Mr. Blameshifter.

Photo by Frank Shoemaker.

The weekend started innocently enough;

I was headed to the state capital for the Blue Collar Meet Your Maker ride/W.S.A.T.U. Once all the dust had settled from that it should be easy enough to get back home and bang out a post, right?

That’s what the plan was, but then on the heels of his pacific northwest book release tour, who should darken my door not 30 minutes after I got home but that Bike Snob fella himself;

I mean, how was I supposed to get a post written with all of that going on?

The answer is I wasn’t, but for the sake of satisfying my OCD, and getting some semblance of anything up here for today, I’ll barf up a random selection of words and images and you can do with them what you will.

As I said previously, but most recently on Friday, in amongst all of the Meet Your Maker rides, Blue Collar Robert has opted to take his and use it as a source to raise funds for two area pit bull shelters. Erroneously, I said previously that last year $15,000 grand was raised for the pups, but because I’m terrible at remembering numbers, that was incorrect. Last year $8,000 dollars was raised, and this year, we were looking to top that figure.

Waking up at the ass crack of dawn on Saturday, we made our way to the venue to begin setting up.

To save you from having to read a bunch of words, and me having to hunt and peck them out to begin with, I’ll simply offer the following selection of images, which are to the best of my recollection how I remember things going down;

This up here is Toby, and he and I were bike messengers together back in the roaring 90s. We had kinda lost a little bit of touch with one another, but at the Meet Your Maker ride were able to reconnect and spend a portion of the day riding bike along side one another as we reminisced about our glory days.

We were young, and beautiful, and the world was ours for the taking.

As it turns out, now we’re old, and beautiful, and it would seems as though the world is still ours for the taking.


























They truly were the best of times.

At the conclusion to all of the madness, we packed up, broke down, cleaned up, and shipped off, after which we wound up in a backyard enjoying a well-earned fire and continued binge drinking;

Which resulted in a fair showing on my part;

Not my best, and not my worst.

I’ll always have next time or not.

The following day we took our show on the road and went back out along the 70 mile route to clean up the course markers, and make sure everything was just as we left it;





It was a fantastic weekend filled with fantastic people and fantastic hijinx, and I can’t thank the Blue Collar family enough for putting forth the effort for both the sweet pups, as well as or community at large.

As I said at the top of the post, we were looking to top last year’s $8,000 raised for Sac County Dogs, and Chako Pit Bull Rescue, which this year we bested by $3,000. Clearly an additional thanks should be extended to the folks who bought raffle tickets. I hope you won stuff. If you didn’t, at least you know that your hard earned cash is going to make a better life for some sweet, sweet little blockheads;
See what I mean?

Those critters make me melt.

So I suppose the question remains… Have I been able to properly recollect, or at the very least, shoot adequate photos in an effort to document any of the chaos at the capital?

I doubt it, but as long as I can figure someone else to blame, I’ll remain in good shape.