This may be some overly inspired blaa blaa, but damn that yesterdays gig was good! As I may have told before, I have quite a lot of records and I generally get bored about everything very fast. This means that most of the time, I change the styles and genres I listen and same albums rarely end up being playd repeatedly. Anyway, if I would try to sum those records that get the most air time, I think Primal Screams Screamadelica would be close to the top!
It´s not the best album I own, but it has characteristics that suit wide range of situations and most of all emotions! There is the psychedelic chilling along side with hands in the air party options. And extremely beautifull melodies hidden inside! Yes, when I have trouble to decide what to play next, this is a safe bet.
I found this album with a friend of mine some ten years ago. We were in a bar in the center of Helsinki (Cafe Meteori) and there was one of our favourite trance dj´s playing a special chillout set. The guy was dropping lots of classic balearic trax and suddenly this very long song with horns and gosspel choir was aired. Together we decided to ask what on earth are we listening since both of us wanted to get it. The song was what is presented in the the following video:
Next day I went to buy the album and since then I have wanted to hear it live. I really don´t mind the rest of their albums, though I have to admit that I should propably give them another change. Why I like Screamadelica is quite likely because Andrew Weatherall and the Orb were behind the production and their influence formed the basis for the acid house and dub roots.
Yesterday the awaited gig finally arrived! And the band was in a really good form! They definitely seemed to enjoy playing these old songs and the live versions of some of the songs were just astonishing! I loved every second of the gig and danced my feet sore! Last track of the first set was of course Come Together and when the song was coming to an end, rest of the band left the stage leaving Bobby Gillespie alone infront of the audience and he demanded everyone to sing the chorus for almost 5 minutes to get the encore. This was worth every cent paid for the tickets!!!
ps. Since I´m not much of a fashion enthusiast, I still do like T-shirts. Screamadelicas cover is one of the most amazing album covers ever and I just had to have a T-shirt of that since there was such available. I will include a picture of that later!
torstai 1. syyskuuta 2011
torstai 9. kesäkuuta 2011
Krazy Kat - possibly the greatest comic ever!
It was some time during the early 90´s when I first encountered the translated version of Krazy Kat at the local library. They had suprisingly educated and well curated selection of intelligent comics there. Though I was more into American mainstream and European classics back then. But then again, I had also fallen in love with Calvin & Hobbes (which is by the way really heavy contender for the best comic category) that was also widely available in finnish. I realised the similarities between the philosophical and surreal sides of Krazy Kat and the fast paced but still slow tempo of Calvin & Hobbes later when I had matured a bit.
The other shared quality with these two was the use of landscapes as their narrator. Landscape could create perfect timing and really strong moods for both series. This resulted the themes to be taken into really strong situations where surrealistic and unpredictable events could get proper effects. What also helped was the language. Krazy Kat is one hugely underrated mythical poetry - an epic that should be lifted next upon such masters as Homer.
Ok, so why I am writing this now is that I just bought this a moment ago: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Bric. It´s a collection of sunday pages ranging three year period of adventures of Krazy Kat and her (or is it his) arch rival and secretly loved one Ignatz mouse. This is now 8th album of Krazy stories I have. First three were Finnish translations (that are actually very well done, thanks to Soile & Heikki Kaukoranta whom have done great things for Finnish Comic culture by translating so many excellent works of art past 40 years) and the rest are recent English re-publications done by Fantagraphics.
Little something about the basic story line: Krazy Kat tells about the life at Kokonino Kounty located middle of Arizona desert and close by the Mexican border. The inhabitants of said kounty reflect early 20th century American life very precisely but always quite satirically. The main characters are Krazy Kat, who is a warm hearted and naive person strongly in love with Ignatz mouse, the cunning villain who hates Krazy and shows the hatred by throwing bricks to her noodle. The third party is offisa P. Pupp, a dog in the police force that admires Krazy and keeps pushing Ignatz into jail after forementioned brick tossing. These three form the triangular basis for most of the events but they get company from the varied group of essential and interesting side characters. The list is long but here is some of the most important fellows: Joe Stork, the purveyor of progeny to prince and proletariat, ms. Kwak Wakk who delivers rumours along the characters, Bum Bill Bee who comes and goes but is never on the way to nowhere, Walther Sephus Austridge, Kolin Kelly, the baker in bricks and so on... everyone have their own important role in the life in Kokonino and everyone interfere everyones life from time to time.
