As far as I can tell, sosovelo began with three friends who liked cycling, loved laffing, and sort of knew how to use the internet. All came from very different backgrounds and were drawn to different aspects of bicycling culture. Yet this motley crew managed to maintain high-endurance blogging for several years, and are still going strong today.

What made sosovelo such a success (it’s been referred to as “the google of blogs”) was the different perspectives its three founders brought online with them. These different personalities, or “flavors” of writing, can best be categorized by using an analogy of the standard holiday popcorn tin. (For those of you unaware of what I’m talking about, the holiday popcorn tin is a large aluminum cask, trisected, and filled with butter, caramel, and cheese flavored popcorn…one flavor to each section).

In terms of sosovelo writers, the popcorn breakdown goes as such:

Editor: Butter
Cait: Caramel
Dawn: Cheese.

But this isn’t the only way that popcorn categorization can be used. No, no, avid reader, you can categorize ANY group of three things this way! Another easy one is the popular brands of bicycle components:
Shimano, Campagnolo, and SRAM.

So far, everyone I have asked has come up with the same answer. So take a minute to make up YOUR mind.

Done? Well of course Shimano is butter, Campy is Caramel, and SRAM is cheese.

When Cait came to visit she woke up one morning popcorn tinning the Holy Trinity. This wasn’t as cut and dry for me, having been raised in a godless family, but she is fairly sure this is how it goes:

Father: Butter
Son: Caramel
Holy Ghost: Cheese

Basically what I am getting at is that sorting out any group of three things into popcorn flavors is something we can AND SHOULD all be doing all the time. Or at least that’s what I thought until a certain fated day in early December when I discovered the new Trader Joes QUADRISECTED popcorn tin. In adition to adding another section, TJs also switched up the flavors, adding the crowd pleasing Kettlecorn, but also including two more “mature” flavors: White Cheddar and Olive Oil. Butter was dropped, but caramel was kept on, leaving us with two savories and two sweets. A safe decision on their part…but did it hold up when used to categorize everyday things?
The answer isn’t as easy as you might think. First of all, after purchasing and consuming this tin with Cait, we can both confidently say this it is a bullshit popcorn tin. The Kettlecorn and Caramel were great, but the white cheddar is way too serious for our festive moods. The Olive Oil flavor tasted like a rotten pile of nothing. If nothing could still have a bad taste to it, this is what I would say the Olive Oil popcorn was like. Maybe like the taste of a bad smell? Something like that. I don’t think it even had salt on it. That section remained full as the others diminished, I assure you.

Yet despite its failure in the overall popcorn tin category, the new flavors still held up in some scenarios.

In bike parts companies, Kettlecorn is Chris King and Olive Oil is suicide brakes. In the Holy Trinity, Olive Oil is purgatory and Kettlecorn is free will. Do you see what I’m getting at?

In bike racing:
1st: Caramel, 2nd: Butter, 3rd: Cheese, Prime: Kettlecorn, DNF: Olive Oil.
This is only related to race placement, it does not reflect my actual popcorn preferences.

Do you understand what I’m saying? If you’re more of a visual learner, I’ll use diagrams:

In closing, even though Trader Joe fucked up his popcorn tin, don’t feel like you need to live within the rigidity of the three-flavor system. Make your own way through the world and pop your own corn. Put nutritional yeast or cayenne or Braggs or cinnamon and sugar on it. Just please always use salt and always compare the favors to other groups of things completely unrelated to popcorn.

Thank you for your time.
Love,
Dawn Riddle

The best part about having an expensive hobby like cycling is that you never have to worry about what normal grownups call “investing” because you sink all of your money into plastic parts for your bicycle. Your portfolio is your quiver of bikes, and your broker is eBay. If you want to, you can diversify by buying both Campy and Shimano components, but the only payout you’ll ever see is a crumpled piece of paper taped to a box truck and a photo or two of you standing on milk crates of various heights taken in the dusk, after even the families of people that care have left the race. But when the economy goes to shit, it has almost zero impact on your life. Because who the fuck cares about mark to market accounting?!

But the worst part about maintaining an expensive hobby like cycling is that you never want to get rid of anything you purchase. There is never a good time to sell. It either has sentemental value, like the busted Rocky Mountain seatpost that took my virginity during a romantic 48 hour adventure race at Whistler. Or it has future value, like my 2004 limited edition Tickle Me Elmo Primal Wear Jersey, still with original tags and in Near Mint condition. None of these things are ever actually going to get used again. They’re just going to sit in my box labeled “parts” that may as well be labeled “Short Circuit 2 props” because the only person that’s ever going to make any of that shit work  is Steve Guttenburg and his sidekick, the racist Indian stereotype.

