As my better half and I made our way to a friend's birthday on Friday night, I rounded a final corner and my front fender mysteriously sucked into my front wheel, stopping me cold and sending me over the bars so fast, my body was engulfed in agonizing pain before I even knew I was horizontal in traffic.

Once I was able to breathe again, I took inventory of my faculties and surmised that despite the soul shattering fall, all that appeared to be amiss was a severely broken wrist.

Unable to ride due to a blown out front wheel and possibly tweeked fork, we called The Skipper, and as always, he came to save the day with bloodshot eyes and a smile.
The ER has been a frequent locale for date night for the girl and me, so we hunkered down and commenced with some quality people watching.
After immersing ourselves in an endless parade of the disturbed and downtrodden, it was finally my turn at the front of the line. The attending P.A. delighted us with tales of naked, drunk and drugged out patents, and I got the sense that she was quite happy with the fact that we were two relatively normal people with a relatively normal problem.
During an eventual meeting with the attending physician, I was slightly disheartened to find out that I didn't have a break, but rather an extraordinarily jacked left wrist. (Strangely a break would make the unbelievable pain slightly easier to bear) and I was sent on my way with some Vicodin and a prescription for more.

The girl rode home to pick up a car to fetch me, but called with the news that a hit and run vehicle had been abandoned in front of our house and the street was swarmed with cops, preventing her from leaving.

I attempted to open my front brakes so that I could ride, or at the very least push my bike the few miles home, (the pills were preventing my brain from clearly estimating the process of opening the binder bolt on my cantis) and I began the midnight walk of shame on down the road, my front wheel coming to a stop every rotation.

Eventually the girl came to my rescue and six and a half hours after my night out began, it was finally concluded as I threw my heap of a bike in the garage.

So for those of you keeping score- in the last six weeks, I've had one folded fork, resulting in a catastrophic crash, pulled back muscles, one flu, several yellow jacket stings inside of my throat, two colds, four hangovers, and a severely sprained wrist, but at least I'm not the guy at the top of the post.

Yet.

Though I should note that I'm not calling for the wambulance. I'm merely making note of a freakish string of occurrences which brings to mind a story that I'm sure I've shared with you before.

When I was in college, I retuned from a trip to Europe with a staff infection from malnourishment, sleeping for three months in bushes at various skate parks, and one knife fight with junkies in Holland. Not having a place to live, I was invited to sleep in the crawl space beneath the stairs in the residence of five woman.
(And as awesome as that sounds, it kinda wasn't, but I had a roof over my head, and that was good enough for me.)
Anyway, one night after a particularly trying day, all I wanted to do was take a bath and crawl into my nook and sleep it off. As I was standing in the tub I flicked the light off, and received an electric shock that bought my naked frame to my knees. It was at this point that I began laughing.. The thought of my run of crap luck being capped off by being found naked and dead in the bathtub by all of my housemates made the scale of bummer luck go all the way back around to awesome.

I appreciated the fact that things got so bad, they went all the way to laughably good again.

That is pretty much where things lie now, and thanks to the pills, I'm rolling with it.

So that was my weekend in a nut shell... let's get onto other matters that matter.

The other day while I was on my way to my web guy's house, I came across this cat;

This upstanding looking fellow is none other than Rick from Clutch Courier. He was out and about saving the world one tag at a time, and upon my query of 'how's your work load been lately?' he shot back with "well, we do legal filings as well, and since everybody is suing the shit out of each other, things have been really good."

Rick is a good guy, and runs a quality business, so I can only say that if you find yourself in the Santa Cruz area and are currently suing the shit out of anyone, Clutch Courier is the way to go.

Well, between tweekers dumping their trucks in front of my house, and me trying to cover my unplanned medical costs with the sale of cycling caps, as you can imagine, the mail bags filled up, so let's check and see what's going on out there in the world.

