Thursday, June 24, 2010

Opportunity Knocked And I Downloaded!

One of the biggest nits I have about my work area is that it is so cramped and cluttered. Being in an old basement in an old house, well.........I shouldn't expect much! The thing was that I had collected so much bicycle stuff since the mid 90's that it was beyond ridiculous down there. It made it so that I dreaded having to even set foot in the place, actually.

There were a lot of reasons for that mess. One was that during my time as a car mechanic I had felt the need to grab on to all the spurned bike parts I could because that helped me in my fixing up of other peoples bikes on the side. I had no inside hook up for cheap parts, but I could make do with lightly used ones and still do a tune up or two for some extra pocket change back in the day. 

Then I got back into a shop job and things just went crazy. Well, by 2010 I am sitting in a veritable bicycle rats nest. I was of the mind to download a lot of it, but to whom? Most of the stuff I wouldn't want was, well.......pretty much junk.

Then I heard about the plan someone in Parkersburg, Iowa had to make a "bicycle tornado" sculpture to decorate the town for the arrival of RAGBRAI next month. Opportunity was a knocking! So today I downloaded a whole pickup load of stuff and I even drove it all the way to Parkersburg myself, (approximately 30 miles from my house), just to see it off. Man!  What a difference!

I now have some "breathing room" in The Lab, and I am excited to do some sprucing up down there now so I can actually move around without smacking my head on something or knocking a bicycle over. Really! You folks have no idea how crazy it is down there. (Well, actually, Captain Bob does, but not many other folks do!)

 Okay folks. This is for those that were on the Fargo Adventure Ride. Last weekend we were reported to have 9 riders. Okay, something about the math isn't adding up for me, and I need help here. (I admit not being good at math, but just entertain me here for a minute)

Here's our pile of Fargos at the end of the day. I count six bikes: Three across the far side, two in the middle, and one in the foreground, right?

Okay, besides these Fargos, there was one Vaya, a Redline 29"er, a Kona cross bike, and a Surly CrossCheck. That equals four bikes, right? Okay, who was the "ghost rider" if there were only nine of us?

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just confused. Help a brother out here Fargo Adventurers!

Have a great Thursday!

9 comments:

Jerry said...

you are correct, there were 10 riders on the Fargo ride. I think Gnat was counting 9 in addition to himself. 6 fargos, kona, redline, vaya, and surly.

Captain Bob said...

Great way to make some room my friend. You needed the space Badly!

Guitar Ted said...

@Jerry: Huh! Well, I can not place who had that sixth Fargo. Maybe somebody can help me out there.

Gnat had one

MG had one

Josh had one

I had one

Dave had one

Who was the sixth Fargo rider?

paxtoncoyote said...

was it Elvis?

GNAT said...

GT, when I said 9 I was not counting myself.

The other Fargo rider was Scott from Alexandria, MN. He came down with Derek (on the Surly Crosscheck).

Good for you for purging. I did the same thing earlier this spring. My garage is still a pit, but I can at least see my floor!

Scott S. said...

The sixth Fargo, and the one in the foreground, belongs to me. Great ride everyone and I look forward to next year's.

MG said...

It was that super tall guy on the XXL Fargo that had the custom not-called-Epic-anymore bag that had a laptop sleeve in it. I forget his name right off, but he was from St. Paul.

D said...

I have long suspected that Scott may be Elvis.

Don said...

MTBR caption of the day picture is of GT "downloading" to Parkersburg:
http://gallery.mtbr.com/data/mtbr/594/30293_416275663056_274586768056_4133377_2149577_n.jpg