helmet

Yesterday I accomplished two things. I had sort of wanted to do more, but two things is a respectable number. I made cherry pie and shared it with friends (and it was really, really good, thanks to my homemade filling and Wim's wise advice in the matter of crust-making), and I performed Bicycle Maintenance.

I had a flat tire, so Wim showed me how to extract the tube from the tire. We put it underwater to search for leaks and found what looked like a large weak area, so we figured we should just get a new tube instead of trying to patch it. The nearby bike shop didn't have the right size tube because I have a kid's bike. Hmph. We had to go to Greenlake.

Gregg's Greenlake Cycle has got so much stuff. We were like geeks in a hardware store. (Oh. Wait. Never mind.) We managed to escape without too much damage to my bank balance, though.

So, after dealing with the tires, we used fun fun foaming degreaser [credit to Bax for recommending degreaser a while ago] on the gears and chain in the hopes of making the sticky chain links unstick. The little gears in the back, which I am sure have a name I don't know, were completely encrusted with dirt, and the gears in general were just all disgusting. I scrubbed 'em with a toothbrush and they're much better now. Just before going to bed, we sprayed things down with lube, and I hit the sticky links with it again this morning.

I made such good time to work. Who knew that a bike which is actually functional was so much easier to drive? (Though properly inflated tires transmit bouncing from rough road to the rider a lot more effectively, too.)

The cloud in the flawless blue sky, however, is my helmet. Wim finally convinced me to get a helmet, and even to wear it. *sigh* I want a forcefield around my head instead. Not only does the helmet make my head hot and my hair look silly, and not only do I have to remember to bring it and worry about places to put it, but I really hate having any compression on my neck. It gives me dizzy, hazy-feeling headaches, which is not something I want when biking. I'm just wearing the straps really loose for now in the hope that I'll get used to them; I understand why they don't want you to do that, but I figure some helmet is better than no helmet.

Maybe I'll eventually get to this point. But do I want to?

much giggling

Stolen from gloriajn is another amusing link!

http://pizza.sandwich.net/poke/pokemon.html

Your Pokéname is:
Shattwo

Profile
You live in the valleys of Britain, and your diet consists mostly of bats, wolves and wine.

Characteristics
(Combat and Non-combat)
You have ten-inch claws. You can breathe jet fuel. You have a covered wicker basket. You can shoot lightning bolts. You have a force field. You can throw sand. You can resist slime. You can shoot tahini.

Natural Enemies
Your natural enemy is Charcow.

grr!

Would someone like to tell me just what it is that I am not doing, but which everyone else in the entire bloody world who has played Chrono Cross apparently found completely intuitive and had no trouble with?! I've done precisely what it says in the manual to get back to the first world (small spoiler but I don't care) and it does not WORK. It is so completely annoying that I can hardly believe it.