Here is two examples of 1922 Kat pages:
It´s important to realise that these represent only the early period of Krazy adventures. The works continued without break till middle of 1940´s, almost 40 years. George Herriman, the artist behind all this kept evolving the art and the style through out years and while most of the early works are black & white, the final years were coloured.
Krazy´s world is open for everything. It´s a surreal realm where modern inventions come and go and doesn´t leave a mark, but merely work for the purposes of the ever caring narrator. It´s wonderfull to notice the love of lifes mysterious things and surprising events that may or may not occur. There is always something strange going on. For example, the Mexican Jumping Bean, Willie Mendoza tries to conquest Kokonino from time to time and while mr Austridge may solve the problem by swallowing the intruder, the soon to be laid egg will cause havoc among the local justice system. Background changes basically in every picture that makes the world flexible for the plot to wander into territories that would otherwise be impossible to reach.
There is actually quite a lot of writings about Krazy Kat. These new publications include very well written research about various issues of the comics history and other such things. These include the racial issue of Herrimans heritage, the love of the Mexican life and Indian culture, the problems with the original publisher and their news papers that thought Krazy was too complicated series to most of the American papers (it was Hearst that published the comic and Randolph Hearst was the person who quaranteed Krazy Kats succes by forcing the papers to include it to their pages), tha other cultural phenomenas that followed (i.e. the Jazz Pantomime, etc.) and so on... I highly recommend to read these trough!
I also recommend the Fantagraphs publications for anyone who sometimes wants to indulge themselves with intelligent stories of mindbending graphics! These are extremely well made with much much love and time sacricficed!
The other shared quality with these two was the use of landscapes as their narrator. Landscape could create perfect timing and really strong moods for both series. This resulted the themes to be taken into really strong situations where surrealistic and unpredictable events could get proper effects. What also helped was the language. Krazy Kat is one hugely underrated mythical poetry - an epic that should be lifted next upon such masters as Homer.
Ok, so why I am writing this now is that I just bought this a moment ago: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Bric. It´s a collection of sunday pages ranging three year period of adventures of Krazy Kat and her (or is it his) arch rival and secretly loved one Ignatz mouse. This is now 8th album of Krazy stories I have. First three were Finnish translations (that are actually very well done, thanks to Soile & Heikki Kaukoranta whom have done great things for Finnish Comic culture by translating so many excellent works of art past 40 years) and the rest are recent English re-publications done by Fantagraphics.
Little something about the basic story line: Krazy Kat tells about the life at Kokonino Kounty located middle of Arizona desert and close by the Mexican border. The inhabitants of said kounty reflect early 20th century American life very precisely but always quite satirically. The main characters are Krazy Kat, who is a warm hearted and naive person strongly in love with Ignatz mouse, the cunning villain who hates Krazy and shows the hatred by throwing bricks to her noodle. The third party is offisa P. Pupp, a dog in the police force that admires Krazy and keeps pushing Ignatz into jail after forementioned brick tossing. These three form the triangular basis for most of the events but they get company from the varied group of essential and interesting side characters. The list is long but here is some of the most important fellows: Joe Stork, the purveyor of progeny to prince and proletariat, ms. Kwak Wakk who delivers rumours along the characters, Bum Bill Bee who comes and goes but is never on the way to nowhere, Walther Sephus Austridge, Kolin Kelly, the baker in bricks and so on... everyone have their own important role in the life in Kokonino and everyone interfere everyones life from time to time.
