After adjusting the front derailleur on Anna’s bike, I was able to
get down to the lower 7 gears; although as I found out on my ride
today, the adjustment wasn’t perfect: the derailleur won’t kick down
until I’m on the lowest geared cog. So I must shift all the way down to
2-1 before I can shift down to 1-1 and back up to whatever 1-x gear I
want.
Fortunately, there were only two places where I had to resort to the
lowest gears. Ominously enough, one of the hills is right along an old
cemetary on Mill Rd. So, just as I’m panting and really wanting to die:
voila!
I might have to start carrying my camera when I go riding. Today I
spotted a robin, two more blue-jays and a cardinal. I haven’t seen a
cardinal in ages. Of course, there were the usual insolent squirrels
laughing into their tails as I puffed past.
I need to adjust the front derailleur again and also see if I can’t
shift the seat back a bit before I go for my next ride.
Okay, so I went bicycling today. I borrowed Anna’s bike and followed
one of the Rhinebeck & Red Hook Historic District’s bike paths. 10
miles later, I’m a little beat.
The worst part is that Anna’s bike doesn’t seem to be able to down
shift into gears 1 through 7. That makes climbing some of the hills
around here quite a challenge. I never got off the bike (except to
answer several phone calls); but I certainly wish I had.
More on this later…
There are probably one or two of our friends who haven’t yet heard
about our move. It certainly wasn’t one of the best either of us has
ever had. It started with the wrong truck.
When I called Budget to reserve a truck, I told the woman on the
phone that we had a 2 bedroom apartment. She seemed confident that a 10′ truck would be just the thing for us.
As the boxes (and boxes and boxes and boxes) of our stuff
started to pile up, I called Budget to confirm that a 10′ truck would
really be enough to handle all our stuff. The woman I spoke to
on the phone didn’t want to discuss size estimates; she only stated
that they had already rented all their trucks for the weekend we were
moving. So I was stuck.
The day of the move (Saturday, 27 March) all our possessions
(including 23 boxes of books) was collected in the center of the living
room. Unfortunately, we hadn’t managed to convince any of our friends
to come down to Jersey City to help us move. So it was all up to us. Or
me, as it turned out. Anna started the morning in a very cranky mood
which only got better. I was fairly optimistic that we would be
able to fit everything into the truck, although it would be an
extremely close fit.
The day is largely a blur; but all I can recall is the similarity to
a 3D version of Tetris — a game I’ve never mastered. Around 4 PM
(we started at Noon) I realised there was no way we’d be able to fit
the mattress and box spring (Where did that name come from?
There are no springs in a box spring.) or all the stuff that seemed
to have materialised out of nowhere. Specifically the filing
cabinets and several dozen more boxes which seem to have been hiding in
the second bedroom.
Eventually we called it quits around 7 PM.
The next morning, I awoke bright and early to begin unloading the
truck. Our friends Gretchen & Owen were to arrive at 11 AM and I
wanted to have everything unpacked and waiting on the sidewalk to
maximise their time. Un-tetrissing the truck took about an
hour.
I tried to keep track of the number of boxes during the unpacking
process; but I seem to have lost count around 80 boxes. 80
boxes. With 23 boxes labelled books. There’s no telling how
many other boxes Anna hid books in without labelling them.
Of course, there was also some furniture.
I left the dressers in the truck because they were too much for me
to move by myself. When Owen & Gretchen arrived, we set out to heft
the furniture starting with the monster couch. Once Owen and I had
moved all the furniture, we formed a box brigade to speed up getting
all the boxes into the house. 45 minutes after they arrived, everything
from the truck was in the house.
Of course, we still had another van load of junk down in Jersey City
including the mattresses, a four-drawer filing cabinet (to compliment
the 2 drawer), and other assorted stuff. But that could wait for
Wednesday.
I’ve put my foot down: when next we move, we will not have so much
stuff.
Anna’s already making good progress, when she unpacked the boxes of
books, she discovered that nearly 2 boxes worth of books had never
been read and many of the books were no longer worth keeping. We’ve
donated 3 boxes of books to the local library so far…
