September Update

It's been a long and interesting month. I'm just starting to feel settled into my new living arrangement.

This September was immediately preceded by moving out of my old house and moving Jill to Santa Cruz, where we broke up. After a week chilling with my sister, I returned to my new house. My three roommates were near-perfect strangers, my room was too full of boxes to fit a mattress and Jill wasn't the only person close to me to have moved on from Davis, just the most recent.

I started work again with Monsanto on the seventh. I'd gotten the job on the basis of an excellent recommendation from my old boss Staci, who I worked under during my internship. I knew I'd be facing a cut in pay, responsibility and interest of work. I'll be doing a complex assay to detect disease contamination in tomato seeds all year. I recently told Staci that my erratic thought-patterns are sub-ideal for the rather meticulous job, but that I'd get the rhythm of it soon enough. The tediousness of the job is saved by the pleasantness of the work environment. Everyone there is very cool and the nature of the job affords us some opportunity to talk.

It also turns out I won the roommate lottery. Mike is a nerdy but affable guy of understated intelligence that I think I could eventually become good friends with. Mereb and Celeste have the master bedroom. I was concerned that their hippy quirks might drive me crazy, but they're really open-minded and not even vegetarians. They turned me onto an awesome beer made by Pabst called Olympia. It's just as good as PBR, but the flavor is corn-driven instead of rice-driven. I suspect they used Cascade-style hops, which is kind of cool. Everyone is interesting to talk to and has a surprising number of things in common with me. I finally have a player for my records, I got my butt handed to me playing Axis and Allies and we might even get chickens soon.

Most of my free time this month has been spent in long conversations with old friends and writing this blog (four thousand unique hits and counting). A few you who know more than how to count will observe that it's been my most productive month of blogging thus far.

I've also been dabbling in TV shows, music and bonding with my new people. Mereb picked up a ping-pong table this weekend. I'd forgotten how much I liked that game. I went to Fry's with Mike on Sunday to check out computers. Yesterday I went to Vacaville Outlet Mall with coworkers and picked up some new shoes (green and white plaid converse, fyi).

I went to a KDVS show last week in Sac with Kern that his band was playing at. He and I both loved one of the bands there (Fall of Electricity), which embodied an intense, proggy drummer/guitarist formula that I've seen work really well a few times (other notable examples being the two-person incarnations of Afternoon Brother and Lightning Bolt). I bought Fall of Electicity's cassette, but I don't have a cassette player, so I'm going to download the mp3's it entitles me to and give away the cassette to the first person who asks, as per the guitarist's suggestion.

Howard has reclaimed an old mini-fridge and is trying to splice in a thermostat so that we can temperature-control fermentation for making sakes and lagers. The plan is to start a doppelbock this weekend and have bottles of it ready for Christmas. I've been scurrying to put together a recipe worthy of my "North Swell Bock" concept.

I've been thanking my lucky stars that Howard ended up sticking around for at least a little while longer. New friends are great and phone friends are great, but having a concrete piece of familiarity is priceless. It's interesting to chat with Howard on a one-on-one basis too. I've hardly ever had conversations with him as personal and thoughtful as they have recently been.

I've kept in contact with Jill and I think there's a decent chance the friends-afterward thing will work. She visited me last Sunday, partly to drop off the next books of a series she got me addicted to. We walked to Borders and talked. We don't talk like nothing's changed, but the familiarity is still there and it's nice. The whole visit was intensely bittersweet, though. Our hugs were the stuff of poetry. After she left I took a nap to both sort out my thoughts and disrupt their endless flow. I was off balance the whole rest of the day.

For those of you who keep asking me why we didn't stay together, please go back and read this. The reasons haven't changed and I have yet to (seriously) reconsider the decision.

For those of you who keep asking me how I'm doing, I'm doing fine. I'm doing better with each passing week. I have my moments, but mostly I feel surprisingly okay and that's getting more true with time. I think the good terms we parted on and the constant talk with friends has helped a lot.

That said, I've been dwelling a lot on the past and it is occasionally depressing. It's not just Jill, it's everything. I miss college things like watching TV and drinking beer with Brandon, bullshitting late at night and John Lazur giving me dubious advice. My being disgruntled about change should be neither surprising nor worrisome to any of you. I never pretended to like change, just to know it's good for me.

Eighty-Six Bottles of Beer on the Wall

I remember. Oh how I remember.

The last few weeks and indeed the last few months have been a time for reflection upon my time in Davis. It is, as I have already said, the end of an era. When Howard and Brandon and I moved to the Apple House, we started lining up beer bottles on top of our kitchen cabinets. A year later, when my mind was also looking backwards because of my upcoming graduation, I started telling Brandon stories I associated with various bottles. I realized how good a storytelling device they were and resolved to write this post in the future.

Yet another year later, Howard was the last of us original three to leave the Apple House and I got those charmed bottles. They had a crust of grease on their shoulders from their lengthy existence in that kitchen. I lined them up (mostly) chronologically and photographed them to tell you their stories. This is a long post, full of stories both momentous and trivial whose value lies in their significance to those who played roles in them.


Stella Artois was the first beer I ever bought. I got it while in the dorms through Brandon's high school friend Tyler. Tyler ended up introducing us to craft beer while we lived in the dorms because periodically he would visit his girlfriend Erin at UC Davis and we'd all hang out in Brandon's dorm and drink Tyler's beer. I remember it took me months to acquire a taste for any beer, but I left the dorms a fan of Sierra Nevada and Fat Tire.

My first visit to Nugget Market, I bought a battery of craft sodas, my interest a relic from my days in high school. I tasted them with my roommates one by one over the course of a week, setting the pattern I would later revisit with single-bottles of beer after I graduated.

The standout was an old soda I'd wanted to try since those high school days. Moxie has become synonymous with spunk and determination in vernacular and it frankly tastes medicinal. The thing is, it tastes medicinal in a completely awesome way. I'd drink it periodically if Nugget would freaking stock it again (more than can be said of all but a handful of craft sodas), but I haven't seen it on their shelves since.

Later that sophomore year, I got Allison's roommate Emy to buy us alcohol. She recommended New Belgium's 1554 from the Coop, which was excellent.

We became fans of Gordon Biersch Marzen among other things. We started saving bottles so that we might insinuate ourselves into brewing beer of our own some day. I remember Brandon thought Stone IPA was too bitter, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. He liked Red Hook, though, and three years later we had a pitcher of it with his family in Dana Point while they were visiting for a cousin's wedding.

I also remember when Allison's mom visited (but I forgot why) with a bottle of Skyy vodka and we made lemon drops at my house.


Our junior year Adam was old enough to give us the hookup. We liked Gordon Biersch's Marzen enough that we tried out Sudwerk's. I though it was relatively boring, but Brandon liked it.

Seagram's Gin should be in the lineup somewhere, because it was that year that Brandon and I started making martinis regularly, sipping them while we watched Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Howard's girlfriend Tammy turned twenty-one late in the year and I remember sipping Pyramid Apricot Ale with she and Howard at her apartment.

