Author: Matt Talley

Bionic Shoulder

/ Matt Talley

I sit by the fire at my Father-in-Laws home, nursing an aching shoulder with 10 or so milligrams of hydrocodine and a couple of good wheat beers. You might ask yourself, ‘why the self-medication?’ Well, that is a funny story:

At 05:30 on recent Monday morning, the alarm was buzzing in my ear, the dog (who has abandonment issues) was sitting on me shaking because my wife left the room without him and closed the door. My lovely bride had just tripped a breaker while using the hair dryer and was yelling at me from the next room to fix it. At 05:30 in the morning I am not the happiest being in creation – add to that general condition the above mentioned details, a complete lack of coffee in my system, and a VERY recent memory of a conversation concerning NOT using the hairdryer in the bathroom swirling in my fuzzy consciousness and I might could pass the Ogre Finishing School entrance exam.

I threw on Laurel’s thigh-length hot-pink terry-cloth robe, navigated the maze of boxes in the living room and kitchen, and stomped down the steep carpeted basement stairs. I flipped the breaker, turned around, and climbed back up out of the basement. I got as far as the kitchen when she turned the hair-dryer on again and “pop” goes the breaker. I snarled and roared and headed back down – yelling in no uncertain terms for her not to do it again. Halfway down I found myself floating for a brief second. My feet slipped and in the short expanse of time before the impending hard landing, time stood still for me and I thought of three possible outcomes – each brought me to the same conclusion: “Oh fuck…” I put my hand down to keep from breaking my ass and I caught myself on a step for about ½ a second before my already thrice-surgically repaired shoulder failed me. I felt an intense burning, heard a snap and a sick-ish sucking noise. I then found myself in a lump on the basement floor, my arm cocked awkwardly like a fast-food hot wing. The pink robe was gathered above my waist, letting all my man-bits show, my wife was standing straddle of me alternately seeing if I was OK (the falling noise, my screams of anguish and the lump of me on the floor was apparently not a complete enough answer for her) and trying to discuss the nuances of our 1928 electrical system. The thought of the paramedics finding me in that state, pink robe and all, snapped me into lucidity.

The dog was also there, happy to be reunited with his “Mommy” and when I came back to reality, I found that he wass licking my foot. As I lay there, frozen with pain, I think ‘does he know I am hurt and is he trying to make it better or does he think I am going to die soon and trying to figure out what part of me will be the tastiest?’ The thoughts that go through one’s head while crumpled on the floor… I am still not sure what the answer was and I’ve lately been eyeing him with a certain suspicion.

Fast forward a few days through a couple of orthopedic visits, x-rays and an MRI, and I find that I have torn two tendons, torn a muscle, and have ripped two previously placed screws out of the bone. Someone gets to have post-operative morphine again… I will get a surgery schedule date next week, just in time for Christmas!


SOLD!!

/ Matt Talley

Ha!! Our home loan funded and was recorded today and we are now the proud owners of a GREAT Jewel-box house!! Our agent handed us the keys just after 6:00 and let us wander around our new place unmolested. I unloaded four boxes from the car, we let Brodie sniff all the corners, Laurel started a load of clothes, we ate our first meal in the dining nook, and explored every room of what we hope will be our home until we are both old and bent.

We are now officially Seattle residents, no longer denizens of the soul-sucking ‘burbs in Kent. Nope, we are living in a hip and trendy walking neighborhood with public transit, a fantastic public park, a NEW library branch, a local coffee shop house in a huge Craftsman bungalow, and a neighborhood pub where dogs are welcome and where the bartender knows what sort of glass to pour a German Weiss Bier into. I have a green yard that I can obcess over, Laurel has a vine-maple tree to sit under, we have a dedicated office, Brodie has cats to chase out of the yard, there are 6 coffee shops within ¼ mile, a grocery store almost next door, and we get views of the mountains, city lights, and the Puget Sound.

incompetent agent…

/ Matt Talley

As of today, it has been 102 days since our offer on the house was accepted by the seller and we still do not have keys in hand or even a fvckin’ closing date scheduled!?! Pissed is only part of the paragraph that describes our state right now. It also includes: frustrated, mad, stressed, resentful, hopeful, happy, disappointed, thwarted, cheerfully optimistic, defeated, vengeful, sad, expectant, sanguine, angry, optimistic, confident and 50 other descriptive adjectives that still do not fully capture it all. It seems that the selling agent that we have to rely on has been in a stupidity-induced coma for the last three months and did not even know the name of the second Mortgage (the house is in short sale with two Mortgages lenders…) holding bank until I sent it to her last week. We would LOVE to walk away and tell her to shove her commission, but we like the house, love the neighborhood, see a 100K in free equity in the near future, and if we pull out now, the chance of finding and closing on a place before the end of the year has about the same odds as Newark, NJ becoming crime free.

We have actually looked at other places and none of them have the mix of package and potential that this one does. SHIT!!!

THIS is why pets eventually eat their owners:

/ Matt Talley

Why do pets eat people? We have all heard the horror stories about someone found in their home after being missing for a few days, the authorities finding them in a ‘snacked upon’ state. Most people feel it happens because the animal is left alone, gets hungry, there is semi-fresh meat about, and nature takes its course… Well, I beg to differ!! Why do pets eat people… because people dress their pets up in sweaters, hats, booties, t-shirts, and fvckin’ Halloween costumes! I love my wife, God know that I love her with all my soul, but she is among this crazy sub-group of our species. She has been giddy for months about making Brodie a costume. I refused to let it happen, but using forms of torture, pressure, guilt, and persuasion that only women know, I sold my furry little buddy out and agreed to let her do her worst to our puppy. There was costume shopping, his humiliation at the pet store in front of the other dogs (the cats even laughed at him), alteration of the chosen outfit, and multiple test fittings. Front the look of helplessness he made every time she came at him it was like she neutered him a second time. As a precursor to the actual event, we went to a French Bulldog costume contest. The morning before said contest, she had her last fitting session. I will include a picture of his face, on which even a blind man could read his desperation and shame. There were crazier people there, but the guilt I carry over letting poor Brodie take part (he won 3rd place) will haunt me. It is a stain that I can’t wash off and I know that because of my lack of action and my cowardice in the face of tiny wife, I too am on the obscure ‘OK to eat list.’

