Quick Breather

I finished roughing my freelance hell, so I get a day or two to breathe before I get the board back, address the notes, and make the whole mess somewhat legible.

I was able to finish my duties on this in the meantime:




















I ended up choosing the final color palette so that it didn't look like Xmas thrown up. Go, me!
And wait til you see the back of the shirt...it's gonna be a collector's item for sure! Unfortunately I had little to do with the artwork involved in that...I just threw the text together and made it into a file that the shirt screeners can deal with.



Last night the Dear Husband and I attempted to go on a bicycle ride with a group of "fixie" riders. It was called the "Chill Ride" and started in Venice.

A word about fixies: they're not the "casual" bike rider. They're serious. They have ridiculously lightweight racing-style bikes, no gears, and usually no brakes. When we rolled up on our comparitively heavy bikes, complete with gears, brakes, and bells...well, let's just say we didn't fit in. But we were game to try and see if we could keep up.

Things started out fine. The DH was near the back of the pack, I was in the middle. I was keeping up just fine on the Raleigh, when I did an apparently stoopid thing: I tried to switch gears.

Which caused the chain to disengage from the front sprocket.

WTF?!?!?

This has happened before, and I've figured out that if I shift gears too fast, the bike hiccups and revolts.

Anyway, I had to stop. The DH had to stop. He picked up the back end of the bike while I re-engaged the chain, cussing all the while.

When we were ready to roll, the Chill Riders were gone. GONE.

Thankfully we knew where they were going, but we didn't know which route they were taking, so we faked it by taking the beach path to the first stopping point.

We finally met up with them at a pizza place in Manhattan Beach. By the time we'd gotten there, they'd been chilling for a good 20 minutes or so. They hauled @$$, basically.

I probably could've kept up with them, as my bike stopped throwing its chain because I stopped shifting gears. The DH was not up to the challenge, however. He was tired and sweaty and needed to rest. So we sat and ate some pizza and waved the group off as they wound their way down to Hermosa Beach and then planned on racing back to Santa Monica. We then made our way back home...me in the lead, the DH trailing behind, which was sometimes scary when I couldn't turn around and easily see the headlights on his bike.

So we need to find rides that are faster than parade speed, but not as fast as a fixie ride. I used to go on the Midnight Ridazz rides, which accomodated a wide variety of speeds and bikes. But that's not a Westside ride. One guy in the Chill Ride group suggested a group that's cruiser bike-oriented. Maybe we'll check that out.

In the meantime, I plan on riding the bicycle to the Art Department meeting scheduled this Friday. Another ride to Los Feliz. Woohoo!