Bicycle Built For Who?

Saturday is garage sale day. I got up early so I could visit as many of the community sales in my neighborhood as possible before going to work. Since finding the elusive kayak tie down kit last week I didn't have any particular goals, but I wanted to see as much junk as I could, and maybe buy some of it. My friend Chris told me to keep an eye out for a stereo receiver for him to use outside around his mud oven. The one he's using now has funky connections that make it hard to attach  and detach the speakers.

After striking out at a half dozen sales (no books or cds) I came upon a sale that had just what we were looking for.  An old Onkyo receiver with real imitation wood grain metal side panels and a price of $10.  I asked if it worked and was assured that it did so I picked it up (heavy MFer) and loaded it into Stubby. I was contemplating calling Chris and telling him of the good fortune when my phone rang.  It was Chris.  He wanted to know what I was doing because there was a tandem bike for sale on craigslist for $150 to the first person to get there with the money.  He's been looking for a tandem bike for a while and since it was in Annapolis I told him I'd love to go pay for it to seal the deal but there was no way I was going to get a tandem bike in or on Stubby. He said that would be fine so I took a drive to Annapolis  and made the buy, skipping countless garage and yard sales on the way. Even with this detour I was only about 2 minutes late for work.

On the way back from the great bike pickup, Sue and Chris stopped by to see me at work so he could pay me off for the various purchases I'd made for them. He said the bike may be a little small for him but it would be fine for Sue and maybe Kathy if I can ever get her to go biking with us.  She has a fear of riding on the roads around here and it's with good reason. There are parts of our area that are very friendly like the Baltimore/Annapolis trail that goes along the old trolley bed from Annapolis to around BWI airport, but there are other areas where even the shoulder on the road is non-existent.

Chris cooling his heels

Speaking of Bike rides, Sunday we did another 38 mile ride, including parts of the previously mentioned B&A trail as well as lots of dangerous road riding. It was a course I helped map out.  Basically I picked a half dozen bars I wanted to visit and Chris mapped it out.  My nephew Jeremy came with us this time and the ease of which he road the same trail as I did a lot to make me feel even more old and out of shape. The original plan contained more bars than we actually stopped at but three of the four places we did go were firsts for me. It turns out that Anne Arundel County is up and coming as some what of a craft beer haven. Most of the places we stopped had more that a dozen beers on tap as well as a nice selection of bottled beer.

I won't give a play by play of this ride.  It was a good one and we saw some new places and tried some new beers. We did make an unscheduled stop at a cigar store.  We picked up a couple smokes to enjoy at the scenic war memorial that looks out over the Severn River and the Naval Academy.  This was at the top of the last big hill we had to do for the day so it was safe to pollute our lungs a bit before the the final leg of the ride.  Jeremy doesn't smoke (or drink for that matter, What's wrong with this kid and why does he want to ride with us?) so after riding in circles for a while he said he'd ride the rest of the way home alone so we could take our time. Of course with him gone we had an excuse for one last beer stop less that 2 miles from home.  We had some wings (half price!) and a couple pints of #9 and then called it a day.

This puts my miles total for this year to over 70 which I think is more than I did all last year.  It's only May so I'm pretty confident I can get up to over 100 miles before summer ends, especially since there are so many beers out there that I still want to try.