May 10 - in and out

Our short-term visitor left with a working bike ...

We took Jason's rear wheel off, which is more difficult than mine because a) it doesn't have a quick release and b) it has internal gearing.  He's riding 26" wheels / 36 spokes, so I didn't have any spare spokes that would fit the wheels.

The wheel wasn't too far off true, in spite of the four broken spokes, so I figured that I could do as good a job as a bike shop fixing his wheel, without the delay.  We went over to the bike shop beachside on 3rd, but it wasn't going to be open until 10am.  So ... we went to the Fox place on SR44 across from the defunct K-Mart, and they were opening at 9am.  Since it wasn't quite 9am yet, we took a little tour of Canal and Flagler and drove on the beach and then back to the bike shop.

Sure enough, they had some spokes ... great ... so we took 6 (4 + 2 spares) and headed home.  It didn't take very long to install the spokes -- 1 on the drive side and 3 on the non-drive side -- and get the wheel trued.  Whoever built the wheel hadn't really put much tension on the spokes so I tightened things up all around.

The spoke on the drive side was tricky to get in because I didn't want to remove his one cog.  We managed though.  Soon the bike was back together and he was loading up his panniers.

In the meantime, Jim Brendel and the stair guy came.  Sandy started working with them while I finished up with Jason, then I left Jason to do his thing and met with Jim, talking about the kitchen work.  I think that we're good to go but don't have numbers from him yet, obviously.

They left and Jason said his good-byes, taking some pictures of us before heading out.  We exchanged contact information -- I'll have to check his blog and FB pages, but haven't yet.

I'd given directions to Jason to head down Merritt Island for a more pleasant ride without many bonus miles.  I was out the door myself about an hour later, heading the same way since we had a stiff wind coming from the SE. Getting to Merritt Island, they had a sign that the Haulover Bridge was under construction for the next two months ... damn ... did Jason go that way or take the hint and stay on US 1 ?  There was no point in heading that way myself; hopefully I'd catch him on US 1 and know that he guessed right.

Well, I got to Titusville without seeing him.  Perhaps he was riding faster with all that gear than I expected or perhaps he was behind me ?  Turning around and riding with a tailwind, about 10 miles north there he was, heading south.  I took the next turn-around and caught up to him, which wasn't very hard.  He said that he was about half-way down and a kind motorist told him that the bridge was out.  Half-way probably means that he was close to the Haulover Bridge, which is about half-way to Titusville.  Anyway, he was in good spirits -- that's life -- and rolling strong.  I'm not sure if he'd still make Melbourne that night but I said my good-bye's again, and headed north.

I talked to Jason, who was up at the cottage.  Kim has a half-marathon in Sudbury tomorrow, Sunday.  Apparently snow is predicted.  Yikes.

We'd made arrangements to have dinner with Sharon and Kirby and they had picked the Steakhouse by Publix.  We hadn't tried there before but we did have a good dinner.  The half-rack of ribs was excellent, very meaty which meant that I was very full and didn't sleep all that well.  It was payback time.  I don't eat much heavy meat these days.

Oh well, once in a while won't kill me. 

The day was done.

Today; I'm not sure.  We'd planned to go boating but that will depend on the Doppler and whether the "isolated thunderstorms" looked like we might be hit.

Onward ...