Soon after we'd graduated, the household turned twenty-one all at once. We stocked a bar and purchased some liquors I'd read about, including Rye Whiskey and Brazilian Cachaca. We had a cocktail party for Howard and I's birthday with our newly stocked bar. John Lazur, Adam, Greg Webb, Russell Manning and Jill were all there. Russell and Jill were dating that summer and I became friends with both of them through my involvement with DCD (the Davis College Democrats).

Brandon bought a Japanese White Ale called Hitachino's nest on some DCD escapade and I remember it tasted great.

Caius came to visit me that summer, twice. He made me a blackberry pie the first time and I documented a bike trip he and Brandon and I took up the American River. We also tried some beer and cider from the coop. Caius loved hard apple cider.


I took my new grill for it's first spin, grilling $4/lb New York Strip on the patio at Kingston Apartments. Brandon and I bought Pilsner Urquell on a whim. The steak turned out great. Though the beer was awesome, it didn't pair well at all. This inaugurated both my love of Pilsner and my long and unsuccessful search for the beer that would pair with American steak.

I also remember the love-at-first-taste I had with New Belgium's Skinny Dip.

When I visited home that summer, I bought Virgil's Cola at Farm-to-Market with my sister. The cola wasn't half as good as their root beer, but I had a great time hanging out with Bri.

Howard brought some Kirkland beer that he'd discovered at his hometown Costco.

I vividly remember shoving a wedge of key lime into a Corona on my way out the door to ride with Brian Ang and Matt Takaichi to see My Bloody Valentine in San Francisco. I remember sharing my jam jar of rye, the incredible volume of the show and the absolute hordes of kids dressed in their scene best.

Brandon and I ended up becoming big fans of Cachaca and the cocktail made from it called a Caipirinha. Before long we had to replace the old bottle we'd bought on my birthday.


At some point, John Lazur and I's boss, Richard, brought a few bottles of beer back from a visit to Jack Russell brewery. He told us that we could drink them together after closing up the chemical dispensary (John acted as manager for the closing shift). The two of us had a wonderful time discussing the beers. After that, we made a semi-regular thing out of it. John also introduced me to Dogfish Head brewery by giving me their fall seasonal.


Inspired by John, I hosted a "six-pack party", where guests where instructed to bring a six-pack of a beer they had never tried before. The hit of the night was Laura Nevins' Prohibition Lager, which I thought tasted like strawberries.

Before that fall, we made the big move from our run down apartment to a duplex that we called the Apple House. The last day of the move, Brandon went to pick up some McDonald's (having not unpacked the kitchen yet) and as such things go that time of year, a few friends dropped by and we had a housewarming party. Among those friends was Jill. We cracked open a sixer of Leffe, which Brandon claimed tasted exactly like creamed corn when he drank it in Europe with Tyler. Jill and I got to chat when the others made a trip to the store and the two of us hit it off. She'd broken up with Russell earlier that summer and I remember thinking to myself that I should go after her.

There were two impromptu get-togethers around our kitchen that September and Jill was at both. On one Jill formed her first opinion of Leffe and on the other I invented my Christmas Punch in the process of playing bartender to Jill, trying to mimic a cranberry vodka with limited ingredients.

Later in the fall I remember discovering Hefeweizen playing a drinking game with Sudwerk's at Don Gibson's house. I soon got bored with the style, though.


At the beginning of the fall my sister and Aaron Robinson visited for ORMF with Bri's friend Lauren and Aaron's then-girlfriend Jill Hardy. I cracked open one of my dad's more prized red wines (I'd taken a case to Davis with me).

The next day we went to the show and the brief romance I'd had with Lauren came back to life, Lauren's affection growing more pronounced when the the only one of the many Davis friends I invited to show up turned out to be Jill Miller.

A few weeks later, Brandon and I planned to visit our respective siblings in Santa Cruz. We hadn't found anyone interested in gas-sharing with us by that Friday, when by chance I ran into Jill between classes. I invited her and she said she'd come along. The three of us chatted enthusiastically the way there, bickering about whether Jill had good movie taste and agreeing to host a movie marathon. Lauren happened to have dropped by to visit Bri for the weekend, so the dynamic resumed. This time, though, while I put my arms around Lauren, Brandon put his arms around Jill. That night was when Jill decided she didn't actually like Leffe. The following night we picked up some "Oktoberfest" from Trader Joe's that Brandon and I agreed tasted a little like raw meat.

It wasn't until later, when Bri asked me if I liked Jill that I realized how obvious our chemistry was. Lauren certainly noticed. The similarities between the two outings are astonishing. In both cases, Jill was the only person of many invitees to show and Lauren happened to have dropped in on Bri. In both cases I was more ignorant of the dynamic than Lauren or Jill.

After we'd dropped Jill off at her house (and Jill and I had agreed to have a movie marathon the next weekend), I asked Brandon if he was interested in Jill. Brandon said definitely not and I said good, because though he had first dibs, I really wanted to go after her.

My new roommate Greg Webb had run a bruising independent campaign for ASUCD Senator. He announced that regardless of the outcome, he'd be hosting a "Moral Victory Party" and that he would drink a shot of tequila for every twenty votes he received. He got three hundred votes and was just eight votes short of winning.

We measured off the small amount of extra tequila from a fifth and Greg started to drink. Everybody drank (Brandon and I as always playing the role of bartenders extraordinaire), but Greg made it halfway through the bottle within an hour. We decided to move our small party to check out a handful of large parties we'd heard about. Greg was shouting a continuous stream of slurs and insults about the candidates that had beaten him, insisting that we go to the victory party for LEAD (the winning party) so that he could cuss them out in person. We steered Greg to my friend Kern's party. I had an involved albeit tipsy discussion with Jill about "las otras", trying desperately to convince her that she was my first pick. We danced together at Kern's party. By the time we left that party, our numbers had thinned considerably. By the time we arrived at Greg's friend's "wig party", it was just the three of us.

Drunken Greg looked like ET in a hot pink bob. We mixed and chatted, but mostly Jill and I's conversation continued. By the time we left, I was easily the most sober of our trio, Greg still weaving precariously as he continued hurling a stream of insults into the empty streets. Jill and I felt a sense of teamwork as we shepherded him home. For about half the walk I pushed Greg in a grocery cart. In the last leg of the trip Jill and I held hands. It was at that moment that I knew for sure that we had mutual interest, though later she would say it hadn't meant anything.

Jill and I had the long promised movie marathon and though it went otherwise swimmingly, Jill rebuffed my attempt to put my arm around her. We agreed to do it again the next weekend. The second time Jill's friend Lazzuly joined us and Jill snuggled up to me until I put my arm around her. We watched a couple of movies like that. Lazzuly left to get ready for a DCD party that night and I fed Jill a potato with cheese. We walked to the party holding hands.

At the party we danced only with each other. A DCDer named Shane mistook me for Colin Doyle, who'd been hitting on his girlfriend. He tipsily apologized for the mistake later, forcing not one but two bottles of Mirror Pond on me. I didn't care. By that time dancing had turned into making out and I was practically floating.

