Originally posted at project pedal...

I've spent the last hour-&-a-half packing my GL2 away on my bike, then unpacking it, then again - I just can't seem to find an efficient and compact way to carry it... not to mention a safe way.

It's close - I can't hardly wait, it hasn't quite hit me full on yet that I'm leaving in the morning, but enough to keep my heart pounding all afternoon. It's time to cut myself off from the distractions, the bad habits, the routine...

In case any of you out there are wondering - no, we are not dead here at caliblog - we are all alive and very well... sorry it's been so slow here lately, we are over our heads getting ready for a bike trip we are taking from Santa Monica to Seattle [starting this sunday].

If you don't know anything about it - you can catch up by reading the last few post at project pedal.

10 things i did today:
stuck my toes in a warm swimming pool
made a strawberry pie
watched confessions of a dangerous mind (again)
went grocery shopping (twice)
drove to ikea (twice)
changed a diaper (twice)
played peek-a-boo (for an hour)
made $50
spent $152
washed the dishes

10 things i didn't do today:
go swimming
take a shower
laundry
ride my bike
work at ikea
change a poopy diaper
make out with my boyfriend
sneeze
call back the lady from bally total fitness who wants my money
clean the cat litter

Today was one of the warmest days of the year so far. I think it got up to 86 degrees. We were house/ dog-sitting for Dennis and Stephanie for the weekend and today was the last day. Mike and I walked the dogs – Norton and Brimley - in the morning before I went to baby-sit for Nick. Tricia flew back east to visit her mom in the hospital. When I got to their house Uncle Thurmon took a nap. Then Nick went to sleep so I watched the Pistons game. We won 89 to 76. Not bad. After babysitting I went back to Dennis and Steph’s to feed the dogs and pick up Mike and all of our stuff. When we got home I paid some bills. Then Mike took a nap on the couch and I wrote some emails. He woke up when Billy came home from work. We forgot to tell Billy we were house sitting. He was surprised to see us. He thought we were dead. I made a grocery list and watched disc 3 season 9 of friends. Now I’m going to bed. Goodnight.

Tonight, as Billy was flipping through the channels, I [unfortunately] caught a few minutes of Fox "news" covering the special effects behind Star Wars - yes, I know, two post in a row about Lucas - now I'm not questioning that the special effects for a sci-fi movie are news-worthy material... [long pause to let the sarcasm sink in] okay, so, what would I be hearing about if - and this is a big "if" - American media was reporting actual news? For starters, I might be hearing about something called "The Downing Street Memo" - a document containing the meeting minutes during a July 23rd, 2002 talk [a full 8 months before our invasion of Iraq] with the British Prime Minister. The document clearly states that Bush decided to go to war in the summer of '02 and that he ensured U.S. intelligence be "fixed" to support his decision relevant to WMDs.

When asked about the document's validity - British officials didn't even try to dispute it's authenticity. But... I guess I'd rather hear about the news-breaking special effects behind a movie with 'wookies' in it, opposed to what appears to be Bush's downfall. Lucky for Bush though, U.S. media isn't covering the document.

Ten days ago eighty-nine democratic members of the congress asked Bush to explain the memo... so far I can't find anything about his actually responding.

Do you believe that Americans deserve to know the truth? This is an issue beyond partisan politics—no President should ever mislead our Nation into a war. Sign the petition to ask President Bush and his administration to address the Downing Street Memo.

I've always been a bit harsh towards George Lucas - I'm not quite sure where the negative-opinion sprang from, but somewhere along the way I got the notion that this man simply made shitty, poorly written movies to sell more toys & collectibles to his unwavering legion of followers. Now, I should clarify that I'm not talking about the originals - I admit that I've only seen episode 4, 5 & 6 once... I watched them all back to back when I was very young, with my cousin Chad, at a thanksgiving family get-together. I had no beef with the films at the time - but then again I had a bowl cut... so, who knows.

Anyways, I'm getting side tracked. Point is, Lucas has written & directed some pretty mind-numbingly terrible movies the last few years... but, about six months ago, Billy made me sit down and watch a behind the scenes documentary on Lucas, spanning from pre-Star Wars to present day. I was pleasantly shocked to find that the young Lucas openly despised everything that he now embodies as a production powerhouse. But I was still hesitant to give the full benefit of the doubt. Until now - after reading this - I can't help but like him - I may never have the patience or desire to sit through his films, but I definitely don't find him as... unaware... as I once thought he had become. Here's a clip:

...Lucas never mentioned the president by name but was eager to speak his mind on U.S. policy in Iraq, careful again to note that he created the story long before the Bush-led occupation there.

"When I wrote it, Iraq didn't exist," Lucas said, laughing. "We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam. ... The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

Thanks to 'Mark Maynard' for stealing this from 'Daily Kos' so that I could take it from the both of them... pass it on:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54

I guess we can't say we haven't been warned.

Last night, Amanda and I went over to Marcos's apartment in Burbank to watch Dallas play [Marcos liven in Dallas up until a year ago]... I'm not much into basketball, I didn't even know who was playing until he told me, and even then I couldn't tell you one person's name on either team. Anyways, after that - a small group of us followed Lorrie over to her friend's house for a small 'Sinco De Mayo' get-together that was canceled and then un-canceled. Amanda, Lorrie, Eric and myself all showed up at the party at the same time - Marcos and Jolene stopped by her friend's house to pick someone up - this is where this post really begins:

As Jolene was inside, Marcos stayed in the car, I'm guessing because he wasn't feeling well all night, as he was waiting - he watched an oversized van coming down the road, without really stopping or slowing down, it turned onto the street where Marcos was parked. He said he never really saw the 20-something Asian man until he was in the air - he just watched the van turn and then a "thing" caught his eye as it slammed into the front of the van and went swinging through the air, over the roof and then landing behind it.

