Tour De Troit 2011

This was the second time I’ve ever bicycled in Detroit, the first was scavenger hunt that had me riding a cruiser bike with non-working coaster brakes down Gratiot Ave with a baguette. They had over 5000 cyclists and it was great riding in an endless pack and taking up entire roads.

Mechanical Metronome in Montreal

Oh Montreal, what to say about you? Amazing food, bicycles everywhere and Neil Young albums for sale. The Music Tapes & Olivia Tremor Control show included a giant talking mechanical metronome – awesome!

Detroit river stuff and other stuff

Thanks to Ed for taking the family on a boat tour of the Detroit River and Peche Island. I’ve never been on a boat before in the Detroit River, and we had a perfect day for it. I felt an earthquake yesterday while I was at my desk. I might have to ask Air New Zealand for a refund, I paid $2000 to never have the thought of dying at work cross my mind again. I had to miss Ron Leary last week because of the flu.

Let’s see, what else has happened recently? Not much really. The United States’ Moniac must be leaking again, we’re building a road to nowhere, Goldman Sachs are storing 1/4 of the world’s Aluminium supply in Detroit, India has started up, magazines are running a full page ad calling for a “Tahrir moment” in New York (Can’t wait to see how that goes), local libraries aren’t letting me look at any number of web pages that “may contain inappropriate material”, websites can now be seized by US Customs, and Canadian Police are changing laws and buying new gear. I also earned my geek merit badge in laser cutting, and I’m very excited about it.

Bring on the snow… maybe not.

We had a “feels like 50C” day a few weeks ago. That was the same day I decided to ride my bike 12KM to pick up a second-hand printer. I’m learning how to cope though and the Sulu I brought back from Fiji is proving to be a useful form of air-conditioning.

Fish Flies, Fire Works and Ikea

Fish Flies have been out for the past week, which has been fun to see. They’ve made bike rides a bit “crunchy”, but feeding live ones to Ninja the cat has been entertaining.