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DEC

19

2009

today i took out my rebuilt bicycle on a test ride (here's the same bike back in november). i didn't really notice that much of a difference, maybe a smoother ride, but that could just be a placebo effect. the pedals were a little bit further apart, but once i was riding i couldn't distinguish the difference. i adjusted the cantilever brakes earlier, just to even out the brake shoes and pin them closer to the rims. i went to the cafe, where i had some sauerkraut noodle soup for lunch. i went down into the basement to check out the 2 old bicycles that need some repair work. one is a raleigh 3-speed (with a hub drive), the other is some old yellow 7-speed cruiser bike that somebody dumped in front of my house a few years ago. the raleigh uses a cottered crank while the cruiser bike has an old one-piece crank. the cruiser needs to have its rear brake cable replaced. it'd also be cool to repaint the yellow to some cooler color.

with the approaching blizzard scheduled for later tonight, i decided to put the bike away in the basement. out in the backyard was evidence of a pigeon massacre with bird feathers everywhere, probably the handy work of a hungry hawk. i brought out a shovel and some sidewalk salt, in preparation for the clean up tomorrow morning.

my roommate actually left for work today around 11:00. in the few days that he's lived here, he's probably spent more time at the office than my previous roommate in the month that he stayed here. i didn't know when he came back because i left the house in the evening to go with my father to delivery some chinese food around cambridge. my job was basically to sit in the car for those occasions where he had to park illegally, and input the next address into the GPS. he was using the garmin portable friction mount i got him a while back. for something that looks like a glorified bean bag with a mounting hook, it holds surprisingly well and much better than using the suction cup mount, which periodically falls off. in the few hours that i tagged along, we must've made a dozen deliveries. i was hoping to see some serious snow action but the sky was eerily quiet. by 9:00 with business tapering down, my father dropped me off back at my place.

with an hour before midnight i'm still waiting for the first snowflakes to fall. i'm not the only one who's impatient: all the local news forecast have been gearing up for this blizzard, sending out their field reporters en masse. but with no snow, there's not much to report, and viewers are left to stare at doppler radar and projected snowfall charts, or footage of our southern neighbors who've already gotten their snow.