birds and bikes

There was supposed to be an enlightened post about my camping trip here, but it just isn’t going to be. Work and life has interfered with my schedule and the time has past…

Well here I am on a Friday night. I should have been out riding my bike, but instead I spent most of the evening browsing Cornell University Ornithology website.

Ornithology you ask? It’s a fancy name for bird watching or simply “birding”. My wife and I have really gotten into birding this year and today she came across the Cornell website because it had an audio file of a Black-capped Chickadee song. For years now we have been pestered by what we called the “nelson bird”. By nelson bird I mean that the birds call sounded to us like nelson from the Simpsons saying “ha-ha”, almost mocking us in the woods as we looked to the trees to trace this sound to no avail. Well, we will be mocked no longer because we know who it is.

Anyhow, I am not sure I wasted my time so much as realigned my priorities. Tomorrow morning I plan on riding the bike instead.

  On a bike note, I got out the huffy or should I say 39 lb “le grand noir”.
  le grand noir is a 198? Huffy 314 I acquired a few years back for the grand sum of $20. I spent some time do what some would call “polishing a turd” and I now have a pretty nice looking vintage 10 speed. In addition to polishing, the bike also required some new components. Brakes and handlebars were procured from a $10 huffy wind sprint, which I then turned around and sold for $40. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I got new brakes and handlebar AND put $30 in my pocket.  Actually I think I have a thing for old beat-up bikes. My wife accused me of being a bicycle hillbilly this spring when I had 6 bikes in the garage, all in varying states of repair. I took this as a signal and sold 4 bikes and bought 1. This leaves me with a current total of (do the math) 3 bikes: (1) 39lb black monster, (2) 2006 Columbia journey, and (3) 1990 Raleigh technium grand prix (aka the green machine) the green machine is my current “serious road bike” being that it is the fastest of the three. The huffy is going to get a rear rack to fit the panniers from the Columbia, which I have grown to dislike very much, and the Columbia will be sold. The Columbia used to be my grocery-shopping bike, but the huffy is a much better riding bike and will begin its grocery getting tour soon. Some may wince when they think of a 39lb bike but that heavy, old time gas pipe frame rides smooth as silk