NOTE: All timestamps are in the future because WE are in the future. The care takers of Midnight Ridazz.com reserves the right to remove, edit, move or delete anything for any reason. None of the opinions expressed on these boards represent the Midnight Ridazz nor can anyone purport to speak on behalf of Midnight Ridazz.
I might be making it up to Weed by the end of my 10PM.
I sat at the loading place for about 5 hrs today in San Leandro.
Luckily, I found a nearby bike shop and switched the tubes in my mtb over to Presta's.
Like I said though, I've got the federally-mandated hours and speed limits to abide by, so good chance you guys will still make it there before I do.
But, then again, hopefully we could meet up for the photo-op.
Just remember the SWIFT truck with the BIANCHI sticker on the drivers side.
Y'all with mobile Internet access, wow, you makin' me jealous! I get no Internet (or any other, er, uh, services) while on Southwest Air...
Here's something to read re our destination. - check out Cycling In Portland
I broke a tradition at the Sins and Sprockets ride last night, maybe I should of been up there with you all.
I have noticed ever since I've been coming to bike rides, that when you see somebody at the rides all the time and then they are not there, its like, "hey, whats missing, somethings not right here" After they stop coming out for a while, that effect wears off and you get use to other people that are on the rides all the time. When they stop coming the same effect happens again. What I'm saying is, that you folks are missed, its odd, having a big group of regulars missing from the rides. I can only imagine how it felt when a group of us went to vegas last month.
Have a blast, send Portland our bike love. Come home not so battered that you can't make it out to your next ride when you get back. We miss you. oxoxox
Thanks for coming up and pissing off all the peace treehugging hippies up here. I may have said otherwise at the time, but bringing 6 megaphones was not overkill. At all. I'm at work right now and feel like satans dildo. I have bruises all over and this weird rash is starting to form....
My only regret is that you all tried to kill yourselves and hung out in the hospital so much. Hope everyone is okay.
LA ridazz just took off heading south. They should be back in about 15 hours. I'm still chilin up here with the wonderful Kelly Peach (one of our gracious hosts at the Kitten Shak) so we have been given the task of updating you all on the trip.
This has been one of the most amazing weekends. The portland bikers were so great to us. A big thanks to them from all of us LA people. Warchild made us a killer printed itinerary with addresses and phone numbers of peoples houses we could crash at (including his) and a list of everything that was going on for the weekend. He also hosted a bbq for us after tour de fat which included mini bike jousting. The Kitten Shak threw a party on Friday night where skidmarcus cut everyone's hair. The Kitten Shak was also one of the places that offered us a place to stay. The gave us their basement to crash in. I think we topped out at about 12 people sleeping down there (with skidmarcus sleeping on the ironing board). After the party on friday night we rolled out with Warchild to the dropout ride which took us to party at a golf course and then ended at pirate island for a bonfire. Saturday we headed to tour de fat, a big party on the waterfront. Fat Tire sponsered it, so there was plenty of beer and food, and bands playing. A few of the Sprockettes live at the Kitten Shak so we hung out to see their performance at tour de fat. After tour de fat was Warchild's bbq, then a block party with bands playing, a ride around the city, free midnight pizza for everyone at the park courtesy of Kelly Peach and then a house party. Sunday morning Kelly Peach took Rev Phil, onethirtynine, KataCyklsLA2NY, and myself for 8am Waffle Tacos (an amazing breakfast where they use a waffle as the taco shell and fill it with meat, cheese and syrup). Somehow she was able to convince us all to get up for it even though we only had a couple hours of sleep. After that we we headed to Shawn's (revphil's lady) house for champagne brunch. Post brunch, Warchild took us on an amazing ride to a nature preserve and then swimming in the river (reports of giardia possibly coming later). We got back from that and then headed up to zoobomb. I'm sure there is plenty i'm forgetting, but my brain is fried at the moment, so i'll let the rest of the crew fill you in when they get back.
Now on to the fun stuff....the injury list.
Injury List:
1. Kyber - Zombie Foot (crash immediately after picking up our bikes, resulting in a really gnarly foot. Thank god for whiskey).
