still in victoria, and some friends and i are going on a 'find a coffee dumpster or bust' adventure tonight. we've finagled a vehicle and locked n loaded every roaster in town. we might be driving around for hours to no avail, but gosh what an epic victory that would be for the working class.
theres a coffee dump in minneaplolis whose secret is guarded like the golden fleece so it doesn't get blown up.
a new fork and stem were successfully installed and are currrently operational. thanks luke.
maybe to returning to vancouver a couple days before larissa to get started with the five cockrings of death. yes folks, its the olympics.

i'm in victoria and its so nice and warm here. we went camping over the weekend and had a fire on the beach and i went swimming. which isnt really like swiming. more like floundering momentarilly in wicked cold water and runing back to the fire we had on the beach. the forests on the north shore of the island are like a docter seus forest, with lots of wonky oold growth douglas firs. so dank and pretty. pretty moist.

i was borrowing a bike from a friend thats here and a car in an intersection was about to run me down real slow motion like. i was able to jump off the bike and get out of the way of the car, but the front fork got all mangled in the collision . so i reported it to insurence after getting the niceguys info. they arebuying my friend a new used bike, which is great. but i'm taking in the old bike to a for profit but cool bike shop that will let me use their tools for a few bucks and am going to try and fix it up. headsets are funny! its an old bike so i'm hoping it wont turn into an avelanch of 40 tiny ball bearings rolling everywhere.

hello #2!

i am in frech speaking québec city. i`ve been in montreal these last weeks, and there also is the speaking of french, but here. gosh. i don`t stand a chance and wish you were here. for your constant and attentive translations i would pay you in the knick nacks and trinkets i picked up on the side of the highway during my 7 hr hitch here. its just incredable how many people want to give you a ride 10 minutes down the road when you have a sign stating clearly and in BOLD BLACK CAPITAL LETTERS that you are going the distance.

i am traveling with a friend, her name is sonia, and we came to see the musical group Beirut. but the venue was overcroweded and we didn`t stand a chance of getting it. and of course, like so many fall back plans concieved of and competently executed, we bought a bottle. ours we drank on the midevil city walls while the city music festival that brought beirut in sounded from sides all around us. then on our top-heavy bikes (which might of been more our top-heavy heads after that bottle) to the fairy, across the st laurence river, and the long bike to the house of sonias parents. anyway, all this is leading to you. you are involved in this story. because now it is morning, and a fluke would have it that sonias brother is here visiting also. and get this. he is flying to france tomorrow and will be in paris with no place to stay in a week.
so, you know. if you want to put him up for a minute your welcome to. he comes from good stock, and he actually got into the show last night, so i can speak highly of his musical tastes (if nothing else exactly) because they are somewhat similar to my own. and his sister is top knotch.

xxxxxxxxxx is how you can reach him. his name is Phill. but these frehch-0-phones they might spell it any old how.

i`ll be leaving montreal on saturday, on my bike with a friend who will be on hers, with her dog that will be in a trailer towed by her bike. we`ll be making tracks north of the great lakes and then south into minesota to minneapolis where i will be living this fall.

love you olin! i hope this letter reaches you well. lets try to talk friday night! i`ll email you again when it gets closer. there is one house where the phone rings!

After much time, some spent well, some completly out the window, periods of intense productivity followed immediatly by sevier laziness, i would like to keep this thing a little (but not at all entirly) relevent to my life.

I stuck it out in Minneapolis and eventually pled my seven charges down to one misdameaner disorderly conduct on time served with no fine. During these 4 months of judicial hang-ups I was a part of BarBones Halloween Puppet Theater, meet lots of sweet people, and enjoy Minneapolis.

Had a heck of a time getting back to Asheville, but my perminent record will speak for itself on that account.

