Sick and super tired

Aside from being silly busy right now, I'm sick. I rarely get sick enough to actually stop doing stuff. I think the last time I got sick where I had to stop, it was self-inflicted. Interesting that it was nearly 2 years ago to the week that I was down and out.

Glen's garage. How many Elephants do you see here? 

I've been powering through my sickness all week. That's my way and that's how I roll. Normally that works for the minor colds that I get. But today I hit the wall and I couldn't keep going, so I bailed out of school after two of three classes. It drives me nuts to miss class. As with all things in life, the basic requirement to anything is simply showing up... so missing just one class bugs the crap out of me, even though I know that's not really rational.

So I came home early to sleep. And of course I couldn't sleep. So I resigned to just laying there, forcing myself to do nothing. And I couldn't do that. But since I had made my mind up to come home and not do stuff, I couldn't stand the thought of grading another paper or writing any of the many things I should be working on as the end of the quarter looms. Coming home sick gave me the rationale to just blow off the whole school thing for afternoon.

Bikes are pretty.
You can gripe about mis-matched stuff on this bike, but there's a functional beauty about  this bike that works for me. I would like some 40mm 650b cross-style tires.

Old habits die hard. As I laid there, not sleeping and not doing stuff and thinking about doing stuff, I pondered the RB-1 issue. The RB-1 issue is familiar. Essentially: the RB-1, as built (with drop bars and fattish tires) -- is similar enough to three other bikes hanging in my garage that to call it redundant wouldn't be redundant enough.  Anyone who has paid attention here for a few years will see that this is a familiar story, with different bikes playing the lead role and even the same bikes recycling roles... if you follow.

What I resolved was that I was covered on the drop-bar, fast, but off-road capable bikes, and what was clearly lacking was a short-haul, townie, platform-pedal, fast, multi-geared, grocery-getter-commuter-trail bike. It became so friggin obvious. And with that, I was in the garage removing the drop bars from the RB-1 and replacing them with my favorite Origin-8 Space bars and the fantastically functional $12 Sun Race plastic friction thumbies.

Click for big to see that great Ritchey crown... and my ill-centered brake cable hanger. 

This change both resolves and complicates other issues: it frees up the drop bars (Noodles) for the campus bike, which really wants to do the odd commute home with me come spring and therefore ought to have drops. But, the change also casts just a shadow of doubt on the future of the MB-2 in its traditional role as summer bike. Though, given the MB-2's status as the sole single-speed, it's hard to imagine casting it out all together. Further, by eliminating some drop-bar, fast, but off-road capable bike redundancy, the status of Phil's RB-T, presently shod with studded tires, will be coming to the fore as spring quickly approaches. Perhaps that ought to be the campus bike and the present campus bike can come home as the resident fixed-gear. It's true -- the tiny bit of tooling around on the campus bike has made me interested in doing a bit more riding on fixed gear again.

Tubus Fly. Best production rack ever.
End of discussion.