Ranting on IRC about this isn’t enough, so I’m going to vent here too so I can get back to work. I ride to work most days now on my bicycle from Georgetown to the downtown core business district. I used to take Airport Way, which is alright once you get used to the cars not usually changing lanes to pass you despite there being two lanes in your direction.

I recently started taking fourth because a friend said that was his route. Fourth is alright, I hadn’t taken it before because there wasn’t a sidewalk over the railroad yard bridge, but I don’t usually use those anymore so it’s okay. Fourth isn’t really any different than Airport way. I still get cars passing me in my lane if I stay to the right of it, and people yelling and honking if I stay in the middle of it so they have to change lanes to pass.

The one benefit of fourth is it has dedicated one way routes to get on and off third, which is my preferred downtown route because during the rush hours it’s limited to buses and bikes. I was north of Jackson and south of Prefonatine Place S today, where 4th is one way. I worked over to the middle lane but traffic was thick and I needed to get to the left in another block or two to get on to Prefontaine Place (which goes to third). Then a cop in a car started telling me over the PA that I couldn’t be there and I had to move to the right. Unfortunately my bike doesn’t have a PA. After I figured out what his issue was he said, “Sir, don’t you understand what I’m saying?” and I managed to communicate my need to go left with hand gestures and he stopped talking and drove off. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t be in the middle lane though.

This is a pretty good page for Washington Bicycle Laws. RCW 46.61.770(1):

Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway at a rate of speed less than the normal flow of traffic at the particular time and place shall ride as near to the right side of the right through lane as is safe except as may be appropriate while preparing to make or while making turning movements, or while overtaking and passing another bicycle or vehicle proceeding in the same direction. A person operating a bicycle upon a roadway or highway other than a limited-access highway, which roadway or highway carries traffic in one direction only and has two or more marked traffic lanes, may ride as near to the left side of the left through lane as is safe. A person operating a bicycle upon a roadway may use the shoulder of the roadway or any specially designated bicycle lane if such exists.

So you can’t ride a bicycle in the middle lane, unless you’re trying to get to another lane. Which I was, so I was fine, which is surely why he left me alone,  but my morning would have been nicer if he had waiting a minute to see what I was doing before yelling at me.

Why can’t we have a South Park to Downtown bike trail already?

Well fuck.

Why do you have to swear so much, dude?

My eyeball, and wikipedia:

In North America, “hazel” is often used to describe eyes that appear to change color, ranging from light brown to green and even gray, depending on current lighting in the environment.

I always thought hazel was actually a color, not a social compromise for identifying difficult eyes.

And for more random movie references:

Only 1-2% of the world’s population has green eyes and it is the least common eye color.

Chinese girls do not come with green eyes.

My new flight medical came in the mail, the one that caused the whole “I weight 200lbs, that’s weird.” debacle. I got looking at my earlier ones.

The first from 2000-09 when I started flying. I was working at Panax, had graduated high school after dropping out the year before and spending a few months re-evaluating life and finding ground. I weighed 178lbs, which was about normal for me all of my life that I can remember my weight from.

The next was 2004-06. I would have been about finishing up working on the road doing the towers jobs then I think. After 18 months on the road doing hard physical work daily, it’s no surprised I weighed 196lbs.

And now today. I sit in a chair most the day, but I’m probably the most active I’ve ever been. I bike to work the majority of days a week now and go hiking most weekends depending on who I’m with and how active they are.

So I kinda fixed the rear wheel on the schwinn. It’s mostly straight, but the cassette lags so the chain hangs a little. probably from the mostly straight. I head off to squid but Tori says she thinks there’s a show there. It’s true, so I don’t bother trying to get food and ride up the strip. Everything’s closed, of course. I end up at GLC because the lights on in the kitchen and I hear The Big Lebowski and remember it’s playing there. Kitchen’s closed though so I have a few drinks and leave when the movies over. Unfortunately their plan to play the movie on a projector failed when the projector did, but on the way home I found the parking lot where another movie was playing on a projector that Ken had told me about and saw some kids there I knew. Came home to see if Ken was home but Tori said he’d been in bed for a while so I’m soaking up the whiskey with some beans and messing around on the google.

