jazz funeral for fallen cyclists Portland 2019

People were tangling on our normally quiet, peaceful street.

Olive just bore witness to a kerfuffle.
2 CAMBs (Come-At-Me- Bro's) had a road rage episode in front of our house.

One CAMB was driving a truck loaded with bikes, the other CAMB was driving down the narrow street and apparently came to a disagreement with CAMB #1. CAMB#2 throws his vehicle in park.
They started screaming at each other inches from each others faces then breaking back. "At least I don't gotta sell bicycles all day" Traffic started backing up.
Cars were honking and CAMB#2 started screaming at them "This is obviously not the street to go down right now!" That was heard by the first car but not the 4 cars behind it. Gridlock!
They were tangling on our normally quiet street. I was close by but totally oblivious. At the time I was watering the plants and rocking out to Rush. I wasn't even wearing headphones. I have Cygnus X1 memorized. Olive tried to get the scoop.
She was still in full clown drag but she is really good at camo mode in front of colorful flowers. She stood there with phone at the ready but the combatant CAMBs were drifting their fight right at her.
So she ran off without getting pics (Good try citizen reporter Rootbeer). So CAMB#1 got in his truck, CAMB#2 got in his janky car and they both reversed at each other stopping just short of bumping tails.
CAMB#1 took off yelling and CAMB#2 quickly peeled out (still in reverse) in chase. Olive eventually found me asking "Did you see that?" Me: "Nope."

The wine tasted like wine

What kind of Ice Cream goes with $30 wine?
Hope it's bargain bin, damaged freight butter pecan. We live in a house that rents out rooms.

Most often they leave their weed behind for us, this time it's wine. I don't drink but I never had expensive wine...even when I was a souse.
The wine came from a sun baked couple from SoCal. They were delightful, really smiley and it was adorable how they had such amazing tan lines from the flip flops.
They enjoy, coffee, cycling, reading books and taking phone clients even though they are retired.
Our tallbikes were no biggie to them, they are both hot air balloon pilots. My giant rig is a bug to them.
They had that grandparent vibe that made us want to impress them. Over and over again I had to stop myself from bothering them "um here is a drawing I crayoned for you, perhaps you can put it on your fridge?"
They took a shine to us too. They bought this wine and only had a glass out of it, then left the rest for us.
Olive and I decided to make a date of it. We sat down with the bottle, ice cream and a 2001 episode of Amazing Race. I made myself a butter pecan wine float that tasted more than a little bit like burnt kitten ear medication.
I realized that the two taste sensations need to be separated.
The wine tasted like wine. I didn't have anything to compare it to since the last time I had regular wine (from a box) was over a decade ago

Troutdale parade and Summerfest

Protecting my esoteric P town landmark

I almost royally screwed up. My favorite taco place hosts one of my favorite esoteric Portland landmarks.

This ice cream spill has been here since Summer 2017. It's amazing that a spill can last that long in a busy restaurant with plenty of staff.
Also it's a minor miracle to behold a fossilized ice cream spill in a place that doesn't sell ice cream.
This spill means a lot to me and today I almost ruined it.
I walked in to find a bunch of beer bottles on the ledge. Quickly I went to dispose of the litter before it attracts a more thorough cleaning.
But while doing that I dropped one of the bottles (buttafingiz) smashing it loudly.
Employees came in to check the commotion. I asked for a broom but they wouldn't let me.
So I just stood between the ice cream and certain scrubbery. They quickly scooped the glass and went back to bigger and better tacos.
(Whew that was close)

Dramatic Reading Of A Break-Up Letter

Colored delighted while checking my bike's traffic cam,

 

Colored delighted while checking my bike's traffic cam,

I see what Olive was up to when she is the passenger on my tallbike today. <3 span=""> <3 span=""> <3 span="">

One day on the tillicum bridge

As they watched us approach, they had time to huddled up, have a discussion, form a task force and then send a delegate to ask us an important question. :"Excuse me. How do you stop?"
 We hear that question all day. Sometimes it's really charming.
 Instead of the standard "gracefully" line we decided to give them a slo-mo-demo with bubbles.
 It went over great, diplomacy was had and Dad even had some sound advice for me as we left. "Don't fall off the bridge!"
 I won't Sir. I won't. :)