Now, I am on a bike trip north. I've been traveling for a couple months and have been able to spend weeks in richmond, DC, baltimore, philidelphia, and now almost a week in binghamton. i planned on leaving today but the rain and my good friends Medusa and Miles convinced me not to. I'll be biking north to burlington, vt by myself and rejoining Cusi, a good friend i met in minneapolis who i have been biking with from asheville, nc (pictured above, all excited about a fire he kept going through an hour of rain). Here are some pictures i've finally gotten off my camera, maybe 40 of them spread over quite a lot of time and space, too much i would have like to document.

Thank you everyone who kept on me about writing here, but understand IM NOT MAKING ANY PROMISES.

My PD

So the public defender issued to me (my second actually) is horrible. I am filing a complaint against her (below). I have hired a real lawyer (for lots of money I am making by painting a little carpentry) who is great. He is representing some other folks arrested with me so is privy to what happened and how best to fight the charges. The state has singled me out out the group, giving me the most and the harshest charges as well as pushing my case forward the quickest. I am scheduled for a trial by jury on the 20th (way before any other RNC case I have heard of), but my lawyer will hopefully get it pushed back to give him time to prepare.

Now without further, my complaint to the Ramsey Co. Public Defenders office.

Both interactions I have had with Marilyn Knudsen have been an exhausting
and demeaning experience.  The first was a phone conversation where she
was very angry with me for 15 minutes for not mailing her a description of
the events prior to my arrest.  She did not receive contact info from my
first Public Defender Ron Paulzine, and she refused to contact me any way
other then then a house in upstate NY that I do not live in anymore.  She
said she did not have the time to 'babysit' me.  Nothing else was
communicated during the 15 minutes, it was just her yelling at me.  When
we met before my Sept 25th court date we had talked for 2 minutes before
she said "I have many more important clients and having to spend so much
of my time on you is making me sick."  She was demeaning constantly during
this short interview.  She refused to believe that I was protesting
non-violently because I had on a black sweatshirt, wore a mask, and did
not give my name at the time of my arrest.  I understand that she has to
anticipate the questions a prosecuting attorney might ask, but her level
of hostility during this brief conversation was startling.  She asked me
why I was wearing a uniform that symbolized violence, and informed me that
she hated uniforms before I had a chance to answer.  She asked me why I
just didn't join the army if I wanted to be violent and wear a uniform.
At one point she contemptuously asked my level of education.  I answered
her and she replied "Then you must understand the English language." She
was not filling out a form or getting information pertinent to the case,
she was insulting me because of my lack of knowledge of the legal process.
At another point she asked if I was mentally disabled.  When I was called
before the judge he told Mrs. Knudsen and I that the state was adding 4
charges to my case, bringing the total to 7.  He asked Marilyn if she had
spoken to me about them and she said "yes" but I had to interject that she
had not.  It was important to me that I understand the severity of the new
charges, since I had been charged with misdemeanors and was now being
charged with a gross misdemeanor for the first time.  She asked the judge
for a 5 minute recess and was furious at me for contradicting her in front
of the judge, but did answer my questions about the new charges.  It was
during this 5 minute recess that she told me that this was not a pretrial
hearing (as had been scheduled), but an omnibus hearing.  I had no idea
what was going on or what to expect when we went back in front of the
judge.  I wanted to ask her, but was afraid to.  Her level of hostility
and outright anger at me, combined with my need for her to act on my
behalf, effectively silenced me.  After my case was heard, she left the
courtroom immediately and I have not spoken to her since.  I feel that it
is important that you understand that during each of my interactions with
Mrs. Knudsen that I was consistently trying to be both helpful and polite.
I was (and am) very aware of how helpful or hurtful she has the power to
be right now.  My hope is to find alternate representation, although I
have given her the document she requested of me in case I cannot.  I would
like her not to know that I am part of this complaint until I find other
representation.

