casual ultimate » bikes

it is a gorgeous chicago fall day for the 2008 election and this blogger has tickets to obama’s election night rally in grant park! woot! we got lucky enough to get them before they disappeared so the casuals will be in grant park to witness history.. either our first black president gets elected or the loop erupts into an absurd riot. clearly we are hoping for the former. get out and vote today!

also in other non political news team pegasus, the cycling team that i joined but then shirked all summer while planning the wedding, is having a recruitment meeting at weegee’s a week from today at 8pm. so if you still read this blog and are interested in racing for an awesomely fun team come out and see what its all about.

in other pegasus news.. the team has put together a calendar of lady cyclists to raise money for the team and for world bicycle relief. you can pre-order yours here. there is even a NSFW version cause im not gonna lie.. some of my teammates are giving it all away. Im not of course but i am nevertheless in the calendar with my bike (Im july) and so is ms. ultimate’s new haven roommate (she’s october). anyways the team and world bicycle relief are both great causes so buy a nudie calendar for charity.

i will probably post about the wedding at length at some point (i can hear you holding your breath your so excited) and hopefully chuck or bjorn will give us a post about nationals? anyway is anyone out there?

happy election day!

edit:

heres a video of our own flying viking at nationals making a heroic catch.

so after getting my stem and riser bars stolen off my bike two weeks ago i have not ridden my bike to work again. its starting to get frickin rediculous so i thought id buy another bike for commuting. something less flashy and track bike-y for bad weather. well my new baby is on its way. its an empella bonfire cross bike i found on ebay. pretty but still pretty rough and tumble. ill get some locking screws and cross my fingers that it will be safe outside my work.

on another note im getting lasik on thursday morning. the magic of science is going to make me able to see in less than a week. this is profoundly scary for some reason.. mostly because ive never had surgery of any kind but also because everyone knows that when you want creepy medical stuff to go away you close your eyes (and possibly cry or whimper) but for lasik you have to be wide eyed and awake. i hope they have lots of valium on hand.

friday i had my preliminary appointment and they super dialated my eyes to the point where i went back to work and couldn’t read at all. also my eye doctor berated me for wearing someone else’s glasses. my prescription was so old and it was only for two weeks so i didnt want to buy new ones.. and my friend ben had some old glasses that were close to my prescription. they work fine. but the doc thought i was a total nut. her actual words were ‘wow i’ve never seen something like that from an educated person.’ wait wait.. i’m educated? werd.

also friday night we had a little going away fete for simon and amy (of chicks and drinks fame) at delilahs. this was one of the better parties ive been to lately. great crowd. great beer for cheap. well miss chivolvos premiere couple.

im hoping well get an update from lei out when everyone gets back. yall are lucky youre in la. its a degree outside her. a. degree. burrrr….

It’s Christmas time in Townville. We are all gathered in Pompano Beach, FL to annualize our love for each other. How do I love thee? Let me count the years that I have come to this same place in the month of December.

This year, we tried something new: not playing tennis. Here’s some pictures of the tennis we didn’t play.

(footage not found)

I’d just like to make positive mentions or “Pos Mens” of two gifts in particular. Mama Town has a tradition of giving Jess and I a particular gift every year. For Jess, it’s an angel. For me, it’s a nutcracker. However, this year, she took it to the next level and created a nutcracker of me at Nationals in all my Brass Monkey gear. For Jess, she created this bike-riding angel. I think the symbolism is quite powerful. I have powerful jaws that can be controlled from my lower back in real-life, and Jess is a messenger from God in real-life. That’s why it makes sense.

Here are the pictures:

well in the long list of violence done to my cursed bianchi, the insane huge dent and hole that showed up in my top tube at some point on saturday night while we were at the after party for the sadie hawkins day race is certainly the worst. ending the evening by biking home ever so slowly so as to not finish the job of ripping my frame in half was a little disappointing. i cant figure out if someone was trying to steal it and just destroyed the frame before they could get through the lock or what but i always make it a policy to put my bike next to way nicer bikes in the hope that thieves will look at the others first and it still got jacked up. go figure.

the party was great. huge fantastic loft space. everyone we know. tons of cheap beer. plus tbrizzle and sally took it to the house and made it in 10th place out of about 100 teams which is a fantastic finish. they showed those nerdy fixed gear hipsters for sure. its called athleticism and it comes from chasing a frisbee, not wearing tight jeans and a bandana. nice work peeps. also michelle (of chicks and drinks fame) and her new hubby won the best dressed award and jessi came in second at the skid comp. heres a pic of the newleyweds with aaron wearing his fake moustache as a unibrow. all around nice weekend especially dance party central courtesy of andrew.

thank god i made it through this weekend in one piece. things are shaking up at the office and the fact that im still employed and might eventually afford replacing the bike that was trashed is, in itself, a cause for celebration. if im going to get fired however, it might as well be for blogging. happy monday. and happy belated bday to dr. tanguay. and congrats to the hales-es.

miss casual

p.s. can we get a role call of who is in for black wednesday night mayhem thanksgiving weekend on the forum? i cant wait to see everybody.

well all our friends are back from nationals by now but after playing their butts off all weekend in sarasota im sure they need a day or two to recoup and collect their thoughts… check email, call mom, check in with their tivo, etc. hopefully well get some recap and highlights after all that but to give them a breather heres what happened in chicago this weekend.

the race. it was awesome. went off basically without a hitch. check out simon bringing the pain to his checkpoint in the video above. we had 29 teams and we raised a pile of cash for cornerstone plus everyone was in costume and the afterparty was a hit. big thanks to dave and rodan for putting up with all of us. the only minor snag was that 20,000 war protestors were in union park right when our race was starting. it was a little confusing to say the least. why couldnt they have their protestacular another day? oh well. heres some of us getting swarmed by them as they began their march downtown.

another minor miracle was this guy from one less car clothing just swooped in (literally swooped) out of nowhere and brought us a bunch of shirts and stuff for prizes. we are now best friends forever with those guys. the Brs and ms. mimms did the race and said they had fun. cbr’s porcupine costume was interesting to say the least. you dont often see an architect dressed in all black and covered in clothes pins riding a bike.

meanwhile i was watching scores on the upa website and clenching my teeth. i was on the war phone to mama town during brass monkey’s face off to the death with tandem that took it to double game point. i almost died of the tension but brass pulled it out and went on to semis. the talk in the forum was the big upsets in the open bracket in pool D with furious going 0-3 the first day as the top seed in that pool and chain lightening going 3-0 as the bottom seed (ATL represent!). madness.

anyway wished we could’ve dusted off our press passes and joined you on the sidelines. congrats to everyone who played on finishing great seasons. cant wait to hear your stories.

hugs

miss casual

so ive been looking for a new bike for a while. i was thinking of getting a road bike.. something with gears for longer rides and for use as a backup when someone steals a pink wheel off my bike or other hypothetical situations like that. and i looked and looked and finally i found the new whip. here she is in all her splendor. of course its not a road bike. and of course its a bianchi. and of course its white and shiny. but what can i say? i know what i like. lay off me its almost my birthday.

the ‘concept’ sticker is coming off first thing and will be promptly replaced with new decals. maybe pink ones that say ‘casual’ or something. ill post new photos when it gets all built up proper like. alls i knows is… its gonna make me fast at the track. big time.

in other news the alley kitten scavenger hunt were throwing is gonna be bananas. piece is sponsoring and so is rodan (which is where the afterparty will be) and so is casual ultimate of course. but maybe most importantly tbrizzle is sponsoring our own ms. ultimate’s plane ticket to come back for the festivities. that is if she can finish up all her forestrying in time. here is the new flier and the request for sponsorship that i send to tbrizzle.

