after a salmon cream cheese bagel for lunch, i biked down to the cafe on the newly-fixed 1971 schwinn super sport 10-speed. i cleaned up the bike a while back, replaced the cables, and finally installed new matching pedals last month. all that work, and i've yet to ride this bike more than a couple of short turns on my street.
what i discovered is the super sport is a tall bike. i may try to lower the seat a bit, but i think it's already at the lowest setting. i can still ride it, but my feet are pointing to the road on my downward pedal strokes. i can't touch the ground while i'm seated, so i try to ride without stopping, or i stop along a curb; when i do need to stop though it's fairly easy with the lady-style step-through frame. i like the small wald basket in the front and the plastic milk crate in the back; bikes with baskets are utilitarian, i wish all my bikes had them. i locked up the bike with a simple combination chain lock; with the amount of rust still on the bike, i don't think anyone would want to steal it.
i was going to go to belmont to borrow my father's hard drive docking station but he happened to have it at the cafe, saving me a trip. i was supposed to give my mother a thumb drive with season 4 of breaking bad on it but i remembered i left it at home. i returned, packed with some leftover fish and rice for dinner. going through my pockets, i realized i had the thumb drive on me the whole time.
i went to the community garden to see how much damage the hornworm could do in just a single day. i picked the wrong time because the sky was all dark and large droplets of rain was falling as i was riding.
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the hornworm was still there, having defoliated a good chunk of the cherry tomato plant, but still the parts i wasn't too concerned about. i noticed there was some bruising on the tail end, not sure if i caused that yesterday or it's natural. maybe it's about to pupate, which is a good thing, because it'll finally stop hiding and burrow into the ground. anyway, i was going to throw it out again but had another change of heart; tomatoes i can grow everything season, but it's a rare event (at least for me anyway) to have a hornworm living in my garden. the amateur entomologist in me won over the amateur gardener.
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the purple blue delphiniums are even more beautiful. i have one more delphinium plant that hasn't blossomed yet; i'm curious to know what color that one will be. last time i was on a snapdragon kick; this time i'm all about the delphiniums. i can't get enough of them; i should go around the garden and see if anybody else are growing them (i'm sure there is).
the whole time i was there the ominous dark sky would send out heavy droplets and some thundering. fortunately there was no downpour, just a lot of threat posturing, and i made it back home relatively unscathed. a neighbor with a baby came up to me to ask if i knew anything about my neighbors across the street, who left the trunk of their car opened all morning long. she thought maybe something bad happened so together we rang her doorbell. turns out she was just preoccupied with child care duty and totally forgot about her car. we helped her close the trunk. my neighbor brandy finally introduced herself, even though we've probably lived on the same street for almost a decade.
at one point i saw the schwinn super sport toppled on the ground lying on its side. i went outside to secure it better. the only damage was some scratch marks on the new left hand pedal; that was bound to happen sooner or later, can't be too attached about that.
my father's docking station is a dual hard drive station, so i was able to mount both the old drive and the backup drive. unfortunately it only has usb, 
so copying just 30gb worth of data took an hour. i got ambitious and did a large batch totally 120gb; the calculated time was 6 hours, but it only took 4 hours. at that rate, to completely back up 2000gb worth of data will take several days. the process also eats up my laptop time because i'm afraid to do anything with my computer for fear of interfering with the copying.
while i was waiting, i ordered a new replacement docking station for myself. instead of another thermaltake blacx ST0005U docking station ($27 after rebate from newegg), i went with a different brand. despite the relatively positive reviews, i've actually had some bad luck with thermaltake. other than this current instance of corrupting my hard drives, when i first bought this dock the power button was busted so i had to engage in some creative product swapping/returning to get a replacement station from a local store. i went with a startech docking station with both USB and eSATA connections. i bought it through amazon for almost the same price ($26.62, no rebate hassle); it's gotten some good reviews on amazon but newegg reviews were lukewarm. i just wanted to go with a different company.
the day didn't end without spending at least some money at newegg: i ended up buying a 32gb class 10 microSDHC memory card for $20 after rebate. my father asked me to look into it, for his portable video player device that his friend gave him when he was in taiwan.
LJ came home around 6:30 and then promptly left again for the supermarket. i chatted with her briefly while she was stewing some vegetables over the stove. since she went whale watching on sunday, i asked if she got a chance to do some boston sightseeing. she said no, because the people she went with (including my former roommate LX) had already seen boston. she only has 2 weeks left and still haven't seen the city; i get the feeling that she's not interested. it wouldn't be a hassle for me to take her, but i've already been too nice to her (a guided tour of new york that seemed to bore her? you're welcome) and it's obvious she doesn't appreciate it.