Employed and Homeless

On Tuesday I'll be starting a new job with the boys at Latitude 45.  I'd say the fun is over, but since the job description clearly stated that I must ride my bike consistently, I'm thinking it might just be a new kind of fun, especially since I pretty much ended up with the job because I tried to fix my own bike in their parking lot and screwed it up.

Last Friday morning I rolled into Petoskey and decided to go for a ride. I pulled the bike out of the van, got ready to go, and discovered my rear tire was so worn there was metal showing. Since I was already dressed to ride, I rode over to the shop and asked the mechanic to fix it. He was busy so I did one more ride on the tire, hopped in the van and drove over to the shop. By then I realized it was pretty lazy of me to have a mechanic fix something I'm capable of doing myself so I bought a tire and confidently informed the guys who worked there I could do it myself in the parking lot.

Famous last words.

10 minutes later I actually had the new tire on and pumped. While I was struggling to put the wheel on the bike, Joe came out of the shop, seeming sort of impressed I'd done that so fast. Unfortunately, 2 minutes later after he helped me put the wheel onto the bike, we discovered why it didn't want to fit. I'd put a 700 x 25 tire on a tiny triathlon bike that barely fits a 700 x 23. So- I took tire number one off, bought another tire and put that one on myself. While all this was going on, I heard from Joe that they were hiring so when I was finished, I attempted to wipe the dirt, grease and sweat off with a few baby wipes and went in to meet Christian, the owner. Miraculously, he told me to go ahead and apply.

A few days later, I had an interview in shorts, a t-shirt and tennis shoes.

Really, how can this not end up being just a little bit fun?