Waves, Wine, Steel, and Sue...
I am sitting in a cafe in Berkeley writing this post on my Airport enabled antique iBook. I thought that I could increase the frequency and reliability of posting to this blog if I had Airport capability, so I bought the no longer available original Airport card from one of the few places that still carries it. When my dad opened the computer to install it, there was an Airport card already there! I don't mind being a Luddite, but Luddite and idiot aren't supposed to be synonymous. Anyhoodle, it works.
Why am I not hunkered under a Red Cross cot in Baton Rouge? Well, part of the screening for the Red Cross that they don't tell you about (some would call it hazing), is that in order to test your flexibility and capacity for dealing with stress and changed plans, they make your flight reservations, but do not actually purchase the tickets, so that when you call the airline to confirm they say, "Yes, we have your name, we have that reservation number, but the tickets were never purchased so we sold them to someone else,and there is no room on that flight." Then there is the call to the Red Cross travel line, a 30 minute wait on hold (read some fascinating stuff in the National Geographic), and the net result is that I'm flying out on Wednesday morning, "and God is willing," as the old time Quakers used to say.
So, some of you are wondering how the Waves to Wine ride went? I got to REI Santa Rosa a little after eight, checked in, bought a bicycle tube and some warm gloves, then up to the Luther Burbank Center to camp out with other riders. As I exited the freeway, I put the dashboard switch on the Isuzu from "Paradise" to "Purgatory," indicating that I was burning biodiesel and not straight vegetable oil. However, I didn't drive far enough to really purge the fuel system of oil--but more on that later. The Hartsough clan were all coming up on Saturday morning, hoping to ride the more reasonable 25 mile course, so I was on my own for the night. Luckily, I had stopped by Trader Joe's in Roseville to get some serious snackage (Red Cross recommends that you carry tow days worth of food and water in a "hardship disaster"), so I had a good dinner of turkey jerkey, Kettle chips and Fuji apples--if you wanna run cool, you've got to run on heavy, heavy fuel!
I had busted a spoke that morning on a light training ride, and the Tour of Nevada City bike shop had restrung my wheel (Thanks guys!), but I had to put the tire back on, change saddles, put Carradice saddle bag on, and adjust headset on the old Bridgestone RB-1 with J.D. Gruppo. (J.D. stands for Junk Drawer.) Then I just flopped down the old Thermarest and sacked out around 10pm.
Morning on next post.
Why am I not hunkered under a Red Cross cot in Baton Rouge? Well, part of the screening for the Red Cross that they don't tell you about (some would call it hazing), is that in order to test your flexibility and capacity for dealing with stress and changed plans, they make your flight reservations, but do not actually purchase the tickets, so that when you call the airline to confirm they say, "Yes, we have your name, we have that reservation number, but the tickets were never purchased so we sold them to someone else,and there is no room on that flight." Then there is the call to the Red Cross travel line, a 30 minute wait on hold (read some fascinating stuff in the National Geographic), and the net result is that I'm flying out on Wednesday morning, "and God is willing," as the old time Quakers used to say.
So, some of you are wondering how the Waves to Wine ride went? I got to REI Santa Rosa a little after eight, checked in, bought a bicycle tube and some warm gloves, then up to the Luther Burbank Center to camp out with other riders. As I exited the freeway, I put the dashboard switch on the Isuzu from "Paradise" to "Purgatory," indicating that I was burning biodiesel and not straight vegetable oil. However, I didn't drive far enough to really purge the fuel system of oil--but more on that later. The Hartsough clan were all coming up on Saturday morning, hoping to ride the more reasonable 25 mile course, so I was on my own for the night. Luckily, I had stopped by Trader Joe's in Roseville to get some serious snackage (Red Cross recommends that you carry tow days worth of food and water in a "hardship disaster"), so I had a good dinner of turkey jerkey, Kettle chips and Fuji apples--if you wanna run cool, you've got to run on heavy, heavy fuel!
I had busted a spoke that morning on a light training ride, and the Tour of Nevada City bike shop had restrung my wheel (Thanks guys!), but I had to put the tire back on, change saddles, put Carradice saddle bag on, and adjust headset on the old Bridgestone RB-1 with J.D. Gruppo. (J.D. stands for Junk Drawer.) Then I just flopped down the old Thermarest and sacked out around 10pm.
Morning on next post.
posted by Carl Magruder at 1:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home