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elephant and bird have grown up and moved on and i miss them so much...and while there will always be a place in my heart for them, i have to be strong and start again with new friends/family. a short while ago i was lucky enough to have hippopamus introduced into my life and today i am proud to present a new member of the family!
KITTY!!!
kitty and hippopotamus are getting along wonderfully and all is happy.
love,
sam
(click on bill to make him bigger)
such an exciting day!
hardly an hour ago i rolled into grand rapids on my bike from oh so wonderful lansing!
the weather looked wonderful this morning so i decided to hop on for a little adventure, and what an adventure it was. 65 miles of joy with everything you could ever imagine.
i left at about 11. the sky wasnt looking too nice anymore but i was prepared for anything.
in my bag i had one pair of jeans, one tshirt, one sweat shirt, one pair of shoes, one book (george jackson's soledad brothers), one plastic garbage bacg, two spare tubes, one hand pump, one set of tire irons, one wrench, three granola bars, one extra bottle of water, one metronome, one mus 148 course pack, one end times orchestra bass folder, and one set of lights (notice i forgot my toiletries :) )
i started out down grand river avenue towards downtown lansing/grand rapids. rode past some places i had never seen before then industrial parks and then highways and then trees (yay!).
30 miles of rolling hills and pleasant greenness (not the unpleasant green that bothers me so much). about ten miles into the first leg of the trip the rain came. i took shelter under a tree to cover up my backpack with the the plastic garbage bag and the rain turned to pouring turned to thunder turned to lightning turned to drizzle. i was back on the road but the backpack cover was bothering me. it was removed. i ate two of the granola bars.
one and half hours later i arrived at my half way point.
portland, michigan.
a nice little city. the river runs through the center and the shopping area was pretty crowded with people. by the time i arrived here, the sun was shining bright. i stopped for a quick lunch at a subway. veggie delite. then got going again.
up until portland things had been going fairly smooth (im talking about the wind. it was dead.). after portand, the land flattened, the farms came, and the wind kicked my ass. it got slow and painful for the next 20 miles. averaging between 10 and 15 miles an hour.
but then!
BUT THEN!
LOWELL!!!
my heart jumped with joy when i saw that i had entered lowell township (i was even happier when i saw the cascade sign). the wind was still blowing as hard as ever but i knew that the trip was almost done. only tenish more miles to go.
jump ahead 5 miles. i just pass snow going down what is now cascade road. and by now my excitement has my legs working a little harder. im pushing around 20 miles per hours again. i go down to grab my water bottle. put it to my mouth. my body jerks forward. im rolling on the ground.
pothole threw me over the handle bars.
bike accidents are kind of surreal.
they happen so fast but go by so slow.
i was alright. i went down right in front of a family enjoying a yard sale.
i impulsively yelled fuck and jumped up and down for a few seconds. calmed down fairly quickly and checked out my bike.
no damage.
i was bloodied up a little bit but not nearly as bad as previous crashes. the family came down to ask if i was ok.
i said i was fine and thanked them for their concern.
picked up my bike and rode away laughing at how fucked the situation was.
i stopped at hollywood video and rented inland empire to celebrate. lisa was working so i said hi and chatted briefly but i was very strange from the tiredness and shock of the crash.
so fun!
not bad at all. my wrist and elbow feel pretty shitty. but yeah. last time was during a crit. i was going a little fast. went around a corned. my pedal hit the ground and threw me over the bars. that one had an emergency room and stitches involved. no fun. i expect the ride back to lansing to be much more enjoyable (NO WIND!) but really i did have a lot of fun on this ride. the ending was very very happy.
this place just opened up in lansing a very large space downtown right across from the baseball stadium 3 floors of hugeness with 2 or 1 floor(s) of gallery space and very noise friendly so sos o noise friendly the story goes like this the building is owned by jake's dad jake's dad owns a couple buildings/bars/strip clubs around lansing and he told jake that he could use this empty space if he could bring in a little money jake and his friends that run the place are "communists" but im under the impression that they are fakers karen isnt a communist tho she was there when i arrived last night to check the place out aj has been pretty active there and has all the inside connections meaning we basically have total complete access to this place we jammed and recorded last night with aj's buddy jay from from denver who is now in lansing jay ran a warehouse venue in denver called monkey something... i cant remember and he was in Pretty Thighs i believe which is funny because i just picked up a Pretty Thighs/KKRampage split onesided seven inch at vertigo the other day and i took some pictures with my phone
the other gallery room
dirty storage with lots of old GM tapes and fun
back dark room
pennies!
second floor main room
creepy hallway
extremely creepy staircase to nothing
fun in the main room
more second floor
i didnt get any pictures of the third floor unfortunately but i think that we are going to have the next big noise fest here which will be weee!
meet hippopotamus.
strange things happen with my cell phone by strange i mean people repeatedly call me looking for not me. a few weeks ago a man called my phone a dozen times in a week looking for matt after calling me three times in one day he finally started to understand that im not matt and stopped now i have a woman calling looking for mary she has called three or four times in the past couple days... i feel like tom hanks in that movie about being a foreigner in an airport... confused but in a fun way shit im late for class
this day has been too surreal. mostly in a fucked way but i little bit not.
little frog hopped out of the cupboard. i think it was a ghost frog with special camera destructo powers because he is a constant blur.
this is the floor.
he is a hairy little guy.
very hairy.
and green.
scary from up top.
blurry from over here.
not so blurry but little.
he is orange in this one.
the rescue.