That's more like it

It's Sunday evening, and I'm thinking this was yet another good weekend. Bean27 (aka BeanSS) and I rode Sweetwater in the cool air with Veelz this morning, reprising part of the ride that he and I did there last weekend. There were no desert tortoise sightings this time, though we did see a red-tailed hawk on the drive there and a prairie falcon on the way back home.

It was one more ride with no other purpose than to just pedal along; not a milk run, not a trip to the office. I'm hoping that my reshuffling of priorities makes these weekend rides more frequent and thus, less novel, ultimately freeing me from wanting to describe each and every one of them in this blog.

To help remind myself that it is still the weekend and that I don't need to be at work for another 10 hours, I've got the Meat Beat Manifesto Psyche-Out and Now EPs - complete with their signature SONAR pings and scratchy old record noises - spinning in another window. I'd like to talk about how smoothly a well-deserved beer or two are going down but alas, it is unwise to imbibe when one is loaded up with Ibuprofen. I said the weekend was fun. I did not say it was painless.

Despite the aches and pains, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for having fixed one of the messed-up struts that hold our camper shell's gate up. It came loose late last week and, in what was a veritable whirlwind of activity considering my general lack of handyman skills and all-around level of sloth, I fixed it this afternoon. My sub-month response time was fueled by an amazing confluence of events. Not only did I know what needed to be done to fix the window, the necessary cordless drill and rivet gun were right where I remember them being. On top of that, the repair worked on the first try. I even repaired the other strut in advance after noticing that it was about to fail, too. I suppose I was also motivated in no small part by the fact that the single operative strut could, and did, drop the window on an unsuspecting cranium belonging to my wife. High on my general sense of accomplishment, I went on to fix the plastic retention dealie on the back of BeanSS' bike helmet. I just hope the custom, zip tie-based kludge holds the brain bucket together as well as the rivets did on the camper.

Despite the myriad other things that need fixing, I'll have to get back to work, and to bike commuting, tomorrow. And despite my constant bitching on the subject, the biking is getting steadily more enjoyable as things cool down. I'm not saying I wouldn't park the commutant immediately if I found a motorcycle, but riding to work day after day is definitely more tolerable when heat stroke is off the table.