‘Dear Mr. Brizzle

We at chicks and drinks incorporated are looking for a sponsor for our grad student rescue program. For your contribution of just 25$ you will receive a photo and a letter from the grad student, your logo on our race flier for the headless horseman hunt, a smug feeling of superiority, and the chance to have your grad student come and stay in your home for an entire weekend. Such a small amount can do so much for a needy grad student from New England. Wont you help us at Lets Get Crunk.org to give this starving Yale forestry student a temporary home?

Please make payments via pay pal to m. ulty.

Thank you so much for your contribution

Miss Casual
VP of Forestry Refugees
Lets Get Crunk Corp.’

i know machine will be busy at nationals but the rest of you better come on out. while condors are getting their asses served by our boys from the chi you can be biking around in silly costumes and drinking cheap draft beer at rodan. what could be better than that?

There’s been a lot of communication back and forth with Chicago this week, particularly about the headless horseman scavenger hunt & bi-cycle race in two weeks, which is going to be fantastic. word on the street is that the peach pit is sponsoring with beer- and pizza-related prizes and rodan is hosting the afterparty. let’s spend some time on this blog talking about how fantastic their mojitos are. but for real: all my peeps in chicago need to congregate and have the happy hour to end all happy hours tonight.

back in eastern standard time, ms. ulty is excited about the prospect of getting back on her iron horse like the chicks n’ drinks ladies in chicity….eventually. the bruises from my battle with a biology professor’s hood are pretty much gone, but my right knee still has this weird swelling on it, it’s a little hurty, etc. now you know. i can’t help but think that if i’d gone to berkeley i would have had doctor welsh’s expert consultation. maybe grandma’s right, maybe i do need to start hanging out with the medical school.

since this accident kept me away from regionals last weekend (so frustrating), i picked up a new pastime to cheer myself up: stump. this game is what it sounds and looks like: you put a bunch of nails into a tree stump in a circle, with one in the middle. everybody playing picks a nail and the object of the game is to be the last nail standing. you achieve this by flipping a forester-sized hammer end over end, cactching it on the fly and immediately striking your opponents’ nails/the stump/miss catching it and permanently maim a bystander. i got pretty into it, and finally won a round by the end of happy hour. needless to say every aspect of the competition improved over time since it was part of our weekly outdoor happy hour.

speaking of which, miss casual, i seem to remember us making a graph of crunkedness over time at one point. last friday, at the as-close-as-new-haven-gets-to-a-bicycle-bar bar, we were doing something similar and my friend esteban came up with a complex version involving four axes. general consensus at the table was that he’s a shoe-in for the nobel prize. turns out that went to al gore instead, but maybe next year we’ll get his submission in on time.

but back to ultimate. congratuf’inglations to machine, and my heart goes out to everyone else. while no one wanted their seasons to end in the sooner state, the good news is that, while machine is having two-a-days in 50 degree drizzle, you’ll be inside watching football, eating steak and drinking beer. same goes for happy hour: do it up chicago, make some happy hour magic so miss casual has something to post about on monday. rally the troops - i want shenanigans, hijinx and pictures. remember that time bp and miss casual got into a fight at that crappy indoor beergarden? remember when that kids got headbutted by the crazy bartender at the hole-in-the-wall on armitage? avoid those places, and instead go to lemming’s, order a kind midwestern brew and catch up with your friends. do it or else i’ll come at you with my hammer.

so yesterday was the 34th annual apple cider century in three oaks michigan. i was attempting to ride 100 miles on my bike for the first time and it proved tougher than i thought. barreling around chicago for miles and miles is one thing. climbing hills with fierce wind and a bike with only one gear was total insanity. next year i will be sure to do this sucker with a real road bike. i painted my nails the fastest color scheme i could think of and i still only did 75 miles in the end.

the night before we went to the town house in michigan to carbo load. no one does pre-ride dinners like mama town. we skipped rocks and played trivial pursuit on the deck until we crashed out early. getting up at 6 was just the beginning though. we drank some coffee and got on the road to three oaks. thankfully a huge posse of our friends were already there when we registered and ate our first apple of the day. so we rolled out maybe 20 strong on the first leg. maggie and i were riding with one gear each although she was doing the ride fixed which is just plain nuts. the first 26 mile bit was nice. beautiful weather and lots of chitchat with the two amys of chicks and drinks fame.

heres the first stop. thats a lot of spandex. each stop had apples and cookies and gatorade. even pb&j. yummm. after mile 43 i was hurtin. the course was much hillier than i was told and my knees were killing. maggie and i had to walk one or two of them. but the course was lovely and the company was great so we kept it up for another 30 miles. 6 hours start to finish including stops. about 15 miles an hour. not too bad. culvers never tasted so sweet as on the ride home. and the booth was so big and squishy i couldve stayed all day.

ill certainly do some more distance but not without a road bike. although i slept like 10 hours and feel great today. good times. cheers to all the friendly faces at the checkpoints and to ms. ultimate whose encouraging text messages made me fly down the road like a dolphin. im gonna go to chipotes and house a burrito.

well as you may or may not know… my lovely bicycle had a run in with thieves this week and they made off with one of my wheels, pink hub, spokecards and all. i can honestly say i didnt cry but i was trapped in a glass case of emotion all day on tuesday when i found out. thankfully mama town was here to drive my me and my bike home but it still means my big birthday present to myself is going to be replacing a wheel i already owned which is not fun at all. i briefly considered just throwing this bike away and getting a new one but ms. ultimate talked me down. ‘your horn broke so now you need a whole new bike?’ now i have to decide what color rim to put on my new back wheel. thoughts? pink again? white? maybe a nice dark eggplant? decisions decisions…

the other things going on in casual land are 1. fall league has started which is awesome because we have an awesome team who is big fun filled with tall dudes and fast ladies. 2. football season arrived with the first turkey chez casual / brizzle. tbr hooked up a crazy thanksgiving dinner for most of briefcase to watch the bears go down pretty hard to dallas. at least there were sally’s cupcakes from heaven to cheer everyone up. and 3. chicks and drinks is throwing a sweet bike race / scavenger hunt type thingy for halloween called the headless horseman hunt. check out the flier. its dope. granted everyone reading this will be in florida for nationals that weekend but if youre not for some reason and youre in chicago you should come out. itll be fun plus its to benefit a chicago homeless shelter so you get a smug feeling of satisfaction with your 5$ entry fee.

