spring! (in the land where spring is meaningless)
Today is the first day of Spring, we're told, though you'd hardly know it here in the land of eternal Summer. Well, maybe not eternal Summer--folks here sure think it gets cold at times--but eternal warm-enough-that-Spring-isn't-as-exciting, that's for sure. There are no new buds pushing up through the soil, or anything like that. On the other hand, Capistrano and its swallows aren't far from here, so if you want some real Spring action you could always head over that way; those birds are due in any day now, I understand. Also, I got a new bike!
As you may recall from an earlier post, I've been using Leah's bike since I got here--which is fine most of the time, like where I want to vistit her at work or bring her something, but which is a little less convenient when we want to bike somewhere together. So I've been meaning to get one of my own, and now I have; though I don't exactly have it yet. But I will soon.
We got it at REI, and the immediate motivation for the trip wasn't the bike (that's never immediate) but the fact that I needed new shoes, since I can barely walk in mine, let alone run. And I got some very nice shoes too, just barely resisting the temptation to buy this year's model of the shoes I've been wearing for the past year or two. But you don't want to hear about shoes! So the bikes at REI were cheaper than the ones at the local bike store here to start with, and they were offering a membership promotion whereby you could get 20% off any purchase for signing up. Since membership is only fifteen dollars we went for it in a second, and ended up saving over a hundred dollars. Only I wanted a 15 inch frame, cause I got sick of 13 inches with my old purple bike, and all the 15 inch bikes had the handlebars too far forwards for me; so I had to get a new thingy to attach the handlebars to the rest of the bike (I'm secure enough in my masculinity to use such non-technical terms, you see) and since they didn't have one in stock we had to order it. So next week sometime. And won't we have some fun then. I'll write more about the bike itself when I actually have it in my hot little hands, and get a chance to take it through its paces.