Back to Work

Yesterday I started working at Geoff's Bike and Ski. It will be my second job this summer as I am also continuing to advise young English majors. The shop is nice, as are the people that work there. So far I have been able to work in small apartment that they use for storage and bike building. It is really quite nice to be alone with a new bike. The grease is all clean and has that sweet, somewhat fruity smell. Some would say I don't get to talk to many people, but I like to think of it as not being bothered. I think I will be building bikes for a little while, but there will be sales and some tune-ups too. It should all be enjoyable.

Tomorrow I go back to my advising job. It is also a transfer day, so I will spend the afternoon looking at transcripts of students who have transfered from other schools to be English majors at Iowa. Sadly most of them come to be the next big thing in creative writing, so most of the meetings begin with me explaining that the Iowa Writers' Workshop is a graduate program only. I often dread these days in the office, but for some reason I'm rather ambivalent about tomorrow. Hopefully it will be ok.

I went and did the group ride tonight. It was a beautiful evening with big puffy white clouds and very little wind. Evenings like this are rare. The ride was fast, perhaps in part due to this guy's presence, but I felt pretty good and thought I'd make it into town with the lead group. But then my chain started rubbing my front derailleur. As I looked down I noticed that I could see a sizable chunk of my bottom bracket axle between the frame and the crank. At first I just went to the back of the group to sit in and spin. But that was not going to last long, so I pulled over, got off, tightened the crank back down as fast as I could and jumped back on the bike.

With the slight tail wind I thought I actually had an ok chance to chase back onto the group. Luckily for me Steve waited up to ride with me. And I was even more happy when he said he just wanted to cruise in. Good company and conversation are usually better than hammering with your head down, and judging by how tired my legs are now, adding a ten or fifteen minute all out time trial to my ride would not have felt all that great. So cheers to Steve.

Tomorrow Robin and I go to the Chicago burbs to hang out at my parents house. We should get a cool night or two to enjoy the hot tub, and its almost Jen's birthday, so we might have some celebrating to do.

Oh, and Robin is currently changing the design of her blog, it looks fun. It might not be up quite yet though, so be patient if it is still light green and wind-chimy.