imaginary wishlist

Are you guys also trying to save up money for a brainbike - the kind you can ride and instead of burning calories or transporting you from one place to another, it powers your brain? 

Do you guys also think that, even though a brainbike is sort of expensive, and would take up quite a bit of space in your apartment, or at your desk, or really wherever you decide to put it there are so many options, that it would be so useful? 

It seems so nice, when your brain starts to sag and can't go on its own as far, when your brain energy seems used up, to put on you brainbiking outfit and ride for hours and hours until you're hopelessly sweaty and look at the pages of ideas you biked - ideas for work and ideas about love and ideas on how to build a shark toaster gun where the sharks won't get caught in the electric coils and slow their trajectory. That's what I'm saving my money for.

I'm leaving LA without ever seeing a celebrity

No, that guy with the crazy hair that I always talk about seeing doesn't count. To be honest, I don't think he was famous. I think he just had crazy hair.

Starting next week I'm going to be jaywalking, eating french fries, and making too much eye contact with homeless people in a brand-new city. Which one? Read on to the next sentence to find out!

Oh man, what if I did one of those scrolling things from chain emails where you scroll down for days?

   __       __   ____       ____
   ) \     / (   )   \     /   (
  )_  \_V_/  _(   )_  \_V_/  _(
    )__   __(       )__   __(           
       `-'             `-'

Remember those?

                     /\/\
        ___--~^~~--_(-  -)_--~~^~--___
       ^\      HOORAY 4 TENNIS       /^
          \   /\   /\    /\   /\   /
            \/   \/  \  /   \/  \/
                     ^\/^

Didn't you love those?

                 _..-'(                       )`-.._
              ./'. '||\\.       (\_/)       .//||` .`\.
           ./'.|'.'||||\\|..    )*.*(    ..|//||||`.`|.`\.
        ./'..|'.|| |||||\```````  "  '''''''/||||| ||.`|..`\.
      ./'.||'.|||| ||||||||||||.     .|||||||||||| ||||.`||.`\.
     /'|||'.|||||| ||||||||||||{     }|||||||||||| ||||||.`|||`\
    '.|||'.||||||| ||||||||||||{     }|||||||||||| |||||||.`|||.`
   '.||| ||||||||| |/'   ``\||/`     '\||/''   `\| ||||||||| |||.`
   |/' \./'     `\./          |/\   /\|          \./'     `\./ `\|
   V    V         V          }' `\ /' `{          V         V    V

No, guess not. Portland! I'm moving to Portland.

I don't know a lot about Portland yet except that it will be awesome and that people bike a lot there. Apparently there's even a restaurant where the electricity is powered by stationary bikes at all the tables. I have wanted to do that for years but in a GYM because think of all the people moving in a gym, you could power a city. Feel free to use that idea. And stay tuned for more great ideas, sent to you via the internet, from Portland.

How many times do you think I said "Portland" in this post?



football plays football plays football plays football plays

I miss you already LA.

Down with the system

Today something horrible that I've been dreading happening every day since July finally happened.

Alright that sentence was a bit too dramatic. But every day I carry my giant cruiser bike up a flight of stairs to my apartment with the left handlebar gently pressing the thought of impeding decapitation against my neck. There are twenty steps and I can't see them but I count them out loud slowly, cheering silently after each one I don't slip on.

Really it's a miracle nothing happened until today when I finally ate it on step twelve, and fell all the way down and busted my lip open on the handlebars.

The good thing about something happening that you worried about forever is that you realize it isn't all that bad. That's the worst you can do? Bring it on, universe.

And the cuts make me look like a rockstar. Do rockstars have bloody lips? Maybe from smashing guitars around and accidentally hitting themselves in the face. I've lost too much blood to really analyze this right now.

who's cool now?

Here's what I usually look like on my way to work.



I know what you're thinking, "How could she possibly improve on this?" Think no longer:



This is a dramatization of how it would look if my tricked-out helmet somehow hit me in the face. Check out that lightning bolt!

Now maybe fewer children will mock me mercilessly. I would say type that with so much more confidence if this morning two people hadn't yelled "Hey nice helmet, loser!" from the side of the road. Do you not see these lightning bolts? I am made for speed.

glad I could cheer you up

I keep forgetting that even though I'm hard at work, the rest of LA is on summer vacation. This morning on my bike ride to the agency I saw a man riding with his daughter on the handlebars. The little girl smiled at and looked beyond thrilled to see me. "What a sweet little girl" I thought. "What a wonderful day." Then I realized she was probably laughing because I was wearing a helmet. Boo.

The most exhilarating part of my mornings and afternoons is The Overpass.

It's halfway between my apartment and my office - an empty, dark, tunnel decked out with bright yellow signs that read "DANGER! BEES!" and beneath that PELIGRO! ABEJAS!

I don't know about you, but to me there's nothing like an upside-down exclamation point to make you ask WHAT BEES? What are you freaking talking about? Is this thing just packed with bees? Why so many signs? Are you breeding them with a chemical that makes them super angry? Does the tunnel smell like honey?

And there's nothing like a honey-scented, psychotic-bee-packed tunnel to get me biking sixty miles an hour. I fly through that thing like a bee that smells dinner. No, faster. Just a hair faster.

I've got a cobalt-blue beach cruiser and a bright future in sales

This was going to be a post about my super-hipster practically-useless one-speed beach cruiser a got for biking to work.

But instead it's going to be a rant about why no one wears a freaking helmet anymore. Have you forgotten everything you learned in bike safety class in second grade? Or did no one else have to take that class?

There are few things worse than leaving the apartment with clean clothes, a freshly-packed lunch, and a neat-o super-duper safe AND stylish helmet, only to pass thirty people who are biking around with hair blowing in the breeze. I don't know who these thick-skulled and soon-to-be-skull-less losers think they are, but they're sharing the road with giant pieces of steel that are going 50 mph, and the closest thing to protection I've seen anyone wearing are Dodgers baseball caps. Twins hats, of course, protect the wearer from any sort of bodily harm that may arise. I'm not aware that Dodgers caps have the same effect.

End of rant. Wear your helmet, you'll double the number of people in the world that are currently doing it.