A few weeks later the Apple House hosted its Christmakah party. This was the third we'd hosted and by this time my roommates were pulling more weight in the preparation than I was (I who'd gallantly started the first one). That Jill and I were dating was made apparent to DCD that night. I busted out some of my dad's wine, making the mistake of letting a stranger open one of the bottles. The only way to salvage the resulting split cork was to push it into the bottle. I was pissed at the time, but I'm amused to see that cork half still sitting glumly in the bottle (the Chardonnay, btw). The next morning I asked Jill, (with a note of exasperation) "What are we?". She seemed surprised that I wanted to date exclusively. I was surprised that she'd allowed it to go this far without demanding some kind of commitment. I'd wanted a long term relationship all along (since that first hang-out at the Apple House) and wanted to lock her down before winter break.


That winter quarter, I took "Introduction to Beer and Brewing" with funny British professor Charles Bamforth. I was immediately excited by the sound of the bocks, starting off with the ubiquitous Shiner Bock.

That Valentine's day was my first worth celebrating and I pulled out the stops to make it special, more for me than for Jill. We went to Seasons for dinner and watched a playing of A Winter's Tale. The next day we decided to go to Napa, though it was raining. We bought a couple bottles of wine and some nice cheese, including the Chardonnay pictured.

I also remember having Adam over for a more modest incarnation of the "six-pack party". He brought Henry Weinhard and I got some Red Seal. Talk was good and the Red Seal was great.

That winter, my sister came to visit. I'd promised to bake her cookies if she visited me (and actually stayed with me, instead of spending all her time with Allison), a promise which she was quick to remind me of. I fondly remember sipping Red Tail while baking cookies (another terrible pairing) while it softly rained outside. I think probably the other time she came and stayed with Allison we drank the Kriek Boon, kriek being another beer style I'd been introduced to through my class.


At some point I hosted a beer tasting of various bocks. Allison, Jack, Brandon, Howard and Jill were all in attendance. I do love getting all my favorite people in one place. Add that to a wealth of delicious new beer and I'd have to call my state one of bliss.

After I graduated, Jill went to study abroad in Spain. I knew her being gone would be hard on me. She actually left the morning of my birthday. That afternoon I called John Lazur to come over and hang out. I made him try my newly invented Black Bayou with my purpose-purchased bottle of Maker's Mark, which isn't in the lineup because I still have some left in it.

We were having a great time chatting. One thing led to another and we cracked open a forty of Old English while Howard and Greg prepared a feast of different dishes all made with zucchini (you know how it is with zucchini). John left at eight or so and I passed out on my bed around ten. I woke up at four AM feeling like I'd been hit by a cement truck. Since I couldn't get to sleep I screwed around online and feverishly read the pulp fiction Jill had left me to read. In the next couple days I burned through her sizable stack of books, sleeping erratically and feeling like shit the whole time.

While Jill was gone I drove with my mom and sister to Wisconsin. Driving in shifts, we did it in thirty-two hours. It was the first time I'd been to Wisconsin since I'd turned twenty-one. I drank a local beer by New Glarus with my cousin Eddie, which felt like some kind of rite of passage.

I'd heard that Coca-Cola's formulation varied from country to country. I'd told Jill to bring back a coke from every country she passed through. She brought back a Spanish coke and a French one. I added in a bottle of Mexican coke and a can of Americana and we had an old-fashioned Apple House taste test. We couldn't really tell the difference between the Spanish and French cokes. For that matter, except the obvious difference of sucrose vs high fructose corn syrup, I couldn't detect a difference in the formula between the European cokes and our American one. The Mexican coke was definitely different. It drew the most polarized response, but we all agreed that it was "weird". It tasted warmer, like a fiesta (more cinnamon?). Whatever it was, I think Mexican coke was my favorite of the tasting.

Jill also returned from Spain with a taste for Spanish Tempranillo. We were always trying to drink it with pork. I'm not sure if we ever actually did.

On the edge of the picture is a bottle of Stone Pale Ale. Caius and I picked up a six pack of the stuff on our way to a backyard folk show. This must have been the summer before, because the occasion provided the inspiration for I BUI.


That summer, Jill's mom kind of turned on me without my realizing it. Jill wanted me to make my delicious grilled steak for her mom, so I made steaks for Jill, her mom and her friend Myranda Hunter (who happens to be my kind of people). I picked one of my dad's Bordeaux's for the steak (Jill's mom likes Merlot). Out of the gates I was criticized for burning the steaks. The night went downhill from there as Jill's mom became more drunk, more belligerent and more appalled by my nonchalance (any chance at diplomacy on my part being similarly buried in wine).

The night ended with Jill's mom telling Jill to break up with me and insisting that she was ok to drive home. Jill would hardly look at me until she got a text the next afternoon saying, "I was only kidding. Don't break up with the boy."

A few weeks later Matt Gribble visited me along his way from Stanford to grad school in Baltimore. I took him to a KDVS house show. He was pretty critical of the music, but he loved the lambic he'd bought (I did too, enough to ask to keep the bottle for my wall) and had a great time unsuccessfully chasing this scene kid who "wasn't out of the closet yet".

Matt Wingert finally visited me as he'd been promising for years. We chilled out with Brandon's brother Spencer and watched the first two seasons of the Venture Brothers. The last night we picked up a variety of mostly German lagers from the coop and he, Brandon, Jill and I had a tasting. The equation is simple: good beer plus good friends equals awesome. Works every time.


After a summer's growing anxiety about my continuing unemployment, I ran smack into the most unlikely of jobs. DCD had decided to encourage it's members to work for a housing measure on the ballot called Measure P. The project was sustainable and the campaign very well funded. I think somebody in DCD's leadership mistakenly hoped the club might get some portion of the $15/hour that the campaign was paying its workers.

Working the campaign was great. It got me out of the house and also off Jill's nerves (it was a hot summer). Flyering was a beautiful excuse to walk around Davis's idyllic neighborhoods. "Walking" and phone banking got me chatting with the town's residents. In addition to paying us well, the campaign was generous about taking us out to lunch. I acquired great respect for two of the three eateries we had accounts with: Steve's Pizza and Zia's Deli (the latter superb). Somehow, they even let us order beer for lunch, so I got a taste for Boont Amber Ale along the way.

I liked the hours, the people and the job itself. Because I was one of the few nonstudent campaigners, I eventually took a greater level of responsibility within the campaign. I organized walks, discussed strategy and even wrote campaign literature. I remember getting home completely windswept after acting as a bike messenger (eat your hearts out, fixie kids!) and immediately loving Sam Adams' Octoberfest, which fit the season and moment so perfectly. Did I mention October is my favorite month?

Towards the end of the campaign, the more regular among us went out to Little Prague for beers after a long day. On David Urhausen's suggestion, we got all three of the Chimay brews they offered. It was all very bittersweet, so I took home the most expensive bottle to memorialize the parting. Because Little Prague had recently decided to stop stocking Chimay, the bartender let us have a Chimay glass each for a couple dollars.