so thats all for now. im riding my first century this weekend (thats 100 miles for those who dont know) so ill be missing fall league but im sure public news team will be taking a break from their pledge drive to kick some ass without me. hopefully i dont have to call mama town from the side of the road to pick me up.

so this weekend was the most epic roadtrip miss casual has ever attempted. driving from chicago to savannah georgia is not for the weak willed. on our way out of town we heard the new britney track on b96. it starts off with her all breathy whispering ‘its britney bitch’. classy with a k for sure. i might have to put the post title as my outgoing massage on my voicemail. so it was a good start.

on the way down we spotted a weird petting zoo type thing at a gas station. heres an ostrich posing for us. we stopped into the a-town and had dinner and then went to savannah. lovely lovely savannah. it is so beautiful there when its not raining. which it was. all weekend pretty much. (this is the part where you tell me how f^&*ing gorgeous it was in chicago / san fran / new haven all weekend and i tell you to ‘wow thats awesome. really.’)

but it was so beautiful there with the fountains and our pretty little bed and breakfast and the ghosts and getting to walk around outside with beer in your hand like youre at a frat party that the rain didnt bother us too much. it cleared up for a bit on sunday so we got to bike around and do tricks and hit the marc jacobs store. we wouldve gone to the evening social at our b&b but we were younger than everyone there but about 2 decades so it seemed like we didnt have too much to share. ‘what do your kids do?’ ‘ummm…’

the ride back was no big deal really except for when a bloodthirsty cricket got into the car and miss casual screamed and cried til we pulled over and killed it. im pretty sure it was the vampire cricket variety with fangs and hair and stuff. also i think if i never go back to indiana again it will be too soon. not just because of the cricket but it also smells really bad there and we got a speeding ticket and i think we got ripped off at the popeyes just north of indianapolis. i was too scared of the people working there to complain.

anyways its certainly good to get back to normal in beautiful chicago. i love this city so much. cheers.

xoxo miss casual

last night was a monumental success. congrats to michelle for organizing and aaron for making the best frickin trophies known to man. below is a pic of one of the winners accepting their prize. they were forks (like bike forks) with stuffed kittens impaled on them with chain rings as name plates. so funny. first place was a team in clown costumes and burkhas. our very own little ben won third with his team. nice work friendcrusher.

the race itself drew a huge crowd. 110 participants! 30+ teams! at each chicks and drinks run checkpoint teams had to do tasks to get points and they could return to the same checkpoints as many times as they wanted. j dot and i got the ‘find the bubblegum in the flour without using your hands and blow a bubble’ checkpoint on division and damen. the thursday night bar crowd on damen enjoyed the screeching breaks and clouds of flour im sure. the trick was to blow the flour everywhere cause if you took a big mouthful your chances of blowing a bubble were slim to none.

the after party was great too. weegees never disappoints. every time i go there it gets tougher to leave. i think they put something in the water… or beer. or whatevs. this morning came early.

tbrizzle got home last night which was a nice surprise. hopefully he’ll post about his life altering epiphanies on the road. hes skinny as a rail. seriously. ms. ultimate is also back on the radar after spending a week in the woods with the yalies. the weekend looks like a circus of napping, biking, and movie watching. superbad anyone? plus the bike film fest of course. good luck to our friends headed out to cooler this weekend. we’re hoping for a post from our favorite viking next week to recap the action. happy friday yall.

last night was the kickoff party for the bicycle film festival in chicago. unfortunately it started passed my bed time so instead of partying like a rockstar the chicks and drinks ladies gathered chez casual to make spoke cards for tonight’s alleykitten. the triplets of belmont is a bike film festival sponsored scanvenger hunt and michelle and jessi are co-chairing the event so we all got together to drink some beers and do arts and crafts. everyone should come out and participate in the shennanigans. its gonna be lots of fun and its free for goodness sakes! the teams will have to do all kinds of stunts to earn points plus theres extra discretionary points for badassity. and the after party is at weegee’s, a cu favorite since july.

therell probably be some film watching this weekend too obviously and hopefully a long ride at some point since i got my confirmation for the apple cider century at the end of september. looks like tbrizzle’s return to the chi is imminent so also house cleaning is on the agenda. what does one buy a br for their birthday? i have an idea but any additional thoughts are appreciated.

I saw this Muppet show once where Dr. Bunson Honeydew makes a machine that can combine things. Shortly following the exposition of this novelty, Beaker ends up sticking his arm in at the same time a puppy dog is placed inside; machine turns on, and suddenly Beaker has a living puppy head instead of a hand. The effect was disorienting and horrific, and left me, as a child, rather afraid of the inarticulate Beaker thereafter.

Today I experienced just this same sort of shudder when I came across this pillow resting on the windowsill of my hotel. And while I like to think that I support innovation in nearly all it’s forms, my heart goes out to the unfortunate pillow, stuffed lion, soccerball and crucifix that were jammed into Dr. Honeydew’s machine this time around.

(i am putting together some of tony’s updates from the road. i think hes just leaving traverse city. for those who dont know… our very own tbrizzle is biking all the way around lake michigan for two weeks with only his iphone for company. he has all his stuff in a trailer and is camping half the time. -miss casual)

late as usual

minor crisis this morning, the skewer that holds my trailer to my bike was unfit. i couldn’t find a shop that sold only the skewer so i bought a whole new trailer and left everything other than the skewer hanging in the window at rapid transit. so i have $350 in store credit if anyone needs anything…
classic.

many thanks to jess and claire for hanging out this morning and especially to mr. rick russell for supporting me emotionally through my tomfoolery.
leaving…now.

mile 32

Flat tire in Gary, in.

Fixed, but still a bit annoying.

first day

78 miles through chicago indiana and a little of Michigan. Dinner with mom and monica. Tired.

mile 242: alonzo gives me the rest of his pizza

Day 3 was long, but finished well. Made it to silver lake mi, land of the dune buggy. My campground is packed (on a Monday no less) with every kind of 4×4. People have been consistently friendly (e.g. Giving me pizza). Looked silly strapped to my bike but no chance I was going to turn that down.

mile 304: smoothie break in manistee, mi

There’s coffee shops and wireless everywhere…what an age we live in

day 5: reality check

Tired today. Arms more sore than anything else. Roads terrible, no shoulder. Only 50 miles today but I’m beat…rewarding my capitulation with a night at the grand old wellington inn, traverse city, MI. Wifi, free beer, and tight next to downtown.

Starting the ride again will be hard.

i am a manly man

my hotel room

this summer has been great and all, but it’s speeding along at a different pace than the epic summer of 2006. here are a few things we’ve been missing:

1. frisbee
1(a). potlatch - what a great tourney. we want to put together a chicago n’ friends team for next year. who’s in?
1(b). summer league - the competitive games are great, but we miss playing twice a week.
1(c). briefcase - ms. ulty misses her teammates and sunday practices at uic, and miss casual has no excuse for a manicure since she’s not doing admin.