Commuting with Bear Spray…

/ Matt Talley

Man, Some days my bike commute (1200+ miles so far this year) is the SHIT!… Warm sunshine, crisp air, blue sky, mountains in the background, little traffic, all the lights are green, etc… Then there are days like today that I get home ragged, twitching, in a foul mood, and in need of quite time. I got off a little late so the sun was setting as I started the 40-minute ride home. Traffic was tight, exhaust fumes hung thick in the air, some asshole swerved at me to be funny – I hope, two douche-bags laid into their horns as they sped past me while I was climbing a hill, a lady in a Honda almost hit me in the cross walk, and finally this dick screamed at me with his head hanging out the passenger window of a truck as I was coming to yet another red-light. I got up out of the saddle and mashed the peddles for all I was worth, getting mentally ready for the beat-down I was going to give the ass-hat. Just as I got within reach of the bumper, the guy driving ran the light. I hate assholes!

I was hit 5 times in 3 years of living in California and I learned that you have to watch drivers like a hawk. After a while you become intuitive of their no-signal right turns and you can feel when that lady on her cell phone is going to look right through you and pull out, so you hit the brakes and avoid a crash that she was never aware of. The Burbs and industrial district south of Seattle is a whole other hot mess indeed. Unlike in the city proper, there aren’t too many of us bike commuters, lots of busy mid-level managers talking into the mobile phones, and it is a battle every time I get on my bike. There is a guy in a dark blue Chevy Malibu van that has the same schedule as me who will squeeze his van against the curb if he sees me coming so that I can’t pass him at red lights – no cutting in line! I get honked at daily, had a Burger King bag tossed at me back in June, and once had a semi-homeless (living in his car) dude (there are a bunch in S. King County, WA) try to chase me down and steal my bike – really!

Now, if I had caught the guy at the light I would have hit him at least three times before he got his door open. Then it would have been two good-sized fellers on a skinny guy in spandex and funny shoes. I would have given pretty good, but I would have bleed some and I don’t know if that would have taught them the proper lesson. Ruminating on that and the possibility of assault by one of our local street people, I have decided to not fuck around with my safety. I have a wife and kids and it is my job to come home safe every night (and contribute heavily to two college funds), so I sat down at my bride’s sewing machine and made (with her patient help) a snazzy black nylon pouch to hold my bike-commute insurance policy: bear spray. Yep, a big ol’ canister of Ursine-Off. If it can stop a charging grizzly, then some asshole that takes a swipe at me because I am on a bike and look like an easy target is going to have a very spice-filled evening. I see it this way: If you’re a prick and you try to touch me or run me over, you get a nice even coating of Oleoresin Capsicum, I call the cops, you learn a valuable lesson, I go home safely, have a yummy dinner, you may get to post bail, I have a beer, you spend the rest of your evening itchy and red. Everyone wins!

I needed new glasses anyway.

/ Matt Talley

Apparently, all our puppy needs to be happy is a soft bed, warm yummy food, some ear scratchin’, and a $300 pair of glasses to chew on. We left him in the kitchen after coming home for lunch with the baby gate closed, his bowls were full, and he had a room full of friendly toys. Instead of chewing on his rope or gnawing at one of his m-a-n-y bones, that little M0TH3R FVCK3R climbed up on the table, grabbed my glasses, and used them for teething ring. He crunched up the metal frames and turned them into a paperclip. A couple of days later, he broke out of the kennel that he had been banished to and tore up a library book that had been left on the floor by the couch. As desert, turned Laurel’s reading glasses into confetti. Two weeks later, Houdini slips his shackles again, cozies up to Laurel’s sunglasses and after removing each earpiece like he had opposable-thumbs and a screwdriver, he began an assault on my back-up pair of glasses. I caught his hairy little rump square in the act. The glasses survived, but only barely – the polycarbonate lenses look like they were put in the dryer for a nice long spin. We are now out $500+ and he now has a taste for all things optical. My fear is that it is a condition similar to that of lions or tigers that taste man-flesh; once that threshold is breached, they crave it. I have noticed him eyeing my new specs with great interest and I know he watches me as I take them off and put them on a high shelf for the night. He is waiting for me to slip, to leave them on an end table or nightstand so that he can satisfy this growing hunger, his consuming urge to both piss me off and partake in the forbidden fruit of LensCrafters.

A normal day:

/ Matt Talley

Alarm at 6:50
Snuggling for 10 minutes after the snooze
let the puppy out
shower/shave
make coffee
have breakfast
Kiss Laurel bye
Hang out with puppy for 15 in front of CNN
Get clothes together
Pack bag
Forget belt
Ride to work
Change
Discover belt missing
Say dirty, hateful things
Get dressed
Shirt untucked 🙁
Sit at desk and e-mail/draw for 4 hours
Quick lunch at desk
Walk to Starbucks
Coffee, coffee, coffee
Make a few calls about new house
Back to work
More e-mail, meetings and drawings
Work late
Change
Bike home
Kiss Laurel
Play fetch with Brodie
Talk about our day
Eat dinner
Clean up kitchen some
Watch part of DVD
Work a little on computer
Laugh at puppy
Organize some writing drafts
Get ready for bed
Catch up daily journal
Read a little
Lights out
Serious snuggling
Pass out ~12:30

Buying a house/in debt FOREVER!

/ Matt Talley

After living in a1980’s Miami Vice-prefab over grown house in the endless suburbs for the last eight months we are done. We are trying to buy a place in the city, in an urban-ish area full of cute houses and green lawns, where we can walk to the grocery store, read a paper at a neighborhood coffee shop on Saturday morning, and would be within stumbling distance from a local pub. As an added bonus, it is about 500 yards from the first man-made rock-climbing wall in the US with views of the Puget Sound and Mt. Rainer at the end of the street. Just a few houses away is a branch of the King County Library – books, books, books! The place and location are great, but the buying process has been a nightmare!

The house is a rock solid 1928 craftsman and we made an offer about 6 weeks ago. It was accepted by the individual seller of the home, but still no official word from the mortgage holding bank or closing schedule. I have put something like 3-4 hours a day for the last 5 weeks (really!) getting paperwork ready, scheduling structural inspections, sewer line inspection, submitting paperwork, re-submitting the same paperwork, transferring funds, property surveys, title insurance, answering countless stupid questions and providing minute details of our lives in writing – I had to legally declare my middle name as an alias at one point before we could proceed. It is like having a second job as an air traffic controller that I pay for the privilege of going to after my real job everyday.