I gained an appreciation for the vast beauty of Davis those two months. I also gained an appreciation for the intelligent and ornery citizens of Davis, who voted our Measure down by a landslide. Things had to come to an end sooner or later. The campaign managers had slowly let on how unlikely it was that we'd win, but even they were unprepared for the decisiveness of the rebuke. It didn't sting as bad as the fact that the campaign ended. David hosted an end of campaign party with a keg of Sudwerk Pilsner, which was about the most jaw-droppingly awesome party provision I'd ever heard of.

Soon after I joined Jill and DCD for their Tahoe retreat, where young democrats from across the state rubbed shoulders. I don't think we brought it along, but I remember buying that bottle of Grolsch with Brandon around the same time. The beer itself was terribly skunked. The story of note from the retreat was my increasingly hostile disposition towards Andrew Peake. I'll just say that I guardedly liked him for a long time and that changed dramatically.

In December I finally retook the GRE (after bombing because I'd gone in cold). A weekend's prep and I increased my math score by 130 points. All told it was a raging victory for me. I cracked open Anchor's Christmas Ale with Brandon and Jill. It was quite good.

I decided to scale down last year's lavish Valentine's day celebration and work on a budget. Jill and I went to dinner with a coupon to one of our favorite Indian restaurants. The Indian lager tasted divine alongside the curry and the lamb special we ordered was quite delectable.


I remember buying and drinking the Red Bull Cola while still living at the Apple House, but I'm pretty sure I was already making arrangements to move out. The cola was really good. Pity it was too expensive to buy again.

Probably around the same time I remember drinking another Dogfish Head brew at Jill's house, this one inspired by ancient Mesopotamian beers. I'd started buying single bottles since Jill moved so close to the Coop and I discovered the cheap single bottles at Save-Mart. That trend would increase considerably once I'd moved away from my beer buddy Brandon.

My replacement at the Apple House was named Alberto. He took Brandon's living room and Brandon took my room, which Brandon was stoked about. Alberto brought with him a single bottle of Amaretto. I always coveted a taste, but never asked in my subsequent visits to the Apple House. Eventually it was added to the wall in my absence, and I find that somehow fitting.

End of the Davis Era

There's suddenly a chill to the dawn air again. To be sure, there are still hundred degree days ahead of us in Davis, but the worst of the summer is over. As with every year, I face summer's end with the melancholy of anticipated change.

This year I have particular cause for melancholy. Jill starts a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz this September. Brandon left for Washington DC in June and Howard will be leaving for home when his lease finishes at the end of the month. My job with Monsanto finishes this Friday the 13th and after that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not going to Santa Cruz. I'm not staying at my house in Davis either. My lease finishes the same time as Howard's. I plan to help move Jill into Santa Cruz and then take the month of September off, backpacking with my sister and maybe surfing a little back home.

After that is anybody's guess. I've started applying to Monsanto full time positions, microbreweries and tech jobs. I'm at a stage at my life where I can take a job anywhere in the country. We'll see what comes of it. Cross your fingers. Whatever happens, even if I get a Monsanto job in Davis for the year, the end of this summer marks the end of an era. There's no longer anything left for me in Davis in terms of people.

Jill and I are parting ways when she moves to Santa Cruz. It was something we'd known was coming since we started going out, but it's been a year longer than originally envisioned. As you can imagine, too, it's something we've made an effort to blot out. It's coming quickly and soon enough denial won't be sufficient to insulate us.

My sister wisely pointed out that mutual breakups are hardly ever mutual. I think Jill would very happily do the long distance thing. I however, besides hating the idea of a long distance relationship, need more diversity of experience before I can contentedly commit. The idea of marrying my first girlfriend is many times more terrifying to me than a return to loneliness. Between you and me, that is saying something.

So I can look forward to either moving back in with my parents to a town I love but with only a handful of friends remaining or a year of gainful employment in a place completely without friends. Gosh, guys, post-college is a blast from start to finish. Tell me when it's over.

Waiting for the Bus

It's getting hot around here. Like approaching the 100's hot. I wait for the bus in the afternoon after work. When I can't find space on the only bench with shade, I sit on the sidewalk behind the structure in the shade. I'm the only person I've seen doing this, so far. It strikes me as a "me" thing to do, though it's even more characteristic of my sister Bri than me.

In contrast to Davis, Woodland has a lot of Mexicans. I've been listening to the world cup in Spanish on the radio while at work. Boy I've missed hearing Mexican-Spanish.

Rules of the Road: Davis

Davis prides itself for being the only city in the nation with a platinum rating (though that sentiment is actually a bit out of date) from the League of American Bicyclists. Among the qualifications for this distinction is the degree of lawfulness displayed by the city's bicyclists; obeying traffic signs, not riding on the sidewalk, etc.

However, the preponderance of bicycles has beaten automobiles and pedestrians into submission. There are so many bikes on the road that other forms of transit become habituated to deferring right of way to bikes. By nationwide standards Davis bicyclists get away with murder. Even normally uptight townies generally ignore many traffic laws that apply to bicyclists, like stop signs. I've compiled the de facto Rules of the Road for Davis bikers for your viewing pleasure.

There's a saying around here that according to bikers, traffic signals are stop signs, stop signs are yield signs and yield signs are decorative. That might not give the uninitiated an accurate picture of how things work here, though.

Bicycles have right of way over cars because cyclists are fragile and over pedestrians because getting hit by a bike hurts like a bitch. This is the crux of the double standard that produced Davis traffic rules. This first rule forms the logical basis for much of the following.

Bicyclists can at will change from using pedestrian priveledges (like riding on sidewalks) to vehicle ones (like riding in regular car lanes when the bike lane is inconvenient). As per the aforementioned right of way rule, this means that pedestrians will stop and make space for you to pass if you, technically illegally, ride on the sidewalk.

The second fundamental rule of Davis biking is that bicycles need only obey laws when enforcement is imminent, in contrast to cars. This includes Bicycling Under the Influence, as previously discussed. However, bikes, just like cars, assume all blame should their liberties with law cause a crash.

This comes up most frequently on the issue of riding the wrong direction in bike lanes. I performed this maneuver routinely when I lived at Kingston Apartments, because my formal path involved a left turn at an intersection followed by crossing left over the street and I figured that was bullshit and I'd just cross early to the left bike lane and turn left into the sidewalk. This worked out fine for me, but I almost got creamed by someone doing it recently. As my eyes began to cloud over with rage at the near miss, I heard the offending bicyclist yell, "Shit, sorry!". This I deemed to be adequate appeasement, but if we'd collided and the impact had bent my front rim I would have asked him to cough up the $60 replacement.

Back to intersections:
Traffic signs are treated as traffic signs when there's enough traffic to mandate adherence, but bikes are permitted whatever liberties they can safely get away with, which includes flexing their de facto right of way.

Four way stops, which are the bread and butter of the Davis downtown, again need only be paid attention to if there are physically cars in your way. During heavy traffic bicyclists slow down and stop to wait for their opening, but if a car is going your direction you are perfectly entitled to ride in its shadow without so much as a touch of your brakes. Because cars defer right of way to bikes to such an extreme, an aggressive bike can easily forgo waiting its rightful turn if it finds a small opening. Cars will stop in the middle of the intersection just to let that overeager cyclist through without harm.

