Brown Lunch with a homeless Man

SUNSHINE!

After 17 days of rain, Good Day Sunshine. So you know we went to the stairs.

Left the house, got 1/4 up the hill, remembered the pocket knife. No knife, no open can of Lentil Soup for lunch. Hate returning home after getting motivated out the door, but... Go back & get knife. Grab ipod-oops, left on from Fremont- batteries dead. Go back in leave ipod. Leave again.




Aguajito out today. Then up (short but I'm guessing 19 percent on 2 sections of) Monhollan to ease through Cside to the liquor store. I left J in the trailer out front beside the front door (he's under 21) and go in to pick up a 6 of tallboys. He starts wailing he wants to come in while I'm in line behind some guy buying 5 minutes worth of Lotto tickets. Crying baby all the while. Like the quality parent I am, I yell from the line "Hold on Bud, I'll be out in a minute!" Continued crying. Then it's my turn to place my 6 on the counter and ask for a pint of Old Grandad. Crying baby. Get my hooch, get my change, get out the door. Got no reaction whatsoever from the clerk. Does he see this level of parenting a lot?

Smoothly transition to the Frog Pond, where we do our usual duck watching. J steps in dogshit, and I bag his shoe to keep it out of the trailer. I, too, could rant about dogshit now, but lookie here instead. Then I hesitate over whether or not to take S. Boundary (and all the lumpy climbing that will bring me to the sandy good singletrack #50 downhill while putting me on the far end of Ft. Ord from the stairs). Telling myself the beer would get all shook up, I opt for Gen. Jim up instead. Like I didn't just shake the beer like a crying baby rolling the trailer down the steps to the Frog Pond? But what's logic got to do with avoiding more climbing? If I'm gonna whisper "Cachagua" with any real intent, I better stop lying to myself and get to climbing...

Arrive in high style at the stairs to watch A___ R_____ and A___ R_____ ride by, and reride by. At this point I have realized I neglected my warm jacket, and am standing at the stairs cooking our can of soup, wearing J's wool blanket like a hobo shawl.Good times. I'm sure if they didn't know me they'd have worried that perhaps J had been kidnapped and taken there in a shopping cart full of garbage. And then we are unexpectedly joined by J__ , freshly returned from abroad. Gooder times. We all shared a brown lunch, with an orange for dessert. Tall boys and Old Grandad in the woods with fine company.

We part ways. J__ to ride dirt, and J and I on the return leg. Pull through the 4 way between Cside and Bayonet, and there's a large truck blocking the ped. route into Cside. I stall, he stalls and lets the clutch go and then catch a couple times like he's gonna go. I juke my shoulders at hime a couple times like he should go already. He doesn't, I do, and promptly lose the front wheel in the ice plant and eucalyptus leaves. Crash. Down I go.

I get up thinking how the trucker's probably laughing. I'm irritated, and then find my front wheel took it harder than I'd realized. The wheel is badly out of true- hitting the brakes and fender stays. I disconnect the trailer, get my multitool from the saddlebag, flip my bike over and get set to true the wheel. Only, my new multitool doesn't have spoke wrenches on it. Anywhere. And no, the chain tool doesn't fit either. Hosed. For the record, it's the Soma wooden sided multitool, and it SUCKS. I got 2 of them- ok, I admit it was solely because I liked the stylish wood paneling. My trusty Crank Bros. multis were loose and rusty...and I took for granted these would have the same functionality. They don't. And the other one's chain tool broke the 1st time I used it on last year's Birthday Ride- so they really do suck. Don't be fooled.

I disconnect the front brake, and wrap the straddle cable well out of the way. After that, I unwrap the light wire which had been wrapped around the stay to the gen. hub, and tie it up and away from friction. Then I tweak the fender stays so the tire hits as little as possible (2x per revolution), and ride limpingly down the hill and over to Sports Center Bicycles. I'm a Joselyn's supporter (true and blue like a...well, like Papa Smurf maybe), so I've never even been in the shop. And, my experiences with their people outside the shop haven't been inspiring. And, plus they have no good word of mouth. So I pointedly remove my Josshole vest before I get to the shop. You understand.

I go in and ask if I can borrow one of their black spoke wrenches. The guy at the counter just says "Black spoke wrench." So I say "Yes, can I borrow one of your black spoke wrenches to fix my wheel? I just crashed." He turns and goes in back and comes out with the wrench. I thanked him and went outside to true the wheel as best I could. The wheel was so trashed. It occurs to me that truing wheels is a lot like bodywork in the diagnosis of tension, and adjustment towards equilibrium. A few minutes later, I went back in and returned the wrench, saying "Thank you very much." Again he looked at me and went in the back. No more words. That's grudgingly bad service.

Rode over to Joselyn's where I asked M____ if his wheel kung fu was stronger than mine. He applied the Iron Skin technique by slamming it down on the bench, so it was, and the wheel is true enough to connect the brakes for the ride back up and over. That's good service.

Happy to ride in the sun. Bummed to lose a good generator wheel.


R.I.P. Sheldon Brown. Respect.(found this here.)