2. terrycloth
2(a). dresses - last summer we dressed up for a party as good and evil terrycloth, this summer the dresses haven’t even been busted out.
2(b). see (3) below - ms. ulty’s beach towel has only been used once this year. we concede that this is a first world problem.

3. playing in the water
3(a). the beach - every weekend seems so jammed with other stuff, there’s no time for an old fashioned tanning session.
3(b). swimming pools - and the people-watching surrounding them. ms. ulty might have to head up to her grandma’s this weekend for a chlorine fix.
3(c). see (2) - water-based recreation is usually a prereq for wearing and use of terrycloth.

4. good news from the tour
4(a) no more doping people. we cant handle it.
4(b) remember lance? he was so dreamy…

5. happy hour
can there ever be enough? we think not. so in honor of ms. ulty moving to the east coast and tbrizzles birthday and just never having enough happy hour were gonna do something next friday. put it in your outlook.

happy friday

(oh and by the way… how on time are we with the poll about li-lo? she is totally back in treatment by labor day!)

heres a picture, hot off the presses, of ms. ultimate with some friends from the london fixed gear / single speed bike forum. we miss you so much here! and im so jealous of your all access pass to wimbeldon! please slap high fives with andy roddick and report back. also you are no longer allowed to go to yale. i forgot to tell you. we voted and youll be attending u of c in the fall.

in other casual world news… this weekend looks like a throwdown in honor of this country we love so much at the house of the rwip. saturday could be dangerous. bring your beer pong helmet.

and last but certainly not least… the voting is going down as we speak for the cusl board. with all the animated conversations that have occurred in the forum over new policies in the last year… you all better vote. casual ultimate is endorsing our very own russell, the ja rule to miss casual’s ashanti. so get on it people. vote for rick… four times even.

well ms. ultimate left town for europa for almost three weeks leaving me steering this blogging ship alone. judging by the sweaty palms and nervous finger tapping on my space bar… its not going to be good when she leaves for the ivy league. but here goes nothin and hopefully shell post from wimbeldon where shes hanging out with andy roddick and biking around with our london ss/fg counterparts.

this weekend was a parade of bike events. friday night was the ali g cat. j dot and i worked the crunkest checkpoint on harrison and lower wacker. it was all fun and games until one of our chicks and drinks ladies went down in the race and broke her collar bone. here she is looking hardcore in the er looks like wednesday well be hanging with jessi and doing less tricks and more drinks. not that we mind… michelle took second and emily took third for the females so c’n'd still came out way ahead on friday night at gold star at the awards ceremony.

then saturday was track racing. the picture at the top is emily and michelle (on her miami sound machine bike) busting around the velodrome in kenosha. it was hot outside the chi and miss casual needed a nap to recoup for the after party. unfortunately i recovered too quickly and had time for a few beers before i somehow ended doing a sprint against michelle which i only won because michelle was tired from the track. after the sprints adam decided to pick julio up over his shoulders and run around the block and that was how we knew it was time to go home. brunch today at cozy corner with the new humboldt homeboys was just what the dr. ordered to recover from such a fun and tiring weekend. thanks to val and the rest of the velo city people.

happy monday

heres a typical sunday chez tbrizzle / casual. the girls of cu are in the kitchen, making frozen cocktails out of lemoncello and lime popsicles and the boys, tbrizzle and the viking, are in the back yard stripping the paint off their bikes. watching wes anderson movies and making fruity cocktails was all we had left after an eventful weekend.

miss casual had adam in town from nyc to squire her about town and explore the edge of culinary art. friday night the 25+ courses at alinea changed our lives. i cant even begin to truly describe how perfect the whole experience was so instead ill just post some photos of things that we ate. maybe therell be an in depth analysis on our brother site, scrumptulesence. well keep you posted. after four hours of nausea nirvana miss casual will never be the same again. the next night however… we went to moto and honestly… i want my money back. maybe alinea is too tough of an act to follow… or maybe the bread didnt really taste any better from being dyed in squid ink, frozen in liquid nitrigen, and set on fire tableside. whoever said moto was as good as alinea is dead to us.

but overall a fantastic weekend which harkens back to this other moment in our casual ultimate past. a culinary adventure of another sort… our throwback post today is that time we went out for ribs after cho came to beach drunk. drunk cho, our video game winner, we miss you.

today is our one year blog birthday! its difficult to believe we’ve been doing this for an entire revolution around the sun but here we are. it wouldnt have been possible without you. you are the wind beneath our wings.

if you didnt already know from runnning into one of us, a week from tonight at high dive (chicago and damen) from 6-9 we are throwing a happy hour birthday party. the first 50 pbr’s are on casual ultimate. after that 3$ drafts. we even got buttons made to honor the occasion. so bring friends and come help us celebrate a year of shennanigans. all week well be posting links to our favorite throwback posts in the last year so today we’ll start with the very first post to see where it all started.

last night on the eve of our anniversary we went out and saw lots of our favorite people. we stopped at beach and ran into most of team ‘close your eyes’ in addition to baker, vijay, and of course the viking. it was a lovley night for ultimate except for the 50 mph winds and some stray dodgeball hussies who wouldnt get off of our field. the cu staff left a bit early to beat the rain, which never came.

when we ran into the chifggers, oren dubbed the ‘big storm’ the ‘new cicada’ since it was talked about much but never happened. we toasted all our bike friends with free beer at weegee’s one year bday party. coincidence that their bday is one day before ours? we didnt think so either. all us geminis stick together. friendhugger spilled beer all over miss casual’s blinged out feet before we retired to streetside for burgers and champagne. here he is looking innocent. thats how we roll. a year later and still more to come…

friday evening started with some chicks and drinks with the usual ladies plus a new amy, simon’s wife. we messed around for long enough for miss casual to fall and skin her entire right side from a bad skid before retiring for dinner at handlebar with simon and amy. ms. ulty stopped for a beer with the boss, the hales, and the viking along the way. we waited out the rain discussing the phenomenon of surly waiters at handlebar and then went across town for saturrday night’s race preparty.

we were worried approaching a club in the gold coast called funk, but hey, free drinks from 9-10? we drank a few. and then took over the dancefoor and then the stage with the rest of the chifg crew. who knew coyote, adam, friendhugger, amy and emily had such fierce moves? unfortunately ms. ulty was out for the race because shes visting her sister but amy and miss casual took the viking and barreled through traffic for a couple of hours on saturday night. heres a pic of bjorn and amy with their race faces on at the last checkpoint. the viking rolls with sparxx natch. team c’n'd finished the whole course and definitely earned the beers that flowed freely at tumans. tbrizzle came out to meet us and the picture at the top is of all the racers bikes on the fence at the bar.

tomorrow night marks the beginning of summer league so heres hoping competitive league starts with a bang.

last night the cu staff regrouped chez ultimate to plan our attack on tricks and drinks at its new way up north location. after checking in with the kittens and battening down the hatches we proceded on bicycle to kumas in order to fuel up for an evening of skids. however it was super packed and we waited almost an hour for our burgers. ms. ultimate almost went blind with hunger. luckily our bartender was mr. kuma himself and he bought our burgers since they took so long. let me tell you… a burger never tasted so good. in a shocking triumph of will, miss casual annihilated her mastadon.

