refuse that!?

You'd be foolish in the extreme.

Rain and rumors of wind all weekend. It was raining like hell one minute and bright and sunny the next. Repeat. Friday was a washout, Saturday too, but Sunday- Sunday was a sneaky jewel.

I'd spent rainy Saturday tinkering in the workshop. Shellacking the cloth tape on a couple of bikes. I like the way the amber shellac deepens the colors. I swapped the upright Northroad bars on the LongHaulTrucker for some moustache bars. I've been feeling like a change for a more aggressive fit on this bike.This required several different dis- and re-assemblies of various setups. It all worked out for the best. I'll stick with this at least through the winter, I think.

Sunday evening proved to be gloriously bright and temperate. The Full Beaver Moon (while not hot! action!) was open wide before us. I heard the owls hooting to each other as I wound my way through the twilight and down Valenzuela- one of the finer twisty roads between me and the Ord. Then we saw at least 4 more owls in the Ord itself. The clouds came and went, threatening and retreating in equal measure until I was just about home; at which point it spit a little and then I was inside and warm, dry and lit from within. To those that rallied- salud! the owl is your totem! To those that didn't- well, unless you broke a rib crashing on the way to Segovia's and are recovering from this, you are the loser whose totem is the lowly skunk with it's head stuck in a jar.


I will again state the obvious: if you are not willing to risk a thorough shellacking from horrible conditions, you will never appreciate how sublime conditions may be. That is a science fact. Here it is as an equation:

(Riding bicycles+drinking beers) Full Moon= win+ x.

Where x is the #ranking of possible weather severity.