The Aerie
Ah, now THAT was nice. Saturday and Sunday featured weather so very pleasant that I expected at any moment for someone to tap me on the shoulder and explain that, sorry, there's been a mistake, but this is Northern California's weather, and they'd like it back.
Saturday was a family birthday function, and I was uncertain whether to go or to make excuses and skip it. Then I stepped outside into a wash of balmy weather, and I decided: I wasn't going. My wife and I met nineteen years ago and during that time I've attended plenty of family birthdays. Let my mother-in-law get a year older without me, I was going bicycling!
Wearing nothing warmer than a windbreaker I set out down the Greenway, putting my new rear tire to the test.
Oh yes, haven't I mentioned? I had not one, not two, but THREE flats last week! Three! The last time was on Friday afternoon: I had ridden downtown and when I mounted my bike again the rear tire was flat. It's not like I've been doing crazy riding! The first flat happened after two miles of biking, the second after about twenty, the third after five. ALL of these miles have been on bike paths! Either the Midtown Greenway or the bike path following the light rail line into downtown: it's not like I've been riding on Thumbtack Lane...
So walked my bike back to the light rail and rode down to Freewheel Bike, where the guy in the shop recognized me.
We agreed that the first time was a fluke and the second time was a coincidence, but the third time was a problem, and I dropped forty bucks for a new rear tire (not just the inner tube). A really thick rear tire. So quick was he to repair the tire that he was done by the time my wife arrived to drive me home to get my car: instead she drove me to work and I biked back from there.
Saturday, then, was the test: would the tire be flat when I got the bike out? Would it go flat on the ride?
All was well! I put about 12 miles on it and it worked fine. Likewise Sunday, when I rode with my friend R.
Before R and I could go riding on Sunday I attended to some Bonus Chores. During the last round of frigid weather (which I assumed would last til February) I assumed that I had missed my opportunity to repair the rooftop heater coils that keep the roof free of ice dams. The glacial behavior of ice means that every year or two the neat zigzag coils are all shoved into the gutters and have to be repositioned, and this year I was due. However, since I had delegated gutter-cleaning to The Boy, I had forgotten to fix the wiring.
So when the weather remained Californian this Sunday, I knew I had a special second chance to get it right. I climbed up on the roof, fixed the wiring, and got The Boy to pull the last of this year's gloppy leaves out of the gutters. Examining the TV antenna, I saw that the heater coil plug-ins had come exposed: the duct tape I'd used to protect the wiring had been worn away to tissue paper by sun and wind, so I applied another couple years' worth to remedy the situation.
Aside from chores and bike rides I hung around church on Sunday morning where I basked in the adulation of several church members, who enjoyed my letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star Tribune last Thursday, and who also appreciated my support in the recent decision to "transition" one of our two ministers (e.g. ask to resign). In the middle of this conversation I got a phone call - odd for a Sunday morning.
I took the call, it was my friend V, with whom I traveled Europe twenty years ago.
"I want you to get me pregnant," was the first thing she told me.
Turns out she's in a sort-of play this Saturday, and needs someone to fill in for a guard (no lines apparently) who supposedly fathered her character's child. Still, it was an odd way to start a phonecall, particularly one picked up while chatting with members of the church board. On the other hand it was very effective, and now I'm committed to the performance, seeing as I said "Yes!" before she explained all this. Damned hormones.
Finally, this weekend was, among several other things at church (blood drive, cookie sale) the annual gift-exchange: church members were encouraged to bring in junk, and take home other people's junk. Every year we swear we're going to go through OUR junk and bring a lot of it: every year we forget and don't. At the last minute this year I brought an unused Starbuck's coffee mug good for discounted refills - I rarely go to Starbucks. So I wander around the table and what do I see? A collectible 1970's vintage boxed Dungeons and Dragons set! The exchange was made!
I haven't checked to see what it's worth, but I'll hang onto it until I can get my acquaintance Dave Arneson to sign it...
So that was my weekend, and a warm one it was in several ways...
Posted by Albatross at December 11, 2006 8:49 PM | TrackBack