Stuck on the front

Just a quick note about the last post which was Kao's first contribution to this blog. As you can tell if you read (or saw) all the way down to the end of the post, the title "I'm sticking with you" is a reference to the Velvet Underground song of the same title. The video she picked is a version by VU's Moe Tucker and Jonathan Richman. Though I think I prefer this original version featuring Lou Reed.

I'm sticking with you from ali demirel on Vimeo.

As I mentioned before, Kao thinks her English is not good enough to write any text here with, so instead her contributions are more visually oriented. Her post features pictures she took of me over the years while we were riding our bikes together. Not all the pictures she took were from the behind, but to go with the theme, she picked these ones. First picture was taken in 2005 before we were married while visiting her parents home in Kashima. The following pictures are from when I still lived in NYC. I'm riding my old Rockhopper (stolen last year) there. It wasn't a fast bike, but very solid and can go over any bumps on the road without worry. My road bike is faster, but feels a bit fragile in comparison. In Japan, I'm either riding a Mamachari (I think I will do a post about the Mamachari sometime) or my Dahon folding bike. Neither are fast or comfortable enough to go on long rides with, but the bikes we rented when we went to Kyoto this new year were really excellent as far as rental bikes go. The ride was pretty solid and almost as good as my old Rockhopper and they even had disc brakes. Towards the end of the post, I'm riding my road bike here in Portland.


(the rental bike we rode in Kyoto)

It's not like I prefer riding in the front all the time, but I am better with directions and also because I have been riding much longer than Kao, so I tend to ride a bit faster, and it always seem to work out with me in the front. But I'm sure you are tired (as I am) of seeing pictures of me, so here's a photo of Kao I took while riding behind her on our trip to Kyoto.



She's definitely the more photogenic member of Mumbreeze.