This is THE time to buy a house in the US: cheap prices, tax credits, lower property taxes, cheap materials for upgrades, carpenters and electricians with open schedules, etc… and we are having to BEG someone at to take our money and relieve them of bad debt. It is mind numbing and my cute little sweet gentle wife is ready to brain someone with a bat – really!

Tools on the Cheap

/ Matt Talley

Yard sales are the SHIT!! This weekend we happened upon a garage sale and an estate sale in the middle of the afternoon. I hit the mother-load of man-nesting paraphernalia – yard tools! I loaded our Subaru down with a 2-Stroke weed-eater with attachments, hoe, two edgers, 3 shovels (two round end and one square, tree saw, hack saw, joiner fence for 1942 Homecraft machine, pruning shears, garden trowel, pitch fork, electric chainsaw, rake, yard-broom rake, two water hoses, sprinkler head, edging shears, two tablesaw miter fences, a bench top vise, a grinder base, an old-school milk crate, and the board game RISK with all the pieces still in plastic. I paid a grand total of… drum roll… $43. The weed eater alone is worth $200 – I made out like a bandit! There are a couple more things that we need/want concerning yard tools (splitting maul, pick, maddox, posthole digger, 1928 Model-A coupe, etc…) and you can bet that I will be hitting the garage sales and pushing the blue-hairs out of my way in my quest for bargains.

Water hose, a chain saw and RISK – the makings of a fine par-ty!

Laurel’s new steed

/ Matt Talley

We finally got Laurel’s bike back from the shop. I built it from a found frame that I happened upon in Hamburg in August of 2008. I stripped it, sanded it down, put the base coat of paint on, and bought a few parts before our move to Seattle. After our things were delivered to the house here, it was my second project. I got it completely finished and took a test ride. She wanted a plush yet sporty ride and this was it! Big bouncy tires, internal rear hub, front suspension, upright riding position, special sparkly undercoat on the paint, comfy seat – oh yeah! The only one hitch was the hub was stuck in second gear… I took it into a SRAM dealer as the hub was under warrantee. Fast forward three months and 10 e-mails to SRAM later, we got her bike back.

Bamboo bar ends, the finished product, and a shot during the painting process.

homebrew and hotdogs

/ Matt Talley

Well, we had our opening of summer BBQ with LOTS of home brew. We had all sorts of sausage, my buddy Dave’s wife is a sushi chef and she made more raw fish than 30 normal people could eat – luckily we had Daniel and Laurel who put a major dent in the sashimi.

The beer was mostly good. Daniel was the Brew-Master and the IPA beer turned out to be just as planned – I named it Hopocalypse. There was a special Double-IPA that Daniel named S&M IPA that was super-stiff. The PacNW boys seemed to like it though. My wheat beer (Between the Sheets Wheat) didn’t turn out as good, however. The taste was excellent, but we didn’t put enough sugar in during the bottling process and it was somewhat flat. A proper Weissbier should have a nice thick foamy head, my wheat had a John Waters pencil moustache sort of head. It hurt my soul a little, but there was plenty of other beer and everyone had a good time and waddled home at the end of the evening.

BRODIE!

/ Matt Talley

We have a new addition to our Family – Brodie!! He is a ½ French bulldog and ½ Boston terrier. We got him from a bulldog rescue society after he had been turned over from a shelter and nursed back to health by a foster family.

My lovely bride has been not so patiently waiting on a puppy for the last four years. Our apartment lease in California strictly forbade animals, so we planned on getting a puppy in Germany. After 3 months of not being able to find an apartment, we jumped at the first one offered to us, but sadly it also came with a no pet clause (though we did have a dragon/weasel for a landlady…). Laurel was gnashing at the bit from almost the moment our plane touched down back in the US, looking for a suitable puppy to love and after three blissful days of pet ownership, she couldn’t be happier!

Brodie is a lover. He wants to be with people, he gives kisses, snuggles, hugs, and nuzzles. We haven’t heard him bark once, he is potty trained, leash trained, fetches (three retrieves are his max for some reason), naps a lot, is extremely calm, and has all sorts of personality. He has been sleeping with us and though a pillow-hog and a snorer, isn’t bad bed company.

Nope, not loved at all! Brodie has now attained a life of leisure. Warm food, soft beds, scratching, bacon, and lots of snuggling are in his future.

“…you sure do gots a purdy mouth…”

/ Matt Talley

We spent the Memorial Day weekend with Laurel’s kinfolk in a cabin situated on a hillside above apple orchards that had an AMAZING view of Mt. Hood. It was a great weekend, full of laugher, campfire smoke, yummy fermented hop and wheat beverages, and good food.

1. Me playing the only three cords I know (the ones Leif just taught me)

2. The view from the deck every morning

3. A porch perfect for drinking coffee and playing the banjo…

Ich Liebe Weißbier

/ Matt Talley

As I live in the beer capital of the world and great beer swirls all around me, I feel that there is no reason to drink sub-par beer. As my particular favorite fermented beverage is wheat beer, I thought about having a blind taste test that included a group of multi-national friends to see which of the most popular and available brands I should buttress with my patronage and financial support. The Beer Fairy (we are big buds – exchange Christmas cards and all that) stopped by our flat this past weekend and left eighteen (18) different quality brands of Hefeweissen (or just plain “weisse Bier” as we were repeatedly corrected by a German participating in the event). My darling bride graciously volunteered to be the beer wench/test focal for the evening along with another friend – both sporting dirndls, making for an authentic German beer drinking atmosphere (they are both getting some good stuff for this added and appreciated surprise detail). The tasting was loosely organized along the lines of a blind taste test – very loosely.

IMG_2503_lg

All 18 Hefeweissens we tested and a few other kinds of beer consumed after the testing. This shot was taken on the way to the recycling center the next day. I know my neighbors looked out their windows as I lined up the bottles for the picture and thought, ‘Crazy American, what is he doing now…‘

It wasn’t a test that would hold up to scientific peer review: Pallets were not cleansed before and after tasting, the beer was swallowed after the tasting (spitting good beer in my house unless you are having a heart attack will get one unceremoniously booted out the door!), the participants were seated together and were allowed to talk about the beer and/or each other’s mother if they so desired, food was served with the beer, there was not a control group given the same beer each time, no random sampling of participants from the overall beer drinking population was used. Multiple tests were not conducted under exacting standards, etc… This was a gathering of like-minded friends who just like beer. So, if you are reading this and you work for one of the companies that we decided sucked – sorry, but it is going to be real hard to sue me for posting an OPINION on my VERY obscure, almost NEVER read (…save for a couple of friends and a crazy English woman…) website/blog.

