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Rant-dom thoughts on a Sunday

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Accidental Advertising: This arty shot, resulting from almost dropping my camera as I chased down a customer on her bike, resulted in a very nice little plug for clothing manufacturer Peal Izumi. I've just spent a week riding my bike 80-100 miles a day with 2000 customers and other folks on Cycle Oregon . I was looking forward to impressively blogging from the saddle, except my supposed all-singing-all-dancing iPhone turned out to be a bit of club-footed wallflower, as I ranted on Fastcompany.com . So I'm glad to have my clunky, predicatable but lightening fast old Blackberry back. it does what I want and fast. A friend is reading Terry Pratchett. I'd never heard of this English author at all, but he's prolific, having written a ton of books. The friend keeps sharing snippets aloud. Last one offered: if you steal a sock from a vampire, it will throw him off completely, because vampires are such neat freaks. Now just pause for a moment and savor the absurdity: a vampire

What do you blog about on your 45th birthday?

This.

New York Minutes: Angela's Flying Bed - A Review

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The Selfish Shellfish tell Angela like it is. Writer Karl Greenburg at the bedhead. The adventure unfurled when Angela pushed that big button with the 'X' on it. I was lucky to get this shot - a minder came up and told me not to take pictures. Even the Guggenheim now realizes that to get butts back on seats you gotta let people bottle memories with their Nikon Coolpixes! AUGUST is Fringe Festival (or off-off Broadway) month in NYC, when low (budget) life like me get to feel like one of those folks who live in Tribeca, Soho, or the upper East Side, the Upper West Side, or dammit, any which side of NYC. One of these shows I attended was Angela's Flying Bed , a 1-hour family musical staged in Bleecker Street. Now what was I, a die hard single income no kidder, doing at a PG-rated show? Well, the co-writer is none other than a Bike Friday customer, Karl Greenberg . Oh how I love to dip my toe into the diverse and quirky lives of our customers. Besides, so many of the

New York Minutes: "Excuse me, this isn't a gallery"

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Another 'luxury condo' development in NYC. Note the Frank Gehry 'Bundt Cake/Jello Mold' building to the right. I got the quintessential 'you're taking up airspace, young man' treatment recently. My Chelsea architect friend is always dragging me around to hear the latest Renzo Piano concerto (you can tell I'm not an architect) but we did attempt a sneak peak at a new condo development - correction - at the sales office of the development. We hadn't gotten our Tevas much past the threshold when a 20-something toothy sales rep wafted in our direction to declare, painted nails drawn, "This is NOT a gallery." Shuffling around in our shorts on a muggy summer's day, I guess we DID look like a pair of underfunded galleristas. "I know, this is a sales office. Can we take a look around?" said my friend. She retreated momentarily. We did get to run our fingers across the seamless terazzo countertops and thumb through the thick binder

Downward dog days in NYC

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A downward dog with a building up your butt? That's Yoga at Bryant's Park. When I travel I try to pretend I've been in the place I'm visiting for years. That is, rather than rush about seeing sights, I try to do normal things that I or anyone else would do at home. Like eat, sleep, work, buy groceries. I might take in a museum or show or two, but I don't run around with this great long list and a Fodor's duct-taped to my chest. In fact, I don't run around at all. I've been known to spend days indoors in the heart of a NYC summer, the MOMA, Met, Cooper Hewitt, and Century 21 clothing store beckoning, glued to my laptop. What's the fun in that, I hear you ask? In this way, I don't get so much of that 'gotta tear myself away' angst and 'get back to real life' letdown when my stay comes to an end. This *is* real life. Or as a friend put it, 'This is not a holiday, this is my life.' So my attending a free yoga class in the mid

Plinkety plunk ... a birthday impulse buy

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I just visited the famous Mandolin Bros fretted instrument shop on Staten Island, NY. Mandolin Bros, owner Stan May (left), the Gal with a Guild, and ever patient sales expert Dennis Ryan. … and came out with something a transglobal telecommuter can neither store, stash or carry terribly easily: a brand new guitar! Just like the time I schlepped home a giant framed Paul Alan Bennett picture for my birthday last year, and which is now freeloading in a friend's dining room in Eugene, Oregon. (As you will read, I almost dropped $750 on a blanket too…) "Paintings and blankets, you're settling," quipped my sage friend, Jerry Norquist. I've never heard of Mandolin Bros until I happened to jump onto the tail of the New York Cycle Club Ride to the Staten Island Bluegrass Festival, led by a bluegrass aficionado, Mark Gelles. Take a look at Straight Drive playing on stage here. "You gotta go there, best shop in New York," said Mark. "By t

Greets from IOWA, no wait ... Chicago

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One of the many things you can buy on RAGBRAI My RAGBRAI shots (the photogallery doesn't work that well in CHROME) I've just returned from bouncing around like an email selling Viagara .... NY, Philly, Texas, Eugene, Seattle and finally IOWA, where I rode across the state with 10,000 others on RAGBRAI. Including Lance, who, at all times, seemed to be riding his bike just outside my field of vision. After many 'Where's Lance?' moments I lightheartedly accused his yellow and black clad platoon of fundraisers of being paid to say 'here's over there' while pointing in precisely the opposite direction. I saw one guy who I swore was Lance except on dropping my gaze to his shoes I saw a pair of sandals. Would Lance wear sandals? If he was wearing ballet slippers with a large gold button on the toe I'd know it was him - I read somewhere he was dating a NY fashion designer called Tori Burch whose signature creation for 2007 are those very slippers. B