Bikes: March 2009 Archives

Restless today. Still haven't fixed the valve flat that spontaneously burst into song (or rather, loud hissing) on my way out the door yesterday.

Rather than fix it (which would have made me late), I simply grabbed an alternate bike and zipped away at top speed. Miraculously arrived five minutes early for brunch. Thank you, fastbike.

Indulged myself shamelessly in every way I could think of this weekend - though not in the one that really counts.

Spent money on the following:

mimosa et tartine et salade des fruits
tiny garnet nose-jewel
the good hummus
pedicure

Took a day off the bike(s) today to rest my knees, but even moreso my poor back. Walked to the spa.

Making soup. Really really distracted today by impure thoughts which will no doubt simply remain in the realm of fantasy, which is disappointing, but on the other hand I must be less depressed to be having those thoughts again. For a couple of weeks there even the lure of hot boy(s) was doing nothing to raise my antennae. (You know I'm depressed when...)

Hello, lovelies. When last we left our heroine in a huddled sad heap on the floor, things were looking bleak indeed. They're still looking bleak, but her mood has improved ever so slightly.

Put it down to a few uninterrupted days on the bike(s), or to a bit of judicious flirting, or to whatever you'd like.

I've been taking advantage of the still-pretty-fracking-chilly weather to keep knitting a few late-March items for self and friends. Ordinarily among spring's many gifts (hayfever, the nagging feeling that one ought always to be outdoors doing something fabulous, and that since one isn't, one is wasting one's life) is a sudden and total loss of interest in the knitterly arts.

I felt the first fingers of that beginning to take hold a couple of weeks ago, but then it got cold again (not that it ever really pushed fully into warm, mind you; there were just hints and vague promises), and so I kept knitting. And now I have a pretty pair of mittens that didn't photograph at all well in the incandescent lighting, but you may take my word on it - they are sweet.

And I am knitting another pair for a friend who massacred his first pair by the simple expedient of wearing them on the bike in a rainstorm. I am thinking that however pretty that Koigu stuff is, fabled in song and story, it doesn't hold up very well. I mean, one rainstorm, c'mon.

So the replacements will be in less-gorgeous but hopefully sturdier yarn that's already been road-tested by yours truly.

There's a whole thread on Rav about knitting for the bike, and I wonder if I ought to post some real-world feedback from my various knit-recipients. Enh. Too complicated.

I was telling my dad, finally, after 10 days of utter silence, about the various bad newses to which I have been subject lately, and he commented that any one of them would be enough to make a sane person's head spin.

Which would explain the impression of her I've been doing lately. I dunno. It seemed like I should just be able to handle it all.

Of course, that is how it always seems, with me. It's like a disease. I expect that nothing will ever break my back, and then what happens is that my body takes that challenge literally, and I end up with my back out for months and months.

Yes, the poking with needles seems to be doing something. I mean, something in addition to giving me strange bruises in even stranger places. It seems, thankfully, to be easing up my mobility a bit, and if I'd just stop doing laundry and twisting myself into unfortunate contortions in my sleep, the pain might even abate a bit.

Me: I hurt my back in my sleep.
He: Alone?

Sigh.

Maybe this is just me, but it really seems that there ought to be at least one cute guy who finds it a turn-on that I enjoy adjusting my chain tension at two in the morning.

And yet...I don't hear any volunteers.

Kitwich hates the sound of tires being changed, primarily because the first step is to drain the air out of the currently mounted ones so you can take them off the rims and put on the new ones (or in this case, the old summer slicks). That hissing sound sends her scrambling for the shelter of her covered litter box - ack! zoop zoop zoop - all hunkered down low along the ground like a mongoose.

I love working on my bikes, even though the amount of work I know how to do on them is limited. Whenever I get home, I am always kind of reluctant to stop riding and go inside. Working on the bike is another way of spending time with it - of giving it some love.

I've heard mechanics refer to it that way, too - gently admonishing people who've neglected their routine maintenance - "You need to give your bike some love."

So, I lube their chains, and adjust the tension, and pump them up, and kiss them and tell them they're beautiful, and - most importantly - ride them, lots. Hello, bikes - I love you.

Oh my dears, I have no pics for you. How can I show you what I wanted to show you on the way home tonight?

The lit-up skylines, like row after row of angular Xmas trees. The Goldfrapp song leaking out of my head where my iPod had placed it, apparently very firmly, earlier today. The piles of dim sum making (admittedly) uncomfortable cargo in my stomach.