the wait gave us plenty of time to discuss the late-breaking competitive summer league news whereby games are switched from wednesday to monday night and south side kids have to play some games up north. switching days is no big whoop, but we’re bummed that we’ll probably have to miss some of the up north games due to work hours (miss casual) and transportation issues (ms. ulty). and it’s sounding like lady numbers will be very tight on the teams. perhaps we can organize some sort of complex carpool system. anyone have room for a bike in their car on the way home? we considered trying to switch back to regular CUSL just to ensure we’d get to play enough games this summer, but we know baker would kill us for even making the request.

well, with an after glow from red meat and alpha king we booked it up to t’n'd. we drank some beers and practiced our tricks with most of the usual suspects. miss casual had a scary skid that ended up going off road and we had some adoring fans from the surrounding neighborhood chatting us up all evening. it was a beautiful night under a blue moon and we are looking forward to another fun night of tricks with the ladies tonight.

have you ever seen anything so pretty as a million skittle colored bikes like this? this is where miss casuals holiday weekend ended. well i guess technically it ended doing laundry and icing my ankle watching law $ order but really michelle and aaron’s super badass cupcake and bicycle filled bithday bbq was my last stop so well retell the weekend memento style and start at the end.

pulling up to the birthday bbq it was easy to pick out the house as it looked like a parade of pretty bicycles. michelle and aaron were great hosts and amy made some fierce vegan cupcakes. it was nice to drink some sangria and lounge with the ladies of c’n'd. we at casual ultimate feel very lucky to have met such wonderful ladies with such similar interests as ourselves. amy and miss casual are mentally preparing to race our first alleycat on saturday. we need to think positive. theres no ‘i’ in win. but before then there will surely be some tricks as miss casuals skids need work and ms. ulty wants to perfect her skid hop move.

previously the cu staff and stacy had stopped by a bqq thrown by dp and liz. looks like hales is back in town for good and is our new neighbor. baby audrey came looking like she meant business and the boss’s neice was the envy of miss casual in ruffly pink socks and perfectly fluffy hair. with all the babies around it occurred to us that briefcase could easily be renamed ‘team earmuffs.’ good to see the letter j out and about and again we were glad to have friends that appreciate grilling and beer the way team paulina does.

all the bbqs came after recovery brunch because stacy, brooke, and the cu staff started at piece the night before with malt liquor and determination. crunk or die. miss casual had bumped into nat on armitage and he let on the it was going down at dannys so off we went. stacy bought us a shot and it was ON. super dance party all night til stacy looked like she might be napping at the bar. we havent danced so much since… well since the last time we were at dannys probably. a stranger had given stacy and ms. ulty ballons on the walk over from piece so we tied them above our table to indicate clearly ‘this is where the party’s at.’ balloon time.

ms. ultimates bday needs its own explanation from the birthday girl. she also is in further photographic evidence so ill leave it to her. back to the architectures. lates.

this might be my new favorite picture of ye olde beache ultimatee, even though it’s just the viking and miss casual waiting for everyone else to showe uppe. the cold weather didn’t keep the faithfuls away, and we had five-in-five almost all night. a fun time was had by all, with baker and tun showing up to everyone’s surprise. it took a while to get tun to take off his bike helmet and shoes, but he eventually joined the game. our team was the c.u. staff, baker, tun and sally, so other than sally it was good warmup for the tourney this weekend. way to squeeze in that extra practice, teamocil. baker, we promise to be good girls and not go out tonight (other than chicks n’ drinks, which is wholesome fun and games) so we’ll be ready to rock tomorrow morning, 9:00 am sharp.

the c.u. staff ducked out of beach early discuss 1st birthday party plans with the manager at lemmings. he told us something lame, like we’d get a quarter off of drinks for our friends, but we’re going to bargain with them until everyone drinks for free. or, for a dollar off drafts. ms. ulty is going to put together a posterboard matrix of bars at which to hold this party, then we’re going to do the hard work of visiting each one and weighing the pros and cons. we might have to visit some of them more than once just to be sure. quenchers, the green eye, cleos II and high dive are all on the docket.

after dinner at pennys (of course), ms. ulty persuaded miss casual to come to tricks n’ drinks by using the kryptonite-like powers of champagne: casual can’t resist it no matter how hard she tries. it’s good she came though, because her skids are dead on and we’re about ready to have a ladies skid comp. we finally met andrew, the owner of the bike baby that our bikes would make, last night at Tn’d. i know that doesn’t make much sense, but luckily we have this pic to illustrate [photo credit: morgan]. ms. ulty got the very basics of a bunny hop down and we’ll be practicing all this and more at chicks n’ drinks tonight, top secret location, etc. tricks are fun, we’re getting good at them; soon enough we’ll be able to do the two backwards circles and 720 front wheel spin that steve may or may not be able to do, we haven’t seen the proof yet. speaking of steves, work steve stopped by with the fiance while walking their pup. remember this at your desk today, steve: the only thing better than working any good job is working no job at all.

sure it was 7 on 5, but at least mr. serious showed up this time. he and his band of illinois brothers couldn’t throw a cup strong enough to contain teamocil’s desire to win that game. too bad not a single woman on their team felt like playing ultimate on the most beautiful day of spring league. props to the one lady they had, who was speedy and savage. arguably the turning point in the game was mr. serious’s soul-crushing turnover in front of his endzone, which was immediately followed by a swing and a huck to ms. ulty for the score. congrats to team teamocil on our two wins (isn’t it fun to win?). this is our fearless leader doing a victory dance, thinly disguised as g.o.b.’s chicken dance [stock footage]. drink lots of water and visualize success for the tourney this weekend - if we don’t win spring league we’re nothing! thanks to our #1 fan for watching both games and going on a beer run - we’re nominating you for the spirit award.

thank goodness for vitamin i, or else miss casual and ms. ulty might have missed all the action saturday morning. both ladies were crazy sore from the inaugural meeting of chicks n’ drinks, whereby ladies with shiny bikes practice their tricks away from the boys in an undisclosed location. here are a couple pics of the members of team unicorn practicing their skids. next friday, everyone on the team will receive a self-destructing notice of location and tricks to be practiced 90 minutes before meeting time. miss casual informs ms. ulty that holding a cloth soaked in white vinegar to a bruise “sucks the bruise out” - doctors, any truth to this? because we’ll try anything at this point to be able to wear shorts again.

sunday was a day for culture and legal education. after calling their respective moms, the c.u. staff brunched it up at toast and then rode to the art institute to catch the last day of the cezanne to picasso exhibit. good show, but approx. 300,000 mom-and-child pairings had the same idea and it was a little crowded. given their bike- and ultimate-induced injuries, we went back to home base to relax on the couch for a bit. “a bit” turned into “seven straight episodes of law $ order” and one plate of nachos and a frozen pizza later it was time to call it a night. too bad we couldn’t make it to beach, but we were dying. oh, and ladies, there’s a pair of hot pink pedal cages on the market if you’re interested.

our post title is courtesy of ben friendhugger…it’s hard to explain, especially on a family-oriented blog such as this.

where to begin? tuesday night: we forgot how much fun it is to hang out at chez tbrizzle, now chez tbrizzle-casual. if you haven’t seen it yet the apt. looks awesome; who knew lucite lamps that cost more than rent go well with cogs and pistons found in old hardware stores? the c.u. stay, the (b)r’s, j dot and ms. mmms all shared a delicious meal while watching the bulls bite it; these pistons don’t look good with our bulls.