2. Kel - busted knee (while wrestling with Franz)
3. Spiraldemon - too many crashes to list. That dude is cut up all over
4. Brassknuckle - Dislocated shoulder
5. onethirtynine - 10 stitches in chin and a jaw fractured in 2 places (done while riding TO ZOOBOMB.) Liquid diet for the next 6 weeks.
6. Skidmarcus - crash on zoobomb. roadrash on face. also lost control around a turn on Saturday night's rain ride and tore up his leg.
7. Goldenticket - decided to avoid zoobomb and the possibility of an injury, and managed to crash in the NE flats and ended up in the hospital getting stitches and a cat scan.
8. Samhain - hurt his shoulder riding Hell Way at Zoobomb
9. Tern - Road rash on face from crashing on Salmon during Zoobomb
10. Michelle (not an LA girl, but someone we hung out with all weekend) - Worst injury of zoobomb. Went down at the speed hole. Broke her jaw in 2 places, dislocated her jaw, is undergoing surgery at the moment.
There were also plenty of crashes that didn't involve injuries.
Okay i'm gonna head out and explore the city. I'll see you all in a couple of weeks.
once I get on a real connection (on the free wifi in the airport right now) I'll dig through my pictures and see what i can bring up for y'all, the on ething missing from the list of shit we did, that I can see and as kyber and I were the only LA people to do it, we went and hung out at the bikepolo game for a few hours, was DAMN fun to watch and i got a few good photos. anyway i gots to go sardine myself into an airplane so i'll get some pics up later.
Yep, it was K who busted his jaw. He actually seemed to be doing great. The guy is quite the trooper. His jaw isn't wired shut or anything, they just don't want him to eat solids for the next 6 weeks.
Didn't Samson purportedly kill a bunch of mofos with the jaw bone of an ass? If them damn things is so strong how come they keep breaking? Or is it because 139 (prime number btw) is not an ass and hence doesn't possess the associated super ass jaw which slays?
WTF!!!!! THEY'RE COMING BACK!?!?!?!? I THOUGHT IT WAS A ONE WAY TRIP!!! I SPENT ALL SUNDAY GETTING SHIT ASS DRUNK CELIBRATING AND I LEARN TODAY THEY'RE COMING BACK!!!!!
GRRRRRRRRRR !!!!
ALRIGHT MADA FUCAZZ...... YOU GUYS OWE ME A CASE OF TECATE, A FIFTH OF JD, A NEW FRONT DOOR, AND 25 OZ BOTTLE OF BRUT (DON'T ASK!)!!!!!
LOOK MAN MAYBE WE CAN MAKE A DEAL. TAKE BORFO AND SKIDMARCUS AND LET'S CALL IT EVEN...................
PS: WE DEFINITELY NEED ROADBLOCK BACK ASAP...... THINGS ARE FALLING APART HERE!!!!!!!!!!
damn, I took stock of the place today, I think (as long ignore the ringing in my ears) that I ended up on the clean end of the shit stick. What I found at my place:
Full bottle of Makers
Full 1.75 of Jack
20 hamburgers
30 dogs
2 trout
chicken breasts
salmon
kneepads
elbowpads
helmet
rei jacket
tent
quilt
full pack of cigs
yummy! You guys are the most generous guests ever!
No, but really, I have a hunch most of the shit is tern's, so if you want it back gimme a shout out. Now post more pics, fuckers!
Well, apart from all the casualties we suffered, I still thought it was a kickass time.
Got to meet all of you guys face to face for the first(or second) time.
Yet, another large city I now have gloriously mapped into my brain.
A place where I don't live that I now could actually travel to and feel plenty of welcome in.
All in all, this was like one of those "stress-buster" vacations for me.
Oh, and mop-up operations were commenced without any hitches.
I don't leave until probably Tuesday afternoon, so I'll stick to mopping until I hand it over to brassknuckles.
Oh yeah, I found that MAX station and got back to Troutdale in one, 30lbs of water, soaking piece.