Getting late, time for bed.

Kim and I hiked up to rattlesnake ledge today and came up with this awesome story about when ol’ Pasty McLellan (from logghe calling me ‘the pasty irish kid’ friday) rides his horse into town and all the townfolk go running to hide their whiskey. It was pretty epic but I’m kinda too tired to dictate it at the moment.

A couple of times this weekend I’ve want to stop what I was doing and write, knowing I’d forget what thought was going through my head at the time. Of course, for the most part I have.

Wendell wanted to make a cosmopolitan the other day and I ended up reading about cosmopolitanism. It doesn’t seem like a bad way of thinking, although someone schooled can probably argue otherwise. It reminded me of thinking or reading recently about colors are perceived and thinking about the consensual agreement that whenever we all see something blue, we call it blue, and assume we all see the same thing. Science surely has an explanation for why it’s not really an assumption, involved rods and cones and such, but we definitely do it with names and stamps on less tangible things like feelings.

I don’t know that you can tell or teach anyone what love or happiness is. Surely you can speak of what you believe evokes your feelings that you label that way, but your hedging on the association staying attached to the communique. I don’t know that it does. The adolescent arguing with their parents about how they’re in love with someone that their parents don’t approve of comes to mind. My dad once told me one of the biggest shames of humanity is that we have to keep relearning everything; it’s a terrible balance to maintain. Every generation gets the opportunity to form new viewpoints and ideas (as long as they don’t automatically inherit those of their parents), throwing away old grudges and social norms, yet they have to  make the sames mistakes and have all of life’s experiences all over again.

It’s a foul mix to sort out. I know I sort of put off dealing with people for quite a few years longer than most, but I don’t expect to have much of it sorted out in the next few years. Not that I expect to have the question to fourty two ever… but I do expect some gray areas about what I like and don’t like less blurry, beyond simply those things that I enjoy and those that evoke frustration.

Even something like the difference between frustration and anger seem unclear to me at the moment. My first thought was that the key is in your actions. Frustrations are difficulties while anger produces actions that are regrettable. Feelings like lust seem like they’d touch into this circle of regret producing feelings, although the things we regret are certainly unique as we’re awfully good at convincing ourselves bits aren’t are fault.

Anyways, got the new chain on the trek yesterday. I used a chain tool for motorcycle chains to try to pull the old one, got it stuck and just resorted to the grind wheel. I had trouble with the new chain, and with the derailleur I still don’t understand under what circumstances I would need to shorten it, unless it was really long but it seemed like I should know. Biggest trouble was tuning the derailleur though. First, don’t flip the bike and tune it upside down, the added weight of the derailleur hanging makes a difference; that took me a bit to figure out. But I can’t get some skip out of the middle gear on the back. I’m calling it good enough at this point. After some problems last year, 20/20 recommended I put new shifters on, which I did, but maybe I need a new cassette too because it’s worn or something. I’m not going to start replacing all the parts though, it’s not worth it. Somehow I’ll have to remember to just watch out for that gear.

I haven’t looked at fixing the rear rim on the schwinn yet, although I did tap all the spokes to see if any were obviously loose. I should, I want to, but I’m really tired and I think I’ll go read for the thirty seconds that it will take me to fall asleep from sitting still finally this weekend.

Well then.

Started off happy hour with Jim and Adam after work last night. How is even that part of the night hazy? Started at Contour, but the phone’s battery died so I sort of lost track of the night. We ended up on the pier at some restaurant, drinking on a closed patio overlooking the sound, which was probably best under the conditions. I almost lost them as I was on my bike, we weren’t sure where we were going so I went off in search of something with a dead cell phone. But I spied them walking into a building, so I went to the bar-est looking establishment inside and Adam had left instructions with the hostess to send the “pasty irish kid” up to the bar so it worked out. After much arguing over food I got them to go to the Owl n’ Thistle, where I left them because it was getting really late and I was risking missing BSG.

