fourth of fun

Last weekend was the Fourth of July weekend, and it was a pretty good weekend. I'm going to keep this recap short and sweet this time around.

Friday night we went to Sherlock's with some of Justin's coworkers and had a good time. There was a pop-rock/rap/classics cover band there, who were entertaining to say the least.

Saturday was a day at the Kelcey's lake house. She had invited me and Taylor there, and it was the first time I went to the lake house and actually spent time out on the lake. There were a lot of firsts for me: first time jet-skiing, first time jumping into a lake, and first time swinging off a rope into a lake. Before you ask, yes I had a life jacket on because there is no way I would do any of those things otherwise. Maybe one day I'll stop being such a baby, but until then there are life jackets. When I jumped into the lake with the rope swing, I was a bit nervous (okay, fairly nervous) and let go a bit earlier than I should have. The unfortunate side effect of that was that I wasn't completely clear of some of the underwater rocks, and I slammed the top of my foot into a rock as I splashed in. It hurt, but not terribly bad. It got worse the next day, but it's mostly healed now. The rest of the night was spent indoors, where we had brisket, drank and played games. It was a fun night.

For brevity, I will skip straight to Sunday night, when I went to a house/pool party that was hosted by one of Justin's coworkers. It was part awkward and part fun. It was part awkward because I didn't know most of the people so I had to force myself into conversations so that I wasn't just sitting there by myself or constantly following Justin around. The people there were very friendly though, so once I started getting more comfortable being there it was fun. Unfortunately I didn't get the memo that it was actually going to be a not-really-house-but-mostly-pool party, so I didn't bring swimming trunks because I didn't feel like swimming. Turns out I was the only one there without swimming gear. Eventually, I grabbed a pair of swim trunks from someone, but by the time that happened and I got in the water, almost everyone had gotten out. Maybe I smelled bad. Their neighborhood all pitched in together and bought several hundred dollars worth of fireworks, so the remainder of the night was spent watching fireworks go off about 20 feet away from me. Drove home.

Usually at this point, I just wrap up the blog post because the weekends are really the only eventful part of my week, however something noteworthy happened today. I rode my motorcycle into work today, which went fine all the way up until I turned onto the street that leads to my building. Right as I finished upshifting into third gear, as I was releasing the clutch I heard a snapping sound and my clutch lever lost all springiness. Uh oh, that can't be good. I tried pressing it a few times and sure enough the cable was clearly snapped, and I lost the clutch. I was able to ride my bike all the way into the garage in 3rd gear, but unfortunately stalled out about 5 feet shy of the parking spot. Given that I have no clutch, my bike is, for now, permanently stuck in third gear. Since I have no neutral, my bike was stuck 5 feet away from the parking spot since I couldn't roll it. I got Andy and Nick to come help me lift the rear tire up so we could roll the bike on its front tires into a spot. And there my bike shall stay until I get my new clutch cable shipped to me.

I think that's a hint that I need to pony up the cash to pay for some infrequent maintenance, such as new tires, a new chain and sprockets, new brake pads, and obviously now a new clutch cable.