Rubble

One of several strip malls adjacent to my apartment has been mostly abandoned for the past two years. Eventually, there were no tenants left, however I'm guessing the last of them were forced to leave due to pending re-development. Over the course of the last week, I've watched as the area is reduced to a pile of rubble. You have probably noticed by now that I kind of have this thing about demolition scenes. As of last night, not a single wall stands. Here's hoping there's something interesting and useful being built, not just mid-rise offices or some warehouse.



This morning, I saw the city venting the fire hydrant pipes. jwz would call it a series of tubes.



Random Tunage:
Plumb - Cut
Cher & Peter Cetera - After All

Winter: 3 Spring: 1

Photo: Moonlit Demolition Scene from this morning at the bus stop.


Spring gave it a real go of things, but Winter continues to persevere and knock it down. We got a surprise snow-storm a few weekends ago. Yesterday, a relatively warm morning fell to its knees over the workday, greeting me with temperatures back in the 30s and a wind strong enough to work its way through my balaclava and give me a really nasty ear-ache. Not to mention the fact that it was constantly pushing me sideways toward traffic.

This morning? 15 degrees or so. Some forecasters are saying it could get even colder tomorrow morning.

/me shakes fist at winter.

Firestone

It looks like Demolition's about to begin at the abandoned Firestone Building by Oak Park 'Maul'.


I took the later bus this morning. I was up pretty late working on some pet projects, the results of which I'll share with you at the end of this post. This allowed me to watch the sun come up. That makes me happy.



This is The Blackintosh. It's a Mac SE/30 From 1989 or thereabouts. Yes that means it's about 20 years old. I took the photo about 10 years ago before I went to DefCon 7 in Las Vegas. I used an Apple QuickTake 100, which was cutting-edge at the time. I did 'photoshop' this (I used GIMP, actually) to remove some unsightly clutter from the left.

Why am I posting a photo of a 20 year old computer on my bike blog? Well, because I had to carry a ton of parts for it (more like 12 pounds) on my way to work today, and I'm heading to the CCCKC Cave after work to hopefully get this beast back up and running for a presentation on using old computers.

I've got a LOT of really old computers. I happen to have two fully-functioning Mac SE/30s like this. I painted this one for reasons unknown. While both of them boot, I've found that MacOS 7 isn't really conducive to getting anything done. When you throw something like Linux (in my case, NetBSD) on it, though, you end up with a cute, tiny machine that can do basic text-only things such as email, light-duty web surfing, word processing and other fun stuff.

A lot of midnight oil was burned into the wee hours of this morning in an attempt to get things working properly for the little Blackintosh. Here's hoping the presentation goes smoothly this evening...

Half Day

Ostensibly, I've got a "Half Day" today. It's more like 3/4 of a day because I get in kind of early.



The ride to the bus was fascinating as ever. Although it's maybe 2 miles to the bus stop from my place, it's 2 miles through what I usually call "My Village" - The stuff that's a reasonable walking/cycling distance from home. My village has a lot of cool places -- pretty much everything I really need and most of what I like that I don't need. Not to mention all the places that I will probably never go.

It so happens that a lot of those cool places are also offering "Black Friday" deals. That means that Quivira, one of the main roads through town, turns into a circus of selfishly inexorable motorists. They push, shove, honk, nudge, and bully one another as they attempt to shoe-horn their beasts into over-crowded parking lots. A traffic jam at 6:00 in the morning, where the stop lights aren't the bottleneck and the minor road crossings cause big problems. It was as if thousands of people were willing -- no, eager -- to participate in one Consumer Thunderdome after the next, while playing Demolition Derby between stops.

Even if I had the day off and stores were literally giving stuff away, I can't picture myself in mindless consumer zombie mode like this. I don't know how (or why) these people do it. But to each their own.

It was a pleasant ride for me, But I saw a lot of undue animosity between motorists. Thanks for not running me over, honking at me, or bullying me around on the road too much this morning.

Quick this morning

I woke up at 5, but it felt like 6, and it looked like 6. I really wish that we'd just get rid of Daylight Saving Time already, but this morning, I was taking full advantage of it.

The cloudless sky was a gradient of amethyst, azure, slate and sapphire to onyx: simply incredible, and simply impossible to capture on the camera without some HDR trickery that I simply didn't have time for this morning.

