Recent Events

Hey gang!

Time to catch folks up on what's been going on in my life of late. It's been far too long since I've posted, and a lot has happened.

First, as I had said in the last post, I've moved. I didn't know I was moving until shortly before I had to, but it's all worked out in the end. I'm now settling in to my new place... it's a roomy basement apartment in a single family home, with my own kitchen, living room, dining area, bedroom and bath. It's a little farther from work than my last place, but that's ok, I was kinda thinking I wanted a little bit longer ride to work, so I got that.

My little cat Tybalt is also settling in, feeling more at home every day. For those of you who have never owned a cat, trust me, change is NOT their favorite thing in the world. From the time I first started boxing things up, through the process of moving out, staying in a temporary place for a week, and moving in here, he's been a bit freaked out. In my old place he spent most of his time hiding in the rafters.... once I moved here, he burrowed under my blankets whenever I wasn't here, as near as I can tell. But for the last week or so, he's been out and about in the apartment when I've come home, so that's a good sign.

In the middle of all of that, there was the Vienna Halloween Parade, and as always, bikes@vienna made a splash. This year, John's goal was to get as many trike owners as possible to come and hook up their trikes into one giant train, aiming for 25 trikes in all. And I was hoping to assemble a "Brompton Brigade" of Brompton owners, riding and folding their bikes along the route.

Well, neither of us really met our goals, but we still had a lot of fun and made a memorable sight. We ended up with two trike trains of about a half dozen Sun EZ "delta" style trikes, which made quite a sensation looping and circling down the street. On the Brompton side... well, there were only two of us, myself and Christy, who was decked out in a great witches outfit and had lighted plastic pumpkins hanging from her handlebars. In the end, we ended up with me hopping off and folding my bike, walking a short way, and unfolding and remounting, while Christy circled around me, now and then doing appropriate "Vanna gestures" to call attention to what I was doing. Even the announcer at the reviewing stand was impressed, commenting on both the trike trains and my "transformer bike", as he called it.

So far, I haven't been able to find any photos of us in the parade, much to my disappointment. I know folks were snapping photos, but I just haven't been able to track any down online. I'll post links if I find any, or if anyone out there knows of some, please let me know!