Happy Happy Joy Joy

Happy Birthday to Tomi and Leo!! I hope to see you soon!

I've once again crawled from my cave. This time I find it quite cold outside and am ready to crawl back in and hide under some blankets until it passes. It was a chilly 27 degrees on the bank clock on my walk home from work tonight. There was snow on my car this morning, but unfortunately I failed to get a photo, so you may not believe me. I know there are those of you reading this who deal with snow often and may think it strange that I think it strange that there was snow on my car, but believe me there aren't many days that I wake up to find snow on my car.

I decided this past weekend to get the old bike tuned up for what I hope is a winter full of bike rides to work. It needed new pedals, fenders so I can ride in the rain, and a little grease on the chain (some day I'll figure out how to do that myself). When I got to the store the man that I thought was so nice to help me get my bike out of the car started making fun of my bike. "What a pretty peach bike..." What?!?

I can't believe that there is anything to mock about my pretty salmon (yes salmon, not peach or pink) centurion from 1987. She's so lovely and sweet. Amber and Betsy may remember this bike from our many (or few? can't remember) rides to Southeast. I believe it was the first bike I bought myself. The only bike I've bought new for sure. She keeps my purple mountain bike and blue granny bike company in the garage. We can talk later about why I need so many bikes. And yes, there are very good reasons.

Then he was showing me the gear for my bike and he wanted to spice it up with fancy pedals and fancy fenders and fancy handle bar deally bobs (which I totally went for--they are reflectors that go in the hole at the end of the handle bars--so cool!). The pedals were what I couldn't understand. He goes over the cheap plastic ones, which would just break, so he says (I took his word for it). Then he moves on to the regular metal ones that are perfectly sufficient for riding 3 miles per day. Then he walks me over to the locked case and shows me the fancy ones that are so good I could go off a jump with them and not lose my footing. Heck, I could even do a flip and not lose my footing. Hmm...here I am with my "pretty peach bike" that he mocks, looking pretty much exactly my age (okay, older, are you happy?), and he's trying to sell me some pedal that I could use to do tricks with the neighborhood kids. Makes sense.

Anyway, my bike is all winter ready, and once I get some rain pants I hope to be putting it to good use.