grrr..

I've not intentionally not posted in a week.. this last week just flew by.. Sorry about this.

I'd say monday through Wednesday were excellent. Thursday was blah, Friday day was great, Friday evening stunk, Saturday was great, and so far today stinks.

We'll start with Friday afternoon after work. Fridays are fencing day. I leave work ~4:30, drive across Miami, hang out with the kids & do a bit of fencing. While I enjoy fencing, enjoy learning & enjoy practice, I don't particularly enjoy it occurring on Friday after work on the other side of town. I'm usually beat and most days there's an internal debate about do I really want to drive across town.

So Friday rolls around, I drive across town & try to fence. I get paired w/this 20 year old who frustrates me. I think I'm frustrated with him simple because he's young and he acts young. I could spend paragraphs on why he frustrates me, but I'm not. Suffice to say he was my partner, he had 5 minutes of excuses/non fencing activities/adjustments to attend to after our instructor gave us a practice assignment, so I told him I was going to fence with the wall until he was ready to practice. We often use the wall to practice & I figured that was a better use of my time than sitting and listening/watching him get around to the practice sets we had to do. I don't like people who waste my time & he was wasting it.

Anyways so, to instructors comes over to ask what the issue is & tell him. Apparently my actions got my partner's attention (he seemed a bit chastised) because he settled down quickly & completed the sets. After that he wandered off to get some water. I turned to practice a few moves with the wall & suddenly hear a POP, followed by the sound of air escaping from a tire... Just beautiful... one of my tubes had blown. Fencing was over for the evening. Not sure what happened, but I only get flats every few years. Suffice to say fencing was over for the day.

At this point there was nothing to do but leave & attend to my wheel. The adults at fencing were like 'what are you going to do?" I said 'get it fixed'.. What else is there to do? Such things become the overriding priority when they occur. Good & bad news. Good news is that I had another wheel at work already set up. All I had to do was drive to the lab & switch out the bad wheel for the good. Bad news is I needed to order more tubes & I wasn't planning on that expense this month. Good news.. I needed to order new tires anyways, so this was a good nudge to order them. Bad news... that's just more money I didn't want to spend this month... this makes me grouchy.

So that was friday... fun right?


Saturday was great. My friend helped out w/my bike. We were trying to rig up an alternative way to activate the brake. We got a good prototype. Other fun activities for the day included checking out a japenese/thai place for a late lunch (mmmm.. red curry) and trying a local ice cream joint for a 9pm dinner. I can definitely recommend Walls ice cream shop. My friend had a Belgian waffle ice cream sunday. I had very generous cup of triple chocolate & peanut butter cup ice cream w/hot caramel sauce... It was yummy. We ate outside the shop in the BEAUTIFUL subtropical weather... a rockin 80 degrees @ 9:30 pm.

Saturday was awesome.

Today.. well right now I should have been 1 hour into a 3 hour ride. Instead I'm updating my blog.. why you ask? The front tire of my bike is mysteriously flat. Not only is it flat, but the tire wall is busted. I'm not a tire guru by any means, but I rolled around on a flat tire on friday & didn't destroy the tire, but this bike tire seems to fall apart w/out cause. Seems like a piece of junk. A piece of junk I now have to replace so I can train. Yet more money I wasn't planning on spending. So I'm a bit grouchy about that. And because it's a 'special' size it isn't readily available. I can't drop by most shops & pick it up. And since this tire has proven to be a piece of junk, I want to find a more substantial tire.. And I can't train on the bike until I locate the tire... And then get it shipped here & then put on.

So I'm frustrated. I want to train and can't b/c of a busted tire.

But since I don't enjoy being irritated & it accomplishes nothing, I'm going to focus on what I can control & trust this won't set me back. There is always something positive.

I'll make a few calls on monday, find a good tire, get a few tubes & hope it gets here this week.

Today I'll go push up a parking deck in my manual chair.. the closest thing to hills in Miami. And then I'll do a bit of lifting. I suppose I'll use the UBE for the rest of the week until i can get that tire fixed.

And that's the recap of the past 48 hours. I hope ya'll have a great day!