Twenty-second posting - nostalgia

TGIF. It's been a long week, friends. Three days of listening to consumers talk about powdered beverages in focus groups. Good news, though -- for these groups, I think we actually found all of the remaining TANG consumers...

Around this time for the past 2 years, I was preparing for a trip to watch the Tour de France. This year, instead of seeing cyclists push their bodies to human limits (including my own) on the Alpe d'Huez, I'll be watching the paint dry on the walls of my new condo. Instead of sitting with a good friend in a Parisian sidewalk brasserie with a cold Kronenburg and plate of salmon and cheese, I'll be waiting for my refrigerator to arrive (and realizing that it won't fit in my kitchen). Instead of trying to get a glimpse of Lance (and Sheryl!!) near the USPS/ Discovery Channel team bus, I will be trying to figure out how to meet my new neighbors without stalking them. And instead of trying to simultaneously drive a mini-bus (more "bus" than "mini") in the Alps and read a French Michelin map that looks like vomit from a kid who just ate a box of Crayons, I will be driving my own car across town 200 times to pick up one more load...

Sure, it's because of extenuating circumstances, but this will have been the first summer in five years without a major bike trip (Canada, New England, France, France). Next year, friends, come hell or high water, I'm going back to Europe. Today, though, I'm headed to Northwest Wisconsin for a family vacation. Look for me on ESPN 3's next Lumberjack Championships...

NATHAN

P.S. I thought the following was pretty funny...

Monday, May 9, 2005

Protest against Eddie Bauer's Nanotech

On Saturday in Chicago, activists protested topless outside of the Eddie Bauer store on Michigan avenue. They're concerned that the Nano-Tex coating the company uses to make stain- and wrinkle-resistant clothing could cause health problems. Howard Lovy's NanoBot has posted exclusive photos of the protest and the press release from the activists, representing a Chicago group called THONG (Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics): "We’re out here naked so people can SEE THE PROBLEM, Nano-Tex is such a radical and unpredictable new technology, like biotech, that it takes something highly visible, like a naked body, to get people to focus on the need to stop corporations from using humans as guinea pigs for new, untested, and unstable new technologies!" said Kiki Walters of THONG.

And from a Chicago Sun Times report: Some passersby averted their eyes. Others giggled nervously and kept walking past the demonstrators -- about nine men and women who appeared to be in their 20s. "Where's their mother?'' asked Tonya Stewart of Bowling Green, Ky., in Chicago for an Auntie Anne's Pretzels franchise meeting. "Y'all are rude,'' scolded Juanita Simpson, 25, of Beverly. A bunch of guys in town for a bachelor party seemed to approve. "This is the most action we've seen all weekend,'' said Brian Siebert, 25, of St. Louis.