The inevitable flitter of my innards as I flirted but tried not to be noticeably flirting. The regrets at not having managed to forcibly commandeer That Boy for my diabolical purposes on some previous evening. Maybe I should have played rougher.

The champagne bubbles of amusement at the text messages exchanged earlier with Blondie. Me: Dude, you said this is my girlfriend just in time. I might have kissed u. He: Her first words were did u sleep with her?

Hahahahahaaaa. Why yes, love, I did. About a thousand times in three months. Why do you ask?

Oh wait, that would be my answer.

So, my Big Question to the Universe is:

Why is it so frickin' difficult to find a suitable lover to play with? Hot enough and sweet enough and free enough and not interested in getting in my face about my choices in life.

It doesn't seem like such a tall order. Heck, I like 'em short, too. Or not short. Whatever.

Of course, the list of requirements is a bit more involved than that. But not so very. I don't care if he's married, really. I don't care if he's a bit of an idiot when it comes to women. Actually those conditions (or lack thereof) are specific to a particular candidate who shall remain nameless but who is still lighting me up like an airport runway whenever I see him and frustrating the hell out of me when I don't (and when I do, really).

Honestly, darlings, I would have been glad to "settle" for a little romp with Blondie, had he been available, and it's slightly tragic that he's not, because nothing less would be a worthy distraction, and he's only worthy because he happens to be made of candy.

Okay, I know. No pictures are adequate.

I've had three false starts in the past few days. I start to write something and then realize I'm just not in the mood, and why force myself, since it will only sound forced.

Still not sure if I am in the mood, but at least the coffee is right today. After the death of the French press beaker, which shattered in my hands while I was doing dishes one night, I ran out (or rather, shuffled - since I was precaffeine) and bought this. I've had one before, and liked it.

What I didn't realize was that the one I had before was smaller.

So I've been futzing with it, the first two or three days drinking the equivalent of three or four shots of espresso mixed with hot milk, and having the lid of my head blown off. The next couple of days trying to tone it down by, variously, not pouring all of the magic elixir into my cup, or adding a little hot water to it, or (today) simply reducing the amount of coffee and water I put into the thing in the first place.

And this morning I hit upon the right formula, apparently, since it tastes great. Still not the same; I swear I can taste the more finely groundness of the beans, and I still wish I had my French press back, and to that end I suppose I shall be fussy and order myself a replacement beaker, even though I've been forewarned by many customer reviews that it, too, will break one day while I am washing it.

It will be nice to have both, actually, since I do love espresso; I just prefer it black with sugar, and yet I have to have the au lait in the morning. Hey, as that stranger in the five and dime store told me, I'm eccentric.

Not sure how he figured that out on the scant evidence of watching me refuse a plastic bag and simply slip the espresso maker into my little cloth purse thingy. But honestly I can hardly argue with him.

Speaking of which, I am itchy with bike anticipation. I am waiting for ONE PART. Oy veh.

In other words, suffering the torture of the damned, watching other people get their builds done and ride away in glee. Haunting my shop every day in hopes that the thing will magically appear and that I'll be forced to leave one of my existing bikes as a hostage whilst I ride away on my shiny new pony.

(No, they wouldn't make me leave a hostage; I'm paid in full - but have you ever tried to ride two bikes at once in NYC traffic?)

Side note: people do do this; it's called ghost-riding. You ride one while holding the bars of the other one and wheeling it along next to you. It's difficult and not terribly safe and you run the risk of being pulled over by a cop and having to prove that the extra bike is not one you just stole.

There's another method, which I watched someone do just the other day, which is to hoist bike #2 onto your back and carry it while riding bike #1. This, too, is out of the question. I could carry a frame. I have carried a wheelset (and boy did I feel like a little superhero doing that). But a built-up bike? Nope.

No, the irony of it all is that to pick up my new bike, I will have to ride the friggin' subway. Ugh. Already dreading that part. So much so that I've mentally gone through a series of complex schemes trying to figure out how to get a friend to ride my extra bike back for me, either all the way to my place, or to one of their own apartments, where I could pick it up, but then how do I get there....you see the trouble.

Sigh. I think I need to go for a ride.

I am certain that the bicycle will once more fill a social role and again become a means of transport and not just an object of leisure.

Now they're in the process of undoing all that and, even if the change varies from country to country, I can see that there is a whole new way of political thinking. - Eddy Merckx