I was quick this morning. Quicker than I've been in more than a month. Not a personal best, but a spunky start to the morning, with an 18.5 MPH average. I didn't ride much last week (about 35 miles) and I took it pretty easy yesterday. Between having fresh legs and a 10 MPH hind-quarter wind this morning, I was feeling good.

The demo crew has been slowly whittling away at the grain elevator on Southwest Boulevard behind Strasser Hardware. All the silos have been destroyed, leaving behind only a skeleton of the tower on the north side. Quite a few interior shots from this elevator (post-blight, pre-demolition, of course) are in one of aeionic's photosets on Flickr.

The Shopping Card was parked out in front of City Center Square again this morning, and I had the honor of watching its pilot snort two lines of blow some fifteen feet away from me, just prior to a five-minute-long episode of voiding his sinuses into what had to be three dozen Starbucks napkins. I'm still not entirely sure what to think about that. It breaks my heart. Pray for him.

Random Tunage:
Binary Finary - 1999
Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone (Jason Nevins Mixshow)

You'd think things would get boring after a while...

But really, my commute never seems to get old. Since I started writing here in December 2006, I can count on my hands the number of uneventful days in the saddle. This includes back when I was purely multi-modal riding a few miles each day to the bus and over winter when I revert to that same paradigm. There's always something kind of fascinating.

I started off photographing things of interest almost right from the get-go. I kind of strayed away from that for a while, and got bit by the shutter bug again a few months back. Getting off the bike and taking pictures of things doesn't force me to stop and smell the proverbial roses. It's a product of stopping to take a moment and reflect on the sights, smells, sounds, and feels of the commute. And occasionally, I get to experience the taste of a gnat or mosquito, too.

I don't shoot for perfection when I write here. I use slang and wordplay that would be unacceptable in a novel or biography. There are many reasons the stuff I write here simply wouldn't fly in print, but this is my turf and I can get away with crimes against English as I see fit, despite being the spawn of a mechanical engineer and an English professor. I'd like to think this gives me a witty, edgy ability to use myriad adjectives and adverbs to salt what would otherwise be a rather prosaic daily ride report. Sometimes, people see it differently. Fortunately, most of those people fail at primary-level spelling. Good times.

While any given two of my back-to-back commutes are rarely the same, the grain elevator carnage was worth a repeat. Let's face it, very few things in America's heartland are more mystical than a history-packed 20-story edifice that's straddling the line between ripe for exploration and failure to exist. Apparently -- and without so many words -- a frequent reader and commenter named Sally (a.k.a. Sallymander) felt the same way. It turns out that one of her friends lives directly across the street from the blighted barley bins. I agreed to join them in their exploits. The mission was simple: Get inside the facility and get a ton of photos. My tertiary objective which was perhaps not shared with Sally and Barb was to carefully ascend to the pinnacle of the doomed structure if it appeared safe.

This is a lot easier if the demolition crew isn't there watching you do it. Interior access was not an option today. Neither was hiking up the elaborate network of fire escapes and safety ladders. With that, we hiked to the far side to examine the erstwhile partially pulverized office area, far away from the watchful eye of the orange-vested havoc-wreakers.


I allowed the workers to observe me photographing seemingly innocuous objects such as some flowers and a high-voltage power pole.




Then, it was on. Barb kept watch. We started photographing.






There's still a bunch of asbestos in the rubble. I'm not terribly concerned about it while on this adventure, as it takes quite a bit of exposure to cause permanent lung damage. Inside, I'd probably wear something over my mouth and nose, but we didn't get that far.


The gauge read "full" but my attempt to discharge this relic of a fire extinguisher failed miserably.


Supposedly, this elevator suffered from an explosion. Details are elusive, and I'm usually quite skilled at digging up bits of history.


Some time after Rosedale Milling Company quit using the elevator, Clorox took the facility over. The last date I can find evidence of Clorox's occupation was 1986.


Sally rescued a piece of grate material to use on her patio.


It was cool to run into Sally, who's occasionally thrown her two cents in since last September or so. I wish those pesky demolition guys would have left. I wouldn't dare putz around inside this facility without someone spotting me. That, my friends, is rule number one of urban exploration. Well, when I'm making the rules.

Random Tunage:
Suicide Commando - Hell Raiser
Frankie Bones - All The Way Home

Bike, Blight and Light.

Here's the fog light setup. 10W NiteRider Evolution running a 15W bulb. Puts out approximately 300 lumens for 90 minutes, then dies pretty soon after that.


From the other side.