Here is two examples of 1922 Kat pages:
It´s important to realise that these represent only the early period of Krazy adventures. The works continued without break till middle of 1940´s, almost 40 years. George Herriman, the artist behind all this kept evolving the art and the style through out years and while most of the early works are black & white, the final years were coloured.
Krazy´s world is open for everything. It´s a surreal realm where modern inventions come and go and doesn´t leave a mark, but merely work for the purposes of the ever caring narrator. It´s wonderfull to notice the love of lifes mysterious things and surprising events that may or may not occur. There is always something strange going on. For example, the Mexican Jumping Bean, Willie Mendoza tries to conquest Kokonino from time to time and while mr Austridge may solve the problem by swallowing the intruder, the soon to be laid egg will cause havoc among the local justice system. Background changes basically in every picture that makes the world flexible for the plot to wander into territories that would otherwise be impossible to reach.
There is actually quite a lot of writings about Krazy Kat. These new publications include very well written research about various issues of the comics history and other such things. These include the racial issue of Herrimans heritage, the love of the Mexican life and Indian culture, the problems with the original publisher and their news papers that thought Krazy was too complicated series to most of the American papers (it was Hearst that published the comic and Randolph Hearst was the person who quaranteed Krazy Kats succes by forcing the papers to include it to their pages), tha other cultural phenomenas that followed (i.e. the Jazz Pantomime, etc.) and so on... I highly recommend to read these trough!
I also recommend the Fantagraphs publications for anyone who sometimes wants to indulge themselves with intelligent stories of mindbending graphics! These are extremely well made with much much love and time sacricficed!
keskiviikko 8. kesäkuuta 2011
Best Tekno ever (2008 edition)
I just found an old forum post I made in 2008. It was about the top ten best tekno ever and I seem to have divided my participation into best trax and best albums categories. Anyway, here is the list from that period:
Top 10 tekno trax
1. Ultra Sonic - What is Tekno?
2. Energy 52 - Café del Mar (Nalin & Kane remix)
3. Incisions - Techno Gong
4. Misjah - Keep Your Love
5. I-F - Playstation no. 2
6. Boris Blenn - Portamento
7. Thomas Krome - Bitches from Hell
8. Lochi - London Acid City
9. Egyptian Empire - The Horn Track
10. Prodigy - No Good (Start the Dance)
Top 10 tekno albums
1. Cristian Vogel - All Music has Come to an End
2. Chemical Brothers - Dig your own Hole
3. Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
4. Juno Reactor - Transmissions
5. The Speed Freak - For You
6. Emmanuel Top - Asteroid
7. BT - ESCM
8. Various - It's Not Intelligent...And It's Not From Detroit...But It's Fuckin' 'Avin It
9. Dune - Expedicion
10. Scuba - A Mutual Antipathy
I suppose these lists would be different today if I re-did them. Some trax and albums would still make it to the new list too, but some should go back to runners up league... Albumwise this is a little closer to todays list anyhow. My taste of what´s good changes by the moods and therefore is propably different everyday.
I have been using an old Muzik magazine that had a list of 50 greatest dance music albums as my shopping list for last 10 years, and today I have over 30 of those in my collection. I don´t agree with the whole list and it definitely is that years product but still it has given me very good hints of interesting albums. I will try to do a 2011 edition of that later this year.
Suprisingly I made a collection cd some years ago that had almost similar tracklist. Here is the cover for that!