Unfortunately my phone had died so I couldn’t communicate with Tori, as we usually ride together. So biked up to the shark, grabbing a couple tall boys on the way and made BSG. Tanya and Julie were there for BSG, which hasn’t been the case for a while so that was awesome. Somehow I left, came back for my bike lock, and convinced Julie and David to go to the Twilight with me. I had briefly charged my phone at the shark enough to check in there. We had a few rounds and the trouble cocktail having been hours earlier, I don’t remember shit after getting to the Twilight.

I usually find solace in that when I do black out I’m generally not an asshole, I’m not so sure that was the case last night. My memory is all jumbled up though so I can’t tell what memories were dreams or stupid shit I actually did.

In other news, I hadn’t seen this for a while and just ran across it again on okcupid. I wonder if I’ve posted this already? It’s funny, and accuratish.

Pure Geek
43 % Nerd, 73% Geek, 30% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Geek, earning you the title of: Pure Geek.

It’s not that you’re a school junkie, like the nerd, and you don’t really stand out in a crowd, like the dork, you just have some interests that aren’t quite mainstream. Perhaps it’s anime, perhaps it’s computers, perhaps it’s bottlecaps, perhaps it’s all of those and more. Your interests take you to events and gatherings that are filled with people you find unusual and beyond-the-pale, but you don’t quite consider yourself “of that crowd.” Instead, you consider yourself to be fairly normal.

Which, you are.

My back is shot since I got home, maybe from passing out on the couch in the pillow fort at the shark. Oh well, GMF, Art Walk and such things tonight. Did I make other plans today? Sunday? Man. I did stop by 20/20 and get a couple spoke wrenches on the ride home though, maybe I’ll fix the schwinn this weekend. If I don’t I need to at least get a new chain on the trek before next week. It’s slipping and I’m really convinced that’s not cool.

I weigh 202 lbs. When the hell did that happen? And to all you naysayers, I’m still only 6′.

I had a great time talking to Kim last night, although I fear that when I’m encouraged to talk, I ramble about for hours; small connections bringing back memories that may only be connected by a similar color pictured or word in a phrase used. Some day I’d like to be able to summarize my views into a mini-religion with full fledged commandments. Things like “Thou shalt be skewered through the eye with a rabbits foot if thou writes on the bus seats”. I suppose that would make for a long list though, I’d need a lot of stone.

Anna has an excellent blog entry today.

When I was walking at Gasworks on Christmas, I was thinking about how the sense of self is lost in an intense situation (along with the instinct to devote more resources to processing rather than experiencing). I want to keep the experiencing part, but there might be something to developing a more explicit sense of self. Just like I think it was very valuable to learn how to shape thoughts into words, it might be valuable to be able to shape a self out of the nebulous void (that my self at least is now).

I’d like to call it something other than a struggle, but lacking a better word a the moment; I struggle regularly with separating thoughts, feelings and physical needs. After much talk about systems last night, I realize it’s probably a product of how I think. I spend every day learning to understand small bits of kit and then puzzling them together to form something that I inherently understand, but without actually thinking about it. Which is an awesome example of a sum is greater than the whole concept, especially when you think about how our consciousness is able to keep up.

I’m a romantic, so I’m never looking for a “love is just chemicals” explanation (I desperately wish I could remember the name of a movie right now that’s awfuly related, but alas I don’t know any good keywords for it). I’d argue that I’ve long since gotten the distinction of the things I want and the things I need separated in my head, after many years of being thwacked upside the head with the concept by adults as a kid. But there’s some degree for sure of wanting to look at the individual pieces of myself and see how they stack up.

But so why don’t I try to figure out everyone else? It seems often that everyone else is presuming that they have each other figured out. Which I really don’t like; I have a certain distaste for the “I did this because my parents didn’t love me enough” crowd, but those who spend unnecessary time explaining others actions seem… caught up in their own self-worth, almost as if they’re trying to prove to themselves that they’ve got it figured it. It being life, the universe and everything as they say. It just doesn’t seem worth the energy; people will do what people will do and while I think you can lead people, I don’t believe you can change them. Change is a conscious choice that people have to make for themselves along the way.

