Crash

There’s a lot going on right now, life-wise. Yesterday, my wife was involved in a car accident, caught in the middle of a chain reaction rear-end collision on the freeway. She’s suffering from some soreness today, and is probably at the doctor as I write, but we don’t think it’s anything serious. The car, however, is kind of a mess, smooshed up pretty good. We’re still waiting on the assessment of the damages, but the tow driver said he thought it was totaled. One thing about tow drivers, they don’t have anything to gain or lose by offering such opinions, and they’re usually right. We’ve got a rental now, paid for by insurance, but we have to pay the tax and the additional damage waiver, so it’s going to add up if we have to keep it too long. But, really, it could be worse, and we’re thanking the universe that it wasn’t.

In happier news, my bicycle project is nearing completion and I learned a lot from it, including how to rebuild and true a wheel, which I consider a pretty major accomplishment. I’ve taken a couple of test-rides, and it runs beautifully, so I’m quite happy about that.

My internal academic clock is also gearing me back up for a busy fall schedule of work. Even though I’m neither taking nor teaching any classes this year (still just doing dissertation and related work), my mind seems conditioned from twenty-some-odd years of schooling to start working harder ’round about mid-September every year. After a summer of feeling un-motivated and somewhat dejected about my work, I’m looking forward to getting busy again.

Delays

I’ve been working at some of the labor-intensive parts of my bicycle restoration, which totally derailed my working last Thursday and Friday, although I was able to devote Friday morning entirely to actual work. Saturday was one of those wasted days that just seemed to drag by. It was hot and sticky here and I didn’t feel particularly well, so about all I did was get a bit of pleasure reading done. It sounds nice, but wasn’t really. Sunday was quite productive and included priming one bicycle fender for painting, doing a bunch of house chores, and preparing the launch of my new blog, The Cycling Gentleman.

Yesterday, Monday, was not entirely productive, but not too bad. Weekly groceries in the morning, then a few household things, painting the front fender, then to the bike shop to drop off my wheels for truing. They were supposed to be ready in the afternoon, but as of this writing, they’re still not done. I don’t much care for bike shops, and so try to avoid them whenever possible, but I’m not much one for truing wheels, either, so it’s occasionally a necessary evil. I spent the afternoon doing final proofing for a couple of article drafts I’m getting ready to send off.

Today, I’ve made another blog post, sanded on the rear fender, made the corrections from yesterday’s proofing, sent off a draft for a colleague to read, and mailed my mom-in-law’s birthday present. Altogether, even though it seems that I’ve been pretty busy, I feel like I’ve met with a series of delays the last few days that have prevented me from really feeling like things are moving forward.