It isn’t just bike stuff either. That box sits next to another box of worthless electronic crap. Like my trusty Apple Newton, the first PDA with handwriting recognition. The original owner had erased then entire system dictionary and replaced it with only profanity, so anything you wrote would be recognized as some variation of “piss shit shit motherfucker fuck shit whore.” It was like buying an iPad that ran only the Tourette’s translation app. It took me weeks to figure out the problem, but I was too stubborn not to use it so I had a series of grocery lists that read like Bukowski’s poetry.

These are my toxic assets.

It’s worthless now, that Newton, because the average American consumer in 1991 recognized that replacing a pen and paper with a $1000 digital device  is a fucking ridiculous idea, unless that digital device can also magically pull pornography and videos of kittens from space.

Why am I bringing these up now? Well, because I haven’t bought any bike parts in ages so I have nothing to talk about. This is what people do when they run out of shit to talk about. They talk about the past, and how they were once in a band and climbed K2 without any oxygen and slept with 4 women at once and how they used to be a pretty good racer. And they they pull out their boxes of faded pictures and broken bike parts and electronics and they stare at them wistfully.

Well, I’ve never accomplished shit. But I had an Apple Newton once, GODDAMMIT, and that makes me someone.

Mostly I’m bringing this up because I just read this great price from the NYT Sunday Magazine about storage units. And by “just read” I mean last year. But I just thought about it today, because my brain processes things 1 year late. And then I listened to the Planet Money story about Toxic Assets, which was really fantastic. So you should read or listen to both.

Storage Units

Toxic Assets

Here here is a video of kitten attacking its own reflection:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiwoNSy271U

I realize that my job is starting to get to me, because every time I sit down to try and write something it comes out sounding angry. I’ve been in front of the computer so long, I’m starting to refer to the recovery period during races as “buffering” and then getting frustrated when it doesn’t happen faster.  I’m the first to admit that this website is feeling phoned in, like the last couple of seasons of CHiPS when they didn’t care about plot anymore and just kept sending Ponch to the Playboy mansion with reports of disturbances… in his pants.

If anyone has been wondering where all the funny stuff that used to be on this site went, well, that stuff moved to Columbia, Missouri to become a professional journalist. And it took its full size banana suit with it. So this seems like a good time to point people towards the new sister site about running. And journalism. And the Midwest.

By referring to it as a “sister site” I just mean I promised to make it look exactly the same as this site, and in exchange I would be allowed to call Cait my BFF and ride her journalistic coat tails for the rest of both of our lives. The arrangement actually played itself out exactly like the movie Can’t Buy Me Love, when a Pre-McDreamy (the “McPreemie” sounds like the worst fast food breakfast sandwich ever) Patrick Dempsey paid some girl at his school to be his girlfriend so she could buy a sweet suede dress with fringes, then his nerdy friend got mad and yelled “YOU SHIT ON MY HOUSE!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aET9fwIf0ZI

It’s a weird movie. But basically what I’m saying is that Cait has turned me into a prostitute. Or a nerd. Or a suede dress. I’ve never been good at analogies.

I hope that our newly rekindled internet relationship will provide some heated debates, including:

• Biking v. Running
• The Captain v. Tenielle
• Porky Piggin v. Shirt Cockin’
• Smokey v. Bandit

So the website is back. It was here. Then it was stalled. Then it was totally gone. And now it’s totally back. One hundred percent. Some people will say that the Vitamin D is what got us motivated. Others will say that it’s Editor’s fancy new smartphone that allows him to send and receive funny messages. And some will say it’s because we’ve all been drinking 4Loko, America’s hottest new trashy alcoholic energy drink. But all of the people who say those things would be idiots. The true reason for the return to blogging:

A slow motion video camera + endless supply of baby kittens = internet stardom.

Dawn decided that sosovelo would become “America’s Premier Online Cycling Web Magazine About Cats” and the rest was history. Sure, we’ll still talk about bikes. And bike rides. And bike parts. But mostly we’re going to talk about cats. If we happen to find some crossover between these two topics, well, that’s even better. Because I make amazing venn diagrams.

What else is new? How about this:

- We’ve added a new video section, so the next time we have writers block we can just post videos of funny things until we become un-boring. Those funny things will probably be in slow motion.

- We’ve added a ‘Kittens!’ category. If you ever get tired of bike shit, you should just read the kitten section. It will most likely include dogs and chickens, too.

