friday may 16th
june madrona
josh kane
shelby sifers (portland)
morgan orion (illinois)
+ more!

5:30 pm under the 4th avenue bridge
please bring donations for touring bands!

I'm new in town (9 months), and would love some background info on the Capitol Center Tower. I live near the Capitol, and cannot believe how such an ugly building could have been built right in the middle of one of the most beautiful scenes in North America. How could it be allowed to happen? I'm assuming money, greed, and stupidity is involved, but that thing belongs in the Guinness Book of the World's Ugliest Buildings. If someone could direct me to good resources of information I would be grateful. Also, why is it currently vacant? Has anyone thought about putting a private foundation together to buy the building and tear it down? If someone can also let me know how to sign up for e-mail notification on public meetings related to the "mistake by the lake", I would love to get involved. Dave

(I missed a few days, I know. Didn't ride at all yesterday or Saturday; Sunday's ride was actually kinda lame. Freezing cold, blown almost sideways.)

So I'm writing this series as part of my Bike Commute Contest experience, but I don't tend to take the "Contest" part of the thing very seriously. I just don't ride anywhere near enough to be in the running for any sort of prize. The first year I rode, the guy who won was biking from Olympia to DUPONT. Yeah. Not ever ever ever going to beat that, or even get in the general neighborhood of it.

And there's always one crappy day where I just say "eh" and skip the ride, so there goes consistency. (Plus consistency award ties get broken by distance IIRC, so we're back to that.)

But...I can count all of this for two other contests! At work, we're doing this 10K steps a day challenge, which even includes a "friendly" competition with a few other credit unions in town. Bike time counts, too. So with that and some very serious gardening on the weekends, I'm averaging the equivalent of 18,800+ steps per day. I'm sure someone who hiked 10 miles is probably going to kick my ass, but I'm feeling pretty good about it anyway.

Then, I'm in this online bike challenge group as part of another website community, and this summer the founder has announced a "streak" challenge, so whoever rides the most consecutive days wins a super-cool GPS bike computer. (Drool drool drool) Again, I can't win for distance (although last month & so far this month I'm right around #10), but I can definitely be consistent, assuming I can tough out the "eh" days.

As posted by Judd Taylor to Opium, reposted with permission:

"As some or all or none of you might have heard, I had planned on closing down [Phantom City Records] entirely come summer. Fortunately I found a cool buyer for the store named Dave and he'll be taking over operations at the beginning of July. He's a real mensch, and will make the store better and better so be sure to show him some love."

How well do you know Olympia? Here's the game: Each Saturday (or Wednesday) I post a picture from somewhere around Olympia and people try to figure out its location. The first person who gets it correct is the first person who correctly got the location *yay!*.