That's the skinny on Davis bike traffic. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility, so don't forget to treat the little people in cars and on foot with their due respect. In our privileged position we should strive to make traffic flow as smoothly and efficiently as possible to the extent that it doesn't interfere with our own self-interest.

Summer's Nights

There's no common time so romantic as a summer's night. This is even more true in Davis, where night is the only comfortable time of the day. You may think I'm being dramatic, you may think I'm not being fair, but it's been true to me for years. Ignoring human-made holidays and momentary variances in weather, when you're really talking about the time and not anything else, there is nothing so persistently magical as when the land is cool and dark. The possibilities for mischief and holy moments stretch out like fingers across a wide, rounded back.

My obsession with music has passed. It came to me in the morning, ravaged me all day, and went along its way in the evening. Now that it's night, I'm not sure I'm sad it has gone nor am I convinced that it won't return, but I'm glad it came and left me full of color and taste. I'm haunted by its echos. Not the myriad minor bands that I strove to categorize and appreciate, but by the great bands, the bands that formed the only recognizable soundtrack to my college experience.

I'm finally riding my new bike Smoky again. He's inky black like night and dirty like me in summer. Road bikes are such a pleasure to ride. The other bikes get you from place to place, but without the exhilaration of Mercury's speed.

There's something creepy about the progression of summer nights from late spring to early fall. It likely has to do with the apprehension I've viewed the end of all things with, particularly things so open and beautiful as summer. Even now, I'm sensing the approach of September in the dark air. A sweeter smell, maybe? Not like spring's heady pollen, but a deeper, melancholy, more earnest kind of sweetness that has replaced high summer's smell of baking dry tan grass.

Food Pairings: A Pauper's Pretension

I recently went morel hunting with the Davis Mycological Society in the low Sierra. After arriving home with my quarter pound take, I searched recipes to make with morels looking for an easy food pairing to create a meal for friends. To my disappointment, the reams of morel recipes that I found were uniformly built around college-unfriendly ingredients like foie gras, veal and caviar. The very idea that morels might fall into the hands of a pauper like myself seems to have escaped the folks at the Food Network and other recipe sites.

My haul:

The gourmet revels in the delicacy of outlandishly priced ingredient paired with still more outlandishly priced ingredient, but I was taught a different sort of gourmet; a gourmet more in keeping with American ideals. Brilliant food pairings are not limited to gourmet ingredients and establishments. Ratatouille is a peasant dish highly regarded by the culinary elite (notably in the movie of the same name), built around the synergy of bell peppers, squash and eggplant. So too with the Cajun "holy trinity" of peppers, parsley/celery and onions. That world-class food can only be had at world-class prices is a myth of gigantic proportions perpetrated by ignorance and pretension.

Great cuisine is simply about food combinations that sing. They are frequently as simple and ordinary as peanut butter and jelly or Santa's favorite midnight snack, milk and cookies. Too often do people forget that they need not look far to find grace and delight in food. I'd like to share with you some of my culinary discoveries that have brought me cheer through my college career.

While the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is already an American classic in its own right, there's nothing like washing it down with tea to add another dimension to your next noon banquet, as I discovered last summer. I particularly enjoyed "natural" peanut butter, apricot preserves and whole wheat bread with earl grey tea. I like that "natural" peanut butter doesn't have any sugar added and that whole wheat isn't overtly sweet in conjunction with the extra-sweetness found in preserves, because it emphasizes flavor separation. The apricot is brightened by the citrus oils in earl grey, and the tea complements the nuttiness and dryness of the peanuts and bread. If you normally freeze your bread, you'll find that toasting it also adds to the ensemble's flavor.

The single most important dish in my college diet has been potatoes with cheese. I take one large or two small russet potatoes, poke fork holes in them every inch, and nuke them 4-4.5 minutes one side and 2-2.5 on the reverse. I slice about 3 slots into them and insert slices of medium cheddar cheese (pregrated cheese won't smell as good or layer heavily enough). I add cheese until its about 2/3 the volume of the potato. I nuke it again until the cheese is gooey (about one minute). The dish goes great with beer. But beware, the combination has proven to be a powerful narcotic. This sort of lunch almost invariably ends with deciding to take a nap.

A classic meal passed down from my Wisconsin heritage is beer and bratwurst with rice and sauerkraut. I get my bratwurst from the Davis Meat Lab when I can, because it's great value. I brown the sausage in a pan for a couple of minutes, then add a can of beer. I check back to replace water and turn the sausage every fifteen minutes or so until they're cooked through. Ideally, I let the beer cook boil down to a thick goo and use it on the sausage and rice. That stuff is delicious. Serve it all with another beer. I've found light lagers to work best.

A snack I've enjoyed since I discovered prunes has been eating them with superdark chocolate. You can buy canisters of store brand prunes for cheap, and they have better flavor than the expensive ones you find at the farmer's market. You can find cheap superdark chocolate at Trader Joe's in packages called "Pound Plus". Seventy percent cocoa solids is the way to go. Just take a nibble of each and let the magic unfold.

I've also found that coke goes phenomenally with coffee. Pepsi Kona and Coca-Cola Blak are testaments to industry's awareness of the synergy, but both products failed to catch on in the US. I like to alternate sips of coffee with coke. Hot quenched by cold, bitter by sweet and vice versa. Their dark flavors meld beautifully.

Most recently, I discovered the wonder of anchovies on pizza. No frozen brands sell anchovy pizza, so I keep my cupboard stocked. The true wonder of anchovies is their interaction with pepperoni. The similar flavors expand on each other and set off the pizza at large.

Picnic Day

So last week was Picnic Day, the greatest annual event in Davis. Every year a hundred thousand people or so flock to the university's (and city's) open house. Live music blasts from five stages at any given moment, all of the departments put on events and every imaginable animal show finds a place here. Undergraduates wander drunkenly through crowds of visiting families. This year my family came; that is, my sister, mom and the Norrises, family friends whose daughter is a freshman here. Everybody slept in my living room and everybody was delightful.

I joined KDVS for the Picnic Day Parade. The weather was a perfect, cloudless low 80 degrees (the last one I was in was a sodden death march).


I thanked Allison for babysitting my family and began to show them around. The sheepdog trials are the most awesome event at Picnic Day, which is saying something.


We lounged in the grass and watched the incredible spectacle. The dogs work like their lives depend on it.


I slipped off to chat with to Jill and her mom, who were by then pleasantly tipsy. We lounged in the grass some more and her mom, Ra, snapped a couple of pictures of the two of us. This one was a keeper.


I met back up with my unit for some more grass-lounging as we listened to the Battle of the Bands, where school marching bands take turns playing songs until they succumb to exhaustion.

I later showed the Norrises my radio station, capping off my favorite Picnic Day yet.

The California Aggie

UC Davis is not a school with a reputation for journalism. It shouldn't be expected to have a stellar student periodical. Yet it is slightly embarrassing that I myself am a better writer than most of the California Aggie's staff. And it's not just me. Guest editorials and letters to the editor consistently outshine the general staff's contributions.

