Quatorze Juillet

I was thinking about going yesterday when a guy with tools called me up and proclaimed that he could easily deal with my license plate bolt issue.

It was too muggy anyway and it sure felt like rain.  I invited GWT to come on down and have at it.

Well, he has REAL tools and pretty conclusively demonstrated how to undo frozen with rust license plate bolts.  I watched and I feel pretty confident that I could do it myself if need be.  Except for one pretty major thing.

I don't have the tools.

So, merci beaucoup et chapeau to GWT.  Thank you very much and a tip of the hat.

This morning I and the other viewer of the Tour de France who lives here watched that abomination of the guy on drugs raising his cadence by about a third while riding up what Bobke says is the hardest climb in bicycling.  TOVOTTDFWLH will be able to no doubt confirm that I pretty much immediately proclaimed that the spectacle was "ridiculous".

Spectacularly unbelievable.

After that I felt like riding myself.  I tried to get an early start but it was still noonish when I reached the door and it already felt pretty warm and on its way to being pretty muggy.  It turned out OK though as there was enough breeze to keep the humidity from getting completely out of control and the miracle of evaporative cooling mostly kept me from overheating.

There was one problem, however.  Apparently when I skip a day of bicycling I instantly and completely forget the routine.

I was lucky today in following part of the routine.  The part that I followed is when the weather is iffy I often take a loop near home to kinda assess the conditions.  With a mostly south wind I was bent on riding as much as possible east and west so I started off with a loop downhill towards the west.  It was hot, it was muggy but I was finding it tolerable when I followed another part of my usual routine by at the 5 mile mark of the ride of reaching down for a water bottle.  I keep from forgetting to drink by drinking at every 5 mile mark of the ride.  Drinking is extremely important, particularly when conditions are contributing to possible rapid dehydration.

Here's what I found.

The good thing about riding a loop early in the ride is the 5 mile mark of the ride occurs within only a couple of miles by the shortest possible route of my house.  I was home by less than 8 miles and soon enough started out again.

Today's camera gear note:  For the first photo I was apparently disoriented enough already to fail to keep the camera wrist strap out of the shot.

Today's bicycle clothing note:  Who doesn't love Castelli?

Today's bicycle gear note:  The first photo was on an uphill and slightly into the wind.  Small ring.  Second photo was 100 feet from my garage.  Big ring.

Additional note:  I have noticed very many riders in le Tour this year riding with Speedplay pedals.

Today's elitist bicyclist snob note:  No, I do not shave my legs.

So I made it home OK.

This beanie baby thing continues to heat up.

Variations in color are a big deal.  Variable colors were issued in very limited quantities for the most part and any variation contributes significantly to value.

The two cats on the left are Nip.  Nip has three variations in the standard form, all pretty similar to the brown one there.  One has a brown face, one has white paws.  The most valuable is the brown face but also very valuable (according to my book) is the white face brown paw version.

I have been scouring the net but have not yet located any reference at all to the next cat who is very clearly Nip but is somehow black.  No references.

The next one is Cubbie, previously pictured.

Then there's Patti and Inch.  Inch has the less valuable yarn antennae, the valuable version has felt.  Patti was mentioned previously as being possibly valuable depending upon whether she was raspberry or fuchsia.

Well, I found a website that says one way to determine Patti's color is to compare her to the final tail segment of Inch.  I just happen to have Inch.  Inch's tail is fuchsia.  If Patti's color doesn't match the color of that tail segment she is the very, very much more rare and therefore valuable raspberry.  In case it isn't clear from the photograph, that is NOT a match.

Raspberry.

We never intended to be beanie baby collectors.  But when they first appeared on the market TOPWLH bought quite a few of them for our beloved dafter to play with.  Many of the toys the girl did, in fact, play with.  After approximately the 3rd generation of toys the collectors market suddenly appeared resulting in a large increase in number of toys produced and collected.

By then we were pretty much (and totally accidentally) out of the market.  The toys we have are mostly pretty old and relatively rare.

That's our entire collection, a photograph I took when originally we thought we might put the whole collection on Chad's list (or something similar) and ask for $20 or $30.

Not anymore.