- Dawn is moving to Philly, where she’ll hear the word “cheese steak” about a thousand times from the people who do not live in Philly. That’s all we know. Cheese steaks and that broken bell. Dawn will cover all cat and cycling news from the city of brotherly love and street violence, and will be responsible for Eastern seaboard cyclocross coverage in the fall.

- Caitlin is going to head back to Missouri as the journalistic voice of of edgy Midwestern youth, where they’ll heavily edit all of the amazingly clever things she writes. We hope that she’ll save all of her witty exorcised gems for guest editorials from the flyover states. We’ll post her podcasts on our sidebar.

- Editor is going nowhere. Fast. If anyone has a job for him, his skills include swearing, puns, and… shit. Just swearing and puns. But he’s really good at both.

- We want to be socially networked. Is Friendster still cool? No. Damn. What about Myspace? That’s gone too? Fuck. Wait, everyone hates Facebook now also? Jesus. Fine. We’ll get a stupid Twitter account, even though we swore we wouldn’t. And we’ll “tweet” things, until the magic of that one wears off, and like hermit crabs we’ll wanted the sandy beaches of the internet looking for our new electronic shell.

Whatever. We’ve got a Twitter feed now. Follow us or whatever it is that Twitter people do.

We’ve still some technical hiccups. But whatever. You’ve never expected more of us. Why start now.

Point your finger accusingly towards the center of a US map, and you’ll be pointing right at me. I’m a Midwesterner, once again, and after years of self-determined exile I’d like to posit the controversial opinion that it’s not so bad. I know, I know, that’s not what you thought I’d say. But hear me out—I’ve got a lot of complicated feelings on the matter.

I live in a college town called Columbia, Missouri, which I’m constantly informed is an extremely liberal and accepting place. The disclaimer then follows: *in comparison to the rest of Missouri*, which is a little like assuring someone they live in the most handicap-accessible laser hangar on Vader’s Death Star. My basis of comparison is Portland, not Missouri, and I refuse to be impressed by a city’s supposed liberal leanings until an entire lane of traffic is opened up exclusively for drag queens on Segways. It happened this year in the Portland Pride Parade, and will henceforth be the barometer by which I measure a city’s open-mindedness. Sorry, Columbia—I know that you’re trying. Don’t think that the adorable earnestness of your newly-painted bike “sharrows” is completely lost on me.

I moved here two weeks ago to attend grad school in Journalism, a troubled field in which I have no practical experience. It could be the best decision I’ve ever made or the worst—only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m determined to make the most of my new life through exploratory bike adventures, exhaustive friend-making campaigns, and a concerted effort to get everything I can out of grad school so I can return to my beloved west coast in two years with an actual skill set. I’ll tell war stories of my days in Missouri, singing songs of Midwestern troubles to my sweet, sympathetic squad of motherly drag queens. We’ll mount Segways and ride somberly through the night on a trail of remembrance for struggles past, weaving through the dark streets of Portland in mournful conviction. This pain, this sense of loss, is temporary. “I will survive,” as my drag queens so eloquently put it.

There are things I miss about Portland and there are things that I’ll never quite be able to understand about Portland. When I returned from my last bike tour through the Southern US, I couldn’t believe the level of culture shock I experienced just from wandering through the blessed organic paradise of New Seasons. Fresh produce, whole grains, and in every aisle, at least two beaming, fashionable hipsters radiating youthful vigor and heart-healthy antioxidant diets, toting flashy messenger bags laden with micro brews and baguettes in strong, bird-tattooed arms. There were just so many yoga mats. I was startled. It was overwhelming, and it was uncanny. It was Logan’s Run, actually. Where is Portland hiding its old people???

I had a relaxing summer and eventually readjusted to life without the old people that I cherish so much on my bike tours. Eventually, all those quaint old-timey expressions like “I wanna break her like a shotgun and load her from the rear” were exorcised from my vocabulary and once again replaced with women’s studies/stoner surfer Portlandisms. I “held my bros accountable”. I “took up space”, “subverted dominant gender roles”, and used “Dude” at the beginning of every sentence.

I tried to soak up as many of those “only in Portland” experiences as I could—riding tandems to the Bluffs, gay vegan potlucks, Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with my all-girl “She & D” party, inadvertent participation in the World Naked Bike Ride, and most frequently, long mid-morning runs through neighborhoods filled with community gardeners, tae chi masters, flute-players, medieval LARPers, and early-hour Pabst Blue Ribbon enthusiasts. Portland is not a city known for its high employment rate, and for the first time I too experienced a summer month in the city with no job, no scheduled bike tours, and no obligations beyond mentally preparing myself for the big move. By the time my late-July moving day rolled around, I was ready.