Wednesday was happy hour at the peach pit with some new customers. we forgot how good that pizza is. we were also surprised to see a new beverage on the menu: malt liquor. it’s actually quite good, and comes in a paper bag. it’s about time a classy microbrewery gave o.e. a run for its money. order the dolomite next time you’re in there - we think it would go well with the bbq chicken pizza. there’s a chance we’ll be back in there to test that theory before the weekend is up.

we’re not sure if it was the dolomite or the cubs win that went to everyone’s heads, but there was quite a bit of storytelling. two stories tied for weirdest, and only one of them is appropriate to be put into words. we’re saving el presidente’s story about pee pants and the shedd aquarium for tomorrow. morgan’s story could best be titled, “peanut butter and ladies,” and is the tale of one man’s desperate attempt to entertain himself with….perhaps we should call the story, “i love crepes,” because there were actually no ladies involved. it can’t be put into words, but let’s just say it’s related to today’s title and is also the name of the collegehumor.com summer softball team. speaking of which, if bryan plays his cards right we’ll get him one of these t-shirts to wear while blogging.

dinner was followed by a skidding lesson - my. ulty can go two and a half feet, so watch out boys. she’s hoping that learning every bike trick in the book will mask the fact that she still can’t do a track stand.

this afternoon ms. ulty and el presidente are heading to the cubs game, then booking it to beach at 6. be there or be square - word on the street is tbrizzle may be back on with casual ultimate. we’re not sure where this leaves the blog, but it does mean miss casual only had to lug cones to work today.

this weekend was so much fun. thank heaven for sunshine and blue skies. we thought the summer of 2006 was the best it can get, but 2007 is shaping up to be fantastic.

friday night worlds collided at happy hour (hereafter to be known as h60), where bike and ultimate friends drank beer and discussed the land ethic in harmony. everyone was laughing, having fun and the bartender even poured the c.u. staff a couple of beers on the house, but a shadow was cast over the evening when we learned of a death in the family. The death of ameri-can, that is. Lemmings has *stopped serving American beer*. You heard it here first. The replacement is milwaukee’s best. Replacing American with the beast is like replacing ultimate with freestyle. If freestyle tasted like water and hated democracy, that is.

saturday was spring league, and we went 1-1. we’re still not sure what’s up with teamocil; even a saturday night viewing of “switch hitter,” our inspiration, didn’t provide any usable strategy tips. (other than sending miss casual to work for the competition for a week.) regardless of a frustrating loss, we had a ton of fun. rory showed up, finally, and turned out to be at least six inches taller than you might think at first look. baker and casual did their best chicken dance impressions; we’ll see if we can get the video up later. in the end, though, miss casual’s threat of “no burritos for losers” didn’t inspire the masses in that first game, although we rallied for the second. the c.u. staff, dp and hendude still went for burritos after the game, though. note: lemming’s may be out of american, but the margaritas at chipotle aren’t half bad. new h60 venue?

by nighttime we were too pooped from daytime fun to do anything crazy, so it was packing and a.d. for old time’s sake. it’s sad that c.u. HQ will no longer be the 1200-1400 blocks of paulina, but miss casual’s in a better place. the set-up at the former br ranch (the k-br ranch now?) is awesome, and slider’s already learning to love hip hop. miss casual already taught him to bark ‘wamp wamp’.

sunday morning was moving and brunching, respectively. miss casual cleared out the last of her household goods while ms. ulty brunched with bike friendlies. you wouldn’t think it, but oval waffles are actually better than round ones; maybe because they hold so much fruit and syrup. after brunch, while casual and tbrizzle were setting up the new place, ms. ulty peeled off ot spend the afternoon at the velodrome in northbrook. it was *awesome*. it’s like a rollercoaster you make yourself. there’s a very small chance ms. ulty might even start a new blog, www.seriouscycling.com. if you see her in a bike shop considering the purchase of spandex anything, please try to stop her. here’s a picture of two speedracers going faster than pegasi.

some briefcase peeps and the usual beach suspects played at north ave. sunday afternoon, although c.u. missed out. it was a tough call, but guiding movers and going to the track won out. this is only just the beginning of summer; there will be plenty of days wash the sand out of our toes in the coming months.

with ms. utly out of town exploring her ivy league options, i am holding it down solo at headquarters. it is difficult having to not only follow the plot of law$order but also order thai food with just one person but so far there have been no major incidents. this weekend will be a little hectic though. i’m still recovering from milwaukee but blades of glory is opening so there will be at least one viewing, hopefully there will be bicycle brunch again sunday, and saturday night there is some crazy bike sprints competition at a dive bar called the mutiny. sounds sinister. and this is all aside from spring league, basketball on saturday (i hope ohio state just wins the whole thing at this point) and many naps.

last night was tricks and drinks. good times but miss casual fell doing a seated trackstand and now has an enormuos bruise on her right leg. the viking even came out since the weather was so temperate and we drank some slovak beer called the golden pheasant. lovely. no one broke anything (i dont think) and j dot and tristan were doing one legged over the bars skids like no ones biznass. this bodes well for summer.

so after our lovely evening with girl talk the cu staff split up to cover both fair cities - ms. ulty took off at the breaka breaka dawn to bring it at spring league and miss casual stayed in mke to ‘race’ in her first alleycat and see the city with our most gracious hosts evan and emily.

ms. ulty and team teamocil went 2-0 beating vijay and finn’s team and taking us to week 2 undefeated. miss casual got coerced into racing in the milwaukee messenger invitational with a fantastic group of people including a couple from mke on a tandem and some other chicago natives. we did most of the checkpoints but got lost somewhere just north of evanston and stopped for directions (read: beer) at a bar called buck’s on the south side of milwaukee. the ride back was a breeze and we made it back in time to eat ourselves silly at buck bradley’s (how many dudes named buck live in milwaukee anyway?) and drink some pbr.

sunday was a meteorological miracle and upon arrival back in chicago miss casual got on sugarbomb and met bjorn for a ride to rogers park to have brunch with monica and tbrizzle. aside from our surly waiter and a flat which j dot and bjorn fixed, it was a perfect summer day…albeit in the middle of march. milwaukee was fun but its good to be back in the chi.

okay so this isnt the girl talk were goign to see tonight but it might be an image of the cu staff getting prepared for our invasion of milwaukee. i believe ‘milwaukee’ is from the german meaning ‘lets get crunk’. and thats what were gonna do. we are piling into papa john’s jeep and hitting the road with an i-trip, some three six mafia, and the kittens for company.

last night miss casual got pink bar tape put on her bike to complete its total barbie-fication in time for the trip. also her bracket is kicking some major arse. look out denardis. im coming for you… itll be good for spring league to start up again. itll get us in good shape especially now that the league went 4-3 so well be playing savage every week. by summer well be fast as pumas.

have a great weekend. well try and post an update sometime saturday on our take no prisoners friday night and biking / ultimate saturday am. team teamocil faces off with vijay and finn saturday morning and its gonna be wet and wild judging by the weather forecast. but weve got our tuxedo t-shirts and were ready to party.

