Minneapolis local 30/40-something hipster literati mag The Rake has as its cover story for November's issue a story about Dan Buettner, adventurer, explorer, cyclist. To give you a rough taste of what Dan is about, the story opens thusly: "Dan Buettner is best known as a writer and extreme adventurer who rode his bike around the world from east to west and from north to south through the Americas and Africa and Europe and Asia. He has crossed the roadless Sahara desert, numerous jungles, and active war zones." Here's a link to the online story, but what it doesn't show,…

Sunday sunday sunday! At the Knoxville Speedway! See Big Daddy Don Bodean's funny car! See Gravedigger bury Bigfoot! Some go, some blow! Ten bucks buys you the whole seat, but you only need the edge!!! It's Homie Fall Fest time again. And just in time too, as it marks the end of summer around here, and we're all sick of stupid summer with its pleasant temperatures. We're from MN, dammit, and Homie is, depending on your point of view, either a rally to mark the end of the summer riding season, a rally to get yinz'all motivated for the winter…

And to the freaks in the house if you're ready to bounce we can go to the flat and get tantric -Black Thought -----

Local Stuff-N-Things Exhibit A: The bar crawl breed of ride is getting pretty popular around these parts lately, and this kind of ride wasn't suffering any popularity problems as it was. The Bar Crawl could be the new Meat Raffle (Yes, meat raffle. Mainly a Minnesota thing. I still don't quite get why meat raffles are so popular in MN but they are. Don't ask, don't tell). Happily, the Eight Hour Day people (although the ride is ostensibly not associated with them) appear to be incidental cyclists, and they appear to be kick ass graphic artists to boot. What I…

The casinos in Vegas (at least the ones attempting to be expensive...no mean feat in a town where a simple cheap lighter costs $3.50 on The Strip) pump in a weird gas. It's a combination of oxygenated air and some sort of air 'freshener' that smells like formaledhyde and urinal cake. I swear you can see it; you can sure tell when you're breathing it. A walk through a rendering plant situated next to a sewage treatment facility would be slightly worse. There are lights flashing and sounds blaring at all hours, everywhere you go. Getting anywhere is a huge…