind me in line, buying a new yoga mat (no demonetization meant against yoga practitioners – I love yoga – it is just what she happened to be buying) shrieks and starts yelling at me – no really yelling at me about how I should be ashamed “teaching a child to kill.” She launched into a a stuttering unrehearsed diatribe about how wrong guns are, how evil and vile they are, how I was “perpetuating violence against animals and women” – really, she said that – and that “I should be arrested…” I stood there like a statue, not knowing what to do or say. The cashier started yelling at this woman and by the time an employee from the baseball section came running up, the screamer was so worked up that she was almost foaming at the mouth. She dropped her stuff on the floor and charged out the door. The three of us were left just staring at the glass door and each other. I shrugged, they shrugged and I left. I am afraid of both sides of the spectrum when it comes to gun nuts, so I didn’t walk strait to my truck, I stopped in at Starbucks for a much needed Mocha first and took a long look at the parking lot. I was half afraid that the anger over our “discussion” and the loss of a new mat, might drive the woman into braining me with a tire-iron as I tried to leave. No joke, the thought went through my mind.

What has happened to the middle of the road citizen? What is it that seems to have made so many people so aggressively partisan? How is it that all these rational people with real jobs, education, hobbies, etc… go off the deep end? It is that you just never hear from the moderates? Do they just keep their head down, go to work, occasionally go to the pistol or clay range and just go on about their lives????

Getting reacquainted with my two-wheeled mistress

/ Matt Talley

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I hadn’t been on my bike since the overloaded ride from Vancouver to Seattle.  I pulled a trail-a-bike (one wheel, handle bars, peddles…) with a 95 pound kid and 80 pounds of gear, including the trailer.  It was squirrelly and scary trying to peddle from dead still, and I will never do it again, but I can say that my bike has never been so smooth once I got above 10mph.  It was like I had installed dampeners on the steering and suspension. The trail-a-bike is off and now for sale.  I switched my chainings and rear cassette back to the pre-suffering setup late last week and brought my bike into work for a ride home.

Holy CRAP!  I almost tumped over 3 times before I got both feet on the pedals.  I couldn’t keep my bike going in a straight line – like I was seriously drunk.  This is a bike that I have put 11K miles on, It feels like part of me when I ride, and can tell when my seat or bars are moved a fraction of an inch.  It took me almost three miles to get it all figured out and control the bike to the point that I felt comfortable.  Thank God that I was on a nice wide paved trail!  If I would have been on the road I would have packed it up, called the wife, and caught a ride home.  It was scary.

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Flippin’ the bird

/ Matt Talley

I flipped a senior citizen the bird on my way home today. not a casual, lazy, flick of the wrist sort of obscenity, no no… It was a full on, arm strait out, display of the middle finger that would make any self-respecting British football hooligan proud. What might provoke such behavior one might wonder? Why would a someone who is normally so courteous to the older folk commit such a heinous act against one of our blue-haired citizens? Am I ashamed? Will I feel the need to perform some sort of penitence to balance the violation of my Karma? Nope. The act was completely justified!

I was peddling along, listening to a podcast on the French Revolution, the sun was shining, and traffic was light – a recipe for a fine commute. As I pulled into the home stretch, about a mile and a half from La Maison Du Talley, a red car comes soaring down the hill by Luna Park Cafe and doesn’t look like it is going to heed the stop sign. I looked at the driver as I pulled the break levers hard and she was talking on her cell phone; holding it to her left ear with her right hand. Her left hand was on the top of the wheel completely blocking her ability to turn her head to look in my direction.  She made NO attempt to even glance to her left to see if there was a car or a cyclist or a pedestrian or even a lady with a baby carriage coming from that direction. I skidded to a stop as she rolled a full 10 feet past the stop sign, almost clipping me with her bumper.  I looked at her as disapprovingly as I could, pointed to the stop sign and yelled (only so she could hear me in her cocoon of Detroit steel and over her cell phone conversation)  for her to hang up the phone and drive. I then peddled on, shaking my head in annoyance.

About 30 yards up the road she caught up with me, rolled her window down and screamed at me to watch where I was going and that I was an “asshole.” Other obscenities came spilling out as she sped up, I was shocked and reacted as any cyclist worth his shifters would – finger up and complimented with a vocalization of the same.

I know I have said this a couple of times recently, but I have been hit 5 TIMES while riding and was recently rubbed by a rear-view mirror. Three of those incidences involved someone talking on a cell phone while driving. Look, we all make mistakes from time to time, but for the love of God, put the phone down, buy a headset, and watch for cyclists. This is Seattle, we’re everywhere… I stand by my use of THE Finger this time. In fact, I kinda want to wait at the corner the same time tomorrow so that I can do it again.  I know, I know that would solve nothing and only make her REALLY dislike cyclists. I am sure her side of the story is just as compelling as mine: “I was driving home and some lunatic, drug crazed man on a bike went nuts and screamed at me. I didn’t DO anything, I was just driving and he came out of nowhere and started screaming at me…”