I got a spam mail today with the subject line ER Blind Date. No thanks!

It’s almost Tour de France time! Today, however, I’m a bit bummed out about the news that a huge number of cyclists were booted from the tour for having connections to doping. Among them was Germany’s Jan Ullrich, whom I was hoping would take it this year. He won’t be riding. I obviously don’t know if they are doing it or not, but it’s clearly a widespread problem in the sport.

As a note, Mr T would say something like this:

When you’re riding through France
If you do drugs, you take a foolish chance
That you’ll be caught, your dreams cut short
By the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
So don’t do drugs, don’t you do dope
Or your cycling career will end up on the ropes
Take it from me, Mr. T,
Stay clean, work hard and you’ll win the yellow jersey.

As requested, Mr. Davis shirts are now being offered. Go buy them: click here!

I’ve been playing a lot of guitar lately. It feels good, and I am improving, albeit slowly in parts, as muscles won’t magically get stronger or faster overnight. But there is a growing comfort with the instrument, and an understanding of what needs to be done. I’m playing etudes. In a huge step, I’ve considered buying a metronome (my last didn’t make it through grad school).

When taking a 25 minute cat nap, it is not recommended that one set one’s timer for 25 hours.

Davis square isn’t much like a square at all. It’s more like hexagon-meets-thunderdome, with 6 roads colliding in a Euclidian deathmatch.

After peering at a picture by dan4th of the locally famous sign depicted the road formation, and being too caffeinated to know when not to follow through, Mr. Davis was born.

EDIT 6/26/06: As dan4th pointed out in the comments, the original picture was taken by Jesse Ev. Credit due!

Believe it or not, the bike is a good place to think. Generally it’s one thought, and the thought is “why won’t you please use your turn signals, good citizens of Boston?” but at times other things get through.

There’s a passage from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ah, high school!) that compares riding a motorcycle to riding a car. Cycles are more exposed, closer as it were to the road, to the place being driven. Bikes are more exposed still; I feel the road through my inch or so of tire, my lungs and legs encounter every hill, my body catches the breeze and wind and rain.

This exposure, combined with the exigencies of traffic, creates a vivid and vibrant awareness. Most of my attention is draped over the act of riding, so thoughts of turn signals and interesting sights pass by like potholes, or a wall of green ivy swaying gently in the wind. Curious, even wonderful, for a moment, then swallowed back up.

And cars. Cars are predators. No, that’s not right, cars are genetically-engeered bison with quick tempers, lumbering beasts with more power than they know and practically no awareness.* It feels like some sort of inverse of my experience. Cars, coddled in the upholstered cab with music playing, just the right climate, and suspensions so good that they barely feel the road. I wonder sometimes if in the same place as me at all, which reinforces the whole turn signal thing. If they’re here, they’re here only partially, popping back into the here and now to be surprised that they’ve stopped at a red light or are about to turn into me (please, signal!). Wake up, deal with whatever needs to be dealt with, go back to somewhere else, anywhere else.

I’ve been honked at a lot, but never have I been surprised, as I’ve been working feverishly to resolve the potentially conflict long before the sound. The horn as I hear it now goes like “Wha? What’s going on where?! Argh!” It’s more a reminder to the driver than to the world at large.

We all share the same road.

*Not everyone is like this, and I thank the gods for mindful drivers.

It lives!

I want to find out what happens next.

I took a walk along the Charles today. It was perhaps not the best day for it, as it was hot and not all that breezy, but it turned out to be just the thing.

I stumbled across a few interesting pieces of graffiti, including this sticker. “When will you die?” it asked. The man asking looks surprisingly like Patrick Stewart.

I took a few more pictures, which you can see here.

It was a wonderful weekend, and there was much hanging out and talking and general revelry. In the evenings we’d sit in darkened rooms, drink cold beverages, and hide from the heat.

Today on the Red Line I watched as a old man ate a date for the first time. Given to him by the woman sitting next to him, he was marveling as he ate it, nibble by nibble, laughing and smiling throughout. I couldn’t help but share his excitement.

Today featured a trip to the always exciting Apple Store to get V’s power adaptor replaced. The area between the plug and the cord wore down and the plastic melted a bit; all very dramatic. For all their industrial design mojo, Apple can’t seem to make a sexy and durable laptop power adaptor. I’ve had mixed success with previous ones, but invariably they fail in the same location. We’ve been treating this one with kid gloves, and it didn’t make any difference. I’m tossing out the gauntlet to you, Jonathan Ive: take a look at what musicians use, learn from that, and then make a better cord. Those guys torment their cables. The mag safe plug is fabulous, now do the rest of the job.

Happy birthday to the beautiful and wicked smart Chava. She’s a real Duchampion.

‘Tis the weekend for theme parties. On Friday I attended an 80s dance party, and on Saturday a psychedelic luau. While I didn’t dress up for the luau (and the trippy leis had all been distributed by our arrival), some amount of work went into the punk-eurotrash outfit. Many thanks to V for materials. There’s a sad lack of bangles and jelly bracelets these days.

In retrospect, I should have put on more eye makeup.