SUN!

The sun finally came out today, hooray!

This morning I didn't particularly enjoy the ride to work. The reason is because glasses hate fog. I need little tiny windshield wipers installed, or that spell Hermione does for Harry's glasses so he can see to play Quidditch. The fog was completely thick and clingy, obscuring distance vision and wetting my windbreaker pretty well. Not only could anyone not see very well, but I was especially hampered. Pretty much my glasses got opaque and wet, and no matter how much I wiped them, I was looking through a haze. Either that or peeking over the lenses to see: blur. I'd rather see through the haze, thank you very much. I used to say that in an emergency I would be able to drive if I had to. I'll have to amend that statement to include the disclaimer- only on bright clear days. Or maybe I couldn't do it after all. It's a scary thought.

But, the fog did not last forever. I rode home in a clearing sky, and then let the dogs out sometime later to a yard filled with sunshine. It felt so good, that I decided I just HAD to do something outside today. I had arranged to go back to work early and take my school bus to be washed, so I decided that Zoomie badly needed a bath too. I went out with a brown washcloth (the darkest of my hankies, to hide the grease stains) and a Pyrex measuring cup full of hot water.

I simple wipe down became an all-out tear down and rebuild as I turned Zoomie on her back, removed fenders, chainguard, and rack. The fenders came completely off, and I even took the fenderstays off to get at the dirt lurking under the bracket. To get to the fenders, the wheels had to come off too, and they both got some love with the washrag too as I wiped every spoke and the rims and tire sidewalls. I might have used a tire shine on them if we had any (carefully avoiding tread, of course).

Then Zoomie got put back together, and I put the chain oil on. I am fairly certain that the incredibly annoying squeak from the chain is not actually the chain, but a derailleur pulley wheel. I soaked both in oil, probably wasting it, but could not get it quiet.

Zoomie is clean, but doesn't really seem that different for the effort. She has a LOT of battlescars from this winter and before, including the large gash that was there when she came out of the box, seriously scraped and bent cable adjusters at both brake handles, a shortened pedal edge (to match the nearly-shorn lace of the sneaker I had been wearing and much thinner plastic grommet), just to name a few. But her streamers are still bright, if slightly frayed.

It was so hot that I wished I had not been wearing the somewhat black jeans with purple embellishments, and had on shorts instead. Really wished. It was hot. Now I am sitting home, writing this after having absently scratched my forearm, and I've discovered that they are burnt between my wrist and the bottom of my three-quarter sleeves. Time to find the sunscreen!

I am still happy to have the sun.