Halfway to Detroit Here’s how it happens. I wake up in the morning and put on a fairly almost-brand-new pair of Sidis. I lash a temporary home to the back of a heavy steel bike with a long wheel base. I pedal out of Portland. Along the way, I learn how to start the heavy bike from a [...]

You better believe that when I’m quiet for this long there’s bound to be a crack in the dam forming. Summer’s been like pow! Yellow rays and warm breeze and wrapped in sweat and light and heat and adventure. So the world lights up with long days and the people come outside and run around crazy-style [...]

It happened when I was about seven. Thanksgiving Day. I remember clearly. We were out in the garage mashing aluminum cans because as an enterprising young whipper-snapper I’d noticed that the junk man’s aluminum price had recently sky-rocketed. I was preparing the final batch in what would be my most epic aluminum can delivery. Sure to [...]

Father’s day is just around the corner and my Dad asked me specifically for a splitter for his modem. (Not kidding!) But, if I wasn’t making a trip to Radio Shack for the aforementioned wild splurge, I’d probably consider getting him something downright goofy. Like many good Dads in the world, he’s a master of bad [...]

Six years old. A commercial interrupts my television program. Bloated babies with flies in their eyes. A Christian man with a white beard. I get up from where I am sitting, cross-legged, on the living room carpet and move toward the television to push one of the other little rectangular buttons. I am going to push the [...]

I’m antsy. It’s true. As last year kicked my ass like you wouldn’t believe, it also gave me a crazy case of cabin fever. Pow! Biff! Bang! Crazymaking. I stormed into 2010 with one mission: get the hell out of Portland as often as humanly possible. It’s not that I don’t love it here, it’s just that sometimes my gypsy [...]