Marcos ran out of his car with his cell phone in his hand - he said he almost felt prepared because a month and a half earlier, in Studio City, he saw an elderly lady hit by a 40-something asshole in a BMW while doing an illegal u-turn... but he believes she died from the accident - he dialed 911 - a very old couple came out of the van, they were Armenian and didn't speak a lot of English, the man they just sent flying through the air wasn't moving and was bleeding quite a bit.

"All operator are currently busy... please stand by", Marcos couldn't believe it - then, I'm not sure on the details, but somehow the old couple talked Marcos into not staying on the line - at the same time the man started to move around, Marcos tried to get him not to move but he was in shock and stood up saying everything was okay. Here is the strangest part - the old couple said they lived "right there", and pointed across the street, they then led the man they just hit into their van and - supposedly - left for their house.

I think this all happened so fast Marcos didn't have time to let it sink in. I'm hoping that the old couple didn't drive this delirious blood stained man out to the middle of nowhere and leave him... very, very strange.

Originally posted at Project Pedal...

90% of the following pictures don't look anything like they are suppose to... I tried scanning them with several different settings, but in the end, they all became overly desaturated and bright with not enough contrast. I tried to hide this the best I could with photoshop, but now they just don't look natural - I guess I should have added the 'kodak picture CD' package when I did one hour developing at 'Target'. Either way.

These don't have much, if anything, to do with 'project pedal', but I thought the website could use some 'show & tell':



I placed this one at the top because it's the worst, now there is no where to go but up... the area in the lower left half of the picture that is completely blacked-out here, isn't that way at all in the print. Anyways, enough about the scanner... this picture was a balancing act to take, the 'run-off' was only five-or-so inches wide, so I was balancing on one knee while leaning over with my head tilted almost upside down just so I could get the camera far enough down while still seeing through the viewfinder. I wish someone had snapped a picture of me while I was taking this one...


I just had to stop and take a picture of this RV'ish... thing. Actually, there were about 15 more RVs and trailers lined along this road with-in a half-a-mile stretch - if only I had a wide enough lens to fit them all into frame.


This picture was taken while Amanda and I were on our two-day coastal ride... we went snooping around two side-by-side houses in Malibu that were abandoned - the foundations had slipped, and I'm sure they were anything but safe to walk around in. This doorknob caught my eye though, I'm really not sure what happened to it - at first glance, it might look like fire damage, but there was no signs of fire anywhere else in the house... I'm guessing it's some kind of acid...


This was around 4 in the morning, on my way from helping out with the short film I mentioned several post ago. It's a complete accident - but the shutter took so long to snap it gave me this dream-like wave coming off anything that reflected light.


At the top of these stairs, about two minutes before I took this photo - this same homeless man had stumbled up behind me and shouted something I couldn't make out to maybe me... but maybe no one, I was hard to say. Anyways, because of it I decided to take this picture while he wasn't looking... that'll teach him.


This is the same house that the photo of the doorknob was taken in - about half a second after I took this picture two pigeons freaked [because of the shutter's "snap"] and came out of hiding from the rafters - they made a break for the ocean but both crashed head first into the glass doors... then they staggered back in mid-air and made a break again through the next section of door, smacking their heads again [but only one pigeon did it this time, the other was smart enough to watch] - finally on their third try, they flew over my head and left through the giant gapping hole in the wall. I tried very hard to get a picture but it all happened so fast...


It might be hard to tell in this picture because I've scaled it down so much, but the three cars ahead of me all have a 'Michael Jordan' logo on their back windows. The red'ish car on the far right was the first I spotted, we drove next to each-other for about a minute, then he moved up a few cars... then the truck that is farthest ahead in this picture passed me on my left - thirty-some seconds later I saw the car on the left merge from two lanes over... they just all came together at once and drove right in front of me. Coincidence? Perhaps...


Not much to say about this one... it's a shopping cart with no back wheels sitting in the middle of some unused train tracks.


The picture above and the picture below were taken behind a gas station just off Hwy 5 - these pic's might be too small now to really make out what all the screens say so I thought I'd list them for your reading pleasure [in no particular order]:

"1+1=3", "get it together", "everyman for himself", "need? or greed?", "face the disgrace", "point of view", "make it happen", "smile", "never too late", "[heart]", "that little voice", "taste the waste", "social-in-security", "spread demockery to all", "make art", "quantity not quality", "I.D. thief", "gotta hustle", "free-dumb", "shame on us", "health is wealth", "it's not all good", "process aint' pretty", "thoughts have power", "got war?", "never enough", more more more"...


[cont'd...] "gotta hustle", "time of fear", "what if?...", "respect for all", "angels are for real", "pray for peace", "urban voice", stop cellphone abuse", "capitol culture", "positive response", "this too will pass"...

Whew. Okay, I only took two pictures of the hill, but there were actually enough tv's and computer screen to fill up four photos. I'd be interested to meet the person who does this... it's not something you see everyday. That's all for now.