“Stopping to smell the roses” is a good mantra I believe, because so many people are so caught up in the things they’re trying to achieve, because they think they will make them happier, I think the point is missed. An old roommate of my fathers once told me about how when he was in the military every pay grade raise he’d tell himself that everything would work out as soon as he made the next pay grade. And it didn’t. It’s not just about money, it’s about that mindset. I think my father fell victim to that as well, and has yet to recover.

or, “Why I have sympathy for Libertarians”
or, “Why people look at me like I’m bat shit crazy when I talk about a motor on a canoe (because they’ve never seen such a thing)” [1]

So I talked to someone from the DOL via Email:

Q: “I purchased a used 16′ aluminum canoe with a square back motor mount. Do I need to register it? If I put a motor on it (up to 5hp) do I need to register it? Should I scrape off the old registration from MN?”

A: “If you put any size of a motor on the canoe, and use it on federal waters, yes you must register the canoe. If you are not going to put a motor on the canoe, yes you would need to scrape off the registration numbers from MN.”

Q: “Do I need a title or a bill of sale from the former owner to register it? ”

A:”In order to register it you will need a bill of sale and release of interest from the previous owner.”

Attempt #1, I go to a Licensing Agency, which are Washington’s outsourced Department of Licensing. I have a bill of sale, although these types of places have their own way of doing things so I just offer that. They want a Hull Identification Number (HIN). I try to explain that it’s a canoe, let alone one from 1983, and it doesn’t have a HIN. Aghast by this, she says I’ll have to come back on a weekday when they can ‘Call Olympia’.

Attempt #2, I go directly to the DOL at a King County building. They don’t care about the HIN, but the Release of Interest has to be notarized. Seriously. Notarized. For a canoe with a 3hp motor, NOTARIES MUST GET INVOLVED. Upon hearing that it was previously registered in MN, the attendant goes and finds a book about titles, and is surprised she can’t find canoe titles in MN. Yeah, I don’t think we had canoe titles in Maine either, thanks for playing.

I don’t know what’s next. Maybe I just won’t register and I’ll pay fines whenever I get them. That probably would cost less than notaries, all this driving around and time. Maybe I’ll go back to place #1 with an etching of the VIN from my truck and tell them I must have been blind and I found it.

[1]

16:13 < chronomex> btm: you have to register canoes?
16:15 <@btm> chronomex: if you put a motor on one.
16:16 < chronomex> oh. that sounds like something you’d do

Update:

I emailed DOL Saturday about the lack of a HIN and just got a response:

Q: “I went to register it today and they wouldn’t without a HIN. I don’t know if new canoes have HINs now, but none of the canoes I’ve ever had did.”

A: “Any vessel that is powered by human power regardless of it’s size, is not required to be registered in Washington. If you put a motor of 10 HP or less and it’s not used on federal waters, it still doesn’t need to be registered. If you use the canoe on federal waters with any size of a motor, then it must be registered. If there is no HIN number, then the system will assign it a HIN number. To determine what waters are federal, please go to this website.”

I couldn’t find a list of federal waters on that site. I found a list of “navigable waters” that said it isn’t an exclusive list of federal waters but I figure I can assume it is inclusive. There’s only 21 active Coast Guard people in Station Seattle, maybe I’ll just not register it and if the federal government wants to arrest me for my high speed terrorist canoe, they can go ahead.

Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.

This explains my miraculous healing after my death defying motorcycle accident.

Six months since my last interaction with an ex-girlfriend from capitol hill was wear to ship my pants after deciding to “take a break”, I see her at the 9lb. I’m not surprised by the size of Seattle any longer, but it’s still a little bizarre. Probably from the circumstances more than anything else I admit. And her friend ran up an $86 tab, argued with the staff, then left no tip. Fucking banned from Georgetown man… banned.