Just before 7:00pm on Friday, guests started showing up and we sat down for an evening of semi-scientific research. A few were late and a couple had to leave early, so the testing had to accommodate this flow of testers. All counted, there were three Americans, one Scot, one Swede, an Englishman, and three Germans who participated as testers and a good number of significant others and onlookers drinking wine and the hard stuff for the duration. Of those who participated in the actual testing: two were women, seven were men, and we ranged from twenty-two to thirty-six years old. Our dirndl-clad test administrators kept us well stocked, washed glasses between rounds, and delivered mini-pizzas and other snacks fresh from the oven. We had music playing in the background and a slide show of 350+ beer and weisse Bier related images scrolling on the big screen throughout the evening.

Going into this test I just knew that my personal favorite, Franziskaner Hefeweissen would come out on top and that my second favorite, Franziskaner Weissen Dunkel, would place well (I am brand loyal). Though, I was open to try other options to see how they faired against mein Lieblingsbier. I picked regular Franziskaner out the minute it touched my tongue and it was the only beer I gave the top score to, but I was somewhat surprised by the overall result. Here is a link to the results of the overall test and scorecard templates if you are interested, but the top five beers we tested, listed in ascending order, were:

#5: Franziskaner Hefeweissen (I was appalled!)
#4: Edinger Weisse
#3: Schneider Weisse
#2: Franziskaner Weissen Dunkel
#1: Paulaner Hefeweissen Dunkel

As you can see, the Dunkel Hefe’s scored the highest marks and that could either be because of the group of testers selected or because it just tastes better – not real sure… One thing to note though was that although Paulaner had the #1 beer, the brewery also produced the beer that came in second to last: regular Paulaner Hefe Weissen. Odd…

In dead last place was Schoefferhofer Hefeweissen. It wasn’t drinkable (one of the testers scribbled “never again” on his score card as a comment for this beer) and one would think that production of such a concoction would have already ceased due to an angry pitchfork wielding Bavarian mob storming the gates of the brewery.

The evening was a rousing success: lots of beer and food was consumed, there were no fights or broken furniture, no one got sick, no hookers showed up, not one person was locked out of their house by an angry wife/girlfriend, and we agreed to do this again in six or eight weeks to test the quality of local Pilsner (though I might expand the rules to include Czech beers as they are the ones that invented Pils…). Most of the credit for the successful evening goes to Laurel and Megan, who were so gracious to us all, even after we got loud – and I need to give a special note of thanks to Karin, who made all the yummy snacks and testing glasses possible.

Nesting with power tools

/ Matt Talley

I have found that my nomad life over the last 6 years has recently left me with a need to nest and for a man that means I need to build stuff. I need more tools, some projects, and a shop! Right after we moved into our place I started laying out a garage shop plan that would allow me to take care of some home projects, refinish and build some furniture, do some bike building/repair, a little painting, and do some welding. I need a place to store wood, hang bikes, work on projects, and park the car. It has to be modular as we are only leasing and I want to take it all with me when we buy a place later this year. The design is done and so far it is about ¼ of the plan is in place. I am doing it little by little as I have time and funds. So far though I have rebuilt a 1949 table saw/joiner, a 1932 lathe, built a bike work stand, a squirrel feeder for Laurel, assorted shop jigs, and a nice semi-built-in book shelf on our stairway. I currently have a refinishing project going, a bike rebuild (the Penny Farthing), and a rock maple/purple heart topped kitchen-island for Laurel.

Next, I want to build a jig for wooden bike fenders, a honey oak art-deco hall tree, a couple of matching picture frames for some oils we own, customize my table saw further, and build a miter saw cabinet.

Vermaculture

/ Matt Talley

Laurel and I have become farmers and we have about .00008 acres under cultivation right now. We are farming worms, that’s right – Vermaculture. We noticed that 40% or so of our weekly garbage was kitchen waste and didn’t quite know what to do with it all so into the garbage it went. While visiting some family in Seattle we spied their worm box and were impressed with how much the worms ate and how little maintenance they needed. We Googled worm farm instructions/problems, checked out some How-To videos on YouTube, and ordered a 2kg box of exotic red worms on the net. I built a simple worm box as per all the instructions, and they are happily munching away as I type.

I also built a compost bin out of old pallets and so far it is eating yard waste like a champ. We have a 15 gallon trash can and there is never more than 10” of trash in the can and it feels good to push a mostly empty can to the curb every Wednesday morning.

“…The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out…”

Homebrew

/ Matt Talley

What is it about the Pacific Northwest and home brewing? Everyone and their dad either brews their own or has at some point in the past. As a lover of fine fermented wheat beverages, I am intrigued. There is an issue of time: I don’t really have any to start a new hobby where I have to buy a bunch of stuff upfront. I already have this bike addiction, way too many tools, enough mountain gear to outfit a full big wall Himalayan expedition (Really!), and at least 7 pairs of different sport-specific shoes. As the weather has started to turn it has let my mind drift to thoughts of BBQ, laughter, and beer. I started thinking about a medium to large gathering at the new house and how cool it would be to brew some beer for the shindig. It was just whimsy until I remembered that Daniel, my beer/coffee snob coworker, was a master brewer. I cornered him in his cube one morning and offered to buy all the ingredients and provide all the manual labor if he would brew 10 gallons of wheaty nectar for my party. Daniel is not a Weissen fan (we can’t all be perfect) and only agreed to lead the battle if we brew 1/2 of the planned 10 gallons (this will make 17.75 12oz bottle six-packs or 4.5 cases) as wheat and the other half as a heavy gravity IPA. I agreed and a couple of days later we took off at lunch and went to the local brewing supply store for all the ingredients. We bought the malt and wheat extract, yeast, sugar, and 15 ounces of hops. The hops were Kelly green in color and wrapped in rectangular one ounce C02 flushed clear plastic bags. When laid out on the table it made me fill like I was doing something illicit, as I have not seen that much green stuff in little baggies since college.

Bottle caps, hops, yeast, wheat extract and other brewing stuff.

