Constant state of flux

I hit up my local LBS today (local bike shop to those not in the know) and used the gift certificate graciously given me by my brother for the holiday a couple of weeks back. One reason he chose this particular LBS you ask? Although it may be one of the biggest around, there honestly has not been a time in the past year that I have had to pay full price for anything, sometime I get the employee discount, today I got the "with a new bike" discount for "being awesome" (not my words I swear). It wasn't even anyone I knew ringing me up this afternoon either, I just was lucky enough to have one of my friends right there to tell the new guy about my "awesomeness".

I got some parts for K's bike that we hopefully will have built up in the next couple of days, as well as a couple of tubes and a new bontrager racelite tire for myself. Just in case anyone randomly does a google blog search and stumbles upon this blog, I would like to express my personal opinion about the aforementioned tires. While I know that the Racelites are not the lightest tires around, the slight added weight is made up for in sheer hard-core-ness, Racelites are the tires I have had the least amount of flats with, by a big margin. I don't know if it is the "triple puncture protection hardcase" or what, I just know that I usually don't have to worry about flats. Riding through all conditions, I have had a total of two flats over the years, this is riding through all conditions year round, sometimes off-road (damn SNR!). The tire body is so stiff that on one occasion, I didn't even notice I had a flat until I got home, though I think the sub-zero temps that day might have added a little stiffness to the tire body. It is not just I that is in love with the RLs either, everyone I know that has owned them supports them with equal ferocity. One girl I used to work with has only had one flat for the life of her bike (a flat which I actually changed for her), this is again year round riding for a couple of years, not just in Minny but also in San Fran and Seattle, the tires have treated her well. Finally, they tend to be really quick to change, the new tire (new tire-stiffer bead) took me 10 minutes to put on, that was not even really trying that hard. In my newly created rating system, I give them a 10/10, best damn tires I have EVER had.




Most of the time at work we get this Caledonian blue prawns, pretty much a staple on the menu; changes to the menu that occur with 6 week regularity always have included the prawns in same capacity. The blue prawns are the sweetest and firmest shrimp that I can remember eating, and they come head-on meaning that we can make equally delicious stock from the heads and shells. That being said, I was surprised today when the Coastal order did not include the blue prawns, like I would normally expect. Instead of the prawns, I found boxes of previously frozen Langoustines (no not "crustiness's" MR. firefox spell check), a creature of the ocean that I knew about and have eaten, but never had to deal with myself. Think mini-lobsters, or better yet salt water crayfish, that would aptly describe the langoustine. The only reason I bring this up (aside from the argument I got into with a co-worker that ended when she said "If you had a super power for an hour you would make yourself a langoustine so you could make out with one!") is that the yield was TERRIBLE. Five 2.5# boxes and we ended up with just one quart worth of cleaned usable meat! Contrast that to over 2 gallons of bodies and shells, doesn't really seem worth it. The meat was really hard to get out of the shell anyway, stuck to the sides, required cutting both sides of the shell, etc. Supposedly the bodies make better stock than lobster bodies, but lobster bodies are cheap, langoustines aren't. The girl I was arguing with was calling them poser-lobsters, walking around pretending to be all bad ass while really being just one step up from a shrimp, she incidentally wants to make out with a king crab... I SWEAR!

Oh and I know I need to shave, I am just trying my bi-yearly not shaving thing...