So here I am in the heartland of America, living a quiet, lonely life in a vast apartment with my feline animal companion. It’s a Friday night and later I might go investigate a nearby bike path or gay bar or adult video store–now that I’m a “journalist”, the only active verb I’ve been using is “investigate.” You never know when there could be some hot scoop out there, waiting to be discovered by some enterprising girl detective at the Jamba Juice drive-through window.

Actually, I did get a hot scoop in my first week in town—an anti-bike harassment ordinance that seemingly has the entire community up in arms. It’s that tired, old “motorists vs. cyclists” song and dance. The ordinance passed in June, and apparently a few anonymous road-ragers are demanding the goddamned right to lob their chosen projectile (presumably the “Big Gulp”) at all the spandexed scofflaws running wild on our city’s streets. The gruesome battle to repeal the law is being fought in the city council and on internet message boards citywide. I haven’t actually seen enough of a bike presence here to warrant such vitriol, and haven’t experienced TOO much hostility from motorists here yet either. Well, there was that one time when a loud SUV full of raucous fraternity folk informed me that my bike looks “gay,” but that was probably just a polite observance in an attempt to forge bonds across transportation communities. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of encouraging a cease-fire.

It’s hard to start over in a new city where you don’t know anyone, and I’m a little afraid. I miss my friends. I miss the love and familiarity of my entire Portland support network. I miss the short blocks and tree-lined streets of Portland’s east side neighborhoods. I miss the food and the bikes and the beauty of the entire Pacific Northwest. Mostly, I miss my comfort zone. I have no idea what I’m doing here, no sense that I’ll be any good at this program. I’m standing on the edge of the unknown, about ready to take the first step. And I don’t know how much longer I can hold these boner jokes inside of me.

After a month of backaches and inactivity, the day I had been dreaming about finally arrived: My back started feeling normal. I played it safe and took it easy for a few days, but after no changes for the worse, I triumphantly decided to begin riding a bike again.

I threw some cruiser bars and flat pedals on my mountain bike to create, what I assumed was going to be, a veritable safety-mobile. Braving both a too-spinny-for-the-road gear ratio AND an apocalyptic heat wave, I happily set out to ride over to Crush for Cait’s very last going away party (she’s had about 12 during the time I’ve known her). I could scarcely believe I could be riding a bike without agonizing back pain. My future truly looked bright and I assure you, my spirits were soaring.

Sadly, this elation was short lived. On my way to Cait’s house after the party I misjudged a ramp onto the sidewalk and managed to eat shit going about 2 miles per hour. And just like that I rejoined the injured club.

After a pretty depressing month it was a seriously harsh blow to have my back pain come back in full force. The main bummer for me is the extreme isolation and boredom that comes along with being confined to one’s house. So instead of wallowing I decided to get some emergency acupuncture and then go watch a track race.

Because I am a total scrub that lives paycheck to paycheck, I rely on the cheap group acupuncture rates that many places now offer. During this session I had the pleasure of experiencing (in front of 5 strangers) what I have dubbed “ass-upuncture”. I kid you not, my shorts and underpants were pulled almost all the way down while a gaggle of needles attempted to cure what ailed me via my backside. Slightly embarrassing, but extremely effective, I left with seriously diminished pain and a much better mood.

I picked up my also-injured friend Miranda and we drove over to Alpenrose to hang out in 90-something degree weather to watch a small group of our friends ride around in circles. To our delight, Team Motordome (so-named for the motor home they’ve helped each other fix up), provided us with camping chairs and ice-cold Fresca. Comfortably settled, backs supported, bodies hydrated, we settled in to watch the races.

I have never participated in a track race myself, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. All I really learned from an evening of spectating was that track racing has funny rules and tactics, and that James won because he warmed up wearing a camelback under his skinsuit.

Only a handful of people even came out to race, which gave the whole evening the feel of a family-reunion-style picnic. No one seemed to really care how they did, and afterwards Candi Murray (sporting a truly awesome onesie that I am going to try to find a double of) gave us all popsicles! In a further effort of fully banish my newly returned injured, downer mood, Steven Beardsley gave me a headset for my track bike so I too can practice velodrome arts in the future.

So for now I am re-resting, bike rearranging, and onesie shopping. With any luck (and some more needles-in-the-butt) I will be able to ride bikes again someday.

So, the other day I really messed up my back. I didn’t do it, as one would suppose, doing any of the many extreme sports I participate in. Nor did this injury occur during one of my many feats-of-strength moves: opening difficult jar lids, taking out the recycling, refilling and then reinstalling the water cooler bottle at work. No friends, this horrendous malady struck while I was having a picnic.

