well for one, there's no london eye

another craptastic dreary dark damp day. the detroit paper said "we can pretend we're in london" but right away i can think of a few reasons why that won't work. straight away, i thought of them. or maybe they meant london, ontario.

i might be grumpy because i had to cancel my camping trip (speaking of ontario) but it was for a good reason: the older son is marching at this friday's football game, which i absolutely have to see. i get some profound feeling i can't really explain when i see him doing all these things i didn't do in high school, things that i don't exactly regret not doing but that i wonder about anyway, wonder what it might have been like, but he is doing these things without me prompting him in any way. there is this cliché of parents trying to repair their fucked-up childhood (which they can't really do, righrt?) by making their children do all this stuff they didn't do, or screwed up. a parallel cliché involves forcing children to do the same things the parents did and succeeded at, pressuring the children to succeed at the same level, or even higher. but neither of those clichés seem to fit the current pattern, which is this older child just taking on all these things out of his own inspiration, and me just trying to help him along in any way i can, but mostly sitting back, watching, in awe, slack-jawed and cotton-mouthed.

so i'm going camping in november. that will be a trip. stay tuned.

i might also be grumpy because i haven't been able to ride the bike much, because of multiple errands and other complications. i did yesterday, however (which was when that photo was taken), and on the way home i heard that familiar "pong" of a breaking spoke, although quieter than usual, and when i got home i found not one but three broken spokes, all on the drive side. that may have explained the quieter pong - the wheel was already somewhat de-tensioned. so when did the others break? my mind is a blank. but i didn't have enough spares to repair the wheel last night, so here i am, driving (although i had to do that anyway). i'll get some spokes after work and fix the wheel, but my big (new) plan is to build a rear wheel, using that el cheapo steel track hub and a rim and spokes to be purchased later. so that will be an interesting project as well. i will post pictures.

--->crrrchcrnchc