Yay!

I got a new laptop for Christmas!!! It's so cutey and baby, an Acer Aspire One, the keyboard was a little awkward at first but in getting used to it. I also got new ski boots which have been a hueg pain to break in. Merry Christmas everyone!
I've been working at City Bicycle Works during break. They were nice enough to let me work for a few weeks so I could make myself some dollars.
I can't wait to get back to NO I'm missing everyone and my bike terribly.

Lolwhuts? Sneaux?

Thursday was totally rad. It snowed in New Orleans, and it actually stuck to the ground for a while! I took a bunch of pictures, so I'm gonna post some of them here.


Yay!

Giving thanks and getting presents.

I spent my first birthday/Thanksgiving away from my family this year. I went to a small town in Georgia an hour north of Tallahassee (I'm not sure what the name is) with the Boy and his parents and nephew. It was loads of fun, but I definitely missed having Thanksgiving at home. I missed having adobo, tinola, and lumpia along with normal Thanksgiving foods. It was really nice to spend time with Brian's family and bum around in Mobile and Georgia. His sister and I have the same birthday, so we got to have a fun little celebration. Brian still hasn't taken me to get my present. I definately wont let him forget before I have to go home. My parents got me a new camera for my birthday! It's an Olympus Stylus 1030 SW. I love it. I already knew I would, since it's pretty much the same camera I had before, but there's just something so much more awesome when its brand new and shiny. I haven't had a chance to take pictures just yet. Tomorrow is pretty promising. This weekend couldn't have come sooner. School is getting so so super busy since it's finals time now. I've already had two of them and I'm a lot less stressed out about it than I normally am. Then winter break is coming up next week and I'll be able to go home. Which means skiing and snowboarding, and hopefully working at the shop.
This morning I got another flat tire, which made me very very sad. These crappy crappy roads are not being very nice to me.

Gallery Piece

Last night I journeyed to the Howlin' Wolf to see the legendarily fabulous band of Montreal. Please do give them a listen or two if you haven't yet. Their music is quite magical.
We arrived at the venue at about 8:40 considering that the ticket said 9:00 on it, so we assumed that that meant that the show would start at that time. Turns out my normally solid logic is very much incorrect, as we waited in a line that did not move for the better part of an hour. Once we stepped and assumed a position near the sound equipment modules we stood around for another eternity until the opening band, the Icy Demons from Chicago came out to play. I'm still not sure how I felt about their music. I like a lot of the things they did, but I felt like they didn't quite have everything together.
They finished their set and suddenly everything became so much more crowded. I've never been one to suffer from claustrophobia, but I was starting to feel rather squished. Also I made the mistake of wearing my brand new boots from Target which I have not broken in properly.
I loved all the people who came dressed up who came all dressed up or with face paint. I always love when people are really excited about shows.
of Montreal came onto the stage pretty close to 12 if I remember correctly. I could be lying. They were awesome. So titillating and wonderful. My night was magical and filled with centaurs and Kevin Barnes' beautiful body prancing about.
There was a guy in front of me who seemed to be on a mission to irritate me. He had long hair in a low ponytail, and was standing way inside my personal envelope. Every time I tried to move around I would bump him somehow and he would whip his head around, hitting me with his lady-hair and give me a stink eye. This continued for most of the show, even after he began dancing around, backing up into me even more. So I spent a while sandwiched between my boyfriend and lady man. I decided to do something about it so I began counter-dancing. Which is usually very successful in making people move away from you when your are in a crowded venue.
The show ended at around 1:30 or 2am, and my boy and I were so far past our bedtimes that we became quite crabby.
I am very sleepy right now, but there's still an hour to go with my shift.

Adam's Whip

This is my buddy Adam's ride. Its a Nishiki with a purple chain, and I'm super jealous of it.

I got home from NATS last night. I ended up going throught to the finals and I placed fourth in the sophomore women's division. My prize was a hefty check for $15.00, a certificate, and something nice to put on my resume. My comment sheets from the first round said that I have a "creamy sound". I really like the ring of it.

Late Halloween Post

So I know it's not Halloween anymore but it was fabulous. I started off the night by falling off my bike like a fool. I accidentally hit my front brake and did a superman over my handlebars onto State street. I scraped my elbow horribly and bruised myself a bit, but the saddest thing was that I ruined my nurse costume. It was so so sad. Luckily my friends decided to pour fake blood on me and I felt so much better. We rode to Jackson Square and did the mass. It was my first one ever, and I'm so glad because everyone being in costume, and everything being so busy in the Quarter made it a great first time. 

This last week has been so eventful, what with elections and all. I'm so glad Obama won. I knew he would. I am very depressed about prop 8 being passed back home. I don't even want to get into it. It wouldn't be very productive for me to do that here.

I am currently in Natchitoches, Louisiana for NATS, which is a singing competition. We had the prelims this morning. I forgot some of my words, but I finished strong and I think I did alright. Hopefully I get to go to the second round.