And from the front. I ran it this morning instead of my DiNotte. It's great for pot-holes and it's easy to see from ahead, although once oncoming cars get too close the wheel blocks the beam. This doesn't concern me a whole lot, as I don't plan on running this light as a primary headlight. I just want a good backup for the June Moon ride.


I found what appears to be a car key on the ground. I kept it.


The mountain bike has been locked up next to me two days in a row. I'd make fun of the huge seat but my own mountain bike has a similar one.


Ah, grain elevator carnage! From the looks of things, this grain elevator in Kansas City, Kansas has been out of operation for a very, very long time. Demolition started less than two weeks ago, although it doesn't look like much progress has been made.


Literally tons of not-so-fresh wheat.


The gaping rectangular hole, however, appears to be quite old judging from the stuff within.











More carnage.












This area on the far end of the silo appears to have been used for loading trucks and railcars as well as some office space. I saw evidence that it's very recently been used for shelter and/or home.











This building, perhaps a mere two miles away from the grain elevator, is almost all the way gone, too. The semi tractor is being loaded up to haul off debris.






Mmm. Skeeter pit. This swampy water's been stagnating way too long.


Can you say West Nile Virus?


It wasn't terribly hot today, but it was really humid. Karen tops off her bottle at one of the faucets in Chatlain Park.


All in all, a nice day for a bike ride. Now, I need to get crack-a-lackin' on this tire situation.

Random Tunage:
Tul - Pepperoni Machine
Shakta - Lepton Head

Chilly? Really!

Of course, my perception of chilly has been drastically skewed what with morning temperatures often in the 70s and evening heat indexes (indices?) in the 90s. It was a clammy 57°F out this morning. The cotton t-shirt and cut-off jeans didn't feel so great for the first minute or two of my ride. My sluggish tires made sure I warmed up pretty quickly, though. And this brings me to TWO quandaries.

The first one is about my cut-off jeans. Why is it that I hear EVERY SINGLE snobby cyclist use the phrase "he was wearing cut-off jeans" when dismissing someone they saw riding? Are cut-off jeans the difference between "guy on a bike" and "cyclist?" I actually ride with cutoff jeans over an innershort chamois. Why? Because my outershorts that came with the innershorts bit the dust and I'm too broke to buy more shorts so I just cut the legs off a pair of jeans that had the knees blown out of them. Okay, and I kind of do it so that people will cringe in pain at the things that those huge seams could possibly be causing. (link not for the faint of heart. AND cycledog mentions cut-off jeans, too!)

The next one is about these tires. Seriously. Something's gotta give. I'm honestly thinking about giving my apparently compromised Forte's a try. What the worst that could happen? A front blow-out at 25 MPH? That actually sounds pleasant compared to the death slog that has become my 30 mile round trip commute. I honestly think my mountain bike's 1.95" knobbies pumped up to 70 PSI (their max pressure) would roll better than these semi-slicks at their max pressure of 40 PSI. Too bad the knobbies won't fit under these fenders. Believe me, I tried.

What else?
Oh yeah, I found my camera. It was in the bag of miscellaneous cables and gadgetry that I always bring with me when I have my laptop around. Not only did I have my camera with me on my homeward commute last night, but I had it with me this morning as well, and never knew it. This saddens me even more, because there's some seriously fascinating demolition going on in Kansas City, Kansas right now. Last night, I noticed that one of the shops in the Rosedale district had been reduced to a pile of rubble upon which a steam shovel had been perched to complete the demo job.

Also, a grain elevator is either being torn down or it blew out. Regardless, there are a pair of hundred-foot-tall reinforced concrete cylinders that are sitting there on the end of a grain elevator, missing a bunch of material. In fact, last week on one of my bus rides of shame, I managed to get a photo of the carnage from the highway. I'd love to get up close, though. I love photographing blight, and I'm not sure why.


Would you NOT love to see that bad boy up close? I would. Tonight will be the night, I think. This morning, I could have walked almost right up to the facility. We'll see how barricaded it is this afternoon. I'll stay safe. Nothing stupid like going into the damaged silos or anything like that. I just want to stand at the foot of it, or get within a hundred yards or so.

I kept up an even better pace this morning, but my legs and glutes are simply on fire right now. I don't think I've felt this sore since March. Have I mentioned I have to do something about the tires on 'zilla yet?! Egad.

Random Tunage:
Cardigans - Lovefool
Way Out West - Melt