There we were (Jesse, Zack, and I), just enjoying a bromantic sunset at the bluffs when a shooting pain struck the ol’ lower back region. Now I’m no doctor, but I believe I did what any other medical professional would suggest in this situation: a series shake-face and jumping photos. Still, the next morning I could barely walk without making several grampa-esque groans. So in lieu of giving my out-of-town visitors the tour of my usual epic Portland life, we just “took it easy”.

Now for those of you reading this who, like me, feel some strange urge to train and compete in the art of physical activities you’ll surely understand the desire to take a break. I myself barely work (for money), but somehow I still feel busy all the time. This is because even a “1-2 hour ride” ends up taking a lot longer when you factor in after-ride shower and foodfest. And then you’re usually lazy and ready to just enjoy a well-deserved sit-around. I always assumed that if I weren’t riding I’d be getting all the other stuff I put off done.

The sad truth I discovered last week is that there is no “other stuff”.

I have simplified my life down to work, school (when applicable), riding, and cooking/eating. Sometimes I do crosswords, but usually they go with food, so I didn’t give them their own category. Sure, occasionally I’ll watch an action sci-fi thriller while wearing a heart rate monitor or write a play about elderly vampires or play guitar in an acoustic alternative band with my friend Cool Breeze…but these aren’t everyday tasks that I can just go to when my body stops working.

The only answer to my quandary was to smoke a ton of pot (medicinally) and watch a lot of DVDs (also medicinally).

The first few days of this were nothing short of fantastic. Well, okay, slightly short of fantastic due to the fact that I was in pain the whole time. But the relaxathon was really liberating. By day 3 I had totally OD’d on leisure and started feeling crazy. I am glad to report that I am now on the mend. And I emerge from my back-imposed hibernation with MOVIE REVIEWS!

(In chronological order of when I saw them)

1) Adventureland

What is it about movies with young people that I am supposed to relate to that gives them the right to have no real plot?! Are you calling my peers and I boring? Seriously, this movie is about a guy who is trying to be Michael Cera and the girl from Twilight liking each other but not doing anything about it. And then they DO do something about it, Roll credits.

2) Earth Girls Are Easy

This movie is the exact fucking opposite of Adventureland. EVERYTHING happens. Everything. And Jeff Goldblum has a l,ovetouch. And it’s a musical, but you don’t even really notice that it is. It is the sole reason I am applying to school in LA.

3) The deleted scenes from Dirty Dancing

There are really only 2 worth watching. One I think is called “Take My Stan” and it’s just Dennis Nedry telling jokes at the end-of-the-summer talent show. He almost vomits laughing at himself and repeats the punch line a lot and sweats profusely. So my dumb brother in law says to me, “have taken a bath recently?” And I say, “No, is one missing?”

The other scene is aptly titled “Dirty Dancing”. In this scene Baby and Patrick Swayze dry hump/dance for much longer than we need to see. There are a lot of intense hip movements that make me feel funny in a bad way. It raises your heart rate, but lowers your interest in actually seeing Baby and Johnny doing it. Because it is so fucking awkward.

4) The last episode of Gilmore Girls Season 3

During Rory’s high school graduation speech I just started crying. I looked over at Jesse and she had tears streaming down her face too. She just loves her mom so much! Good work Amy Sherman-Palidino.

5) HR Challenge: T2

More Terminator. More Heart rate monitors. We discovered that the really intense scenes actually lower our BPMs because we focus on what’s going on. We are like scientists.

6) The new Harry Potter Movie (#6)

She-who-can-certainly-be-named, Caitlin, invited me to see this fine film with her. I usually shy away from full-pricers, but I can never wait for HP to make it to the cheap theaters. I did not leave the theater feeling ripped off at all. The movie is like 5 hours long and is made up of 32% teen awkwardness, 52% wand wielding action, 10% snogging, and 20% creepy living-lake-ghost-terror. Seriously I cannot imagine a child watching this. There’s parts where they are obviously using broomsticks as visual euphemisms for boners, a spell that when cast makes all your blood come out, children murdering their elders, Ginny in a revealing robe tying Harry’s shoe laces and feeding him mini quiches, and of course Dumbledore’s old, blackened, withered, Horcrux-destroying hand is always making a cameo.

Also, before the movie there was a preview for the upcoming apocalypse film “2012″. At one point a city is sucked up into a tidal wave which then rolls into a bridge which hits a building which smashes a house and starts a massive fireball that a plane flies through into an ice cave causing an avalanche that covers New York igniting yet another fine shot of urban lava. This movie is going to be amazing.