Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Dummy Loads of Fun

Two mornings ago this was my load to work: two wheel boxes stuffed with other cardboard for recycling and a set of wheels to ship to an Ebay buyer. I haul all my bike parts packaging back to work for reuse or recycling. (Yah, our BS landlord doesn't have recycling at our building. Crucify me for that too, Skiles.) With a Burley this would have potentially taken me two trips. No problem, and lots more fun in the crosswinds, with the Dummy.
I want to congratulate my friend and loyal reader, Biz Mark E, for graduating to the good life. The lucky bastard was gifted a used King headset from BRose. He likes to trash my slight penchant for King headsets from time to time. But here is his Steamer, pictured below, effulging the glorious radiance of the King. Or, as Johnny Nebraska likes to call it, the "headset for the endtimes." The endtimes might well be nigh ... for oil. Yeehaw!

By the way, ya might wanna do a little better job of aligning those cups next time. Do the Reverend King some justice.

I just couldn't get enough last week. Tonight on the ride home I took a slow motion fall on my right side while cutting through an icy park for a pee stop. Fell right onto the healing knee scabs of last week's fun in the sun pavement ritual. I've grown accustomed to hopping up from so many falls it was kind of interesting to have one where I actually paused for a few minutes because the pain of re-injury made me see white light and curse like a sailor on leave who's sober against his will.

I'm tired of winter. Actually, I'm tired of clear, glassy, slicker-than-owl-shit ice. I read today that only Siberia has greater temperature fluctuations than Minnesota. (For March we have something like a 114 degree temp range.) I'm ready for clear roads. I'm ready for that first evening I pedal away from work overdressed because it got warm and stayed warm. I'm ready for that first after work beer ride where the sunset doesn't urge me toward indoors because I'm freezing my chamois off.

Those days are coming. We have at least one more night forecast to be below zero this week. Then, perhaps, a warm weekend. Maybe. But, before that, snow tonight? Joy. It's been a long winter.

3 comments:

Marco Esteban said...

the alignment was on purpose, and its existence and installation is nothing more than overkill, especially on a Surly frame. The unbranded OEM loose ball headset on my 20-year old steel Trek is still running fine, by the way.

Patch O'Houli said...

Easy, killer. Let's drop the topics of beards and King headsets. Can't we just be friends again?

Andy said...

Actually, let's crucify your landlord. Then make him into some Tordadoes to be served at the next Flecktoberfest.