Cool Bikes Post!

So I've been seeing neat bikes around town and on campus. I love it.

Awesome banana seat FTW!

Flat Tire

Oh wow. I got my first flat of my entire life the other day. I didn't want to belive it was happening, so I kept riding on it until I got to the music building. Now there's a gash in the sidewall of my tire. I was so upset. Here I had gone almost 19 years of life without any flat tires. I knew it would have to happen eventually, but not yet.
I'm very proud of myself for changing the tire on my own though. The wheel has a bit of a wobble in it, but I'm sure it'll be fine for now. I'm gonna try and go to Plan B this weekend to get it all fixed up before Halloween week, since I'm sure I'll be needing to ride around.
VooDoo Fest is this weekend. I still don't know for sure if I'm going, but I really want to. Boo expensive tickets. I spent most of my money on a refrigerator and clothes. Shiny fun dresses and a nurse costume for Halloween. I spent waay too much money on silly things in the last week. But I really wanted them all. So it's alright, right?

Ring Ring

Ughblah. I was late for Nightwatch. I hate doing that. I take a nap before my shift, and my alarm didn't go off, and when my phone started ringing I thought it was the alarm... and oh well. Now I'm here and that's what counts. I have a West Civ quiz tomorrow which I haven't studied for yet.


With every day that passes I realize how awful not having a camera is. There are so many people riding in New Orleans, and I want to take pictures of them and put them here. I'm going to borrow one of my friends' cameras.

I also lost my cell phone last week. I've gotten a new one already, but it is very stressful not knowing who is calling me. Especially when it is someone like my boss or my voice teacher. I only have about ten peoples' numbers in my phone now. I was thinking about making one of those irritating Facebook "I lost my phone OMGOMG" groups but I think that that is far too silly and I always hate getting invited to those anyway. I'm sure that people whose numbers I'd rather not have would join it too. So now I can be selective in re-collecting people's phone numbers. It is somewhat refreshing not to have a whole bunch of people in your contacts list.


Other than that, I'm quite overjoyed really. The boy and I have been riding to all sorts of places. Tonight he was riding around holding his trumpet case in one hand.


I can't wait to get to sleep.

Hellz yeah, Thomas Edison.

Yeah, Thomas Edison is a badass.

I couldn't make it out to the bike mapping this weekend due to work. So I'm totally bummed, but I'm gonna try and make it out to critical mass this month and to the Zombiecat Race on Halloween! I still need to buy costumes... hopefully I can ride over to a costume store this week.

Here's the info on the race:

zombiecat bicycle race
fridayoctober 31st, 2008
jackson square
register @ 6pm
race @ 7pm
afterparty, contests, prizes, goldsprints
$5 to race
$3 for zombie

Contact info@nolabikerace.com to volunteer.

Here's to a super weekend

Amazingly I couldn't find the time to post last night during my Night Watch shift like I normally do. Night Watch is basically the front desk person at our residence halls, who stays up from 12am to 4am on Wednesday and Thursday nights and 2am to 6am on Friday and Saturday nights. I work the desk on Wednesday and Friday every week. Usually I had been posting from there, since I'm up for 4 hours and usually have nothing to do except watch Youtube videos and listen to music. Usually my friends who never sleep come visit me. Its actually a pretty fun job because I get to sit behind the front desk and watch all the drunk people come in. Sometimes they come talk to me, but they're part of the reason I'm there. If one of the residents comes in and they're really really messed up I'm supposed to call university police who come and get them an abulance. Also I make sure people who don't live in the building can't get in and cause trouble.

Being on ResLife means that they pay for my room and board, so I really don't mind being up at all hours of the night talking to drunks.

I lost my cell phone on Monday, which is very upsetting. I had a Palm Centro, and basically had my entire life on that phone. I hadn't scynced it with my computer since August, so I lost most all of the stuff I had on it. Luckily my parents had it insured so Sprint is shipping me a new phone which is supposed to get here tomorrow, but I won't be able to get it from our pathetic package room until Monday. But I'll be glad to have a phone back. I had to write my friend's phone numbers in a little notebook I've been carrying around. And I hate asking people to borrow their cell phones all the time. Also I never know what time it is anymore. I should probably just buy a watch.

Something awesome happened this week though! My boyfriend finally bought a bike! He got a Giant Boulder mountain bike with street tires. It's a pretty solid bike, I really don't know much of anything about mountain bikes, but I've heard pretty good things about Giant. As soon as we got home with his bike he wanted to go for a ride, so we got some of our friends together and rode around in Audubon park and over to the Tree, where we found a bunch of my other friends who had ridden over there earlier and were climbing in the Tree. Now almost all my close friends have bicycles. I can start a bike gang. Or not and say I did.

So, theres some bike mapping this weekend! I'm going on Saturday for sure.

Saturday October 11th, 4pm - Palmer Park. Mapping Hollygrove.

Sunday October 12th, 4pm - Samuel Square. Mapping Central City.

October!