Without the cost of labor or power or taking into account the cost of Daniel’s kegs, carboys, capper, etc… I am paying about $6.00 per six-pack for what should be GREAT beer with an alcohol content above 8%. Not too shabby. In addition to beer, we are planning on roasted meat, veggies, grilled corn, salads, fresh bread, wine, some store-bought brew (just in case there are Philistines about), music, a fire that night, and hopefully the cops won’t get called.

My sweet commute

/ Matt Talley

My single speed on the edge of Interurban Trail with Mt. Rainer in the background. click on for large image

My 3-5 times per week commute to work on the bike is going great. Even when it rains, it is still a good time out and offsets the amazing amount of time spent in a chair in front of my computer at work. I have just put new wet-condition specific brake pads on my road bike as well as removable fenders and treaded commuter tires. I will swap out the wheels and remove the fenders for long fast road training rides or for any races that I do this year. In addition to my regular road bike, I have been riding my single speed into the office part of the time. I take off after work along the river trail and do 15 to 20 miles of flats before meeting Laurel in the valley after she gets off and put the bike on the roof for a hill-less, pain free ride home. On clear days, Rainer sticks up and I get to look at the snow-capped mountain for ¾ of the way home. There are worse views. “The Hill” is still there. It gives me a small sense of accomplishment everyday when I top it, but that fact doesn’t make it any less of a beast. I have tried a couple of other ways home (will try one more this afternoon). It is the same overall elevation gain from work to home no matter which path I choose, some routes have longer, more gradual ascents. The longer ride to the house is great on pretty days and lessons the chance that I will keel-over from exhaustion one fine afternoon.

a weekend away

/ Matt Talley

Spring is here! We moved to the PacNW to enjoy more sunshine, but it has been slow in coming this year. Well, this weekend it got to 79 degrees, the sky was blue, and the sun was out. Quick rundown of the weekend:

Drove to friend’s place in Portland and had amazing dinner
Yummy warm Sake
Slept in single warm biological mass with Laurel (we can sleep comfortably together in a hammock all night!)
Breakfast in the sun
Newspaper reading
Lunch
Light shopping – new tools and bike parts
A productive Geocaching session
Beer drinking
Socializing at a local pub
Sleep
Woke up to glorious coffee
Walked to good local donut shop and retrieved fried stuff covered in sugar
Walk around St. John’s neighborhood with Laurel and friends
Stop in Cathedral Park
Lunch
Went to 5 bike shops
Bought parts for my commuter bike and Laurel’s new red bike
Work on friend’s bike a little to help out with the fit
Drove home to Seattle

My own personal OCD tracker

/ Matt Talley

As far as the inter turmoil of nerdy/sporty that I have going on, I did better in 2008 than I did in 2007. A breakdown of the last year’s numbers looks like this:

2008
2007
Running
139.5 Miles
15.7 Miles
Cycling
945.5 Miles
346.8 Miles
Days Hiked
10 Days
2 Days
Books Read
41 Books
37 Books
Days Off
98 Days
59 Days
Gym
33 Times
11 Times
Miles Traveled
61,341.3 Miles
68,234.2 Miles
Camping
8 Nights
10 Nights
Overtime Worked
0 Hours
300 Hours

I rode more and ran more. Went to the gym and still managed to read a ton of books. Though I did spend entirely too much time surfing Wikipedia, bike sites, and CNN. I am learning to balance my inner geek, though the process is somewhat like a 12-step program where I fall off the wagon occasionally and spend hours designing tool jigs, watching episode after episode of Dexter or Heroes, or ogling over bike frame geometry on the net. I then pick myself up out of my techie gutter and go to a “meeting” by running in the sunshine, exploring a new trail, or flirting with my cute little wife.

Gas Gage Trivia

/ Matt Talley

How many times have I been in a car, sometimes on my own car/truck, and said to myself; “Which side is the F%@{ING gas cap on!??” I’m a pretty bright guy. I come up with some smart-ish stuff from time to time and am paid pretty well for my ability to problem solve and design effectively. Then out of left field I get smacked with the reality of how ignorant I can be. This happened last week while taking a car back to the airport. I was looking in the mirror for the little door when a co-worker pointed in the general direction of my dash and said, “Look at your gas gauge, the arrow points to the side with the gas cap.” I was astounded!! There it was. I have been driving for 20 –odd years and this was the first time I had ever noticed an arrow there. Sure enough it pointed to the correct side. When I got home, I checked my lovely blue speed buggy and again, there it was. I informed my wife of my incompetence and she had no idea either. I mentioned it to another coworker and they had the same Godsmacked look after we went out in the parking lot to check their car. So far I have told about 30 people about this magic arrow and all but one of them checked their cars and found the same thing. The lone holdout has an early ‘90s truck, so it looks like older cars might not have this feature.

How have none of us noticed the little secret on our dashboards? It is like I have been living next door to a fire-breathing dragon for the last twenty years and just figured my grass was supposed to be blackened every now and again.

The Hill of Pain

/ Matt Talley

I LOVE being able to ride my bike to work! Being within biking distance and somewhat near a long bike path was a prerequisite when we went house hunting in Hamburg and Seattle. My ride in Hamburg was 8 miles each way, VERY flat, and I cut 15 minutes off my commute time compared to riding the train. The only downside to my Hamburg ride was the horrific weather in North Germany nine months a year. That’s right, we moved to Seattle for better weather…

Last weekend, I suited up and got on my 9-speed road bike to take a test run to and from work – 15 miles round trip. Since I hadn’t been on a bike in three months (long story), I decided to try the ride with a few gears before committing myself to single-speed epic – I am SOOO glad I had a little forethought that particular morning… The ride in was great, fast, and a little scary. There is a +16% grade hill about ¾ of a mile long right by the house that I bombed down in amongst some sparse Saturday AM traffic. Holy crap, living in the flat land for 2 years made me forget what 50mph on a bike felt like! I passed a couple of cars on the right and made the drivers look at me crazy. I wish I could say that I was in full control, at the top of my game mentally and peddling for more speed. Sadly, that was not my experience. The road was gravely, my bike was shaking under me, I was right on the edge of losing control of the bike (lots of hamburger and road-rash at that speed), and on the very precipice of pissing my bike shorts. I survived the hill and the rest of my ride in was fairly fast and uneventful – 25 minutes from door to door.

