No parking

There is limited parking on our street, so the neighbors have taken to parking on the grass. What's up with that? I better get rid of the Citation soon!

The credit union called and due to technical difficulties they have to re-do the loan, no problem, just have to sign some papers, essentially.

Matt says the problem with his car was the thermostat stuck.

What's that you say, this is supposed to be bicycle musings?

White steam, hot pizza, and El Ferrocarril Trolley

Well, on Saturday, with Matt's help, I bought something to haul the bike around in, a Ford Ranger.

Here it is parked in the Rees Stealy parking lot.

Today (Monday), we had to go pay for it, since they let ME just TAKE IT Saturday. M. and I met at the Credit Union and finagled around there untill we got a check. Actually two checks, and I would have to pay 56 cents cash since they wrote the checks wrong. So we headed down to National City and as we were turning onto I-15 I said someone is leaking hot water, smell that? And Matthew look at his temperature gauge and said it's ME! So we pulled off at Market street and jeed and jawed and finally called a tow truck to haul the car back to Clairemont. The tow truck guy FINALLY came, and was a little crabby at Matt's directions. But he load up and they left.

A shadowy Matt stands near the car on Market, in front of the Buddhist temple and across the street from the Filipino Veterans building.

I went to Pizza Hut, got a tiny expensive pizza for nurishment and change for a twenty. The place is totally encased in thick plexiglass. Must be a high crime area...

I walked over to the 32nd street trolley. I saw a Sunbeam Alpine and a Hillman (Minx, I think) on the same corner. I remarked on this to a guy standing there, he said "You don't know the half of it".

I caught the trolley back to the Credit Union, drove the truck to Nat. City, waited an hour, paid for the truck (the guy said keep the change, buy myself a soda). Drove back home. By then it was 3:20. Too late to go back to work. I had left work at 9:00 for a two hour tour....

A guy at the 32nd street trolley stop came up to me and asked "Espanol?" I said no. He said "San Ysidro?" I pointed to the button on the ticket machine and said "Azul" to him, as it is the Blue line. I guess he didn't trust me so he later found a Spanish-speaking person to ask.

I was reminded of this little ditty from seventh grade Spanish while waiting for El Trolley Naranja.

"Erre con Erre Cigarro
Erre con Erre Barril
Rapido corren los carros
Los carros del ferrocarril"

Translation:
"R with R" cigar
"R with R" barrel
Quickly run the cars,
the cars on the railroad.
---from http://www.digest.lookiez.com/tonge.php

Finally Friday

I went out last night to turn off the battery charger that was charging the battery (edit that?). I didn't look up at the night sky and missed the BIG LIGHT in the sky that freaked out the masses in San Diego. Of course, it was another missile launch from Vandenberg. n00bs!! We learned about night launches back in the 50s!!

Today I saw a quote on bicycling.com: "It never gets easier, you just go faster." -- Greg LeMond

I thought that was pretty good.

I found a website with a lot of good bicycling quotes:

http://calcycling.org/quotations.php

Cut and paste, baby!

NOW it's Thursday!

I was riding home today and passed some chick listening to music on her cellphone and the tinny squawk reminded me of listening to "The Purple Peaple-eater" on a transistor radio by in the '50s when I was but a wee lad. How far we have come!

This Space For Rent

This shows the fabulous front light bracket I made from a chunk of aluminum that was laying around somewhere. Most filing done with needle files...

The black and white picture has helpful captions. Don't ask why it's B&W, just accept it!

I see there 291 miles on the odometer as of 9/21/05. I walked to work yesterday to avoid getting the bike wet. It took an hour and comes to 3 miles each way.

I was riding home Monday and a guy on a bike came up behind me near Costco. There were a few raindrops plopping down. I said, "Darn, now I've got water spots on the bike!" He replied, "As long as it doesn't mess up my glasses, I'm ok." We wished each other well and went on our way. BTW, I had the strobe going on the back of the bike as it was rather dark because of thunderstorms.

Thursday

There has been a rattle from the rear, as it were, the last three days. Discovered the bolts holding the rear rack were coming loose. That's why one is supposed to use blue Loctite, I guess. Fixed it.

Earled the chain.

Adjusted the front brake again. I really need to take it in and find out what I'm doing wrong, it makes a funny scraping kind of sound.

Riding to work this morning, with the BIG LIGHT and STROBE going, as I signaled to move over a couple lanes to the left turn land some moran moved into the right lane with signaling. Scary. I don't think he had his headlights on, either. I've really got to get a horn!

End O'the Week

Performance returned the broken bottem bracket saying they didn't sell it, as far as they could tell. Well, they did, but of course I didn't have a receipt, and it doesn't say "Performance" on it, so I really didn't expect much anyway.

Monday Monday

The grotesque piece of aluminium is flopping around like a trout out of water. I'm afeared it's going to break off just like everything else. I added a brace on one side, let us see how that holds it...

I used the BIG LIGHT this morning on the way to work, however it was not actually very dark so was a bit of overkill, a lovely phrase. I wonder if it's from the Vietnam War? No, I see Allwords.com says it's from the 1940s.

Sunday

Here's a picture I took some time ago. I keep seeing this bike-on-a-trailor parked over by the police station. It seemed overkill to put a bicycle on a trailor all by itself.

Mounted a grotesque piece of alumunium on the Jamis to hold a LED light and the headlight. Looks like someone constructed it in their garage...

Rode 50 miles forth and back to work this week.