My bike is here my bike is here
Finally after 2 years the mean green machine has arrived. This was the most excruciating large $ purchase I've made in a while., no ever. I appreciate the status that Amazon gives on your purchases - nice proactive messages that show up occasionally but regularly. This bike - it took 2 years to arrive. I think I got maybe 2 proactive messages from them, I had to call or email and say - hey I spent a couple grand with you - where's my stuff...
However the bike is here. Its gorgeous. Annika runs around and screams cycle bike, cycle bike
Its beginning to feel a lot like christmas..... more on that later
consumption
work is consuming my life, I'm thinking about work problems and I can never catch up. My bills are coming with past due notices because I'd rather play with my kids after a long work day..... This better be just a phase.
technology pains
Sometime this week, maybe, my new bike will arrive. Old-timers or bike savvy people will look at it and utter something like "Cool, a classic". My rivendell has a lugged steel frame. All the components were selected carefully for longevity, minimal maintainance, and proven functionality. I expect these observers have a bias that my classic choices are inferior to the average tig welded nonferrous (carbon,aluminum,titanium) frame - throwaway components.
My classic choices weren't completely chosen from nostalgia, my decisions were driven primarily by choosing the bestproducts of the last 30 years that would last another 30 years. Wendell Berry espouses a tenet "Choose the simplest tool for the job without sacrifice. Frankly, most of the cool, new high tech products either have serious design/feature gaps or just aren't intended to last. A phil wood hub is gorgeous, needs minimal attention -even in rainy seattle. I conceded on Shimano STI shifters - they won't last 30 years but they have great functionality. But I don't have clipless pedals to start. Its freeing to walk out the door in my tevas or birks and use the marvelous invention of powertwist straps. No click clack
I'm thinking about this, for one - I'm very disappointed in the buying experience - this is the most expensive thing (multi thousands) that I've bought myself. I knew it would take a long time, even a couple years - the company just managed my expectations and experience for crap. I intend to tell Grant Peterson as much.
But I'm also thinking about this since much of my technology all crapped out this weekend. Though I'll be riding what many consider a luddite bike (until I beat them up the hill), I live on the bleeding edge of technology. I work at a leading .com, I've had cool geek toys, lust after a treo. We have a wireless network - it crapped out, the printer crapped out, but worst of all my VOIP phoneservice crapped out. All of a sudden Vonage is failing me. Fortunately, Vonage offers a simulring service so my calls are going directly to my cell phone. This confuses the callers but they get over it.
At the end of the day it takes time to maintain all these technology connections. 30 minutes to the printer, 120 minutes to reconfigure a laptop for the home network, I'm 90 minutes into fixing the phone and still waiting on a response from "tech support" I'd rather spend this time swimming at the beach with my kids or playing "flying monsters" in the backyard. The technology helps me keep grandparents smiling over their kids but that is the long view.
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bagged buttered popcorn brings me back to dark cold starry evenings spent in bright sweaty gyms in the midwest. Thumping noises of feet and balls as the "hoosier" throng rises and falls with the tenor of the game. 20 years later, my fingers are salty slippery while I listen to the rise & fall of interest in the strategy discussion for 2006. My mind is still thinking about faces and friends in another place far away. Somehow between time differences and necessary tasks of the day, I miss them. those people I grew up with far away. As our tree branches grow, we're now farther apart and wave occasionally to each other in the winds of life. One day our tree will die and the wood will be rejoined together in a beautiful new creation by the master carpenter
spokedust sticks
spokedust. the grit,grime, and flotsam picked up over time along the ride and pauses. The stuff that sticks in the spokes of the wheels. Run your finger over a spoke and your skin will be given a streak, maybe black or probably one of a thousand shades of grey. The spots jump from my fingertips to the keys onto the screen. The streaks and good grit hides between spoke while other dust is easily obtained.
A perfectly tuned wheel makes a unique sound, the tension equal on each spoke, each spoke plucked like a harp gives off a pitch. As the wheels encounter the bumps in the road, railroad tracks, logjams; the spokes change pitch, their tension tightened & loosened releasing a new sound. sometimes, fun is had with extra elements - a baseball card turns the spokes into a motorcycle but a stick creates a tangled mess
if you haven't caught it by now, I'm feeling witty - To quote wierd al yankovich's classic Peter & the Wolf - "Its a Metaphor...." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000026O3