Top 10 tekno trax
1. Ultra Sonic - What is Tekno?
2. Energy 52 - Café del Mar (Nalin & Kane remix)
3. Incisions - Techno Gong
4. Misjah - Keep Your Love
5. I-F - Playstation no. 2
6. Boris Blenn - Portamento
7. Thomas Krome - Bitches from Hell
8. Lochi - London Acid City
9. Egyptian Empire - The Horn Track
10. Prodigy - No Good (Start the Dance)
Top 10 tekno albums
1. Cristian Vogel - All Music has Come to an End
2. Chemical Brothers - Dig your own Hole
3. Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
4. Juno Reactor - Transmissions
5. The Speed Freak - For You
6. Emmanuel Top - Asteroid
7. BT - ESCM
8. Various - It's Not Intelligent...And It's Not From Detroit...But It's Fuckin' 'Avin It
9. Dune - Expedicion
10. Scuba - A Mutual Antipathy
I suppose these lists would be different today if I re-did them. Some trax and albums would still make it to the new list too, but some should go back to runners up league... Albumwise this is a little closer to todays list anyhow. My taste of what´s good changes by the moods and therefore is propably different everyday.
I have been using an old Muzik magazine that had a list of 50 greatest dance music albums as my shopping list for last 10 years, and today I have over 30 of those in my collection. I don´t agree with the whole list and it definitely is that years product but still it has given me very good hints of interesting albums. I will try to do a 2011 edition of that later this year.
Suprisingly I made a collection cd some years ago that had almost similar tracklist. Here is the cover for that!
perjantai 27. toukokuuta 2011
Happosauna - Old Skool Acid Rave
ok, this is a bit different. This is a story about an event that was done by a bunch of "Jannus" in love with acid tekkno. It´s called Happosauna (Acid Sauna, translated from Finnish)!
I will include some more pictures later about the installation process and such and also from the party itself!
The event was created about a year ago, but it was put in practise actually in very short time. All the guys involved have been organizing such shows for years but recently they have had less interest to making these underground raves. It was very nice to see these old skool lovers give so much energy for the setup and planning and the party ended up being colourfull and vivid experience of relentless hedonism!
Here is a video of the headline acts performance:
Yes, it´s Healium feat. K-Larm & J.Raninen LIVE and damn that´s heavy set! The guys did have four (4!!!) Roland TB303´s and one 707 drum machine! (I´ll add a picture of that too later) Listen tot the Acid Drop at the 22-23 minute mark, it´s insanely intense! At the beginning of the video someone is shouting "Päästäkää irti" that means release it or let it loose! Obviously meaning the 303 mayhem!
Other artists included Guardian from Japan playing two sets (one hour of Hardfloor and another filled with London Acid Techno), Kokki303 dropping some evil classics with his Mexican Wrestling mask on, Looney delivering some 80´s 303House and Error spinning Emmanuel Top style monotonic acid trance! Finally Error and Looney played b2b and some other guys joined the game till late in the morning!
The obvious winner was of course Pump Panels remix of Confusion that was played about four times! There was heavy loads of classic acid like Mad Cows on Acid, Acperience, Access and Circus Bells and everyone seemed to enjoy the shit really well! And then there was the Sauna!!! That was propably the reason why some of the dj´s managed to lighten peoples garments at the end of the party...
Anyway, massive thanks goes to production partners and artists! And very big thanks to the party posse! You are really keeping the underground alive!
The event was created about a year ago, but it was put in practise actually in very short time. All the guys involved have been organizing such shows for years but recently they have had less interest to making these underground raves. It was very nice to see these old skool lovers give so much energy for the setup and planning and the party ended up being colourfull and vivid experience of relentless hedonism!
Here is a video of the headline acts performance:
Yes, it´s Healium feat. K-Larm & J.Raninen LIVE and damn that´s heavy set! The guys did have four (4!!!) Roland TB303´s and one 707 drum machine! (I´ll add a picture of that too later) Listen tot the Acid Drop at the 22-23 minute mark, it´s insanely intense! At the beginning of the video someone is shouting "Päästäkää irti" that means release it or let it loose! Obviously meaning the 303 mayhem!
Other artists included Guardian from Japan playing two sets (one hour of Hardfloor and another filled with London Acid Techno), Kokki303 dropping some evil classics with his Mexican Wrestling mask on, Looney delivering some 80´s 303House and Error spinning Emmanuel Top style monotonic acid trance! Finally Error and Looney played b2b and some other guys joined the game till late in the morning!