The ride back was not as cool. I peddled back to the bottom of that monster hill and fired myself up for a little pain. I got a lot of pain and humiliation. For a cyclist, walking a bike up a hill is loathsome and reserved for fat sunburned tourists with grip shifters and gel-pads on their saddles. I shifted up to my biggest rear cog and stood in the saddle, mashing! About ¼ of the way up (I was on the sidewalk, which is already a weenie thing to do), my legs and lungs joined a union and started picketing my brain. I slowed to a crawl and started to weave slightly. Half way up my tongue was hanging out, I was sucking wind, sweating like a whore in church, and my vision started going a little blurry. About ¾ of the way up, I swerved into the grass and fell over a little – I stuck my foot out before actually hitting the ground. I then committed the ultimate roadie sin – I walked my fvcking bike the last 50 yards up the hill. I could feel the cold, laughing stares of the drivers as the passed me clicking along the sidewalk in my $200 carbon soled racing shoes, pushing a carbon and aluminum speed machine. I could even feel the hate coming off my bike. I felt absolutely defeated and like a big ol’ vagina.

Three days later I rode to work, and prepared myself for the battle with the ego-killing hill. I took some Tylenol, ate a bagel and raisins before leaving the office, got some sugar in my system, and slowly warmed my legs up on the approach to the hill. Again I attacked it and again it left me slobbering, bleary-eyed and defeated, though I did get a little closer to the top. On my ride of shame the rest of the way home I had an epiphany – when I moved to Hamburg, I had removed the 12-25 cassette group from my rear wheel and replaced it with an 11-21 group as I wouldn’t need the bigger cogs on the roads there. Hot damn! I went the next day and swapped the two cassettes and now I have two more gears to aid me in the coming grudge-match.

One side note though, I MAY have gotten in trouble when I was prepping the 12-25 to put back on. It was a little greasy, so I decided to clean it up. Naturally, I chose to do this in the bathroom sink. About halfway through, I looked down, saw the rings of grease in the sink and the thousands of black specs covering the entire counter and thought, “Oh SHIT, she is going to come in here, see this, and threaten me with violence.” I warned her about the lapse in judgment as I was called to dinner and cleaned up my mess right after so that I would have a warm and welcoming bed to sleep in that night..

Update 3/4/09: This afternoon, just as the sky faded into dusk, I started up the hill. I took the first 100 yards sitting down, getting out of the saddle and standing in the peddles at the last possible moment. I felt good going up the first bit with the 25-tooth cog whirling under me. I made it halfway without much hassle and wasn’t breathing too hard. I hit my previous high point and just as I started huffing, but I just kept mashin’ away. I topped the beast still riding hard and would have done a ‘Rocky at the top of the steps’ impression, but I couldn’t focus my eyes and was afraid of falling over and someone calling an ambulance – the one thing that would more embarrassing than having to push. The last 20 yards were real tough, but I knocked the bastard off and now I can approach the grade without dread and without the stigma of a coming walk of uphill shame.

Delivery of all our worldly goods

/ Matt Talley

It has been an exercise in patience and frustration. 99% of our worldly positions were shipped from Hamburg to Seattle via an ocean container ship. We went with a medium priced international moving company, Hasenkamp, that seemed to be professional enough, but appearances can be deceiving. On moving day, it was discovered that the moving company didn’t reserve a space for the container truck in front of our building on a very narrow, crowded, one-way cobblestone street. Parking reservation is the norm when moving apartments in Germany. We requested one when we first contacted the relocation company, so we figured it was their issue. The guys sent to pack were pissed at their office when they showed up and blamed the lady organizing everything from the comfort of her chair, saying that it had happened before… and for us not to worry, as they would work it out with the office. They called someone and swapped out for a smaller truck.

The movers were very meticulous in packing our stuff and overall we though they did a great job. We bought them lunch and drinks and stayed out of the way to let them just do their job. Fast forward 9-weeks and we get a demand for payment form the moving company, Hasenkamp, for $600 extra bucks ?!!??? This was after we had already paid them $6,500. The added bill was to pay for the labor hours for moving our goods from the small truck to the ocean freight container since without a reserved space the container truck couldn’t park on our street. The packers called the Hasenkamp office, not me, and told them to bring a smaller truck brought over. I thought it was no big deal and explained it all to the guy requesting funds, expecting an ’Oops, our bad!” sort of reply. Nope, what I got was a shit-storm of e-mail demanding the additional money and explanations defying all logic, arguing over how it was really our fault that the international logistics and moving company hadn’t reserved a parking spot after we contracted them to conduct a door to door move. Included in this correspondence were not-so-veiled threats about holding our goods until we paid, incurring $100 a day in additional costs. The whole time this was going on, Hasenkamp refused to give us the status and location of our property. It wasn’t until the very end of this terse correspondence that we discovered that our stuff had been in the US for weeks, had already cleared US Customs, and was about to start incurring storage fees at the port. It the end I had to pay ½ of their original requested amount, but MAN it pissed me off to do so!

The condition of our stuff was 95% perfect. Lots of padding and tape and cardboard. There were a couple of chipped glasses, two broken picture frames, odd scratches here and there, and the right arm of our couch got smashed/crushed in the container somehow. I took some pictures and turned it in on the insurance. (Five weeks later – no response from Hasenkamp. Fuck ‘em. I am turning it over to my insurer and will give them the Hasenkamp info. AllState will cut me a check and send Hasenkamp a nasty legal note demanding the funds for reimbursement. This is why one should have insurance – companies have entire legal departments to deal with these type of issues.)

I will link the whole demand for payment e-mail chain here. I will leave the company e-mail addresses intact on the mails, for general information purposes only, of course. It would be sad indeed if some automated web crawler spotted them and auto generated a mountain of SPAM/p0rn mail to those addresses… Hopefully I get a few web hits from someone searching for company information or from someone who is thinking about using Hasenkamp to move with. Additionally, I am going on a few of the expat forums in Europe and post all this again.

Make a customer happy and he MIGHT tell two people, piss a customer off and he WILL tell twenty…

Its Girl Scout cookie time again!!

/ Matt Talley

You know how a bear just knows it is time to hibernate and geese just know it is time to fly south for the winter? The wildebeests in Africa just know when and how to migrate across the savannah and the swallows just know that they have to fly to Capistrano. Well, I just know when Girl Scout cookie season is. I feel it in my bones. There is a scent in the air, my Spidy-sense starts humming a little, and I have a Pavlovian response to sage green – the color of their merit badge sashes. Living in Germany for two years wrenched havoc on my system during this annual cookie-lust. I would grow moody and distant as February closed, but now I am back and I can, with some guidance and moderation, enjoy this time of year once again. As a note, self-control with cookies has never an easy thing for me. My wife has to dole them out in my lunch over a two-month period and lock them in a secret location at night. I can’t be left alone with them or she will find me passed out in the kitchen floor with a quart of whole milk, 4-5 empty boxes littered around me, and the crumbs of dozens of Samoas, Thin Mints and Trefoils cascading down my chest. We all have demons and mine are cookie flavored.

