You Better Get Some More Steam

It's been a while since I posted a significant entry. Between being busy at work and sick for a bunch of the week before labor day, I haven't had much time when I didn't have something better to do. I still have some better things to do, but I'm going to procrastinate for a few minutes instead.

I've now put just under a hundred miles on the new bike; it would have been more by now, but I was sick for a few days. Rachel was even going to let me take her to school on the bike on Friday, but I wasn't feeling up to it. I was fine for driving and probably would have been fine riding, but somehow relying on myself for balancing and powering a bike seemed too much. Far better to let the truck's 4 wheels and 190 hp engine take care of those tasks!

Yesterday and this morning I rode up to Spruce and Grizzly. Yesterday, I was approaching a red light on the way and was thinking of running it, but there was a car coming; then I realized it was my father, and started considering running it again, but I had already put my foot down. Then today I decided to go on up to Euclid on Grizzly and come down that instead of Spruce; I had been telling my mother that I was going to wait to do that until I had worked up to doing the ride a little faster or better. I should have known, given how much easier Spruce to Grizzly was the first time I rode it this year than the last time I rode it (probably high school), that Euclid wouldn't be hard - it's only two blocks and neither long nor particularly steep ones, at that. Euclid, on the other hand, is paved almost all the way back to the Cal campus, which made it far nicer to ride down than Spruce! Except for the part where I got a flat tire as I went by the Rose Garden.

This kind of made the rest of the morning interesting. We are working on getting ready for Rachel's birthday party this weekend, and having to walk home and still go to the bike store for a new tube and such, would really have messed things up. Between that and work I'm sure we'll be good and busy the next several days.

Here's a funny story: as we were discussing at dinner what else we should do for the evening, Dawn commented that she was out of steam, to which Rachel announced "you better get some more steam, Mommy."

It gets better, really... a little later, she holds up her hand, holding the ring finger down with her thumb and says "can you do this?" So we teach her the rock-and-roll salute with both the middle & index fingers down... and within a few minutes she's bobbing her head in time to Iron Man. A little later, she's naked dancing with Dawn to Baby Got Back. And we have video of that...