Flashes of Panic

For some reason, the weekend wasn’t anywhere near as de-compressing as I’d hoped. I had a pretty short list of things I wanted to do, but I’d forgotten a few things about the way this particular holiday works, and didn’t even make it through my short list.

For some reason, Independence Day weekend has become a big thing in my family. It may be related to living in (near) a summer vacation spot, so more far-flung family is more than happy to come for a cookout and a short cruise on Whitecap. It may even be, to some degree, my fault; since I became one of those far-flung members of the family, I’ve regularly made the sometimes-heroic effort to be home for that holiday, probably second only to Christmas at this point. To top is off, the town itself makes a big deal of it.

Of course, what winds up happening is a sort of critical mass of relatives. The group becomes too large to easily round up and head out for a simple event; instead of putting three or four people in a car, you wind up with three or four different cars going everywhere. Base the whole thing in three different physical locations, add two very young children who, for various reasons, aren’t sleeping much and are consequently oscillating wildly between charming and cranky, and I wound up doing pretty much the same oscillation.

I did get to ride my brother’s bike around town for a good chunk of Sunday, which has pretty much convinced me that I need to replace mine. (This is probably not a coincidence, since my bike was my brother’s before he replaced it with the one I rode Sunday.) Aside from the fact that it was notably lighter, even accounting for the ten pounds of lunch and work clothes I normally load on for my commute, it had a nice pair of tires of the sort I would call “cross” tires; they’re knobby, but the knobs form a little ridge down the center line so they ride smoothly on flat pavement. It also had a nice seat, and the shifters were more likely than mine to smoothly switch gears without an intermediate squealing or scraping phase. (I spend a lot of time in the large chainring, and when I try to drop down to the middle ring, my bike prefers to drop me all the way down to the small ring, so I flail for a few seconds until I can compensate.)

I did not succeed in braving the Local Employment Powerhouse crowds in search of a new sleeping bag. I have aspirations of an easily-carried sleeping bag and small tent which could be used both on moderately-adventurous local bike treks and a hypothetical kayak journey, but since I’ve done nothing approaching either since a car-camping trip with friends into the wilds of New York about five years ago, I’m not sure who I’m fooling other than myself.

Now playing: We’re All Light from Wasp Star (Apple Venus, Pt. 2) by XTC