Y'all wanted rain, it really came down after y'all left.
Nearly burned my retina's out on the 257th hill.
Oh, and I found a Del Taco not too far from the Blue Line Max off of Cleveland and Burnside in case anyone craves a Macho Combo and you were local.
Big fucking deal.........yeah riiiight.
Warchild, Peach, Justa, and the rest of the Portland Ridazz!
You guys hosted us in the best way possible. I can't think that we could have actually done any more crazy ass shit in one weekend, but we did. The fun never stopped, and by far the best image of the weekend has to be Franz and the Dead Baby guy smashing up the bike joust in unison.. like woah!
Ride on, even now I'm having zoobomb withdrawals.. boo work!
I dunno, watching franz get pulled over by that cop for running a red, no handed, changing lanes, with no lights, wearing his headwrap like a ninja jihadist and waving a plastic machine gun was pretty classic, watching him talk the cop into giving him a warning and letting him off was even better. Still havent gotten around to going through my photos (got home last night and passed out until this morning) will this evening some time though.
I just want to give a shout to Joe Borfo, Brassknuckle and "the architect" Mr. PC for actually making this trip happen. I had an absolute BLAST. even though I had to leave for a family emergency (nothing else not even a house fire would have brought me home) Friday's ride and activities were some seriously good times. I forget the girls name, but whomever had that huffy tandem sittin in the back yard I just want to thank her for letting me and Eva roll that thing around the city. I gave it some love rebuilt the coaster brake and set sail for one of the funnest rides I've ever been on. Looks like from the pictures that it got even more insane. and the bull horns hahaha you fuckers! Marcus and Franz turned that shit into art. Sitting at the golfd course and hearing fart noises and bullhorn raps was highlarious!
I'll be posting up some of the videos I took.
The first one I fixed up was the tweeker tirade from Sunday night.
More will be up as soon as I have them prepped.
So. Portland Ridazz, if I didn't get a chance to say it to you in person (i.e. you weren't in the van), thank you for coming.
Thank you for being fun. Thank you for having fun.
As I was telling one of the Portlanders up on the hill, this trip was exponentially more awesome than I thought it was going to be. And I thought it was going to be good. Portland bike freaks are fucking nuts. COCOC? More like LOLOL!
This is what it's all about. I talked to Warchild about good dates for us to have them down here. It was truly interesting to be a part of a bike-friendly city, and though ZooBomb was the shit, it paled in comparison to the people we were lucky enough to meet.
On a different note, I was truly impressed with ALL the Midnight Ridazz who attended; on these threads I regularly read about trouble on rides and us portraying the wrong image, etc. That definitely did not happen on this trip; it was class all the way from the top down. To those who did not attend, you can be sure that the LA bike community now has some supporters in Portland.
looks good. Come on out. Maybe we can miss the cycling season. That might reduce possible injuries. I'm gonna start riding and routing this hill. I've done it a bunch of times by myself and a couple of times with The Badger Song on road bikes. This sound really fun. I'll keep in touch for the planning, for sure.
Yeah, so.... I've ridden GMR many many times...only not on a mini. So, I will start scouting the route for minis. I'll be ready for you and your crew to come out and ride this hill. I'm sure everyone else will be happy to put you up and show you the town. I hope some LA folks will start riding GMR with me on minis.
I tried to throw ride for GMR before we came up, but no one had enough time to get a bike.
Looking back, I'm glad it didn't happen until I did all of those zoo bomb routes.
To say that I had a great time would be the understatement of the year.
Thanks to everyone involved for making the field trip to Portland happen and for making it happening.
Portland has always had a special place in my heart and now that special place is even special-er.
