Fetch the Comfy Chair!
Ahh yes, a beautiful afternoon: 79°F/26°C. A little warmer than yesterday, which was pleasant for me in the sun but chilly in the shade. I just brought out one of the hammock chairs and set it up under the maple tree. The dog has been going back and forth between the deck and the yard, but mostly just dozing in the grass. He's a lot calmer than he was yesterday. anniemal's been around less than usual with the Maryland Fairy Festival going on this weekend and preparations for it last week, but I guess he's getting used to it.
Friday was Bike-to-Work Day. I rode in as far as Rosslyn with the regular bunch, picked up my T-shirt, some maps (There's a new 2006/2007 edition of the Arlington County Cycling Map.) and pamphlets, and a few bagels, and then went to work. I was having trouble with my front brake going to work, and found that the cable was fraying inside the housing. It was unusable after I got it apart far enough to diagnose the problem. I replaced the cable this afternoon.
I took a spill on the bike last winter, turning into a driveway on black ice. The road was so slick that the bike and I kept slidng after I went down. I'm pretty low on this bike, so down isn't far; I wasn't hurt and the bike had a few new scrapes, but the right-side pannier took a lot of weight, and the clamp that kept it from bouncing lose got broken. The pannier's been falling off easily ever since whenever I hit rough pavement at a moderate speed. It's been sorta workable, and I haven't felt like spending the money (~$70) for new panniers. (What do ya know - now they happen to be on sale.) I knew I had a weird one-piece pannier (kind of like a duffel-bag/pannier hybrid), but that wouldn't serve too well for commuting. I'd forgotten I had a chi-chi set of Italian panniers that I'd bought marked way down several years ago, knowing that my current panniers would eventually wear out. I stumbled across them today. [Wow, talk about a closeout - the manufacturer's site doesn't have panniers now, and I got only one hit, in Australia, where they're selling for A$319 = US$260/pr!] I need to go through a lot of boxes and refresh my memories of what's here.
The lose pannier was a major problem on the bike-to-work ride because that route uses a trail that has a lot of raised cracks in the pavement from tree roots. Would that I had found the spare panniers a couple of days sooner.
I thought I'd be working on installing KnoppMyth (MythTV prepackaged with Debian Linux) on the Compaq this weekend, but I haven't felt like it, so there.