The obvious winner was of course Pump Panels remix of Confusion that was played about four times! There was heavy loads of classic acid like Mad Cows on Acid, Acperience, Access and Circus Bells and everyone seemed to enjoy the shit really well! And then there was the Sauna!!! That was propably the reason why some of the dj´s managed to lighten peoples garments at the end of the party...
Anyway, massive thanks goes to production partners and artists! And very big thanks to the party posse! You are really keeping the underground alive!
keskiviikko 4. toukokuuta 2011
Black Swan (and the Finnkino experience)
We had some gift tickets for movies from christmas and their expiration date was yesterday, so it was about time to see one. After some negotiations Darren Aronofsky´s Black Swan won the ticket! And that was an experience!
I´m somewhat biased what to think of the film. I must admit that it really works on certain levels very well. But at the same time I´m also irritated about some crucial points. Yes, it is really captivating and intensive movie. It is also very good looking. Aronofsky knows how to make pictures look astonishing! He also builds the suspension very carefully.
But this is also the point where I´m not that keen on this business. Some of the effects are so overused that I would have expected him to be more creative (though they are well made). And the motivation behind characters is beyond being a clichê! First of all, I personally can´t accept the myth of artists being creative enough only when they are having huge mental problems. The second point is that the best experiences are not made to work with fear, I mean the working environment. And I see that Aronofsky has some issues with her mother (for example this theme is also seen in Requim for a dream).
Fortunately the actors save this in the end! They are all very good and they can breathe life to these forced characters. And the techno scene is very intensive!
--
I´m sorry for the negative tone of this post, but it is partial caused by the stupidity of the Finnish movie monopoly: Finnkino. Here is a short rant about the bad experience:
- Their website is just horrible: it is heavy and doesn´t load well with mobile connections. It also doesn´t scale to smaller screens well.
- This gift ticket systems sucks big time. When you buy gift tickets for example christmas presents why on earth does the expiration date have to be so short? And why can´t it be randomly changing the last date? Because everyone had the same expiration date there were insane queues for the last day!
- The queues are caused by the fact that you can´t order gift tickets from their website! You can buy normal tickets there with your credit card and you can reserve them but you can´t buy gift tickets.
- You need a code from the ticket to get to the toilets at the theatre (and I assume this changes time to time) but you obviously can´t print the gift number to the ticket (to help the ordering and printing the tickets by yourself).
- Half of the toilets were broken and the room was in horrible condition.
- At the candy store you had to weight the candies youself with a machine that prints a barcode but the clerk still has to type the amount themselves.
- Before the movie you will have to watch half an hour of crappy commercials and even some idiotic propaganda about copyrights (I will write my view of this issue later). I understand that they try to make their business lucrative but the prices are already quite high.
- The movie selection is really week, the amount of independent and generally interesting movies is just really short. This is due to their absolute monopoly in Helsinki.
- and so on... These are the reasons that I don´t go that many times to movies these days. Thanks to internet there is so many alternative options to see some truly amazing films!
I´m somewhat biased what to think of the film. I must admit that it really works on certain levels very well. But at the same time I´m also irritated about some crucial points. Yes, it is really captivating and intensive movie. It is also very good looking. Aronofsky knows how to make pictures look astonishing! He also builds the suspension very carefully.
But this is also the point where I´m not that keen on this business. Some of the effects are so overused that I would have expected him to be more creative (though they are well made). And the motivation behind characters is beyond being a clichê! First of all, I personally can´t accept the myth of artists being creative enough only when they are having huge mental problems. The second point is that the best experiences are not made to work with fear, I mean the working environment. And I see that Aronofsky has some issues with her mother (for example this theme is also seen in Requim for a dream).
Fortunately the actors save this in the end! They are all very good and they can breathe life to these forced characters. And the techno scene is very intensive!
