Summer is here!

This weather has been bizarre to say the least. It seems like we went from day after day of colder than normal temperatures and constant rain immediately into our typical hot/humid summer weather, with no transition. And today, its appears that we're back to rain--oh wait, no, now it's back to hot & humid... Needless to say, the weeds in my yard love this. Speaking of the rain, here's a funny joke that was passed on to me:

A curious fellow died one day and found himself waiting in the long line of judgment. As he stood there he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates into Heaven. Others though, were led over to Satan who threw them into the burning pit. But every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss a soul off to one side into a small pile. After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the best of him. So he strolled over and asked Satan what he was doing. "Excuse me, Mr. Prince of Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, but I couldn't help wondering, why are you tossing those people aside instead of flinging them into the Fires of Hell with the others?" "Ah, those," Satan said with a groan. "They're all from New England.... They're still too wet to burn."

The weather has afforded me an opportunity to get caught up on some stuff that I've been meaning to do, and I recently play musical handlebars on my bikes as I took the handlebar off my cyclocross bike (yeah, it's a flat bar) and swapped it with the bar on one of my singlespeeds and I did the same with handlebars on my other singlespeed and my geared 29'er. If that wasn't enough handlebar hi-jinx, I also re-wrapped the tape on my road bike. Add to that the fact that I recently replaced the grips on my freestyle bike (and repaired a broken headset spacer) and it's appropriate to say that the steering has been addressed on (most of) my bikes.

It's important to have good bike control as I've been trying to ride as much as possible. I did a great road ride the other morning (yeah, rolling out at just after 5:00am) and got hammered by my old friend Glen. It's good to have someone local to kick my butt back into shape AND someone who can ride in the wee hours of the morning. The ride was especially cool as I've tended to take the same routes on my road rides and Glen took me on some different roads. It's funny, I've lived here about 10yrs and he's only been here a few months, and he's showing me good road loops.

A couple of days prior to that I got to lead a group through some of the incredible singletrack out at Willowdale State Forest. I hadn't ridden with a group in a while and it was good to see Ron, Todd, Doug, Rob, Renee and the aforementioned Glen. It was the first ride on the SS with the new rigid fork and I loved it. The bike is light, tight, and outta sight! I can't wait to get back out there.