Gotta Ride, Part 3

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, my new bike os ON THE WAY.

Quick recap for those just joining in: I have a very nice bike, a sturdy number with a massive cargo rack and a cushy seat and good mechanicals and several thousand miles of bonding time. But I need a new wheel, and what I thought would take days has instead taken weeks.

While I waited for my faithful bike to be road-worthy, I started drooling over much fancier bicycles. Bicycles I could buy RIGHT NOW and be riding again. But then I started looking for American small businesses, accepting that maybe I would pay yet more but I would be supporting something I believe in. In my search I found a bike that had my ideal drivetrain and glowing reviews for about 60% the cost of the big guys.

I am not one to underthink anything. I searched and scrabbled, but these guys seemed real. Finally, I placed my order. That included providing many, many measurements, so they could get the bike set up as close to perfectly as possible without actually meeting me.

First note about Fezzari – if anyone there has any doubts about the bikes they are building, they do a damn fine job of hiding it. The pride in what they do oozes from every communication. Second note – they take customer service seriously. They are a friendly and enthusiastic bunch.

In my previous installment in this series I mentioned that I would have to wait a few months to get my bike. After I placed my order I got a phone call to go over what I had requested and whether I had any questions. I had a couple, and the guy had easy, technically-trustworthy answers. We parted happily. A few seconds later, I got another call from Fezzari. Same guy. It seems he had forgotten to ask me an important question: If I was willing to forgo the teal color highlights in favor of olive, I could have my bike in four weeks instead of four months.

Big “fuck yeah” to that. In anticipation of the arrival, I ordered from my local bike shop pedals to match my shoes and light mounts so I could move lights from one bike to the other.

Four weeks shrank to four days, and now FedEx is bringing me my bike. Delivery estimate: Sunday. Day after tomorrow.

I was ready to wait months for this thoroughbred, confident that my trusty pony would have its new wheel any day now. My Giant is a great bike, and will always be my commuter vehicle, when the day comes that I commute again.

But I am giddy with excitement. I have planned my first ride on the new bike, which is essentially my default ride with a hill-climb option at the end. I have started to worry about not having padding in my pants. I’m telling my knee that soon all will be well.

My Fezzari arrives Sunday, some small amount of assembly required. If it’s late in the day when my new ride arrives, I’ll have to take Monday off. Mental health day.

Gotta ride.

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4 thoughts on “Gotta Ride, Part 3

  1. Jerry, I’m sorry this is not about your blog, but I am a user of your Jers novel writer on my Macbook Pro, and I updated my macOS not realizing I’d lose all the work I had saved on your app because it is not configured to the new (I think 64-bit system) and I cannot access the app. Is there someway that you can update the app to be compatible with 64-bit and any way that I can recover the work saved in the previous app??

    • I am able to compile and run an updated JersNW, but I am not able to create a distributable app that your computer will trust, which leaves a couple of alternatives:

      1) send me your files and I’ll convert them to some other format like rtf. [email protected] would be a good address to send them. I won’t read anything without your permission.
      2) I can give you access to the source code and you can compile and run JersNW yourself. There are a lot of steps to get that running, and some of them will feel complicated, but it’s actually a straightforward process.

      For a variety of reasons, this summer I have stopped even trying to keep JersNW alive. Another engineer has expressed interest in keeping the software on life support, but at this point the code base is so old that parts are going to keep falling off as Apple alters the OS.

      In fact, a couple of months ago I accepted the inevitable and started using Scrivener. It’s got *almost* everything JersNW has, and many, many things that were on my to-do list as well. I sure miss those margin notes, but it is quite obvious that in the ten years since I gave JersNW any love, Scrivener has been moving steadily forward.

      • Unfortunately as for #1, my files were saved in the novel writer app so I don’t even have access to them anymore which is why I was hoping that if there was a version I could update I could get access to those files

        • Those files exist on your computer somewhere. Likely long ago you created a directory for them and since it’s never been an issue you’ve never thought about it since, because I worked so hard to keep everything simple within the application. But JersNW does not keep the files inside some special library the way some *ahem* Apple products do.

          You should be able to find them by name, and when you can round them up, I am happy to help.

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