My 39th birthday

Friday birthday lunch at mom's. That's apricot btw.

Watching this morning's tour stage with Patrick at The Scoop.

Joe, Patrick, and I took a great trail ride this morning: an extended version of the Sunday morning SOS loop.

My 39 year old mug. Liza says I look smug. Actually, I'm just not the most photogenic guy on the planet.

Joe and Patrick minding the rules. It was busy at Bowl and Pitcher this morning.

Yay. Maddie made me a double-sided poster and a card. And was super rad to me all day today: for example,, when she brought me a mid-day beer, she delivered it with my favorite glass.

I sat down to string up a wheel. I started it on Friday, but it appeared the spokes were too long so I set it aside after stringing up the first set of spokes.

Thinking on it over a couple days, I figured it was just the odd combo of tiny rim with honkin' hub that made the spokes seem too long: maybe everything would work itself out when I tensioned it up.

Nope. The spokes are too long.

The issue? The Sturmey Archer specs page says the flange width is 58mm. And it is. But Spocalc wants distance from center of hub to flange. I just put 58mm in the flange field and should have put 29 for both left and right center-to-flange measurements.

Damn. So I ordered another (ahem, my third) set of spokes for this build.

Liza made a great big pot of puttanesca and some green beans with garlic scapes. I made a Caesar salad that was a bit disappointing. I'd give anything for the Caesar dressing recipe we used at Patsy Clarks a million years ago. I probably made 100+ gallons of that dressing when I was in high school and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I can remember the details.

The puttanesca was great.

Maddie provided entertainment with the mud pie. Beth is clearly riveted.

I'm a lucky guy.