Peach Street Lords Of Balance - Unite!

My roommate Tim displays the PSLOB weapon of choice, the 5-foot-tall giraffe unicycle. This vehicle strikes fear into the hearts of all who dare set foot into our territory.

The blurry photo is appropriate because my first time on the giraffe was shaky at best. I was successful on my first try and rode it down the street and most of the way back.

Tim makes it look easy.

Husker green and black?

My dad took me to a Husker game this last Saturday. Gotta see the team open up a tall-boy can of whup-ass on the Trojans. Ok, not THE Trojans, but the ones from Troy,. Alabama. I guess they were just working out their frustrations from the USC game. It's been a long time since my Dad and I had seen a game together, as you can see we are out of practice and forgot to wear red. As the night went on I put on my bright, yellow jacket which made it very easy for us to spot each other in the crowd.

The new HuskerVision video board is insanely huge. That whole thing is a video screen, even the side parts with scores, stats and ads. It's over 115 feet wide. I heard that it's currently the 3rd largest video screen in the world. The U. of Texas has the largest, of course. Just how big is it? I was in my car at the corner of 11th and South streets, over 1.5 miles directly south of the stadium and I could clearly watch replays on it. Even more crazy, it's HDTV ready but not yet displaying an HDTV image (they have to buy new cameras) so it will get even clearer.

Beware carbon fiber!

Carbon fiber is scary. My co-worker and friend Matt Peterson's fork on his road bike broke at the base of the steer-tube. Amazingly, he wasn't hurt. Do forks really need carbon fiber steer tubes? Do you save that much weight? The bike industry is going carbon crazy. You see it everywhere being put in every application possible. Carbon fiber chainrings are a reality! If one of those snap on a climb it could be as bad as a fork snapping. You have to wonder how many catastrophic failures the industry will be seeing in about 3 to 5 years.

Beware re-tread!

Spare tires are scary. A couple of weeks ago I was driving to GI to suprise my mother on her birthday. My car started to vibrate. I got off the interstate to get on a slower moving highway. I inspected my tires. No damage visible. I kept driving, the vibration continued and worsened. BLAMMO!!! Blow-out. Stranded nine miles from GI. Happy Birthday, mom. I'm buying you four new tires for my car. Moral of the story. Don't drive for two months on a spare, even if it is a full-size tire.

State Fair!!!

Last week Kimber and I ventured to the State Fair to take in the sites and sounds. It had been a few years since either of us had attended the fair and we were both excited to eat junk food on a stick and be subjected to a verbal barrage of taunts and sales pitches from carnies on the mid-way and booth vendors in the expo hall. What fun!

















One of the first things we saw at the fair was the giant Roberts Dairy cow. If you havent's seen it before, it's quite big and is an attractive, stylized representation of a dairy cow... except for the udders. If you've ever seen one of these cows you've undoubtedly noticed the very veiney udder. I don't get it. It looks gross and the rest of the cow looks cute. I'm not a farm kid, but I can assume cows have veins on their udders, but are they that pronounced? Ewwww.

















My main reason for going to the fair was to discover as many types of food-on-a-stick as possible. I wanted to eat as much of this decidedly fair fare as possible, but was limited by a budget (fair food ain't cheap) and gastronomical tastes. For example, here we see a Corn Dog stand. Corn dogs are about as American as you can get. I love cornbread and I like hot dogs, but put them together though, and I gag. I can't explain it. To say the least, I passed on the corn dogs.



















This stand claimed to be from Louisiana. Judging by the attendent's accents and lack of dental hygeine I'd assume they were telling the truth. Kimber and I decided to try the shrimp on a stick, passing on the gator "tastes like chicken" meat.

State Fair!! (part 2)

Here we see Kimber getting ready to enjoy her shrimp on a stick. Pretty much like a deep-fat fried kabob. Hmmm... I don't recall seeing any Kabab stands at the fair. They use a stick, what's up with those Carnies?



Fried peaches on a stick. Didn't try that one but was told it tasted like peach pie. I'll have to give it a go next year.



I had heard about Cheese on a stick, but wasn't quite sure what that would be like. Kimber and I decided to split one. The breading makes it look like a corndog, but the center is all Velveta-y cheese. Tasted an awful lot like a grilled cheese sandwich. It would've been better if you could choose your cheese variety. "Yes, I'll have the fried brie on a stick with a medium merlot--no ice please."



I'm not familiar with the Husker Indian tribe. Does anyone know where their reservation is located?


When I was in Scotland last summer the locals were bragging about their love of fried foods and that you can get pretty much anything deep-fat fried, including candy bars. I didn't try one but saw them being served in plastic baskets on wax paper and being consumed with utensils. Yeah, well leave it to good ol' American ingenuity to add "THE STICK!"



One vendor was selling Coke-on-a-stick and being parched from all that stick-y food I decided to quench my thirst. Well, what sounded good in theory didn't work so well in execution. All I ended up getting was sticky.

We ended our food-on-a-stick consumption with a pickle-on-a-stick. Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery juice and I failed to document it. You'll have to take my word for it, it was tasty.