All this would work like clockwork except I have been added to some super-secret watch-list available only to 8-10 year old girls and their den mothers. They must have my address details, picture, vital stats, and my feeding patterns. I get nailed by those cute innocent faces at work, at home on the weekends, and while walking into every grocery store in town. They will let other potential cookie-consumers walk by with just the ‘Would you like to buy some cookies?’ pitch. Then they see me coming from across the parking lot. They huddle, then as I near the door one will step in front of me with a box in her hands, flash me the big sad puppy eyes and ask me to “Please” buy some of their crack. Before I can stiff-arm the tike, fake right, roll left and make a break for it, one of her co-conspirators move in from an oblique angle and cuts off my escape with another box of yumminess, looking hopeful while batting her eye lashes. So far this season I have bought 9 boxes and my wife made me promises not to buy another box, but I am a weak, weak man…

Moving sucks!

/ Matt Talley

Moving always sucks and relocating from one continent to another is its own special brand of agony. The logistics of organizing such a move can be a two-month long full time job. I accepted a job offer in Seattle and arranged for our stuff to be shipped out via an ocean container ship. We flew with about six huge suitcases and two boxes into Little Rock a couple days after Christmas. As a note, traveling with a cardboard box is humbling. Your fellow passengers at the baggage carousel look at you as you reach for your battered container like you are about to spread leprosy and back away from the belt as you manhandle the now not so square, not so together carton (baggage handlers worldwide are “super-friendly” to boxes…) onto a luggage buggy.

Anyway, we flew into Little Rock, Arkansas to pick up our car, spend a few days with the kids, and start our drive across the US. The couple days with the kids were good. Madison LOVED her new cell phone and Carlton really liked his Guitar Hero – I may have played it after everyone went to bed until 4 in the morning, but I cannot confirm that… Madison was sweet as was Carlton. He is at the age though where he thinks it’s fun to poke and pick on his sister and she is at the age where EVERYTHING is irritating, so there was some friction there and I had to separate them at the movie, but they got along fine 90% of the time.

We have done the I-30/I-40 drive from Texas to California a couple of times, so we went north to experience some different country. Well, that was the plan anyway. After making a quick overnight stop at my Mother’s place, we headed north into Oklahoma and Kansas. We spent New Year’s Eve on the Kansas/Colorado border and were so tired from the driving and such that we fell asleep before midnight – yep… a rock star life! As we drove north, serous winter weather moved into the Pacific Northwest ahead of schedule so we had a torturous 4.5 day / 12-14 hour a day drive trying to beat the storms. We hit 50mph sustained winds in Utah and Idaho with 80mph+ gusts and crossed a mountain pass in chain-up conditions before being turned back trying to go over the Cascades. A day was added to our trip going south to Portland, away from the closed ice and snow encased passes. The last leg of our trip was a leisurely drive up I-5 on the last morning from a friend’s house in Portland.

We got into Seattle on Saturday before I started work on Monday – a schedule that I do not recommend. No speeding tickets and Laurel drove a good bit of the time. Our Subaru is her first car with a standard transmission, but she is learning quickly. There was only one incident of clutch related frustration/tears on the whole drive. I was really proud of her for picking it up so quickly as a 285hp rocket sled is not the easiest car to learn the nuances of the clutch on.

My new President!

/ Matt Talley

We woke up the morning on November 6th in Marrakech and were told of Obama’s victory by a 40-something French guy working at the front desk of a Riad who was all smiles. Everyone we talked to for a week congratulated us on the change of the “US regime.” We voted via absentee ballot and were ecstatic that our pony came in first this time. Even the sour-faced border security guard at the King Hussein Airport in Morocco lit up into a broad grin when he saw Laurel’s US passport, stuck his thumb in the air and said “Obama!”

This is a VASTLY different experience than we have had in the previous two years and that I have had in the past eight years. I am used to hiding my blue passport in airports to keep the disapproving looks from perfect strangers to a minimum, shying away from any and all public political discussions, and vast amounts of time have been spent apologizing for a government that I do not trust and a leader that I do not respect. There is such a feeling of hope for the future and for positive change in everyone who talks to us about the election. Who knows what the future holds for any of us, but we see this election as an opportunity for our country to turn a corner and build back some of the respect that we have lost in the world’s eyes.

I do need to admit that at some point in the day as I was thinking of Bush leaving the Oval Office I got the “Ding, Dong the witch is dead” song stuck in my head. I quitely snickered to my self in econemy class on th flight home.

My AWESOME wife:

/ Matt Talley

It is windy and raining today and we are sitting inside snuggling with the heater in the living room, but the weather last weekend was nice enough for us to get out and ride our bikes to the city center on Saturday and to Altona the next day for coffee and books. My muse/wife was also gracious enough to let me snap a few pictures of her. She is her own special Betty Crocker/Jenna Jamison/Laurel stew and I couldn’t ask for a better friend or wife or partner in crime.

Fact: My bike is cooler than yours.

/ Matt Talley

Earlier this summer, Laurel (my amazing wife) and I took her bike to the shop to have it repaired – warranty issue. While there, we saw a Penny Farthing (also called a Hiwheel or a Bone Shaker) in the window of the shop with a price tag on it. You NEVER see these things for sale! Some guy will have one is his window as advertising or just to be cool, but they never sell them. Well, we found a place that did. Laurel wouldn’t let me leave the shop without taking this baby home: that is how cool she thought it was. She even let me stay in the shop stroking it sweetly as she went to an ATM to get cash. I love my wife!