Wow! It's already October. The last few months have gone by pretty quick. But with October comes absolutely beautiful New Orleans weather, lots of frat and sorority parties, fall clothes, and HALLOWEEN. My favorite holiday after Mardi Gras and Christmas. I love Halloween. Why? Because it's an excuse to dress up in ridiculous clothes and drink excessively. And since the month leading up to Halloween is crammed with ridiculous costume parties, dress up days, and themed rides, the month of October should really be renamed Octoween. Upon my boyfriend's request I'm going to be prancing around as a nurse. I will definately be pulling my school uniform out of the closet.

There are two NolaCycle bike mapping rides this weekend.

Saturday October 4th, 4pm - Comiskey Park. Mapping Mid-City/Treme.

Sunday October 5th, 4pm - Park at Esplanade and Grand Rte St John. Mapping 7th Ward/Fairgrounds.

There's some sort of ride coming up this weekend, I read about it on NolaCycle. Crunkical Mass is what it's called, and it sounds like its going to be pretty rad. I'm going to try and go for sure. Any excuse to dress up and ride with people. And it's right after mapping, so everyone should go map and then ride over to the Crunkical deal. Heres the flyer, which I stole from NolaCycle, as usual.

I want this weather to last forever...

It has been absolutely beautiful out as of late. Its been sunny, but not too hot and then there's been a wonderful breeze. I've been going for rides almost every day this week. I rode up and down magazine on Monday and stopped by American Apparel and Buffalo Exchange to get some fun accessories. On Tuesday my friend Jason and I rode around in Audubon park and up around the Fly. We kept getting passed by old people, but I didn't mind at all because I was having so much fun. I love how cycling has brought me so many new friends who love to ride. The sense of
community that comes along with a bicycle is so inspiring.
Unfortunately I can't go on the bike mapping rides this weekend since I'll be out of town again, so here's the times and locations for this weekend's rides

Saturday September 27th, 4pm - Freret St. at McAlister Dr. Mapping Freret and Uptown.

Sunday September 28th, 4pm - Freret St. at McAlister Dr. Mapping Broadmoor.

Bored

I only had one class today. I wanted to go for a ride since its been so sunny and nice out lately. But of course on the day that I want to go out, it's raining. Boo rain. I don't like you at all. So guess what I'm going for a ride anyways! No longer will you prevent me from enjoying my day. I'm gonna put on my rain boots and go.

I found this picture on my computer a while ago, it's my family on our tandem-tandem trail a bike monster that my father would pull us all around on.

I have no idea who that kid with training wheels is, but I'm in the red shirt. That thing was very difficult to turn, but it was fun to ride on the back and put my feet up and let dad do all the work. My little sister would wobble back and forth which would generally upset the balance and my mother. Good times... My dad wants to sell that thing, but I want to keep it.

Maps and Alleycats

Sunday's mapping was awesome! Me and my buddy JohnHenry went as a team and made quick work of the area around Langenstiens. Lauren is going back to her school, which is a total bummer since I only just met her. But she'll be back for more fun soon. I can't wait to do more mapping, I love meeting other cyclists. Here's the map so far, I pulled it from nolacycle. The blue bits are finished. It's looking pretty good.


One of the guys I met at the mapping is going to help me start a cycling club at Loyola, which would be so rad I would'nt know what to do with myself. I also convinced one of my good friends to flip his hub and ride fixie with me. Now I just have to work on getting my boyfriend a bike. Won't be too hard.

Also, there's an alleycat coming up this weekend!! Here's the flyer:
I won't be in town for it so I'm pretty bummed. A Wonderland theme sounds so awesome! But I'm going to be sailing in Mobile with The Boy. I wonder if he'll let me bring my bike...

Uptown Mapping

Today's mapping was an exciting adventure! The turnout was not very big, just me and another girl, but we still had loads of fun mapping between Nashville and Audubon Park. I'm going to go again tomorrow... hopefully more people will be there.

It's, like, 3:30 in the morning.

My plans to go for a ride today were thwarted by Hurricane Ike. I woke up and saw that it was storming like crazy outside so I decided to stay in and sit around instead, which I regret terribly. Honestly how often do you get to ride in a hurricane? At least I went to Michaels Bicycles down on Frenchman to have my new stem put on.

Can't wait to go map uptown this afternoon.

Also Clif Mojo bars are amazing and are keeping me alive right now. Peanut Butter Pretzel. Go try it. It's good.

First Post!?

This is my blog about riding and living in New Orleans. I go to Loyola University and after a summer of working at my local bike shop back home in Sacramento I got myself a little Pake fixie and started dodging potholes as soon as I came back for fall semester. I love this city and one of the best ways to take it all in is by bike.

I want to start posting pictures from my adventures in the city, but I dropped my camera in a river over the summer and I need to aquire some dollars before I can replace it.

In other news NolaCycle bike map project will be mapping it up in uptown this weekend. Here's the flyer. All the cool kids are going, and I'll be there so try and come!