May 20 -- stay on your toes !!

... or at least on your feet !

I went for my "usual" ride yesterday and was 5 miles from getting home when suddenly I had no seat ! The bolt that holds the saddle to the seatpost had sheared off. Yikes ! That was a surprise, but I didn't crash, thank goodness. It certainly woke me up, as if I was in any danger of falling asleep !

So ... I picked up the pieces from the road and stood the rest of the way home. My butt may be tough, but not tough enough to sit on a 1.5"x2.0" square of carbon !

This was the new bike, by the way.

After that excitement, I called Easton and they are mailing a new bolt to me. No questions about where I bought the seatpost, age of the post, whether it had been over-torqued or anything else. I guess that they're used to warranty calls like this and at least this is one that they don't have a lawsuit over ! Let's see ... I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it ... I don't think that I'll be able to ride my bike again ... hmmm ... I'm building up to a multi-million $ lawsuit. The only trouble with this one is that it happened when riding in Canada and I'd have to pay the lawyer myself, not contingency fees. Bummer. Whoops, that pun was unintended, but a good one !

Before going biking I worked on the basement ceiling, installing light fixtures. I finished the main room/entrance way this morning just a few minutes ago so other than the smoke detector and heating ducts, I could finish putting up tiles. No, I take that back, I still have to box in that small area of ductwork.

Sandy went to Parry Sound to pickup some stuff for the garden -- tomatoes, etc. and fertilizer. She had looked in Sudbury but had not found anything that she was happy with.

The wind is blowing again today, waves rolling down the lake. It was quite windy yesterday too -- unusual for up here. Of course there would be no wind if Aaron, David or Jeffrey were here trying to windsurf :).

Abby and I went fishing last night and other than a few bites -- fish and flies -- we caught nothing. Actually, Abby got all the fly bites since she did not have a bug jacket on. I did and there was a cloud of flies around my head, angrily buzzing that they couldn't get through the mesh. It gives me great joy to pi$$ off those flies.

For dinner we had one of my favourites -- pasta with a cream sauce with fiddleheads and shrimp. I'm not sure if it has a name ... probably ... but it's something that Sandy makes once a year -- you guessed it -- when fiddleheads are in season. It's about the only pasta with cream sauce that I like. I'm a red sauce guy myself.

Yesterday was warm, predicted high 23C and probably got there. Today it's already 17C and sunny and as I mentioned, windy. The predicted high is 24C. Originally there was no rain in the forecast but that's changed -- rain tonight and all the temperature predictions have pulled back into the mid to high teens (degrees C) from the low 20's. Oh well.

Today is the MNR -- Ministry of Natural Resources -- road tour with Ministry reps and our Roads Board. We meet at the junction of Highway 522 and Smith's Bay Road. It's about 15 minutes away so I'll have to leave a little after 9am and rumour has it that it takes 2-3 hours. I should probably bring my bug jacket in case we're out of the vehicle at any point. The bugs are out in full force. I've already got bites on the back of my neck, my legs, my arms, my head ... no, not my butt -- I keep that covered.

That's it ...