Alex Taft
10/1/08

Its been too long old friend

I have slacked on this blog. It is true, and the world is not shocked.
I am back from Europe. I've been stateside long enough to help my father with his house, see friends along the east coast, and commit myself to a work trade agreement in a community house in Asheville. And then I went and got myself arrested here in Minneapolis. The coppers have accused me of barricading an intersection during the first day of the Republican National Convention. That was way back on the 1st of September, but here I still am. At the moment they are charging me with 3 or 4 misdemeanors (it fluctuates) and I have plead not-guilty to all of them. I didn't do anything wrong and they've got the wrong guy.
Money is running really short (especially because some heroes bailed me out for $1000), but I am staying with friends that I lived with in Barcelona and there is a Little Ceasers and an Aldis right down the street with decadent dumpsters. And the Food Not Bombs crew is tight tight tight.
My needs are being met, but I really hope a couple odd jobs will come threw for me soon (and it looks like they will). This place is so nice! But I wanna get back to Asheville and start the projects I said I would! All my stuff is in a bedroom I'm not doing worktrade for! What will happen if they actually take this thing to trail and try to screw me?
So that is the whats what of me now quickly. And you should all know that there are so many sweet people here doing so many sweet things. I've gotten to help a friend build a wood fired forge, be in a puppet show at the Bedlam Theater, jump off of a bridge into a creek, have a love affair (he left town this morning), play lots of badminton, and fight fascism.
I will write more on the RNC once this whole thing is legally cleared up for me. But I will try get more quick updates posted.
Love you all so much! Thanks specially to all of you who have really come threw and been suportive of me during all of this.

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT

Here I find myself in an anarcho syndicalist bar. There are pictures of the circle A everywhere alongside trade union posters and one old timer for each seat at the bar. It is tiny and playing David Bowie. About 20 seconds in I am offered a cigarette and the warm pale beer is as Spanish as beers come. Luckily, more often then not, as far as beer goes, your standard bubbly barley hops beverage can't be all that bad no matter where it comes from. I have just dropped off my bike's bum back wheel at Nicks bike shop. I am pretty sure that I mounted it at an angle like a jerk and bent the axle. And I am going to need my bike on Saturday. The owner of the shop is paying me to trail a large herd of Danish tourists around the city on a bike tour. It has the potential of being absolutely horrible. I told Nick on my way out of the shop that we may be there when the tower falls. I will be something of a sheep dog, keeping everybody moving in the right direction and rounding up stragglers. They said I shouldn't need to use my cattle prod. Bowie sings “time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth” in between lines about space invaders. Why is he still so neat when he has always been such a dork? And why does the one drunk in a crowded bar always insist on talking to me? Questions for the ages...

Friends from the Auzzy squat Thumderdome came by today. Some sketchballs in an old yellow postal van were loitering in front of their house. After one of them was overheard talking about needing a ladder they started to worry about an illegal eviction. They were checking out the upstairs windows and balcony from the street and really really didn't like it when someone in the squat started taking their pictures. Sometimes the real life owner of a squat will hire a band of ruffians to break into a squat and physically evict its occupants. These types of evictions are against the law, often violent, and don't always work, but the upside is that the owner of the property doesn't have to go through the lengthy court process and the cops don't seem to care either way. My house will probably sleep over there tonight just in case, but probably nothing is going to happen, and either way all the doors and windows are going to be heavily barricaded. Now the old chap who gave me the cigarette is getting all upidy: leaving over my shoulder spitting slurred Catalan in my ear. I think he is talking about May Day and the price of beer and pointing at his empty glass. I have absolutely no idea what he is getting at.

There are few things niftier than getting on an underground train at one and slowly walking its length. Going from car to car, getting a good glance at everyone taking the ride. There is something about trains that make their passengers seem very simply themselves. It is like a random collection of people in a theater, stationary and having a shared experience. Instead of a constructed story projected in one direction, everybody experiences each others projections while pretending not to. Everything is lit harshly by florescent lights, some of it lighting up the black tunnel walls that crowd in and streak by the windows. The train rocks back and fourth meditatively while its captive audience think about where they are coming from or where they are going or what kind of problems might happen on the International Space Station when the US fleet of spaceships goes off line until 2015. The ends of the subway cars are joined by rubber walls, like an accordion, linking the whole train something like giant snake. If you stand in the last car it is possible to look down the entire length of the snake as it winds, twists, and dips along its tunnel.