« Trimming down | Main | Hurrah for commuting! »
November 22, 2007
happy Thanksgiving 
To those of you in the US, happy Thanksgiving. To the rest of you, happy Thursday. So far, it's been a most excellent day.
I woke up at 3:30 and was wide awake. So I got up. Within about a half hour, sweetie was up too. By 5am, we were talking about breakfast. So we went driving around looking for a place to get breakfast. I figured that Hot Cake House would be open (wrong), so after touring much of North and NE Portland, we ended up at My Father's Place when they opened at 6. We sat and read the ad circulars and then ate some underwhelming breakfast -- all in all, it was great.
Then we got home and went back to bed. I've been up for a couple hours now and we've putzed around. I've been doing some light cleaning along with some internet surfing; sweetie has given birdy its first bath and been doing some internet surfing. Right now I feel more relaxed than I can remember feeling in quite a while.
We have no commitments today. We do have some food to cook, but none of the crazy over-achiever stuff that usually marks my holidays (though honestly, I love the overachieving cooking). Food will get cooked when it's time. I'm hoping to do a fair amount of knitting and cleaning, and to haul the Omabike into the living room where I can work on it in the comfort of a heated, well lit space.
***
Since the time changed, I've haven't been riding my bike. Mostly, it's been about simple logistics -- I don't know how to turn on my generator powered lights. It's probably really simple, but I just haven't figured it out.
Yesterday, we were going to have a short day at work, and I realized as I was getting ready that I could ride my bike if I want. Suddenly, I was flooded with irrational happiness, and even though I had a huge deadline to meet at work, I couldn't get the grin off my face.
So I go out to the shed, and check the tires. One is soft; one is all but flat. Ugh. So I get out the pump and I get the front tire, with its schrader valve, right about right. Then I go to the back tire, with its non-schrader valve, and immediate let all the rest of the air out. And I can't seem to get any air in.
This just about reduces me to tears. I thought about riding one of the townies, but I was having a temper tantrum in my mind. I wanted to ride the Oma. Damn it!
So I got to work and was just obsessed with the issue. I thought the valve was a presta, so I looked that up and read all the stuff about it online and just felt like crying again. Damn it, I had tried filling the tube the way they described.
I finally got to work on my deadline and that made me a bit more serene.
After work, I stopped at my bike shop, Clever Cycles. I hadn't been in the shop since they had expanded onto Hawthorne, and it is gorgeous. The front room is full of gorgeous natural fiber clothing for bicycling -- no spandex, indeed nothing sillily jocky -- and bike bags and baskets (this doesn't show all of what they have from Basil, but it will give you an idea. They also carry some other lines of bags). The back room is still citybikes and bakfiets and folders, and other beautiful accessories for your bike, like beautiful handmade bakfiets cushions.
I have a real bag/purse problem. I love a nice reasonably priced purse, and when I got serious about incorporating bicycling into more of my life, I got really annoyed by how ugly the pannier bags are, and how tiny the baskets are. If I have one of my Queen Bee satchels (eg what they call their Trucker bags), it won't fit into my basket.
Of course, what can you do? I have an ugly double pannier which annoys me everytime I look at it.
Anyways, Clever Cycles has beautiful wire and wicker baskets. They have gorgeous panniers in so many colors. And they have purses that work as a single pannier. I of course bought one (it was cheap, cheap, I tell you), and I am most likely going to go in and buy another, as well as a large wire basket on Friday.
I told my tale of presta valve woe to Dean, one of the owners, and Todd ran over and brought me a Woods Pump Connection Schrader Adaptor, which I can just screw on and pump the tire as per usual. Who knew: the valve was actually a Woods, so following the Presta directions would have just resulted in more frustration.
Then, I ran over to the scooter shop and picked up my scooter. Yay!!
Anyways, lazy day ahead. Yay!!
Posted at November 22, 2007
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://hachi.pair.com/vickijea/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/505
Comments
I never heard of a Woods valve before Shelden Brown's Bicycle Glossary to see a picture of one.
Learn something every day, eh?
Posted by: The Squeaky Cyclist at November 29, 2007 6:50 PM
Hey VJ, those bags look nice. I emailed Clever Cycles and heard back from them today about the Basil bags.
Posted by: Fritz at December 2, 2007 4:38 PM