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Trials and tribulations
Jan. 29th, 2011 04:57 pm1) Today I participated in the annual Bird Race in my town. You compete in teams, and the goal is to see as many bird species as possible between 8:30 am and 3 pm. There are two categories: by bike and by car. My team biked, and we saw 26 species, as compared with the winning bike team at 31 and the winning car team at 35 (the explanation for why the car team didn't see much more is that there's no open sea water by the coast this year, so no sea birds for the car team).
I'm afraid I didn't actually contribute much--I'm more of a botanist than an ornithologist. But it was fun. I am really not used to biking so much, though, and my hands suffered. I need a bike where you have an upright posture in order to bike at all (so as to have as little weight on my hands as possible) but even so, my hands are really hurting right now. Ow, ow. And my legs are tired, obviously, but that's to be expected. I had more trouble, though, which brings us to:
2) I think there's a curse on my bike. I got a flat tire some time ago (on the back wheel, naturally, where it's hardest to change) and changed the inflatable thing inside the tire. Not sure what you call it in English, but let us call it the tube for now. Since I changed it, the air has slowly leaked out, and I had to pump it up every time I want to use the bike. I tried changing the, hmm, thing that prevents air from leaking out of the tube, but no go. So yesterday I changed the tube again, being careful to use no sharp tools, check the inside of the tire to make sure no sharp things had gotten lodged there, and ditto for the outside of the wheel. But about an hour into the bird race, the same thing started to happen again, and I had to pump up the tire every five minutes, which got old quickly. And a few hundred meters before we got into goal, the tube decided to plop out of the tire and flop around, like some sort of grand finish. /o\ /o\ /o\
While walking home I listened to Nansen's story of sledging on the pack ice (yes, pack ice!) of the arctic sea and having to kill off his dogs one by one, which I suppose gave some perspective to my feelings of woe.
3) Did![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ficfinishing in January to write the sequel of that magical powers AU (the one where Fraser and Kowalski accidentally end up in a psychic bond). I've gotten a fair way (about 6000 words) but I'll probably fail to finish a first draft. I got stuck on a scene and am feeling all avoidant about it now. But hopefully it'll work out after a while if I give it a rest.
I'm afraid I didn't actually contribute much--I'm more of a botanist than an ornithologist. But it was fun. I am really not used to biking so much, though, and my hands suffered. I need a bike where you have an upright posture in order to bike at all (so as to have as little weight on my hands as possible) but even so, my hands are really hurting right now. Ow, ow. And my legs are tired, obviously, but that's to be expected. I had more trouble, though, which brings us to:
2) I think there's a curse on my bike. I got a flat tire some time ago (on the back wheel, naturally, where it's hardest to change) and changed the inflatable thing inside the tire. Not sure what you call it in English, but let us call it the tube for now. Since I changed it, the air has slowly leaked out, and I had to pump it up every time I want to use the bike. I tried changing the, hmm, thing that prevents air from leaking out of the tube, but no go. So yesterday I changed the tube again, being careful to use no sharp tools, check the inside of the tire to make sure no sharp things had gotten lodged there, and ditto for the outside of the wheel. But about an hour into the bird race, the same thing started to happen again, and I had to pump up the tire every five minutes, which got old quickly. And a few hundred meters before we got into goal, the tube decided to plop out of the tire and flop around, like some sort of grand finish. /o\ /o\ /o\
While walking home I listened to Nansen's story of sledging on the pack ice (yes, pack ice!) of the arctic sea and having to kill off his dogs one by one, which I suppose gave some perspective to my feelings of woe.
3) Did
ficfinishing in January to write the sequel of that magical powers AU (the one where Fraser and Kowalski accidentally end up in a psychic bond). I've gotten a fair way (about 6000 words) but I'll probably fail to finish a first draft. I got stuck on a scene and am feeling all avoidant about it now. But hopefully it'll work out after a while if I give it a rest.