Life is moving fast at casual ultimate headquarters these days and it seems we may have left a few loose ends lately in our posts so today’s a wrap up. (In our defense Ms. Ulty is ivy league bound and miss casual is busy at work making every building going up on the near south side look sexy in pictures. But as we all know losers make excuses, winners make it happen… its happening.)

Our last night in sunny florida was spent in a bacchanalia of carbohydrates and singing plumbing. The dolphin in the walls at the town house was in rare form and so was the insane homemade ravioli and cake with seafoam icing. Chuck and Mama town even played a little something while the kids were at the pool. We didn’t get to spend enough time with nick, a self proclaimed ‘considerate little f^&*er’ but im sure well run into him next year when we might even play Frisbee.

Last weekend was ‘ride and die’ as we cruised around the northside… from watching basketball on Lincoln, to mike d’s going away in wrigleyville, finally ending up at a bar called the California clipper where there was swing dancing and a few champagne cocktails. We wish we had been getting green margaritas made in our mouths with becky but alas mostly it was basketball and naps.

However on Sunday miss casual learned how to trackstand like a pro. Is it too late to quit my job and be a professional bike trick do’er? Since team bon vivant lacks a practice schedule miss casual enlisted a private tutor and took off for a sunny spot at the zoo to practice. Before long she was standing for almost a minute! Hopefully bon vivant will a. get a new name and b. start meeting regularly now that tbrizzle and miss casual will be roommates. We will need to correspond with our sister bike gang on the west coast (captained by dr. welsh) to coordinate jerseys, names, handshakes etc.

Lastly sugarbomb, miss casual’s iron steed, got a makeover with some pink deep v’s last night courtesy of our friends at rapid transit. While sugar will never be as pink as mr. tristan’s bicycle, it still looks pretty sweet. The cu staff celebrated by adjourning to HQ to watch law $ order (it ended up being c$i instead) and discuss strategies at getting on thats show ‘the amazing race’.

Thats enough for today. Expect an excited, high pitched, squealing post about girl talk, spring league, etc tomorrow. Lates.

you can tell from our surrealist poetry post that we had a good night friday. any night that starts with andrew trackstanding in the kitchen with a sparxx in his hand wearing ms. ulty’s white sunglasses couldn’t be bad. even though this photo is the last time anyone will ever see miss casual’s enormous phone the night was bananas.

beginning with sparxx, champagne and thai food chez ultimate, we moved on to the clipse show where there were approximately 120 dudes for every female in the audience. it was a sweet show and the cu staff made every effort to keep brown bear posted on the progress via voicemail. when the show was winding down ms. ulty looked me in the eyes and we both knew what we had to do - get ourselves to carol’s pronto. after phoning the boss and mike d in the cab and losing the phone, we drank some pbr and danced til the breaka dawn. there are some more photos of the aftermath at ms. ulty’s involving more sparxx, a candy hamburger, and sass in the gallery if anyone is curious.

the next morning we made some pancakes and bought miss casual a new bougie phone before recovering with arrested development season one and naps. new ringtones include : milkshake by kelis, aint no fun by snoop, and get low by lil jon and the eastside boys but ballin outta control was a close runner up. last night we went to see zodiac with the boss which was long but also quite a good way to wrap up the weekend.

with five weeks left to go before battle of the beach, miss casual and ms. ultimate decided to kick our workout into high (fixed) gear with a grueling triathlon on saturday, which lasted until the wee hours of sunday morn.

Stage 1: Wake up at 8:00, don’t eat breakfast because it makes you fat and slows you down. we’re trying to convert 100% of our winter energy reserves into lean muscle by march 10. drink coffee to get your heart racing, and then jump on a high-performance bi-cycle racing machine for a 15-mile ride in frigid temperatures. luckily about 20 other people had this same idea, and we met up with the lady and gents from chicago fixed gear for a ride from montrose to the planetarium and back again. here’s a pic of some of the tri-athletes at the start of the ride, courtesy of our man fro. upon completion of this stage, it is acceptable to have a light brunch of bagel and cream cheese (as pictured here) or almond croissant, followed by a repeat of the same after some book shopping at myopic and quimby’s.

Stage 2: After a quick shower to warm up, we went for a consultation with one of our trainers, monica, where she was working the gatorade table/hostess desk at the peach pit. she advised us to drink a beer each (full frontal and double d are choice selections this time of year) and consume a pizza as quickly as possible. this kind of training will prepare for between-game hydration and bagel consumption in florida. we then turned to an endurance sitting session by watching seven episodes of arrested development season three in quick succession. when you’re watching this many episodes on DVD, it’s important to conserve seconds on the clock by fast-forwarding through the credits and opening song of consecutive episodes. we had to sit through the first five episodes only to get to the sixth, which contained steve holt (steve holt!) gems of training wisdom. our favorite adages include the post title, as well as: “don’t ask ‘can i’, ask ‘i can’” and “no blood, no oil”. words to live by as we moved into the all-critical third stage.

Stage 3: stage three was all about isolating muscle groups that will be necessary for beach ultimate dominance down in florida. we chose to focus on the quads, abs and glutes - “wind your waistline to the bass line” was our battlecry as we rolled up to the darkroom for a merciless three-hour dance workout. it’s important to dress appropriately for this stage, particularly for the quads, so we had to wear our heels. one of ms. ultimate’s dance partners showed what a great workout dancing could be, as he refused to dance without holding his shirt up and fondling his six-pack. someday that will be us. just as miss casual was beginning to wonder, “can i?” she ran into inspiration in the form of an old college buddy, j dot. his drunken posting makes us think he’ll be guest posting about dance moves here in the near future.

it was an arduous 16-hour marathon, but that’s what a girl’s gotta do if she wants to play serious ultimate. we plan on repeating this every weekend between now and botb: stage 1 with our chifggers, stage 2 switching it up each week, and stage 3 at various venues including carol’s. we’re going to run out of arrested development, though, so anyone who bought season two of the office is welcome to join the workout. we’re looking forward to an update on the weekend in arizona, gentlemen, so don’t let us down.