--
I´m sorry for the negative tone of this post, but it is partial caused by the stupidity of the Finnish movie monopoly: Finnkino. Here is a short rant about the bad experience:
- Their website is just horrible: it is heavy and doesn´t load well with mobile connections. It also doesn´t scale to smaller screens well.
- This gift ticket systems sucks big time. When you buy gift tickets for example christmas presents why on earth does the expiration date have to be so short? And why can´t it be randomly changing the last date? Because everyone had the same expiration date there were insane queues for the last day!
- The queues are caused by the fact that you can´t order gift tickets from their website! You can buy normal tickets there with your credit card and you can reserve them but you can´t buy gift tickets.
- You need a code from the ticket to get to the toilets at the theatre (and I assume this changes time to time) but you obviously can´t print the gift number to the ticket (to help the ordering and printing the tickets by yourself).
- Half of the toilets were broken and the room was in horrible condition.
- At the candy store you had to weight the candies youself with a machine that prints a barcode but the clerk still has to type the amount themselves.
- Before the movie you will have to watch half an hour of crappy commercials and even some idiotic propaganda about copyrights (I will write my view of this issue later). I understand that they try to make their business lucrative but the prices are already quite high.
- The movie selection is really week, the amount of independent and generally interesting movies is just really short. This is due to their absolute monopoly in Helsinki.
- and so on... These are the reasons that I don´t go that many times to movies these days. Thanks to internet there is so many alternative options to see some truly amazing films!
maanantai 25. huhtikuuta 2011
Random Arts
This Easter has involved some interesting art experiences. Here is a short description of them:
1. Miró exhibition @ Emma
Miró was on of the greatest modernists in the 20th century. A Year ago I went to see his exhibition at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona and it was very very exciting! The place itself is really interesting and fantasy like. So I was likewise enthusiastic when I heard that his exhibition was coming to my close by museum. Though Emma has done some interesting but little bit disappointing exhibition earlier (Monét exhibition had only like 8 pieces on show, Malevits was a little bit better) this was for once something else. There was about 200 works available! And to my advantage these works were mostly from the Mallorca collection - so most of them were something that I had not seen before! Half of the works were sculptures. I must say that I´m more fond of Miró´s paintings. The Sculptures work better in their correct places and they were much better in Barcelona than Espoo... Anyway, the paintings were yet again a huge isnpiration, I should do some try outs myself.
2. Foot Prints on the Moon aka Le Orme by Luigi Bazzoni
This film has been waiting some time now at my shelf. I finally had time to check it out. I got this from the local movie dealer when I asked him to recommend me some old horror movies in the vein of Don´t Look Now and Wickerman. It does it´s job mighty fine, though this time it´s even slower and more hazy! But the visuals are astonishing and the suspension has been built very sophisticated. It´s a story about a woman who is haunted with dreams about a person stranded on the moon. She has to go to a small town of Garma to find the reason behind all this weirdness. Overall this works well, though some viewers may find the slow pace disturbing.
3. Some photography lessons
I was talking to a friend of mine last week about cameras and photography and suddenly I finally realised some major points in using my Canon 450D setup. Here is some firts results, though I´m still practicing some of the basics:
The first one is my cat Isis and the second one is just a rehearsal.
1. Miró exhibition @ Emma
Miró was on of the greatest modernists in the 20th century. A Year ago I went to see his exhibition at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona and it was very very exciting! The place itself is really interesting and fantasy like. So I was likewise enthusiastic when I heard that his exhibition was coming to my close by museum. Though Emma has done some interesting but little bit disappointing exhibition earlier (Monét exhibition had only like 8 pieces on show, Malevits was a little bit better) this was for once something else. There was about 200 works available! And to my advantage these works were mostly from the Mallorca collection - so most of them were something that I had not seen before! Half of the works were sculptures. I must say that I´m more fond of Miró´s paintings. The Sculptures work better in their correct places and they were much better in Barcelona than Espoo... Anyway, the paintings were yet again a huge isnpiration, I should do some try outs myself.
