Cash money

Apologies, once again, for the intermittent writing.

Yesterday, for the first time since Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast, gasoline prices fell below three dollars a gallon. This price reduction helps me because I have been commuting to Newport this summer. There's no bike access to the Jamestown or Newport bridges, so I've been at the mercy of Nature's whims and the resultant increases in fuel costs. Yikes, that's a loaded sentence if ever there was one... Anyway, our noble senator, the Honorable Lincoln Chaffee, has secured several million dollars (it's in the transportation bill that went through a month ago) to create bike access on the Jamestown bridge. It's a start, but the results will obviously take time, and I'd be suprised if the Jamestown NIMBY's let this just slide right through. I don't want those heathen bastards riding their bikes right onto my island! The point of all this is that I can't ride my bike to work, and as a result I've been really smacked by the expensive gas.

Lately my road rig has been plagued by gremlins. More accurately, it has been repeatedly plagued by one, very specific gremlin. The spoke nipples on my front wheel have been exploding. The spoke doesn't break, rather the nipple snaps off right where it passes through the grommet on the rim. It has happened four times in the last month, I haven't noticed any connection to hitting bumps or anything else for that matter. Upon closer inspection of the nipples themselves (uh huh huh, nipples...), I noticed they are corroding, as though they have been exposed to salt water. Ah ha! This is a possibility since I rode all last winter on wet roads, and also road often on Ocean Road, exposed to salt spray. The repair is easy, but it's annoying and it has caused me to lose confidence in my front wheel. It's radially spoked, so when a nipple breaks the wheel goes waaaay out of true and sometimes won't even fit in the brakes. I suppose I should motivate to just change out all the nipples...