Well, the good news is, I won’t need fenders and a rain jacket for the ride downtown to collect my Subie from the shop.
The better news is, it is raining.
Reincarnation (the shop, not my hope for higher rebirth) just texted to say the old bucket of bolts is still deep into its semiannual wellness check and won’t be ready to come home until tomorrow.
It should go without saying that I had just pulled a fendered Soma Saga off its hook, aired up the tires, and lubed the chain.
But no matter. That needed doing anyway. And I got a couple hours of saddle time in this morning when it was still windless, cool, and dry, noodling home from the shop on the fenderless Soma Double Cross.
Besides, I may need the Saga tomorrow. The weather wizards are calling for a 70 percent chance of rain.
FIngers crossed.
Mad Blog Media 
Rain is good. But needing an extra day to do R&R on the Forester? That sounds like money.
They were busy as hell when I ambled in. Good for them! But it was always gonna be money. We’re talking a 21-year-old ride here. Brake pads, rotors machined, 4-wheel alignment, oil and filter service, and Dog nose whatever the hell else is fixin’ to fall off, catch fire, or explode. …
Does yours need a timing belt? I bought a Honda Accord with 99,000 miles on it and a good dose of rust in Honolulu when that’s all I could afford, shortly after getting my first job (and being hit with all my school loans). Drove it for a couple months and then….yep, you guessed it. Never ran the same afterwards. I think I bent some valves.
I drove a ’93 Nissan truck knowing the belt was going to go soon. As I drove out of a parking lot, the belt let go. I knew what it was as soon as it occurred. It was an interference engine meaning the valves overlapped with the pistons and would contact if timing wasn’t maintained. I pulled the heads off and took them to my local machine shop and had new valves installed. I relaxed and took the next month or so to repair and reassemble everything. It started up perfectly. Unfortunately a few months later a scoundrel in Portland decided to steal the truck and after passing through co-conspirator’s hands, the truck ended up in a Portland scrap yard. Portland PD had been surveilling the scrap yard and the chain of theft to the yard, and ended up using my truck as part of their evidence. It was a good truck.
This is a solid argument for driving a beater that nobody will bother to steal or even burgle.
The evildoers take one look at my ancient Subie with the paint scratches, whiskey dents, and general air of impoverishment, and they say, “Shit, this dude ain’t got nothin’. Hey, how’bout that ’93 Nissan truck over there?”
I’ve done one, at 80/90K (can’t remember for sure), so I’m due for another one shortly (158K at present).
For sure the ould warhorse is getting to the point where I think twice, maybe three times, about taking any long rambles in ’er.
Trouble is, I’m just not remotely interested in anything anyone is selling these days. Everything looks like a Honda CR-V to me. I want AWD, manual shift, knobs and buttons. Yeah, good luck with that, Methuselah. …
A coworker named Murray S had a Serotta made for him. He had labels made for the downtube by one of our company vendors. The labels read “MURRAY” Bike never got a second look by thieves.
Something weird is going on with the web interface.
Mine? How so? I’ve been noticing issues across the Innertubes today, from the NYT to the Urinal to the Sidi online store.
Aha. I see your “Sounds like money” comment posted three times.
That’s the only fly in the ointment I see at the moment, and I’ve checked the site in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, on two different Macs running two different operating systems.
Got a ton of rain yesterday up here.
We got 0.29 inch, and were glad to get it. And it’s raining again this afternoon (Thursday)!
I hit to post reply and it goes grey, and then if I hit “return to reading” or whatever, it duplicates the post. I’ll try rebooting this rig.
What are you using for a computer/browser? Everything seems a’ight on Macs with latest Safari and older Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Even looks OK on iOS (iPhone).
WordPress has been adding bells and whistles so it’s not impossible that some of them might honk and/or toot out of tune.
Using a Dell with Firefox.
You have another browser you can try? The Boss just got home, and I think she has Firefox on her Mac; I’ll see if she encounters anything like what you describe.
Gives me this.
Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!
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Khal, It gave me a “duplicate detected” message but did not actually duplicate my message. Computers are all zeros and ones, so maybe they can’t count to two??
oh yeah, and the trigger for the duplicate message is after posting, and then clicking the “continue reading” button.
Thanks for the tip, señor. I rarely comment on other people’s WordPress sites, so that’s a new one on me.
You know how some pop-up boxes have an X to close them, but if you click outside the box, it also closes? Looks like, after posting, you get a “continue?” box, and clicking it confuses the server. But clicking outside returns to your regular programming already in progress. So that’s a temp user hack until it fixes itself.
I loved my Saga, bar ends, rim brakes, and all the rest. First bike I rode with Patrick on the Paseo Del Bosque. Remember that pretty British racing green and tan paint job Patrick?
O, indeed. That was a beauty. Sad that they dropped that model from the line, but the last few years have not been kind to the bike biz.
Pat O’B’s Saga.
When it comes to bikes, unwritten is better than unridden.