Fred was my pay today

Career councilor.
 I was standing around outside a gig. I saw a young man, sharply dressed in white collar biz attire. He was looking a bit confused, peering around. He was looking for something but he clearly wasn't lost. 
I started drinking my coffee like a carrot and asked him. "What's up Doc.?" 
He said he was job hunting. He had a great job in the field of sumpin called tec-nologee but he got laid off after many years. 
He had been to some interviews but they hadn't gone well. He was standing there trying to determine what his next move was. 
I introed myself , he said he was Fred. 
He asked me whats my deal. I said. "
I'm just a clown in town, lets talk about Fred, Fred. How many interviews did ya do today?" 
He said 5. Fred said he never got a chance to show em what he could do. I was busy but decided to hook Fred up with some career coaching. 
The following fell out of my face with me also listening because I don't know where it came from.
 I sed "Fred, don't be defined by your problems and challenges." 
(Him:"I'm not.") 
me: Yes you are, I just met you and that's all I know about you. I want you to reinvent Fred. 
New Fred hooks up 20 interviews a day. Got a script? Got samples of your work?" 
("No but I should")
 "New Fred has a script to get through interviews and I can't stress this enough New Fred. YOU ARE INTERVIEWING THEM TOO! Ask them questions prodding if they are good enough for your time. If you get any answer that doesn't meet yer musterd throw them a fish and move on. 
New Fred's time is valuable."
 Mr. New Fred was grinning and tapping in my ideas into his phone. He asked if I had been to a lot of job interviews. 
I told him EVERYDAY is a job interview for me. He thanked me and said
"You got a good thing going on."
 Just about then Olive appeared in the window calling me in. 
He said "Who is that?" 
"That's my wife and partner New Fred. Her name is Olive Rootbeer."
 "She's fine! How do you..." 
"OK OK time to move along New Fred. Go be Fred Fred. Good luck."
 After the show Olive asked about him. 
When I told her I was giving career counseling she asked "Did you tell him this is our second gig and we still haven't made a penny?" LOL Nope. 
Fred was my pay today. :)

I made this giant dino for a kid I like a lot.

Good times over at Pie Spot Pie shop.

making myself fit everyday.

Lit and Loud bike ride Portland 2019

Albatross Jerky

My parents raised me to be courteous, kind and dutiful. So in being a crass punker for so long I had to occasionally train myself to be pithy, rude and unpleasant.

Those were useful tools in an anarchist clown's toolbox, now notsomuch.

One day I picked up a piece of detritus from the late 90's North Portland sidewalk. It was a jerky wrapper. I marched to the Clown house, sat in my "write'n chair" and penned an angry letter to the company.

I demanded biodegradable packaging for their sulfite sticks. I also had to practice lying so I told them they were stale. Is stale jerky even possible? Sounded ludicrous to me.

I moved on. My charming levels quickly rose back to normal.

Two weeks later we got a package, It was full of dried meat products and a hand written letter apologizing for the staleness.

We noticed all the stamps they used and along with the unmetered postage, the handwritten part was a clue that I just taxed a small biz.

That is a huge No No in my world.

I'm against Walmart not Walter.

It was one of the first things I used this new device called "the internet"for.

I looked the company up and learned something I was suspecting...Dingo sucks. LOL

They were a small biz, So there ya go. I was a huge jerk and it got me a huge bag of jerky.

I had to eat it all too since I was the only clown in our set at the time that ate meat.

I just sat on the porch drinking beer and eating guilt jerky.

Jerk Jerky

Road log, making the rounds. Tallbike riding with my cutie

We made zero money at our gig. So understandably Olive decided we should go to a place the sells mustard by the 5 gal. bucket

 Olive could be heard from across the store laughing her head off.
 Our fellow customers and the employees had mixed reactions to seeing us.
One lady smiled huge and said "EEEEE circus peepoe!"
 Great to do some grocery shopping in bulk at the old Cash and Carry.
It was a riot tearing around there watching Olive go bonkers over the massive quantities.

 I really enjoyed the chance to give my son a lesson on pro kitchen and bar-tending equipment.

My son knows I need some forms of photography. Basically Olive is in all our photos by default. 
I'm the pitcher taker. 
On the other side Olive does all the drawings and isn't into photography. 
She does notice when she can't find many photos of us together when she makes event ads. 
So I peeled my 13 year old away from his game and asked him to get some pics from his tallbike. 
The real deal was I wanted him to get more tallbike practice. We took a long ride around SE PDX and I found some steep hills to try him out on. The camera is attached to his bike. He took this one and I'm liking it a lot. 

Getting home we noticed Olive collected three little humans for the day. She is still babysitting for our friends who are working on house moving. 

Turns out his bike has hand and back pedal brakes. He did better than me. Then I took him down Division so he can experience heavier traffic. 

 I also told him a lot of "outs" for the inevitable questions. I suggested that if people ask if he knows us to say "never heard of em" That is a great way to avoid snubbing the person while still not giving an answer that leads to more questions. I guess it's a lesson on keeping his space. Happy Tuesday!

oliveanddingo.com