:: Thursday, October 03, 2002 ::

The Return to Odwalla
(A dumpster-diving tale)

There is this great dumpster tucked away in the industrial corridor north of Bucktown. The more adventurous of my gentle readers may know of it. The dumpster i speak of belongs to Odwalla (Oh-dwa-la), who make bitchin' fruit drinks. Check out their selection. In-fucking-awsome-credible. Too bad they cost three bucks a peice. Well because Odwalla want to keep their bougie fruit beverages fresh, they have a rigorous experation date turnover policy. Whatever doesn't get sold goes back to the factory and tossed in the aformentioned dumpster. Odwalla supplies the entire city of Chicago, so they have lots of waste. 30-40 bottles at a time is not unusual. Yum. I started diving the Odwalla dumpster last winter, when it was just like a big metal refrigerator. I could stop by and grab a few ice cold smoothies at least once a week. Then it became summer. the squarish plastic bottles started fermenting in the Chi-town sun, which is harsh like everything else around here. The bottles ballooned out fat and tasted nasty. There were precious few good ones to be had. That is, until now. The temp today was a high of 61, and the bottles of fruity goodness were cool to the touch as I loaded fifteen of them into my messenger bag. Sweet sucess. I'm looking forward to a winter of tropical delights.

I saw a Brazilian movie today called Orfeu. It was crazy. Basicly a romantic tragedy, but with gritty out-of-control parts.
:: Ira 7:31 PM [+] :: [comment/respond]
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This morning I was riding downtown and a woman in a white SUV drove up next to me, shouted "You must have a death wish!" and flipped me off. I had done nothing wrong. It pissed me off for 1.5 seconds, during which I contemplated chasing her down and telling her that she was driving like a terrorist and that the FBI would be visiting her in the near future. Instead I just smiled and waved. She was obviously high strung and having a lousy morning. I'm sure she is a nice person and never would have said that if she wasn't inside a half ton of metal armor. Anyway, I can't afford to let peoples' bad attitudes rub off on me.

It rained a couple hours before I woke up this morning, making the roads glisten wet and me thankful for the fender clipped on the rear of my bike. On days like this I stuff an extra change of clothes in my hurricane bag, roll up my pant legs, and blast through the puddles like a man posessed. There is this bubble of summer weather surrounding Chicago, making the air as wet as the street. When I got to work my shirt was slicked to my back and I was happy to have a dry spare.

All but one lane of North Ave look like they've been hit with a giant cheese grater, from west of my house all the way to Western Ave. There are these big machines that eat asphault and they are rolling up and down the street with workmen hanging off of the sides. The rain has reduced the dust factor to 0 out of 10.

My new favorite breakfast food is Soy Yoghurt with Fresh Raspberries. Live cultures do the belly good.

:: Ira 10:50 AM [+] :: [comment/respond]
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This is the new design for this site. There is a nice picture of my bike on the left side. There are still some bugs, however, like that white line and how for some reason Netscape hates my html and makes it look like garbage, but IE likes it. Go Microsoft. My roomate would kill me If he heard that.

The dust factor on my ride this morning was a 7 out of possible 10. I keep forgetting to wear my sunglasses, and today was no exception. The concrete grinding machines were throwing gouts of dust into my eyes and it was mixing with my tears, so by the time I got to Milwaukee Ave I could have cast a set of ornate patio blocks.
:: Ira 9:49 AM [+] :: [comment/respond]
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For the past couple of week, work crews have been grinding away at the curbs and medians all down the western part of North Ave. They have leveled the entire street. I think this is great because now I can cross all four lanes without having to worry about going over the bump in the middle. It also makes me think that they will be repaving the road. That would be exellent. I'm sure that the city must have some kind of reason for doing this though, and I'm betting that it is so they can push development farther west. I've noticed that down by North and Sheffeild, across from the Whole Foods store, a mamoth glass-fronted block of stores just opened up, including a Victoria's Secret and an Express, among others. Now there are even more places to buy stylish womens clothing. What interests me about this is that I was at the Century Landmark theatre yesterday watching Spirited Away and I noticed that inside the big shopping complex where the theatre is there is a nearly identical array of stores to the ones just opened on North Ave. I wonder if all of these stores are oned by the same corporation or if there is just one developer that has made a deal with the stores. Either way, that's no good for economic diversity, which is what makes capitalism work. They had better watch out. Also, the stores are ugly, because they don't match any of the origional architechture.

:: Ira 11:09 AM [+] :: [comment/respond]
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