billy spaceman, kristine and i went out to the cross crusade. it was a really good time and best of all i found out that i won the election pool. i'd put five dollars down betting that we'd know who the president was on november 3rd. now all i've got to do is call the guy who organized it and collect my wad.
spaceman just called to tell me that the john deere is finished. i'm pretty excited that i get to pick it up tomorrow. now before you ask what the fuck the john deere is, i'll give you the short version story.
back in the spring my friend martin shipped me a bike that had lived in someone's back yard for a while and gotten a rather rusted. i'd been toying with buying a fixed gear so this seemed like an excellent chance to put one together on the cheapst. i took it down and had spaceman help me get it disassembled (okay, i sort of stood there and watched while spaceman worked on it). he pronounced it a lucky find, and brandon asked why he never got anything good like that for free.
eventually, it made it's way to colorfx (a super cool paint shop in north portland) to be striped and powder coated. i wasn't sure what color i wanted so asked for the dealer's choice. when i picked it up i found a john deere green frame (that matched someone's lawn furniture) waiting for me. knowing that every bike worth it's salt has a theme to it, it was clear that this one was to be known as the john deere.
there's still quite a bit of work to be done yet. before the weather goes totally to crap i'm going to get a set of fenders and spray paint them john deere yellow. after that i'm going to try and pick up a set of decals to complete the look.
all totaled i'll probably have dropped about $400 on it. not a bad price for a hot looking fixie considering that the price include the the booze to pay for bill's labor. i'll get some pictures up when it's finished.
update: talked to chevil and he pointed me to some yellow fenders. when i mentioned that i was looking for something to use as a head badge he told me how while on a 300 mile bike trip he'd come across one of the bicycles that deere made in the 70s sitting on a junk heap. he popped off the badge and had been holding onto it ever since. i've got to come up with something to trade him for it.
i spent the day yesterday canvassing outer se portland with acorn. walking around in the rain and cold i kept telling myself that this is what democracy feels like, a lot of work. i did a pretty good job of avoiding the tv until about 11pm. what i saw didn't look good.
kerry's concession this morning has me wondering what's going to happen. i hope that when all the second guessing is done people come to the realization that it was a fucking close election. there wasn't a blowout for either side, the republicans just squeaked by. they did a better job of getting out the vote than most people expected and it paid off.
that said, in the last year and a half the left has built up an amazing set of activist groups. i really, truly hope that we can keep the infrastructure in place to fight back in the house and senate races in 2006. the republicans are going to have FULL control of the government for at least that long and bush's probably going to get to pick two supreme court justices. we're going to have to fight like hell to slow down the destruction of this country.
back in 2000 i thought to myself "how bad can it be?" well this time i've got an idea. quite a few of my friends want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that it won't affect them. i wish i could believe that. it's going to be a rough couple of years.