Jon from Dahlonega Wheelworks sent me greetings as only he can;

"This was followed up with many pumpkins sacrificing themselves in the name of a good time.

That's at least one good thing about the South, an abundance of unsafe fireworks. Have a great holiday weekend!
Jon"

I've been there, and I can say with authority that there is a 50% chance activities such as thins can only end in disaster.

As you all probably know, there recently have begun a round of restrictions aimed at cyclists in Philly, but that doesn't mean you can't ride bike inside, as proven by this recent email from Ken;

"hey stevil, just wondering if you could throw this up on the blog for the philadelphia bike messenger association, we're having a gold sprints event since we bought our own machines and software. heres the website with more info-

kenny kaos"

Of course being the astute group that you are, you realize that
1) this event took place yesterday
and
2) my head is generally up my ass.

Perhaps you, Sherman and Mr. Peabody can all get into the Wayback machine® and check it out for yourselves.

Sorry about that Ken.
I owe you a Coke.

Speaking of bicycle no-good-doery, here is a vintage photo of Kent and his brother Keith getting ready to pedal their little legs down the fast track to my heart on their brand new Smoky and the Bandit bicycles;

If I had good money, I'd pay it for one of those steeds.

As I mentioned last week, I was the fortunate recipient of a copy of The Excess Zine, and not two days later I get this clip of a similarly epic adventure from Alex.

That's certainly the stuff of which dreams are made.

I suppose while we are on the topic of dreams coming true, I need to mention this email I got from Erik;

"Stevil,
My cohort and I are raffling off one of them SSCXWC framesets to raise some funds for the local food bank. If you can spread the word that would be hella sweet. Tickets are 10 smackers each and we are limiting it to 125 tickets so the odds are good.

Love peace and chicken grease
Erik"

I have the right mind to blow my proverbial wad and buy all but one of the tickets just to spite the world, but with the way my luck's been running lately, I would still loose.

In all seriousness though, it obviously is for a very good cause, so get your 10 spots out and go.

In other news of the world, everybody's favorite buddy Chopper got ahold of me with word of another kind of help that is needed;

"Hey man what is up? I am seeing if you could alert your fans to this and ask them to donate $5.

Thanks bruddah hope all is well out that way!
Chop"

By growing a moustache, you'll ruin your own world for a month, but conceivably save someone else's for a lifetime.
It seems like a reasonable trade off.

And if growing our own isn't going to happen, five bucks is a small price to pay for Chopper's own shame.

From Ms. MaLora Ann, the mastermind behind last years Lovely Ladies on Beautiful Bicycles, I got an email with a request to mention a new, similarly themed project, 2010 Men of .83 calender.

The following image may or may not be included;

This might end up being as highly coveted as the 2004 Northern California bike builders calendar;

My two favorite shots from which are Mr. February, Rick Hunter;

And Mr. August, Scot Nicol;

(And yeah, the Budwesier slippers don't hurt anything either. If you are thinking about trying to pry them from his grasp, don't bother. In the event of Scot's untimely demise, he's already promised them to me.)

If you think your eyes can handle it, I've scanned the entire collection, which can be found here.

That's about it from this end. As I've said many times before, and by now, you all know too well- I type with two fingers.
Now that I have one hand, this entire post was typed with my right index finger and the tip of my nose.
Please excuse any errors.

It was an utter train wreck to complete.

I can't wrap this one up without offering an addled congratulations to the maestros Todd Wells and Katerina Nash for their victories at the USGP in Portland Saturday, and Tim Johnson's win on Sunday;
*Or was it Jeremy Powers?.. Yeah. That's right. I was using my crystal ball when I wrote this, and it's covered with bacon grease and slobber...*

(As per the request of the photographer the previously existing images were removed, but galleries from the weekend's events can be seen here and here.)

I spoke with Captain Dave on the phone and he said that there were alot of people ruining the race for everybody, but obviously nobody ruined it for these three.

So from here until 48 hours from now, gimpfully yours-