this is oddly cathartic

so here I am in the midst of finishing a gargantuan pumpkin cheesecake.

it's about twenty minutes from coming out of the oven and right now the entire apartment is bathed in the heady aroma of pumpkin pie spice and several pounds of Philly's finest.

dibs on a slice anyone?

it's the biggest cheesecake recipe I've ever seen or made... well considering I've never made cheesecake before, but anyhows. I think this thing is gonna feed not only my colleagues but prolly most of the internet with some left over.

anyways earlier on I was following the roommate's recipe for a cookie crumb crust. like all his recipes, it was pretty basic: "mash 1 box cookies, mix with 1 stick melted butter, refrigerate".

he's a really, really good cook that lad, however his recipes tend towards the spartan on the details.

sooo... there I was wandering around the living room with a box of lorna doones and a 4 quart steel mixer bowl, wondering how in the fuck I was going to mash up an entire box of cookies - seeing as we're somewhat light on kitchen gear, y'know -- luxuries like rolling pins and such. not to mention the last time I tried something like this with a food processor it promptly went tits up.

Now, might I add that we do have eight bikes and seventeen pairs of wheels and about five thousand eight hundred seventy-two bicycle-related doo-dads and whatchamajiggers including a huge rollaway tool chest full of every bike part and maintenance option known to god (you know, those kind car mechanics have? we got one, only it's full of bike tools).

then inspiration struck as my eye lit upon ye olde 12 oz. claw hammer.

turns out a 12 oz. claw hammer is the dog's nutz for mashing cookies, especially in one of those cheapassed Target 4 quart steel mixer bowls cos the profile of the claw and the bottom of the bowl marry up like peas n carrots. So I wrapped that hammer up in a floursack rag, stuck an old Stabbing Westward cd in the stereo and got jiggy with it.

this freaked out the cat and I'm sure the downstairs neighbours wondered what the aitch I was up to, but as the Geto Boyz spit in the movie Office Space: god DAMN it feels good to be a gangsta.



I feel so much better now. thanks y'all for listening.

cheers,

LFR

o Denver Cruise, how I shall miss thee...

Last Wednesday evening included many beers, my date crashing his fixte, some drunken streaking chicks and lots of wrong turns.

ahhhh, Denver Cruise, how I will miss thee in the cold winter months... yet therein lies a tale:

A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, high up in the Rockies where the air is thin and the microbrews are phat -- there were a bunch of cruisers. Most were former (or current) couriers, and every Wednesday night throughout the soft summer months, they would meet at the wineshop with their friends, dress in humourously themed costumes and ride their cruiser, track and singlespeed bicycles around from bar to bar to bar until either the bars closed or they were too drunk to balance... or both.

One of the cruisers, an enterprising young Irish lad, decided that the key to ultimate cruising bliss was to build himself a 'Drunken Cruiser', to merge the themes of boozing and cruising in a metaphorical endless, infinite feedback loop; a proverbial Moebius of debauchery. Being that he was himself a metalworker, and owned a property full of lathes and welding equipment, he cracked a 40 and got down to work.

Thus the Ketel One Valdez was born. Conceived in inebriation, born in intoxication, nurtured in pure unabashed blitzedness and intended never to be ridden sober, it became the paradigm of debauched pubcrawlery. Weighing in at a svelte 83 lbs, stretching 9 feet long, and carrying a fifth of Russia's finest in the conveniently located faux fuel tank, this behemoth inspired fear in the hearts of fixed gear riders up and down the Front Range.



Imagine the pure visceral terror felt by the rider of a scant sixteen pounds of gazelle-like grace and noble purpose that is a fixed gear bicycle, as this juggernaut hurtled out of control on an irrevocable intercept vector, the high child-like scream of its thoroughly inadequate braking system sounding as the klaxons of doom.

on Wednesday night, the KOV claimed its fifth victim.*


*no fixed gears were harmed in the making of this tale

cheers,

LFR