N + 1

I have to say, there couldn't have been a better time to reunite with my Jamis. Although I still get a little thrill of disbelief every time I remember my old bike is with me again, it's rapidly reintegrating. With Mom and Meryl still here, we've had some getting around town to do, and it helps to have two townie bikes that both fit my sister and I perfectly. Meryl and I dashed over to the mall a couple of nights ago to see Ratatouille, and yesterday the three of us did some exploring of town.

Now that I have a townie bikes with gears, a townie bike without gears, a road bike, and a mountain bike, I sort of wonder how I ever got along in the days before the Fuji came along. The hardest decision I'll now have to face every morning is which glorious set of wheels to take on my day's adventures. We have some tentative plans to avail ourselves of the Jamis' touring capabilities - adorn it with some baskets and/or racks, perhaps some 650B wheels, and bigger tires. We'll see, but the possibilities are exciting.

Which just goes to show, as a cyclist friend of Brian's explained to me not long ago, the perfect number of bikes really is n + 1 (n being the number of bikes you already have). We are now a happy couple with seven fully functional bikes under one roof, and two extra frames.

On a different note, it's been great fun having my family here. Although the house is a little fuller than usual, we've had some good times involving port, cucumber sandwiches, WD-40, and potting soil (none of these things were combined). Our front porch is looking much more attractive since my intelligent female relatives suggested a brilliant way to fix (and clean) the exterior windows and, of course, they always help bolster my deplorable lack of interest in the area of clothing. So, I'm looking a bit better as well.


My mother and sister will head back to the land of sagebrush and mesquite trees tomorrow, and we here among the grass and humidity will miss them.