A little late this month, but here I am! As I mentioned last month, the last day of the school year was June 8th, which means I don’t have much to report on the work commute. But for those few days, I don’t think I missed a single one. It was a little cold and rainy and very windy (yeah, we don’t get summer until July around here) but I was determined to ride!
A week after that, I broke out the mountain bike and trailer. I needed to go shopping and believe it or not, in the whole year that I’ve had my trailer, I’ve never taken it to the store! I was always too scared that a child or teenager might think it was funny to try to get into the trailer, and of course, it would break under that kind of weight. I decided it was ridiculous to have such an awesome bicycle commuting tool and to be too scared to take it to stores, so I asked a friend to come with me, and together, we pedaled up the very steep hill to the grocery store.
I shamelessly made my friend take the trailer! Copyright: Five Seed
Unfortunately, a mountain bike malfunction did follow this trip, I’m sorry to say. The trailer was a little overloaded, and it bottomed out a few times, scraping the paint off the bottom. No big deal, though – would’ve happened over time, anyway, and I don’t want to be too precious about something that’s intended to be used as a little workhorse!
The worst part came later. About a week after the trip, I wanted to go riding again, and wheeled out the mountain bike only to find it seriously dragging with every revolution of the rear tire. At first, I thought the brakes were too tight, but then realized that couldn’t be the problem when the wheel only felt “stuck” in one spot. It had to be the rim. So between my friend and brother, it was discovered that a spoke had come off and the rim of the wheel had bent, causing the drag. Not the best time of year for this to happen, since I use the trailer a lot in summer! So I’m hoping to find a rim on Craigslist. But no luck so far and I may have to resort to buying a new one.
In any case, the weather has been pleasant enough for lots of nice bicycle rides. I think I’ve only taken my car out twice in the past five weeks. It’s not very hot yet, and just a little breezy.
Have you all been taking advantage of these gorgeous summer days for a little evening bike ride?
By the way, what do you think of the new blog design? Still a work in progress, but getting there!
hey there – love how clean the site looks. can you move the right column up a little so there’s not as much scrolling down to see all the goodies you have? when i pull it up (i use google chrome as my browser) there’s a lot of white space at the top to the right of the apple…only one other suggestion – would love to see your product logo near the top
@EcoGrrl: Unfortunately, I can’t move it up. That’s part of the banner. I need to redesign the apple/branch to make it way smaller and longer so I can shrink the banner! That will help a bit. I really need to take a class on web design so I can customize these things!
I’ll keep working on it, though! Thanks for the input!
ah good to know…yeah WP has limited customization, i just copied maurie’s blog haha
oh i LOVE LOVE LOVE the apple!! did you paint that yourself??
ps- yay that you got lots of nice bike rides, even if your mountain bike broke… )
@EcoYogini: Yes, I did. Still a work in progress, though. I may change it up a little. Cute as it is, it’s not as old-fashioned as I wanted it to look. More cartoon-y. But I’ll figure it out! Thank you!