SHOUTS!!! Kata (best person to be stuck on a bus for 21 hours with), Joe Borfo (superior ambulance services), spiraldemon (I-5 dominator), Franz (the copkilla), Kyle, PC (the spark that ignited the wildfire), SKIDMARCUS (the court jester), OTH, BrassKnuckle, Roadblock, Tern, B-Rad (thanks for bringing my bike back!), Marino (official event IT specialist dot come slash question mark equals nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine), Katherine, Philip, WARCHILD (the man to know in PDX), Kelly Peach (the woman to know in PDX), The Kitten Shack, The Sprockettes, E-Rock (the party animal), Kel, FuzzBeast, Nicole, Roadblock, SPOOK (the ladies man), Spookette (the man's lady), Reverend Phil, Julie, Erin, Kyber (zombie foot!), golden ticket, Samhain (consistently the one with the most energy at 4:30am), Bentstrider, Buffalo Dave, LE-OH (the PDX/LAX connection), Here Comes A Big Black Cloud (showing LA bands how it should be done), Dead Baby Bikes (Seattle reprazent!), ZooBomb, Dropout Riders, New Belgium Brewery (best event EVAR!), March Fourth, Flavor Shack (waffle tacos!), The Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center and of course everyone who I may have forgotten to mention here (sorry)
Everyone already knows how awesome Portland was so no need to say it anymore... Never mind I can't help myself after looking over the photos, Portland was rad. Dead babies - Dropouts - Zoobombers - Sprockettes - Groupies - Ridazz
I'm still stuck out here in Silverlake/Echo Park so I'm still way off the grid not able to participate in the google group or read emails.
Zombie foot is still haunting me. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up that morning in kittysack's basement, only inches away from my nose...I thought it was going to eat it
Well, my truck is finally fixed and I'm headed out unfortunately.
Nothing but solo's and hittin' the 24.
Sure felt lonely after y'all left.
It's the mid-week slog after all.
Not only did he dislocate his shoulder when he jumped into the Columbia river, but he just called me from the Emergency Room tonight after he endoed on his bike onto his six-pack case of beer (Bottles) - Tearing up his arm and cutting up some of his face in the process.
He actually sounded kind of proud to be added to the Portland Casualty List... Way to go Dan! You made it on the list... Again!
Just got back from the ER. 32 stitches in my arm, 1 in my face, a black eye, a huge lump on my forehead, and some holes in my arm they didn't want to stitch in case there are small pieces of glass in there. Oh and a massive headache. Even with all of that, I still love this city. When i figure out how to get the photos off my camera i'll post them up.
Michelle- Nice to hear you're doing well, and have stopped *lurking* and actually posting on the MR site, you should come down to LA if you get the chance and party like a rock star!
Brassknuckle, if you do it by yourself after we are gone, it doesn't count.
How do we know you were not driving a car when it happened? Or maybe you tried to smash into a liquor store...
You have to come back here and do it again.
Michelle, when you meet a boy from L.A. you are supposed to get your heart broken, not your jaw. Sorry this happened to you and I'm very happy you are doing well now.
The winner of the best injury competition is Spookette (Michelle) with 2 titanium plates in her jaw. Brassknuckle and onethirtynine take the place and show positions respectively.
Michelle: Why the titanium? I would have gone with carbon fiber...
PS> I can't believe there was a six pack REMAINING in Portland after this group visited...
My harddrive got gimped, so I had to completely reboot and reinstall everything.
Like the typical, over-worked ass I am, I forgot to write all the photos I took to DVD.
Luckily, I've still got all the video captures.
Looks like another trip is due in the works.
Perhaps we should make this annual/biannual pilgrimage just for mere principal.
Not to mention photo recovery for my monkeyass.
And Brassknuck's, after your little trip into the river, what other Hellstorm of Fury do you plan on getting yourself into??
I guess some urban stair assault could be in the works.
In the meantime, I'll keep at it.
Seriously...we all got broke off. I actually only ended up with one plate in my jaw; they decided when I was under anesthesia they could probably fix the second break by simply realining my jaw into place.
As for the liquid diet...I'm about ready to puree some meat for myself. This damn fruit in a blender thing is killing me! I always loved fruit, but I'm getting a little sick of it...
We warned you Portland doesn't like californians invading! Fucking heal-up dammit, that sucks. If it makes you feel any better we try to kill our Canadian friends too, poor chris from vancouver is still in the hospital after a real nasty concusion on saturday.