Two Aggie columnists have something interesting to say and are more-or-less capable of articulating it. Michelle Rick works the sassy/clever approach for her column. Though the approach is deeply cliché and sometimes interferes with the actual content of her articles, she otherwise executes it well and, let's face it, it's a medium whose principle objective is to entertain rather than to inform. While I appreciate her talent, her flippancy and posed coolness have earned her one of my friends' undying hatred. Lior Gotesman on the other hand is a solid, if stereotypical, advocate of philosophy. He's hostile to thoughtless consumerism and passionate about the meaning of life. It would put me to sleep if it wasn't interestingly written.

The columnists have improved since last year to the point of consistent mediocrity (except columnist/editor-in-chief Richard Procter who is an excellent writer). There is no low hanging fruit for me to pounce on. The same cannot be said of the Aggie's editorial section.

Zach Han is the worst writer I have ever seen published. He generally chooses topics immediately after they have been beaten to death by mainstream media. He then manages to demonstrate misunderstanding of even TV news' terribly oversimplified explanations of current events. It's as if he took a fractured understanding of a Fox news report, applied some ill-conceived restructuring and then imposed some asinine moral summation he'd heard from a passerby. To add insult to injury, he goes out of his way to use big words and complex sentence structures beyond his apparent reach. The result is a series of syntactical and logical errors that confound the flow of his insipid conclusions. I am appalled by Zach Han's writing on so many levels that just thinking about it makes me see red.

In diametric opposition to Han is the finest Aggie writer I have come across, one James Noonan. There is no minority perspective so persecuted or valuable at a liberal university as the intelligent conservative's and James Noonan is living proof. He writes articulately and fearlessly, exposing hypocrisy and waste in our university and country. Noonan is no partisan hack, though. One of my favorite articles was his caustic assault on Bill O'Reilly.

Unfortunately, Noonan and Procter are in the stark minority at our campus paper. Most Aggie readers pick it up for the Sudoku rather than its bumbling calendar section, comic strips, articles, columns or commentary on world events. I find myself reading it more to mentally shred the writing than for information. Instead, I've taken to scrounging the faculty and staff's weekly periodical, Dateline UC Davis.

In contrast to the Aggie, Dateline UC Davis is interesting, competent, informative, coherently structured and unobtrusively written. It is especially good for finding seminars, guest lectures and Mondavi Center events. It also finds fascinating campus research to report and thoughtfully probes into campus trends and occurrences. By trying for less, Dateline is ultimately more useful to students than the paper the students directly fund.

Dateline is produced by the full-time UC Davis News Service, so its professionalism shouldn't be surprising. I just have trouble legitimizing the university staff having access to higher quality campus information than students. Furthermore, I have trouble understanding why the Aggie can't tap into the student potential that letters to the editor assure me exists.

Davis Rain

My freshman year at college I wasn't sure that it was possible to get sick of rain. It probably isn't in Southern California. That winter it rained for a month straight and in a brief moment of weakness I yearned for the sun's glare.

It's been raining for about three weeks now without indication of letting up. I'm still enjoying it. My favorite place in the house has become our bathroom because it's the only room with a skylight. You can hear each raindrop hit the glass and gaze up at the mottled grey sky. Never has pondering on the throne been so prime.

I photographed a drippy faucet at work in the Chem Dispensary. Davis water is so hard that most faucets on campus have an impressive encrustation around their taps. This one was particularly spectacular.



The soil in Davis is completely waterlogged. Every pore seems to be oozing moisture and green has been sprouting in unusual places. The weather's starting to warm in spite of the relentless rain, some trees are blooming and in between rainstorms I'm noticing some telltale signs of the Davis spring.


We're not there yet, but the hints have gotten me thinking wistfully of the coming season's heady atmosphere and raucous enthusiasm. It's the time when we revolt against winter's heavy cares and stop giving a shit about school. It's the time when possibilities stretch out. Indeed, spring is the season of Picnic Day.

I won't, as is fashion, be getting wasted this Picnic Day. My mother's visiting. Surely we can appreciate Picnic Day as a multifaceted event that can be enjoyed in many ways? I'm crossing my fingers for sunny weather, though. That KDVS parade I participated in a couple of years ago turned out to be a death march.

Odds and Ends of Summer's End

There's been a noticeable cooling recently. The days are getting shorter and the air is getting gusty. Peaches are finishing up and apples went on sale at Safeway this week. It's become painfully obvious that summer is coming to a close and, as much as I have enjoyed the season, I feel ready to embrace the hustle that characterizes fall quarter.

I'm retiring my radio show for the next quarter. I don't have any new bands to play and I won't have the time to find them. I will make a point, however, of cohosting a Halloween show and a Christmas show. After all, it's my last opportunity to do so and I've been dying to do a holiday broadcast. Last year the Christmas music started in October at our house.

I've been getting some extra exercise lately. I keep finding myself on course towards our old apartment. Two weeks in and my subconscious still hasn't managed to internalize that I don't live in the ghetto anymore.

Similarly tardy is our DSL. When Howard called AT&T on the thirtieth, they said it would take them a week and a half to process our request and turn on the internet. So when the internet didn't start working last Tuesday, I called them to find what was up. I was met with a labyrinth of automated questions and confusion on the part of the tech personnel. This process repeated itself the next night and on Thursday they said there's a technical problem and they'll send out someone to fix it on the twenty-fourth. With luck, we'll have internet inside of a month since requesting the switch...

This misadventure has highlighted the fact that the internet permeates every aspect of my life besides sleeping, showering and pooing. It isn't just me though. The world expects you to have use of the web. AT&T referred us to a website that explains how to get your internet working. Think about that for a second.

Without internet an astonishing array of things have gone by the wayside, not the least of which is this blog. I played catch up on the train home and I have a bunch of posts in the works, but I don't think I'll be able to sustain the rate of posting that I kept once classes kick in.

Just Call Me Max Freedom

So when Elisa asked me to write this, she requested I not be critical of ORMF as I have in the past been of certain aspects of KDVS. I told her not to worry. The worst criticism I can make is that Operation Restore Maximum Freedom is unfortunately named. Max Freedom is the KDVS music festival and it happens once or twice a year. It is among my favorite Davis events along with Picnic Day and one is coming up October eleventh.

As you might expect of KDVS, ORMF is intensely eclectic and unless you're a part of the local music scene you won't recognize any of the names on the roster. This works to the festival's advantage. Coachella this is not.

As any veteran will attest, Coachella is a stressful experience. This is because people usually only go to see one or two of the bands playing and because large music festivals are crowded and expensive.

Not so with ORMF. You can sit as close to the stage as you like and there are picnic benches and grass for sitting. The festival takes place in the backyard of a bar called Plainview Station, so good burgers and pitchers of beer are readily available and reasonably priced. I'm stoked to be of drinking age this time.

The bands are the handpicked favorites of KDVS staff, so anyone who comes with an open mind will be delighted and satisfied with the selection. Not necessarily every band, mind you, but the ambiance has a way of making uncommon music friendly. As with any KDVS outlet, you're liable to come away with a broader appreciation for music than you had going in.

