Yep, the new bike is fast! And after almost 20 years with levers on the down-tube it's really nice to have integrated shifting. For the uninitiated, that means the brake levers also function as gear levers. You pull them in to apply the brakes, just like normal, but they also swing inward, and have a smaller tab on the inside of the lever that also swings inward. The right brake lever controls the rear set of gears, so that you swing the brake lever in to move up one gear and swing the tab in to move down one gear. Same thing on the left side to control the front gear set. All of which means that instead of taking my hand off the handle bar to reach down to the lever, I can change gears without moving my hands. Much safer! especially when in traffic, which is everywhere here.
I like my new bike!
That pic is an oleander, a bush native to the desert. Left unpruned it will grow to 6' wide and high. It has pretty flowers in a variety of shades of red, but it grows anywhere and everywhere which doesn't make it an especially desirable landscaping plant. Besides that, it's very toxic. So you mostly see it along freeways and commercial developments.
Oleanders are a little like children. Once you have them you can't get rid of them. So you might as well train them.
I've tried everything to get rid of the six oleanders in the back. I cut them down to ground level. They grew back. I cut them back to ground level and painted the exposed root ball with undiluted Round-Up. They grew back. I cut them back and then used my landscape adz to dig out the root ball. They grew back.
So I'm going to try to turn them into topiaries. The one in front looked like the one behind it. I'll attack that one tomorrow. We've seen oleander trees at Home Depot. I don't know if they started out as bushes or as a particular variety, but we're about to find out. I may discover that like kids, training oleanders sounds a lot easier than it is.
On my bike ride I went past a church with a sign that read, "Live Nativity and Petting Zoo." Now that has to make baby Jesus really happy!
I have no idea how this works.
http://www.funlol.com/funpages/theres-something-in-the-water.html
OK, if you've been reading this blog for very long you know that I regularly watch WineLibraryTV, (http://tv.winelibrary.com/) a web blog about wine done by Gary Vaynerchuk, the director of operations at a HUGE wine shop in NJ. ("I'm from New Jersey." "Really? What exit?")
He's crazy, hyper and funny, but mostly he really knows wine and is the anti-wine snob. Lots of fun, and learning at the same time.
Well, he's had a contest running for the last week or so. If you put a link to their site, in the form of a widget, on your web page or blog you'd be entered in a drawing for an all-expense paid trip to NJ to appear along side Gary on a future taping of his blog.
Unfortunately, Yahoo 360 doesn't allow for inserting widgets. Aaargh! So, I set up a shadow blog on blogspot.com, which does allow widgets. My only reason for doing that was to win the free trip, which gets awarded this Friday. But in an attempt to make the site look like more than a cheap attempt to win a trip I spent some time dressing it up a bit. And now I think I like it more than this blog site. It doesn't allow for a blast (that one-line piece of nonsense I change each morning), but I think I can figure out a way to add one. And it allows me to edit in HTML, which stretches the limits of my abilities, but allows for more flexibility. I think that for awhile, at least, I'll run both sites and just copy/paste the blog. But Yahoo is supposed to restructure all of their services after the first of the year, and in the process make big changes to Yahoo 360. Will I like them? I don't know. But in the meantime I'll be experimenting with the new site and customizing it as I learn my way. The URL is easier to remember, AND (!) you don't have to be a member to post comments!! So you may want to bookmark this new address and use it instead of this one. Aside from some cosmetics the content will be pretty much the same. Whichever you prefer.
http://craigmacdonald.blogspot.com/
And come Friday I'm going to be chosen for that trip to NJ!!
1 comment:
Hooray! I LOVE it! Love. It. And look how easy it is to post a comment. Thank you thank you. I'll miss the "blast," which is often quotable, but it's a worthy tradeoff.
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