A man came to the front door around noon. We had invited him to come over for a visit. We wanted him to look at something that wasn’t working right. We’ve had another guy come over and check out this problem, but that first guy would be described as flighty if he was a teenager. He’s apparently got quite the reputation as such. Seems like everyone that knows him says he’s good, but … well … ya know.

What I know is that he’s run afoul of Smith’s First Rule of Economics: Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

Anyway, this guy shows up, just as I’m working on a particularly chewy PB&J. Isn’t that always the way? I get to talk with the guy because my lovely bride is on a work call. So we go see about the problem, which we are now testing methodically. Bit by bit, we’re testing the parts, eliminating areas where the problem might be. And we’d gotten to the critical segment of all of this, after several weeks of tinkering and trying and testing and being frustrated. We decided we’re down to either a mechanical problem or human error.

The guy today found and fixed the problem.

Now, I invite you, dear reader, to guess which one it was, mechanical problem or human error.

Sure, human error is a bit embarrassing, but it’s a lot less expensive than having to replace parts.

Anyway, the guy unscrewed two panels, played around with some buttons and then gave us an education. We’ll probably be calling him next spring for some more work. Smith’s First Rule of Economics (1994) has two sides to it, of course, and someone can make it easy for me to be a customer, if they want to.

My lovely bride had a long run today, and she was trying a new fuel, but she determined pretty quickly that it didn’t work. So she texted me, asking if I could bring her some of her other fuel. I had a hunch this might happen. I was going to go for a bike ride, but I waited around a while, just to see how she was faring. So it was easy for me to catch up to her when she sent me a message. When I found her on her run route I was able to do a cool thing, reaching into my pocket and putting two packs of Sport Beans without slowing down.

I felt so pro.

Then I set out for a nice early evening ride. It was one of those great rides, the sort where you don’t have a plan, a route or even an idea. You make spontaneous turns and see what you see. Given my late start I didn’t get too radical, this time, but the views were lovely.

I wound up doing a longer version of one of our regular routes, because, again, the sun was ducking low. But! I did it in reverse! Which I haven’t done before. This is about 20 miles into the route, scenic enough, but between the two most interesting parts of the ride.

The first interesting thing was this, which happened about 16 miles into the ride, at about 17 or 18 miles an hour. That sucker just snapped right in two. It was there, and then suddenly the saddle was shifting beneath me.

That’s not supposed to happen. I have 13,345 miles on that saddle, and I tend to ride on the rivet, so I guess structural fatigue was going to figure into it eventually.

I was able to fit the larger, and more important, part of the saddle back onto its railings so I could ride, somewhat gingerly, the last nine miles or so back to the house.

The second interesting thing was that, as I slowed down because, you know, I broke my seat, I lost my race with daylight. I have a great headlight for my bike, and it did me a lot of good sitting in the house. (I didn’t expect to be riding in the gloaming — which was great! I should do that a lot more! — and so I was getting by with my excellent night vision and encyclopedic knowledge of every bump and pothole on the last few miles of road.)

There are two stop signs in the last two miles of this route. Stopping on a broken bike saddle means it will fall off the rails. You have to re-seat it, delllllicately get back on the thing to keep it in place, and time all of this with a bit of cross traffic. Small delays, but they add up between civil and astronomical dusk.

The last mile, a perfectly empty road, was basically dark.

The important thing, I got back in time for spaghetti. And, it turns out, we have a stash of extra saddles in our bike room. Who has an inventory? We do. Why? I don’t know, but trying three new setups will be less expensive than having to go buy a brand new one.