You can hop on the shuttle or bike the five miles to Plainview Station en masse with fellow festival goers. Just bring a picnic blanket and a little money and drop by.

The Gang Makes A Move

I am writing this amidst a mountain of boxes. I had no idea that poor college students could accumulate so much crap, albeit overwhelmingly cheap crap. I apparently need twenty-four boxes and ten bags worth of stuff, plus furniture. That's right I counted. And that was only my room.


On Moving Day the streets are choked with trucks and the dumpsters with abandoned furniture. All the hippie-hobos of Davis come out to scrounge college-kid refuse. I myself acquired a broken dresser and a couple of chairs.

We began packing boxes Friday night so that we could empty and fill them again that night. Saturday, the Uhaul truck was so big it took us most of the day to pack and unload and by nightfall the toll of the day's labors weighed heavily upon us. I responded by drinking heavily.



On Sunday, Brandon's family came to help us. After evacuating our apartment, we set to work cleaning. Our muscles screamed as noxious fumes savaged our lungs. It won't surprise you to hear that that night also ended with heavy drinking.

On Monday we again plunged our lungs into the fumes. We closed our now-empty apartment and said farewell to our neighbors. Then we began unpacking.

Our former apartment was incredibly cheap, incredibly located and incredibly ghetto. Residents were mostly working class and our favorite neighbors were friendly drunks. During the two years we lived there, the complex kept changing hands, and each management demonstrated a complete apathy toward our myriad repair problems. The most recent company decided to flush everyone out with rent hikes and recast the complex to be student friendly. This guy's moving to Woodland.


Each of my roommates left their mark on the truck. Brandon hit a protector at the gas station and Howard took a chunk out of our complex's "pool house". It was a fitting farewell to make the complex look that much more like a war-torn former Soviet republic.


We will be joined this year by Greg Webb, a friend of Brandon's from DCD who's going to share his room. With Greg's contribution, the average rent is as cheap as our previous locale. Our new place is a duplex with the exact floor plan of almost every duplex in Davis and our landlord is a cute little Indian woman. We now benefit from such luxuries as central air, unbroken windows, and a dishwasher.

We are still without internet or phone service and my room's still mostly in boxes, but the TV is set up and we cooked our first meal in the kitchen tonight. This year we're living in style.

What the Heck is a Parkway?

A week ago Caius, Brandon and I went for a trip up the American River Parkway, which is the long way of saying we went on a bike trip. The route goes from Sacramento to Folsom via parks (hence the parkway) along the river for about thirty miles. The path is well-maintained and winds through gorgeous country. Along the way we discovered some logistical issues of extended bike rides. Caius discovered that borrowed mountain bikes go half the speed and take twice the effort of the road variety. I discovered that shorts chafe really badly.


I decided that wearing a backpack would be too hot, so I improvised a satchel from a sheet to hold our provisions. It worked pretty well. Here I am with the Maiden, satchel and camera case, in white.


To our utter surprise we came upon a miniature golden gate bridge in the middle of nowhere. My dear roommate insisted his photo be taken on it.


We hopped off the trail for a deli sandwich and a beer. Another cliche's logic irrefutably validated.

On our way back the men in red regaled me with French lessons. They both happen to be more or less fluent speakers and they've been happy to drill me on the language until it extrudes from my ears. The only problem is that they periodically forget my novice status and get into lively discussions on the obscurities of French grammar.



So we made a round trip of about twenty miles, covering a third of the trail. Next time we'll attach bike racks to avoid satchels and make road bikes mandatory. Next time we are going all the way.

A Century of Art

The definition of high art has been passed down from Europe's classical age. High art was that made by serious, trained minds for appreciation by the noble classes. This was in contrast to popular art, "popular" then having a negative connotation.

Since that time, the industrial revolution has caused the unprecedented growth of the middle class (and democracy). The monetary potential for mass media began to attract talented individuals as an increasingly educated population demanded increasingly intelligent media. Popular art quickly came to aspire to high art, first with Duke Ellington in jazz and the Beatles in rock and roll. Motifs were developed, tonality was explored, lyrics with complex ambiguity were written and records became thematic opuses.

Meanwhile, classical music became increasingly academic. The nineteenth century trends of adding instruments and dissonance were carried on toward their natural conclusions during the twentieth century, ensuring that high art continued to be out of reach for a majority of the middle class. This formed the avant-garde of modern art.

Popular music continued to pick up innovations from the high art community, with avant-garde movements springing up in both jazz and rock. Yet the stigma of popular music continues. I won't forget my music professor describing Radiohead as his favorite "pop music"; that qualification being contrasted with "serious music", a pejorative shockingly ubiquitous among composer-academics.

While the many breakthroughs of the avant-garde movement cannot be denied, a cursory listen reveals that it has ceased to resemble classical high art. A legacy of elitism has combined with a philosophy of progress to make it an unwieldy animal. Modern composition has sufficiently lost its way that I predict it will fail to attain classic status. Instead, the music of the middle class will lay down the impressive legacy of America and the twentieth century.

KDVS has taken a different route in its treatment of twentieth century music, finding its own elitism in the underground. KDVS DJs hold a consensus that true art comes from the soul rather than from monetary incentive. They call music made for self-gratification and little or no money "folk", and there are few greater complements within the station than to call an artist folk. Consider this though, think of your favorite artists and count how many of them did it for money. Bach, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth, Metallica, Beck, etc. Now count how many didn't.

Partly, this is because it takes money to pay for art education, equipment, production and distribution. Partly it's because these are extremely talented people working hard who expect to be compensated accordingly. Personally, I think we should applaud those who refuse to compromise their artistic ideals for money, but I think we should applaud still more those who can have their cake and eat it too. Self-gratification is always a slippery slope and money provides for better treatment of music.

I BUI

Caius and I were drinking beer on a rooftop at one of my friend Elisa's backyard folk shows and Caius suggested, "Let's go for a bike ride before we lose our buzz." That got me to thinking.

I have always happily biked home from a party with a slight sway to my ride. In winter it guards against cold and in spring against boredom, but I have always thought of biking under the influence as a practical measure. Better than to sleep it off or walk, the act endangers neither myself nor others. Wait-- that's not actually true. Normally I tone it down when I'm returning by machine, but on one occasion I hopped on after more than a few or four or five. At some point one's coordination starts to break down completely and I was perched on just such a precipice, narrowly missing light posts and laughing maniacally all the way home. It was not an occasion to be repeated.

It has occurred to me that biking drunk isn't just pragmatic, it's downright fun. This brings me back to the subject of nightrides. The nightride on which the term was born was fueled by a couple glasses of sherry. The scattering effect of a buzz, the speed of a bike and a peaceful night make a perfect combination. I realized that I have long enjoyed riding home from parties without being conscious of why, and now I know. So drink moderately, ride on bike paths where possible, make sure you have a light and discover the wonder of the recreational BUI.

Davis Farmer's Market

Farmer's markets are a wonderful thing. My first encounter with them was in French villages and the piles of vegetables, homemade foie gras, massive rounds of cheese, gnarly hand-sculpted olive wood bowls and etched faces of French farmers added up to make an intimidating point of comparison.