Nah, they still haven't had enough.
This party's just getting started.
Time for me to once again mount up and ride from the southern plains and into the hill country.
This time, we paint the town!!!
Nice photos. Come back and visit. I swear, I'll be able to eat real food in less than a month; you should all come ride with me again and I'll forgo zoobomb. =)
Everything is all fun and games until you catch Dan at the lowpoint.
It's all about candid camera from now on.
I still recall that party where that bossy chick was getting agitated by the bell-ringing.
It inspired me to equip my own rig with a bell.
That girl just needed some sleep. Or is missing lots of love....
For the mean time : " Stop ringing that bell, and get out of here" it was funny to see how furious she got. Although, the sound the bell was making wasn't particularly annoying.
Borfo, you would'a made lil'Miss Hissy-Fit-In-A-Tussle into the biggest pit of rage on the street.
And my camera would've definetely been unholstered to catch that.
Now, I just gotta find another random town to roll into and carry on Marcus' newfound tradition.
HAVE BELL WILL TRAVEL!!!
Just Facebook. It's the easiest place for me to post photos because I have iPhoto linked up to that shit. I hate doing this one-at-a-time thing but I know that some of you aren't as lame as me and don't have Facebook.
Samhain, PC, E-Rock, any of you guys know the name of that dude who took that night shot of us and the others near that bridge on the 18th?
It was when my left crank-arm was gimping out in the rain.
I'd really like to see how that one turned out.
This dude sorta looked Hispanic and drove that VW that was parked at Warchilds place.
Must've been a local or unknown that managed to link up with the detachment.
Oh well, that pic will eventually rear it's ugly head when we least expect it.
holy christ brassknuckles! waffle tacos got you too riled up. maple syrup spread...mmmm.
well, you crazy bastards sure brought it. thanks so much for the perfect bike weekend send off. my final memories of portland are now laced with megaphone sirens, haircuts to pass, waffle tacos, an endless flow of alcohol, and blood spattered roadways. we'll have to up the ante when i visit! is that even possible!?!
KP: this was voted Sexiest Gallery Photo for a while there on the MR main page.
Strider: I know exactly who you're talking about, but I'm blanking on the guy's name. He was a cool cat...I think he came up from San Francisco or something? I don't know whether he reads this site. Maybe you'll just have to be satisfied with your mental photographs of the Magnificent Seven ride.
We should try to keep this thread alive until the next planned Swarm.
Here's a little compilation I put together.
You'll be able to point out who is who with a trained eye.
Nicole, you have an amazing knack for capturing me during moments when I have this "I have to go to the bathroom really badly" look on my face. Bravissimo!
Sweet pics.
Since this particular "mission" is always brought up, perhaps we should gather the remaining spoke cards, and bronze-dip them.
Kind of like one of those military medals that are awarded for specific duty.
-->
Ridazz Roulette!
Here we go! Already an hour late :) we're at the mercy of senor Borfo...... And his portland ridazz camp song. we pray for def.
I have a feeling that 14 hours from now, I will want to be fluffed.
Fo sho, what's your 20?
Well, apart from all the casualties we suffered, I still thought it was a kickass time.
"and by far the best image of the weekend has to be Franz and the Dead Baby guy smashing up the bike joust in unison.. like woah! "
"The Architect." I like it.
Well, it was classy behavior by OUR standards, anyway... andWarchild, if you were any more plastered, I'd have thought YOU were one of us!
E-Rock, I think this was probably one of my favorite photos the entire trip.
I usually don't smile this big in pictures...but then, I'm usually not dancing a chorus line next to Dean Martin in a bunny suit.
We love you to, you injured indigent inebriate. Come back to us!
Well, my truck is finally fixed and I'm headed out unfortunately.
Please add BrassKnuckle to the casualty list:
Another Portland trip next year?
That sucks. We hope he recovers ok.
borfo's threatening to go back, guess we're all going to have to... to keep him in line and all...
Nah, they still haven't had enough.
I spotted Dan's Frankenarm!
There was a chance to be annoying and I missed it? Damn.