March 10, 2003

Manor ride

/ cycling / 3 Comments

Rode out to Manor on Saturday with DuShun. About 30 miles total, though I forgot to reset the cyclometer until we were a little ways into the ride. Much less hard on me than the last ride we took together. He wanted to go farther. I told him “Look, I don’t want to ride so much that I don’t want to ride anymore.”

We stopped at the Manor grocery, and DuShun noticed, alongside all the usual “pigs for sale” signs and such, that someone had drawn a | inside a circle on the back of their receipt and taped that to the window. He speculated this must be some cryptic signal for a secret society. Anyone have any idea what that means?

On the ride back, we saw a truck in the ditch. It was hitched to a trailer fully loaded with 2x4s; the truck was perpendicular to the road, nose-first, and the trailer was jackknifed past 90°, digging into the side of the pickup. As we rode by, we marveled at this feat of vehicular contortion and wondered how, exactly, it had gotten into that position.

SXSW doings

/ personal

As a rule, I don’t do SXSW. In fact, the last SXSW event I attended was a Kim Wilson show at Antone’s back when it was on Guadalupe–probably in ’93 or ’94. It was a great show, but it was more crowded than the Marunouchi line at rush-hour. I decided it wasn’t worth it and that was the end of that.

This year, I broke that rule, sort of. There’s a free way to get into the trade show. So I took it. Several friends I know through Austin Bloggers were staffing a EFF-Austin booth at the SXSW-interactive tradeshow. And I had recently corresponded with Rebecca Blood about weblog ethics. She asked if I’d be at SXSW–I said I generally leave SXSW to the out-of-towners, but I’d stick my head in at the trade show, and if I saw her there, I’d say Hi.

So yesterday, Gwen and I rode down. Gwen, who had worked the trade show in years past, observed that it was much smaller, and that there wasn’t much of an Austin focus. I had a chance to pester my friends at the EFF-Austin table, did indeed meet Rebecca Blood, avoided picking up any swag whatsoever, and much to my delight and surprise, bumped into long-lost friends Greta and Chester. I ran across a neighbor, Susan, and we commiserated over this country’s current regime administration.

War Leaflets

/ Austin

Shortly after Bush’s Thursday-night “get ready for war” speech, a variety of anti-war leaflets (clearly run off on a laser printer in a hurry) were stapled to utility poles around my neighborhood. By Sunday morning, these had been joined by leaflets reading “TERRORISM IS WAR,” (clearly run off on an inkjet printer in a hurry) which I can only suppose is an anti-anti-war message.

I just went out to get pictures of these, but they’re all gone.