I have attended American farmer's markets in Louisiana, Wisconsin and San Clemente and I am here to tell you that the Davis Farmer's Market is the one to see. There is always live music and a wide variety of stalls hosted by farmers, bakers and restaurateurs in the city's central park. A significant portion of the town attends and more come from Sacramento and other areas. Local politicians chat up constituents at the far end and families sit in the grass listening to music and playing in the fountain. It is among the town's most revered institutions and in the summer, of course, it is at its peak.


The produce prices range from fair to expensive, but there are always a few amazing deals to be had. Right now melons are in season and Saturday I found a stand selling ambrosia (like cantaloupe) and orange-flesh honeydew for a dollar apiece and the reddest watermelon you've ever seen for three. I got four peppers for another dollar and two bags of summer squash, paying a dollar for each. I decided to make ratatouille so I got some Japanese eggplant too. I sampled the peaches from a dozen stands before I bought the sweetest, juiciest ones and for a second time in a row, the best were at the last stand I tried. I have stopped buying finicky produce from grocery stores because there is nothing like free samples for quality control.

Road Bikes Rule

I have never understood Davis students' (or people's in general) love affair with crappy Kmart mountain bikes. Granted, I got my bicycle for free, but there is no getting around the logic of buying a bike worth riding. I see the reasons people don't to be thus:

1. People are cheap and will choose the cheapest option set before them whether or not it is the best buy.
2. The exception is that people refuse to buy used. New, road bikes start around five hundred. Used, they start around one.
3. People don't want to be aware of the road. First of all, feeling connected to the world during travel scares them and seems a nuisance because they are used to cars. This is the same reason manual transmissions are so unpopular and one of many reasons for motorcycles' rarity. Strange as it sounds, most people don't like feeling connected to the road. In my opinion this is indicative of poor upbringing.
4. People don't consider where they live when buying a bike. Different bikes are better suited to different terrains.
5. People don't ride fast enough. Bikes are meant to go 15-20mph, not 5.

Max's reasons why you should buy a road bike:
1. Pedaling is easy and the bike is lightweight.
2. This allows you to go really fast.
3. The ride is smooth and graceful yet sensitive to the pavement.
4. In Davis, where the land is flat and everything is paved, mountain bikes don't make any sense.
5. Road bikes go really, really fast.

Kids in Davis who have the crappy Kmart bikes are much less likely to ride places because riding is hard, slow and ugly. Therefore the advantage that was gained in price is compensated by the fact that they don't use their bike. Did I mention these bikes weigh twice as much as road bikes?

PS. I'm not a huge fan of standard racing "hook" handlebars. As cool as they look, they're not very comfortable.

PPS. I respect people who ride cruisers not because they're "my type" but because they obviously made the conscious decision to purchase a bike that suited their needs. They may be sorority girls with one arm on the handlebar and the other on a cellphone, but they're not brain dead.

Max, God of Worms

For the last week and a half, I have been working in Dr. Lesilee Rose's lab. I'm being trained by a guy named Adam. Adam is very nice and laughs through his nose. He's taught me how to do a lot of the basic stuff around the lab. He's getting married this week.

I have a desk with a window. With a view! That's my desk lit by my window. I recently arrived on the perfect lunch: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a mason jar of tea.

The Rose lab studies developmental biology. Specifically, we study biological control of polarity during cell division. It ultimately plays an important role in body development, but we're concerned with things like mitotic spindles and protein gradients. Our lab is a "worm lab", which means that our studies focus on a worm called C. elegans. It is a tiny, near-microscopic worm that is grown on petri dishes.

C. elegans is a model organism like mice, fruit flies, and E. coli. Biologists extrapolate principles discovered in these organisms to understand more complex organisms. Much of the work in the lab revolves around the worms. I have learned to make plates and to handle the worms. I've also been making gels and running proteins. Adam pointed out that you could drink 90% of the chemicals in our lab and be fine. Biology: 1. OChem: 0.

Our lab uses hundreds of plates every week, so we have to make up new ones almost every day. First I measure some digested protein powder and agar into a large flask, pour in water, mix it up and put the flask into the autoclave for an hour and a half. We let it cool for another hour. As soon as it's not scalding I thread a sterile tube into the flask, through a dispenser machine, and back out onto the counter. I take stacks of empty plastic petri dishes and position the nozzle while the dispenser squirts the media into each. The machine measures with rhythmic pumping, so imagine holding a nozzle that is rhythmically squirting hot gooey liquid over and over and over again.

We handle the worms under microscopes with platinum wire picks using sterile technique. We can use the scooping method or the sticking method. I use the latter. I get some bacterial goo on the spatula and then dab the worms. With luck and a little practice they stick on. I can even get a bunch of worms on the pick at a time, writhing in a sticky ball. When it has too many, the worms keep falling off every time it's dabbed. My record so far is 19.

Thus, I am God of the worms, reigning doom with impunity on their little jelly world. Just like "the claw", I choose who will go and who will stay. Sometimes they go to a better place with a virgin bacteria colony and lots of space to lay eggs. Sometimes they get flamed till my platinum wire glows white hot.

The Ash Maiden and Other Stories

For those of you who don't know, the Ash Maiden is my bicycle. The story of the Ash Maiden is a cherished one, and I will share it with you now.


During the summer after senior year in my preparations for moving to Davis I asked my dad about acquiring a bike. He related to me how his friend and his wife had resolved to exercise more and so purchased bicycles. Years later it occurred to them they would likely die of old age before touching those two bikes and so they asked around to see if any of their friends would take the ill-fated machines off their hands. My father, not being one to pass on an opportunity to enlarge his already-terrifying pile of unused possessions, gladly took them and left them out in the elements for two and a half years. Thus, I was faced with two sad looking bikes, covered in rust and grime. The first, least rusty one was decked out with mirrors, all-terrain tires, and all manner of useless contraptions. The second was a criminally shabby but functionally intact road bike of subtle, elegant lines. I don't need to tell you it was love at first sight. I used a wire brush to scrub most of the rust away, washed away the dust and applied WD-40 to every nook the beleaguered road bike had to offer. She was a grey 1980's Panasonic with upright handlebars, cracked whitewalls and a bike rack. I named her after a Grimm fairy tale, the Grimms then being a recent discovery of mine.


A few months ago I changed out the upright handlebars for the sleek, aggressive ones you now see. They're called bullhorns, and my dad was very concerned that I'd gore someone with them. Howard and I made them from a racing handlebar with a hacksaw. Hacksaw ftw.


Around the same time I completed my long-time goal of fitting the Maiden with more reflectors than God. You can see a bunch in the back, but at one point I had roughly twice as many (in the spokes, off the front and attached to my bike rack). When I replaced the rear wheel those douchebags at B&L didn't give me my reflectors back.

A new chapter in the life of the Maiden was written today when the last of her original whitewalls blew out, scaring small girls for miles around. I purchased a matching solid black tire on my way home today (yellowed whitewalls were never to my taste).