Lucky Day

It has been a day of bad luck turned good. It really all started yesterday. While getting ready for work, I couldn't find my sunglasses. I've been wearing the same style green tinted sunglasses since high school. It felt strange not having them. At the end of my shift while trying to kick start the chopper, she kicked back at me. Sportsters have been known to kick back hard enough to toss someone off the bike and I've even heard of broken feet from those silly enough to try starting an old bike while wearing sneakers. My chop kicked back hard enough to snap off the shoulder bolt I had been using as a kicker pedal for the past year. With a very sore foot I jumped on the end of the kicker bar until she was going.

My first item of business for the day was to replace the pedal. The initial plan was to give her back the old one. I had taken it off a couple of years ago when the '73 snapped her kicker bar. The old popsicle pedal was still in the closet attached to that broken bar. I decided to give that one a shot since I really just needed the pedal, not the whole assembly. With the old broken set up in hand, I went to the other closet for my wrenches. Sitting on top of my tool box were my sunglasses. While I have always been a master of chaos organization techniques, that one had slipped me up. So Now I had my sunglasses back!

As I tried to fit the new pedal onto the old bar I ran into a slight problem. The spacing was slightly off. Without the spring steel of the broken pedal, the old popsicle was loose. But I couldn't slide the pedal in with the chunk of spring steel. In the grand tradition of backyard mechanics everywhere, I decided to force the issue. With quite a bit of muscle, I managed to slide the assembly together and bolt it tight. Now for the first time in this chopper's history it has a foot pedal that actually stays up while riding!

Needing to fuel up both myself and the bike before work, I took the fix for a test run. Burgerville was my lunch stop, Pacific Northwest fast food that brags about using as many natural and local ingredients as they can. Decent stuff. I upgraded my drink to a chocolate and coffee milkshake. I got my food and they told me that the milkshake would be out shortly. About half way through the meal someone stops by my table and asks what kind of milkshake I had ordered. As I finish up my food someone asks me if I ever got my milkshake. No I hadn't. Could I just get a refund on it since I am done eating? The manager offers to get me the milkshake and give me a coupon for another one free. Thanks for the offer but I'm on my motorcycle. So they refund my medium milkshake with a large milkshake and still give me a coupon for another one free!

And now I am posting this via Firefox on Ubuntu. I am successfully running Linux on my Mac! The problem was the Airport all along. Now that I have the Linksys router it all works fine without me having to change a single setting. And so far I really like Ubuntu.

Yep. This is a lucky day for me.