Thursday, November 10, 2011

A Week of Mondays

Greetings, Long time no words.

So I have not been writing here, hardly ever.  It comes down to the usual list of things that took effect once I moved to Vancouver.  Not the least of which is I am connected so I don't need this medium to break my isolation. Full time work and being spent enough at the end of a day where not much has happened is the other reason.

This week I feel venting is a bit in order.  It started well enough, with  Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer's zany live show.  This ran latter than I had expected, leading to not getting home till past midnight. It was worth the cost but, sleep is a resource I do not wish to give up.  Monday started good.  I choose to ride into work despite the cool damp nature of the morning.  I was warm enough and dry enough but the streets were wetter than they looked.

I was coming up on to Gore street, at the south eastern corner of china town, I had picked up a little too much speed on the long section of low grade.  One way or an other I miss judged how far I was from the intersection. Breaking hard to stop back fired.  My breaks worked perfectly.  My wheels stopped turning, the ground was lubricated. We fish tailed. Now as it turns out I have more control over the bike than I thought I did, because I was able to pull up and out of the skid and loop around to the edge of the side walk.

Some thing felt off, checking things out on the other side of Gore, reviled a minor warp to the rear wheel.  There was discussion after the fact that if I had bailed the wheel would have been fine.  That logic is good because the recovery put a lot of strain on the wheel. Against my better judgement but in the absence of better options I rode the rest of the way to work.

Work was a slog.  Full of revision after revision.  At the end of the day, I checked on the bike, I had through the abuse of the morning broke a spoke.  I took the train home and left the bike in the builds locker. I had hoped to take it to a down town shop during the week but found my self stuck behind a deadlind for too much of the time to make it outside over lunch.

On the flip side I have a new bed and when I do get a full nights sleep I am well rested.