Its been a while for me on here. I’ve been just feeling like the internet is annoying and tedious lately. No real reason that I can put my finger on, but there is this fleeting urgency that seems to emit from my computer that has been really bothering me. Some sort of “hey! hey! look at me quick before I’m gone!” kind of thing that reminds me of insecure highschool kids or something. Does anyone else ever get that feeling? I suppose its my own fault for paying too much attention to it all.

Austin-> Joplin ->Cleveland->Michigan

In the meantime I moved out of Austin. Not really sure where I’m moving to, but I don’t think its back to Texas. The Snake Trap played at the Joplin contest that just happened and I had all my stuff packed up in a moving van for the trip. After we played that show the band headed back to Austin and I headed north and would camp out every 7 or so hours of driving. I arrived in Cleveland early this week, unloaded all my stuff into storage, bought a car and hung out there for a few days. I stayed with Pat Schreader in his crazy warehouse space for a few days and explored Cleveland. There’s a fair chance I might end up living there. Now I’m over in Michigan visiting family. In a few days I’m taking my grandma and uncle on a little trip to northern Michigan, and then I’m going to take a solo trip along the north part of the country out to Montana. I keep thinking maybe I’d want to live out in Montana somewhere. I guess after that camping and exploring trip I’m headed back to Austin to play one last show since we just got our new records in. We did some real vinyl this time (but we also included a CD inside the record). Hopefully by the time I’ve completed this loop I’ll have an idea of where I want to move to and be able to head to my new home.

My mom’s dog and my two.

My home for the next month or two while wandering.

By the time I’m done with this my new car won’t be so new!

Man, I’ve been sick for like 2 and half weeks. First one of my nasty knee cuts got infected and turned into a fever and I felt awful, then Austin’s winter pollens took their toll on me and I had gnarly allergies that kept me on the couch for a solid week. I know you’d think with all that free time I would have been keeping up on the blogging, but its was a pretty for real kind of sick. I felt completely empty and didn’t really think much beyond sleeping and trying to stay warm.

Finally feeling better now, but all of Austin’s allergen counts are at record levels and I can definitely feel it. Got out and did some BMX yesterday though and it sure was nice. Beautiful day and it felt so good to be out pedaling around. I wish I had a camera. Ran into Sergio Layos at Empire, a truck load of french dudes and about 30 other people at 9th street, and later I stopped off and rode T1- with Ian Morris, Corey Martinez, Nathan WIlliam, Alex from France, James Cox and Dave Parrick at T-1. Oh, Danny Hickerson showed up too and Joe Rich is back home from Spain. This place is just crazy this time of year. So many riders wandering in and out.

This week my cousin in Austin is getting married and so my entire family is coming down to Austin too. I think there’s like 7 of them staying with me in my little house. SXSW is coming after that and things are going to be even crazier here. The Snake Trap just got accepted into the Dickies Battle of the Band with a winner take all $10,000 purse. Not sure how that will work out, but one of the judges is Gza which should be interesting.

When I was a kid I would get so sick of old guys always talking about the “old days” and it seemed to me that they were just past their prime and stuck in the past. Now that I am an old guy (by most of my readers calendars anyway) I tend to find myself doing the same thing, but now I think its because in some weird way I hope to impart some sort of wisdom that took me so long to learn. Information I wish I had back when I was younger.  

Like, how to make a Joe Rich Special. Does anyone remember what that is? I think back in Terrible One zine #1 there was a illustrated diagram of how to make a Joe Rich special. Its one of my guilty pleasures actually and involves eating at Taco Bell. That’s outright sacrilege in a town like Austin where there is so much great and cheap Mexican food so I usually keep this to myself.

Why would I eat such processed crap food? For some reason I like it. Take a tostada, flip it upside down, plop a side of rice on top of the over turned tostada and then break it apart with your spork. Delicious. Takes me back to the days of living in Bethlehem, PA riding trails all day and starving for some decent salsa.

Sandy Carson took me to the newish pump track up in North Austin for the first time. What a good time. The whole pump track concept is amazing. I love the idea of dirt jumps that every skill level can ride an enjoy. Most everything is rollable or table tops, and lots of berms. So cool. I got to ride with some of Austin’s OG riders there. Old men on kids bikes. But there was also some new kids, just learning and then Sandy and I had a great time too trying to link together lines and racing through berms. I recommend anyone starting out building trails to start with one of these. They are easy to build (since everything is smaller) and you will help create a scene of riders because anyone can have fun there. 

I stole this photo of Jeff Pearce from 9th st BMX. I’m sure you guys can sue Transworld/TimeWarnerAOL for like a zillion dollars thanks to my illegal usage of your image.  

Jeff Pearce was there and he’s been riding longer then anyone I know. Its so inspiring seeing people still enjoying riding after so long. Seeing Pearce reminded me about Austin’s original cruiser scene. Back when I moved here in the early 90’s there were as many riders on 24″ BMX cruisers as on 20″s. Maybe I’ll have to get cruisin’ myself soon as old age approaches. Bigger wheels do make things a lot smoother. 

It got me thinking of old Austin in general. This place was so mellow. Most of the riders didn’t read magazines or watch videos. The internet hadn’t even been invented yet. I think thats why so many of the dudes were on cruisers. They just didn’t even know they were abnormal in the BMX world on their big bikes. Everyone was just riding because they enjoyed it. Thats probably more or less true about anyone on a bike from any time or place, but the magical part about Austin was how laid back everyone was (in all walks of life).

Austin is still remarkably chill. I could do with out the new group of trail nazis that are starting to show up, but overall I think most of the people on bikes here have a true love of riding and still want to share it with everyone else. Take it from an old guy, don’t mix salt and BMX, its too fun to spoil.