John’s Ramblings

I got a bit of a ride in yesterday. I did 19 miles around the valley, just doing miles for the sake of miles. I ended up doing a bit of productive detour-scouting for Saturday’s edition of our Newcomer’s Ride. The City of Tukwila continues to fiddle-fart around with some pipeline work along the Green River Trail where it passes under I-405. They have placed large “Trail Closed” and “Detour” signs across the trail, which everyone just steers around because the detour is about 300 times more dangerous than the construction (steep climb up a narrow sidewalk with a steel plate thrown in for “texture”). Not happy with every scofflaw cyclist ignoring their detour signage, the City has gone all-out and unfurled several miles of “Caution” tape, stringing it across the path in order to force the issue. I assume that we will be dodging this little mess all the way through the summer. I’ve ridden through this construction site dozens of times over the last few months, but have never seen a single person working here.

Today it’s raining. This morning the weather was pretty good, but it turned kinda nasty the second that my workday was over. Go figure. So instead of doing anything productive I’m tracking the shipment of my new wheels.

I’m not sure why they had to stop in both Roseburg and Portland, Oregon, but they are back on the highway now! If I get up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, I should see that they have arrived at our local distribution center in Pacific, Washington (about 3 blocks away from where I broke my last spoke, oddly enough). “Gabby” the driver will then show up sometime tomorrow, wanting to know what’s in the box. He loves chatting about what you’re getting. “Another shipment of wine, eh Mr. Calnan? What do you do with it all??”. I’m tempted to order something from the Fetish Warehouse, just to see his reaction when he drops the package off.

I went totally against my anti-flash nature, and ordered orange rims with black spokes, in theory to match my orange and black LeMond Buenos Aires. I figure the look will either be totally hot or totally hideous, but I will be so visible that I’ll never get run over.

Saturday will be the “shakedown cruise” for the new wheels. Sunday, if the weather cooperates, a group of us are going to ride up Sunrise on Mt. Rainier. 3,600 feet in 16 miles or so. The downhill should be fun anyway.

2,600 miles year-to-date.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.