Who else is getting the summer weather now?  We hit 90 today! I like doing my bike rides in the morning when it is cooler. Plus there is less traffic.

I’m on one of my usual routes for an everyday ride. The road was really crappy, but over the last few weeks it has been resurfaced and is great now!

It’s actually a nice shoulder width. The black part. That gray cinder you do not ride on because it’s an unstable surface.  I don’t know if the new asphalt has better grab or something, but I always ride lickety split on new roads – about a mile per hour faster than usual.

I feel in great bike shape for the season. There hasn’t been a huge quantity of riding, but they were quality rides and definitely ready for a 40-mile ride this weekend. It’s cupcake time! Woo Hoo!  Saturday is circled on the calendar as the weekend weather is finally cooperating.

After I got back from this ride, I went to get back to work and found Ms. Pixie laying across my computer. Eeek!

In 10 years, she has never done this. She’s been on my lap with the computer, but never across the whole thing. I even had the computer turned that way so she wouldn’t bother it, but I guess she just really wanted to be there.

In defense of Pixie and her picture – I know she really looks like a sausage here, but she isn’t overweight at all. According to the vet she is a healthy weight. She just looks chubby in this picture  She’s big boned! 😀

On to the post title, one thing I’ve been doing really consistently the few couple months is practicing my guitar. In fact, I went on a streak of 6 weeks of playing every single day. Then I had a piece break on my guitar.  I do a lot of drop D tuning since I play several pieces that way and that can wear out the tuning mechanism, apparently. The arrow is pointing to where the teeth on the gear just broke.

That means the string can’t be tuned at all. It seems like a simple enough fix, right? However, even with the screw out, that little gear is attached to the whole metal bar part and that entire plate has to be replaced to fix it, including the other 2 pegs. I am so bummed because it’s not a stock part. i have to see if it can be ordered through Rodriguez (manufacturer). My playing will be out of commission for a while, I guess. The tech said he moved the gear over so I might be able to get by with trying to tune the string some, so hopefully when I pick it back up tomorrow I can still play.  I have no idea what this might cost, which really makes me sad because it might just be less expensive to get another guitar than special order a part.  We’ll see what happens.