I am not going to tell you what she paid for it, but it wasn’t much. We had to walk my “new” bike home because I was wearing flip-flops. About halfway there she looked over and asked me, “Umm, can you actually ride this thing?” Fvck yes I can!! I went right home, put some real shoes on, and took it for a cautionary spin around a local school yard to practice mounting and un-mounting – it has been about 22 years since I was shown how by a visiting clown at my elementary school. Just like riding a bike…

After a few adjustments, I rode the thing from the house to downtown Hamburg, around the Klein Alster Lake and back – about ten miles. I turned heads and made people smile and wave (neither is a common site in Hamburg) wherever I went. I even let some old guys have their picture taken with it. Not a chick-magnet, but it pulls old dudes out of the woodwork to talk about classic bikes. I had a lot of fun that first day, but paid a high price. The seat that came with the bike was an old unicycle saddle with no springs to cushion the cobblestones and bumps. I ended up getting a blister on the tip of my tailbone that hurt so bad I couldn’t ride any of my regular bikes for a week.

Our first ride together

My Boneshaker on the Alster in Hamburg

Over the next few days, I found out more and more about my new stead – the original builder’s son still runs the company that built it and really helped me out with info about the bike. She was built by Rideable Bicycle Replicas in the late 1970’s as a copy of an 1875 French Boneshaker and brought to Hamburg along with 20 or so other hiwheels for a bicycle show. My bike was one of 13 that were sold to a guy who rented them out for TV shows, movies, as decoration, and to museums. By 2008 he only had 4 left and mine was the most complete, as it had spent the last ten years in a puppet museum; sparing it a hard life. He sold my bike, two other complete, but ugly/bent ones, and the heavily damaged forth hiwheel to the bike shop owner who then put the best one in the window. The only notable damage to mine is where some jackass drilled strait through the headbadge, the head tube, and the fork to suspend the bike from the ceiling so an evil little puppet could sit astride it – sorry it sort of feels like thinking about my wife kissing some old boyfriend – makes me twitch a little.

Since the initial tailbone trauma, I have installed a new seat (two different ones actually), new bars, given her a good scrubbing, and ride her around town for errands on the any weekend afternoon that the sun is shinning. I even rode her to a local wilderness park to get on a few trails with my wife– not recommended. I didn’t go ass-over-tea-kettle, but it is not the greatest bike I have ever ridden on dirt. To be completely honest, I have had one accident thus far: the cobblestones on my street were wet a couple weekends ago and I slipped off while mounting in front of about fifteen neighbors. They think that I am ‘that crazy American that lives in the red building’ anyway, so it only hurt me pride a little.

At the Niendorfer Gehege Park in North Hamburg

Riding on the paths in the Gehege after a picnic lunch

My Rally-Blue, all-wheel drive lover

/ Matt Talley

Hijacked from one of my recent TRs

I spent most of August in the States on vacation with what was supposed to be both kids, but it turned out that only one decided to road-trip. After an uneventful series of flights I arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas from our home in northern Germany (the land of wurst, great beer, rain, and terrible music) and immediately went shopping for a new car. For the past couple of years every time I come in to see the kids I spend between one and two thousand dollars on the rental car alone. As we are planning to move back to the States in early 2009 and we will need a car, Laurel and I sat down and decided not to waste money on a rental car since the money would be better spent on something that was ours instead of increasing the monthly sales of an airport car rental outlet. Also, buying a vehicle in the summer would make it so there would be one less detail to deal with during the move. Shipping all our property one third around the world, starting new jobs, and finding a new home are quite enough for our first month back in the US.

I have been lusting over various Subaru models for years. They are just amazing cars as far as handling, reliability, and safety. I was a breath away from buying an Outback before I was transferred to Germany and have been lovin’ them from a distance ever since my first extended roadtrip in a friend’s. While in Germany I had various online relationships with assorted models: There was the 2006 pearl white WRX STI 4-door Impreza that showed me all her secrets on the Car&Driver website. A jet-black turbo Outback wagon was the next piece of eye candy that turned my head. I found her on the main Subaru site and Googled candid pictures of her interior and was taken right away with her in-dash GPS and sexy charcoal heated seats. I planned for us to spend some serious alone time together at the beach and in the mountains. Our relationship ended before it really started when one day while minding my own business, I happened on a picture of a 5-door Rally-Blue Impreza – The Sport Wagon. I researched her measurements, specifications, and found that her current lovers on the Rally Race Circuit spoke only kind and generous words about her. Oh! she was fast: 285 horses under the hood and her handling was made superb with anti-sway bars, strut stabilizer, 4-wheel disc brakes, and full-time all wheel drive. Just to push me into the abyss of lust and admiration, she had a 5-Star crash safety rating and gets 26+ MPG on the highway. It was like finding a devoted bride that was equal parts Gabriella Reese, Betty Page, Martha Stewart, Briana Banks, Carre Otis, and Marie Curie. I had to have her, possess her, and make her mine.

Before leaving Deutschland for vacation I had e-mailed various car dealers in Arkansas trying to find my all wheel drive mistress. Most of them just wanted to sell me what they had in stock or they didn’t return my e-mails at all. I showed up in Little Rock without a guaranteed deal and spent a couple of days stalking my soon to be Rally-Blue lover. I found her waiting for me at Adventure Subaru in the small college town of Fayetteville. It was love for both of us from the very first moment my hands caressed her soft leather-trimmed steering wheel, while I applied firm yet gentle pressure to her short-throw shifter. And then we were alone, just my Japanese lovely and me for the long drive back to Little Rock…

This is my Rally-Blue lovely on the first day she was mine.

Laurel and I have been car-free for almost two years and in so many ways it has been very liberating and at times a huge blessing: I get to drink as many beers as I want when out with friends since no one is driving home and there is a subway or train stop within 5 minutes of any pub that I would care to frequent. There has been no gas to buy, a reduced overall carbon footprint, no maintenance, no insurance, we both cycle and walk more, no car payment, etc… We have been able to do this because of the amazing transportation in Germany. Moving back to the US means that we will need a car for at least one of us most of the time. We had two vehicles before, but have decided to become a one car family and see how well it works out for us. With the better gas mileage of the Subaru, the subtraction of one vehicle from our lives, and a commitment to bike and walk as much as possible for errands and work; our over all fuel consumption should be less than half of what it was when we lived in California and our level of emotions should be even lower than that. Thatknowledge helps with the moral dilemma that we faced when deciding on owning or not owning a car again – the fact the my blue darling is just so sexy didn’t tip the scales in any way…

As my new lady wasn’t able to sit in my lap for the flight home, a great friend of mine agreed to keep the car under lock and key for me until we move back – taking her out once a month or so to charge the battery, keep everything lubed up, wipe her gently with a soft white cotton diaper, and whisper sweet nothings her delicately formed the side mirrors until we can be together again.

A badly cropped picture of her winking at me…