Sorry, not a lot of tandem content here today. Most a recap of a really bizarre couple days worth of weather and little snippets from various goings-on around the TandemGeek’s home base, but some of those are at least cycling or semi-tandem cycling related.
Weather Timeline / Thursday: Thursday evening the lovely Miss Debbie and I attended my bosses’ annual holiday dinner event at the nearby country club where he holds a membership. It’s a very nice place and even though the dress code was business casual we both elected to step up our game, as that’s become the norm for business casual these days where I work. Even very casual events aren’t really all that casual, as I discovered back in September when I arrived on my Road King wearing jeans, western boots and a Hawaiian shirt, only to find everyone else dressed in country club casual, i.e., khaki’s and polo shirts with loafers. The folks who were at trap shooting were also decked-out in “gun club” attire. But I digress. The weather throughout the week had been 40’s – 50’s with light rain every day but on Thursday the temps began to move up and into the 70’s. It was probably in the mid 60’s when we arrived at the club around 6:30p with a light mist. We left around 9:30p and no sooner had we gotten home the skies let loose with a deluge.
Weather Timeline / Friday: It was in the high 50’s when I left for the office around 7:00a and had moved into the 70’s when I met Debbie for lunch at The Red Eyed Mule at 11:30a. When I finally finished up my work at the office around 2:30 it was in the mid-70s, albeit a bit steamy. After stopping by my local Harley dealer to return a part and then getting a haircut I headed home and hopped on my Harley Wide Glide wearing only a long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans to run a few more errands. It was the ideal opportunity to give the Wide Glide some exercise on a day when the bar-hopper was the right tool for the job. After meeting our friends for dinner at On The Border as we always do on Friday nights we headed home instead of out to a club, as Debbie and Deb would be heading off to Athens, Georgia on Saturday morning for a Girls Day Away. It was still in the upper 50’s, but another weather front would be coming through over night.
Weather Timeline / Saturday: When we woke up on Saturday morning it was 39 degrees and the outlook for where we live was a high only in the mid-40’s. Debbie headed off for Athens around 9:30a while I did laundry, flipped on the self-cleaning oven functions, tidy’d up the kitchen and did a few other chores before heading off to Costco, mailing off stuff sold on FleaBay, and taking advantage of a 2-for-1 suit sale to replace a well-worn blue work suit and add a medium grey suit to my closet. As noted on Thursday, the times they-are-a-changing at work so a suit and tie will once again be my uniform of the day: this required a refresh of my wardrobe, mostly ties but a couple suits were also called for.
When I arrived home I decided to take advantage of the dry but still cool 43 degree weather and take my single Calfee out for a short loop ride from the house. It’d been a long time since I’d ridden in the 40’s, as Debbie’s usually with me at home on the weekends and riding the bike at temps under 60 degrees is pretty rare; under 50 degrees… it ain’t happening. I dug out my Sidi Freeze cycling boots and a 20-year old cold-weather riding jacket to compliment my normal cool weather bib tights and threw on some gloves, which all turned out to be about right for the 42 degree temps that we had around the house at 2:30p in the afternoon. Debbie called from Athens just after I got back from my ride and son-of-a-gun if they weren’t still having 70 degree weather just 85 miles East and slightly North. Unbelievable. Saturday night was dinner with David (Deb’s other half) at Loco Willy’s with the Auburn vs. Missouri game for entertainment, and then back to the house for more outstanding college football and prepping for doing the Christmas decoration thing on Sunday while the rain came down outside.
Weather Timeline / Sunday: Well, it was a great morning for putting up the Christmas tree and other indoor Christmas season decorations and lights: upper 30’s to lower 40’s with a steady, light rain. With the house decorated, I moved on to vacuuming carpets and also took care of a maintenance issue with my motorcycles before sitting down to pen the annual Christmas Letter that goes out to family and certain friends who we only tag up with at Christmas via our letters: it’s an old-school thing. Debbie arrived home around 1:30p and we headed over to Loco Willy’s for hot wings and football with Matti out on the back porch.
Back at home, Debbie needed some downtime to recover from her “Day Away” and ended up falling asleep in my lap while watching the Sea Hawks lose to the 49ers in front of a very nice fire; it was just that kind of an afternoon! As you can see in the photo above, it was still raining as we entered the early evening. Using a flash to take a photo of our exterior illumination, it created the illusion of snow, which was pretty cool. Of course, it won’t be long before I won’t need a flash to make it look like it’s snowing, as I’m guessing we’ll definitely get some snow this winter. Yes, we do in fact get snow here in the Atlanta area!!
Looking at the week ahead, we’ll have rain and 40’s until Tuesday afternoon, at which point the rain will stop but the temps will drop a bit; 30’s – 50’s for the day’s range on Weds & Thursday. That’s a good thing, as we have some other friends with whom we ride motorcycles that are planning on doing the annual motorcycle Christmas lights tour on Wednesday night! Tis the season!
I’m Still A Recovering Wheel-Aholic – A friend from Utah dropped me a note to see if I’d be interested in buying a brand new set of lightweight tandem performance wheels on Thursday at a really attractive price. Despite what I wrote back in October after politely passing on an offer to demo some killer wheels on our Calfee, I was very tempted by the offer. In fact, I almost replied ‘send me your PayPal account or mailing address’ but decided to take a deep breath, think it over and talk it over with Miss Debbie. Buying time was, in retrospect, a good move. I ultimately decided to pass, let him know and I think he had them sold for about $100 more than he’d offered them to me: so it was truly a win-win. I’ve since pondered those same killer wheels that were offered up for a test ride at the Southern Tandem Rally, but after re-reading my own October post on wheels have gotten myself back in the box.
Calfee Refresh? – A few weeks back Mike or one of the other folks at Calfee Design posted up a photo of a new Calfee that was sporting one of their laser cut titanium head tube badges and black painted-on Calfee down tube branding in a very different typeface and style than I was used to seeing. It was a very stealthy-looking combination. My initial reaction was to say, “sign me up”… to which Mike replied, “we can do that!”. However, after mulling over a bit I’m still thinking that our nearly 6-year old Calfee does need to be re-decaled but a set of the standard branding decals in black will do the trick, along with one of those laser cut head badges.
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