xoxo,
c & u

With the awful weather cramping our cycling style, c.u. is looking to branch out to indoor wheel sports. this guy went 85 straight hours on the stationary cycle, with only one 5-minute break allowed for every hour of biking. wouldn’t necessarily give up my day job in pursuit of a Guinness record, but that seems like a weekend well spent. certainly more productive than c.u.’s weekend, where our greatest accomplishment was returning a keg and picking up ms. ulty’s old bike from the shop, and we needed hot cocoa, fresh biscuits and two hours watching talladega nights to recover from that. ms. ulty’s now wondering if “i’ll come at you like a spider monkey” would be an appropriate threat for her commuting nemesis.

to be fair, the weekend started out strong, with ms. ulty chowing down on killer cuban food with treem, el presidente and hendude. the pork-based lipids went to straight to her head, though, and things got crazy by the time el presidente led the charge to innertown pub. miss casual had just witnessed a knockdown dragout fight that ended in three people getting dragged out of the bar and the bouncer doing shots to dull the pain of getting punched in the face. is no corner bar safe for democracy? saturday meant biking and let’s pet puppies; *do not* let ms. ultimate near that store because the next time she goes in, she’s coming out with a puppy. on the way out we ran into our top economic advisor and biggest workplace fan, coach. schultzie’s party capped off the evening, but we were too tuckered out by leisure to see it through to the end. the fact that we made it to the party at all was a triumph of the human spirit, a feat just slightly less astounding than breaking a guiness world record. any crazy stories? who won dice cups?

last night the ladies of casual ultimate went to maproom to expand our minds and drink some hefeweissen. the topic of cafe scientifique (or ’science cafe’ if you need a translation from the french) was climate change so naturally we had to make an appearance and assert ms ultimate’s obvious intellectual superiority over the presenter. here at left is an actualy picture of science. bet ya didnt know…

miss casual gave an exclusive interview to the tribune at the event but probably got edited from the story becuase she was giving her attention to the georgia tech / duke game rather than the issues at hand. it was fun drinking some good beer but going out on wednesday is confusing because i think today is friday but its not. wednesday is the new thursday. which makes friday the new monday according to the mind blowing logic of a guy at the bar last night. no wonder we wanted to go to lemmings so badly. we had our days confused.

anyway the debate in the forum over bikes and gears and wheel sets (oh my) is heating up so check it out. tbr (bless his heart) is bringing his a-game. makes for an interesting thursday…or is it friday… whatevs.

so last night a couple of the team bon vivant members decided to spin their wheels to break in redh.o.t., ms. ulty’s new steed. after we passed logan square and then belmont, we realized we should drop in on our peeps at the real world house. joe little, ever the gracious host, answered the door ‘bryan’s making dinner. you cant have any.’ feel the love.

but bryan made plenty so the cu staff stayed and tore into some chicken and the best broccoli lyrica’s ever eaten. not to mention some rare blondie that miss casual opened up. it seems joe little may be interested in joining bon vivant in the spring when he gets a road bike. he and miss casual are going to be doing centuries by the end of the summer.

so it truly was the good life last night becuase over red wine, pointy soccer, and parsnips the cu ladies got to enjoy the company of cho, who will be leaving us soon becuase of his 10 year life plan. we will miss him but hopefully he’ll guest post on the blog from china, or brazil, or someplace weird. then on the way home we stopped by the Brs to show off the bike to carlo and got to meet sally’s new puppy who is a barrell of energy, kind of like ms. ulty herself.

the argument for fixed gear bikes went up in the forum so check it out and add your two cents. we’re looking forward to a rebuttal from tbrizzle.

after a mostly uneventful weekend, the exception being an excursion out of the double deuce with the boss and dp where ms. ultimate was placed in charge of the boss’s wallet, there was much activity on sunday. in a daring coup miss casual convinced ms. ultimate herself to come over to the dark side and buy a track bike. we had previously planned on a point-counterpoint post debating the merits of gears on bikes versus single speeds. however now we will only post the fixed gear team’s argument and allow tbrizzle to post an empassioned tirade against our position. watch the fireworks in the forum.

even though we fall on different sides of the argument, we still come together for bike practice. our new cycling team, bon vivant, is taking applications for new members. the core is composed of the cu staff, tbrizzle, and our instructor, crash mcgee. you might recognize him from such posts as ‘the viking crashes again for the second time in two days’ or ‘bg skies cho’. we plan on riding, learning tricks like trackstands and bunny hops, and on foul weather days watching bike videos to gain inspiration for new feats of greatness on our bicycles.

so now when you see the cu staff tooling around wicker park youll see miss casual on sugar bomb, her chromed out bianchi, and ms. ultimate on her bike redh.o.t. with the lovely white wheel set that you see joe working on in this picture. joe and nick at cycle smithy on clark are our new best friends forever. we know weve said this before but the circle of friends at cu knows no bounds. they showed us a hot pink tandem track bike that we almost mortgaged our souls for but instead ms. ulty found her valentine in this hot machine.

our friday was spent with the boss and dp in old town or west town or lincoln park as miss casual calls it. we called it scary-ville. cu was wary of leaving wicker park but the boss talked us into an out of zip code adventure. unfortunately our dates, two large gentlemen wearing replica jerseys, were tied up with pfil and dp’s dates, who had quite a lot of blue eyeshadow and a three digit rating code ending in 8.

This morning I was riding to work and saw a girl sprawled in the street, face down, after getting hit by a cab while riding her bike. She was not moving and I honestly thought she was dead. Eventually she started moving a bit but was in a lot of pain; she was only moving her arms and everyone was just waiting for the paramedics. and you know why I thought she might be dead? Because she wasn’t wearing a helmet. Wear your damn bike helmet and be safe, people, it’s not that hard and no one cares how you look. This is especially disconcerting since a certain casual Viking was hit by a car yesterday, and also wasn’t wearing his helmet. Thankfully he’s fine but geez people, just do it. I started wearing my helmet regularly because I got sick of lying to my mom, who asked me if I wore a helmet every time I told her I was riding my bike (yes, even though I’m 25). Now I wear it because I know people getting killed while biking is not something your pediatrician said to scare you, it happens. According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute (seriously) even the safest riders can expect to crash every 4,500 miles. Careening through major thoroughfares at rush hour cuts that mileage number significantly. Clearly getting blindsided by a cab is going to do some damage with or without a piece of plastic on your head, but a good hair day seems a small price to pay for avoiding head trauma.

yall might remember how difficult a time casual ultimate had breaking out and making new friends but this weekend proved to be an exception. after making new architecture friends on thursday, miss casual went on a bike ride with some more new friendlies on saturday. after biking up to loyola with ben bonecrusher, miss casual was introduced to a bunch of new peeps from chifg who not only have sweet bikes but are as nice as can be. heres ben and naz getting ready for our ride up to evanston.

once we made it to evanston, we were headed for ethiopian food but the restaurant didnt open for half an hour. so with time on our hands the group went to the pet store to pet kittens, get scared by spiders, and make goo goo noises at the bunnies. then we went to the bike shop down the street before eating our weight in heavenly meat and spongey bread. is there a more perfect convergence of all things casual? sweet bikes, puppies, and cardamom? miss casual thinks not. so cheers to all you chifggers and i hope therell be lots more rides in our future and that casual ultimate gets to celebrate with you at new years…