2. Foot Prints on the Moon aka Le Orme by Luigi Bazzoni
This film has been waiting some time now at my shelf. I finally had time to check it out. I got this from the local movie dealer when I asked him to recommend me some old horror movies in the vein of Don´t Look Now and Wickerman. It does it´s job mighty fine, though this time it´s even slower and more hazy! But the visuals are astonishing and the suspension has been built very sophisticated. It´s a story about a woman who is haunted with dreams about a person stranded on the moon. She has to go to a small town of Garma to find the reason behind all this weirdness. Overall this works well, though some viewers may find the slow pace disturbing.
3. Some photography lessons
I was talking to a friend of mine last week about cameras and photography and suddenly I finally realised some major points in using my Canon 450D setup. Here is some firts results, though I´m still practicing some of the basics:
The first one is my cat Isis and the second one is just a rehearsal.
tiistai 19. huhtikuuta 2011
Cycling season starts tomorrow!
Sweet! My cycling season is about to start very soon! Basically, I will get my bike back from the repair shop tomorrow after work. It has been taken trough spring maintenance and it should be ready for full action! I will definitely take it for a spin right after it´s ready.
Actually I have two bikes. My old war horse is the Norwegian DBS and it´s almost 20 years old hybrid. I use that mainly for going to a local supermarket for shopping. It´s quite nice bike, but it would need a major fixing. It looks a bit worn-out so there is no worry at leaving it in front of a market.
The other one is a two year old Cyclocross by Kona: Jake The Snake 2009. I just love this bike!
Originally I went to a cyclingstore to buy me a new hybrid, but the model that I was looking for was sold out (it was also by Kona). The guys at the store recommended cyclocross bike. They did have one with extra tall skeleton left and they offered it with 30% discount (it was late august and the season was coming to an end) but it was still way more expensive than I had thought of investing. After some testing I was sold, it certainly was the best bike I had ever tried before!
Now after one full season I still think this was the best decision I could have done! I did get a quality bike dirty cheap and it´s even big enough for me, and yes I´m a tall guy so that is not an easy task! And that reminds me about my new cycling shoes:
Look at those monsters!!! These were just sprawling at the store shelf. The amazing thing here is that these are the size 52 in European scale! I do have some difficulties at finding big enough shoes for normal use so this was more than a pleasant surprise! I just can´t wait to try these on with my Jake the Snake and push the envelope even further during this season. I will have to put some real objectives for this summer performance. At least I will resolve to cycle commute as many times as possible!
Actually I have two bikes. My old war horse is the Norwegian DBS and it´s almost 20 years old hybrid. I use that mainly for going to a local supermarket for shopping. It´s quite nice bike, but it would need a major fixing. It looks a bit worn-out so there is no worry at leaving it in front of a market.
The other one is a two year old Cyclocross by Kona: Jake The Snake 2009. I just love this bike!
Originally I went to a cyclingstore to buy me a new hybrid, but the model that I was looking for was sold out (it was also by Kona). The guys at the store recommended cyclocross bike. They did have one with extra tall skeleton left and they offered it with 30% discount (it was late august and the season was coming to an end) but it was still way more expensive than I had thought of investing. After some testing I was sold, it certainly was the best bike I had ever tried before!
Now after one full season I still think this was the best decision I could have done! I did get a quality bike dirty cheap and it´s even big enough for me, and yes I´m a tall guy so that is not an easy task! And that reminds me about my new cycling shoes:
Look at those monsters!!! These were just sprawling at the store shelf. The amazing thing here is that these are the size 52 in European scale! I do have some difficulties at finding big enough shoes for normal use so this was more than a pleasant surprise! I just can´t wait to try these on with my Jake the Snake and push the envelope even further during this season. I will have to put some real objectives for this summer performance. At least I will resolve to cycle commute as many times as possible!
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