Monday, July 18, 2011

East meets west over great balls of fire

Unlike John Scalzi, Bob Harrigan, another weather man at Channel 7, got the memo to put a positive spin on the weather so that the tourists are not scared off. Harrigan said early Saturday morning that we would be getting some "beneficial rains" this weekend.

According to the weather report this morning, we sure enough got seven inches of beneficial rains! If you don't live in Florida, you might be inclined to think it was rainy and cloudy all weekend to accumulate that much water. It actually was a great weekend and the rains did not last long at all. I even managed to float in the pool for two hours on Sunday afternoon and read my book. Now that's living the life!

Of course, I was still on call. You'll remember that a heart attack occurs every 34 seconds, so at 1:32 Monday morning, one of those heart attacks occurred in Manatee County. I was off on another road trip north on 301 shortly thereafter. Traffic is almost non-existent at that hour, which makes my journey to the hospital super fast. Typically, the only other cars on the road are the  "weavers." I just give them a wide berth and hope for the best.

The patient did very well in our care and he should be home in a few days. He'll want to eat a heart healthy diet, begin an exercise program, take all his medications as prescribed, control his stress, and last but not least, quit smoking. Quitting smoking is going to increase his stress levels, but let's be realistic, four outta five ain't bad!

When I got home from work today, I told Ralph how happy I was that my bike would be finished on Wednesday. My joy was short lived because I doubt I'll be able to extricate the bike from my back seat by myself. Ralph won't be here to help me get it out of my Rav4. Of course, he's confident I will be able to do it.

That's a moot point now. I received a call from the bike shop. When the bike was built at the factory, some pedal part was machine applied and misthreaded on my Nirve Island Flower single speed beach cruiser and the part can't be removed. I was advised to contact Nirve and ask that a new crank arm and chain ring be sent to me. I sent email to Mark at Nirve regarding this, requested the parts, and he wrote back incredulous that this could be wrong.

His incredulity had me aghast, so I called him. Together we railed against the gods that a Lakewood Ranch Bike Shop would dare to try to bulldoze a California Nirve dealer! Mark will contact the bike shop tomorrow and I suspect some heads are gonna roll.

I'm crestfallen that my bike is going to be out of commission and thus no riding for me for possibly weeks. Plus it's unNirving that east is meeting west over my bike drama.

Great balls of fire! You shake my Nirves and you rattle my brain!

Sorry, I'm going adrift. Great Balls of Fire is a new menu item that Deb wants to introduce for our picante lovers. (Yea, I know, what exactly is a picante lover? I had to Google it and check it out on Wikipedia. I still don't know where these lovers are, but I get the drift about picante, I think.)

Anyway, the menu item is very spicy/hot meatballs offered in a sandwich, on pasta, and even on pizza. Do you think east and west would have the nirve to meet at Carmella's Casa Italiana, try this new taste sensation, and resolve their nirvous difficulties about my bike? If they turn into picante lovers, will they argue on a weekly basis as an excuse so that they can meet over Great Balls of Fire? Will I ever get back to riding in a timely manner?

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