All great bike projects begin, and end, with ...

... the right tools? (Plenty of those to go around in this joint.) No, shoot lower, young Grasshopper. Baby powder? Well, no tube is properly installed without it, but ... think of the gentle fizz of malted barley goodness. Beer. Yes, BEER. I really thought seriously about naming my blog "Buddhas, Bikes and Beer." That would have been way more cool. Instead, I wanted to sound more esoteric, symbolic and artsy. (I'm beginning to notice that I really ought to get on my manservant to clean up the place more often.)

I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately. So, I offer up image 'Exhibit B': a little momento placed in my hands by Herr Houts many moons since.

A touching image which has baffled many a friend and turned away countless fine concubines. I do not find it baffling, offensive, nor off-putting. I once worked very closely with cows. (I, unlike my friends at the time, did not find my acquired odor "baffling, offensive, nor off-putting" either.) I tended them (cows, not the friends); I milked them; I wrote poetry about them. And it was all because of an hallucinogenic 8-month stint working third shift on a dairy farm. Hey, I got free tuition because it was the dairy owned by my illustrious alma mater, The University of TN. It was an "experimental and research facility." Don't ask me about rBGH. I know I toasted some potentially good karma with that gig. But I did save a lot of breach-birth calves. You haven't lived 'til you're elbow deep in a heifer trying to pluck a boney, slimey mass of surprisingly fragile life from the grips of suffocation. One one cold, snowy Christmas Eve night I saved a calf. No, I didn't corellate the incident with the birth of a gooey Baby Jesus. But, unfortunately, I think it was a bull. In which case it was promptly removed from its mother and possibly slaughtered months later for veal. Milk's about cows (girly cows, that is). No need for man-folk in this harem. They ain't nothin' a 2 foot stainless steel syringe and some frozen bull seed can't replace. Ah, the joys of factory farming. Amen.

For anyone in the know, who 'da thunk Sov was in A Clockwork Orange?