Seatless is the new brakeless.

Monday:

Two flats within an hour. You can't run to Simon's and fill up a bent valve stem shaft, nor can you patch it, nor can you reef down on the locknut enough with Camilio's adjustable wrench in order to get it to seal. No, you buy two tubes from Simon and suck it up, pobrecito.

Tuesday:

Seatpost clamp bolt (not to be confused with the ubiquitous and little-stressed seatpost binder bolt) shears - and quite cleanly - while crossing Cambie at Water with three trips in the bag. Had to wait for the intersection to clear, then run out and scramble for the shiny bits all yard-saled across the cobblestones. Tres spring classique, non? Pulled the seatpost to avoid an anal probing the likes of which would shock, intrigue, and possibly turn on our readership, and carried on seatless to finally clear the BlackBerry (I think it needs a name of its own now) at Georgia and Thurlow. Mod trials is the new messengering; indeed, the Ibis Ed's got hanging from the rafters is one of the hottest rigs in the joint, but more on Mighty later on.

Made a last-ditch run to Simon's again to see if there's an 8mm bolt LOL OK RITE WE ALSO HAVE SOME MAVIC TRACK HUBS AND ITALIAN-THREADED UNICORNS in the bin, then logged out and ran into Skylar on 10th on my way up to OCB. He made fun; we parted, and up at OCB (still rolling Selle Sans Marco), I ran into Lyle and Tim, who is apparently throwing another alleykitten because Leanne and I weren't loud and violent enough at the last one. I'm not much into riding the alt.bikes myself, but I'm fairly into challenging for a Project B podium sweep this time around.

Nothing in the OCB 8mm or seatpost parts bin was long enough, so Lyle and I rolled back home and offically opened up the front steps for the season. Porchject B: drinkin' my beerz, critiquing ur conversionz. Switched the Thomson over from the .243 and rolled out to a strong HeyFixie! turnout. As much as I love to see my friends out, I'm even more stoked to see new faces showing up and fixedvan humming along rather nicely, with Mr. Charlie Kelly as this week's special guest star. An online community milestone has also been reached, with the first comedy e-thuggin' courtesy of Camilo and Jer-o-me, who is also killing the lighting game. I say this as someone who fully bit his turtle-hub steez, but I will still stack the Olmo in full 8-light fighting seizure robot trim up against anything on the streets in pure annoyance value.

So then I got all up in Lyle's Cunny and skidded it farther than anything else I've ever jumped on, and got it halfway around a backwards circle, making me 50% of the way towards backwards circles and barspins this summer. As we cruised out down Quebec, though, I noticed my rear wheel was out of true and rubbing the brakes, but slackened up on the cable and kept going out to Waterfront for the inevitable climb-descent-sprint under the overpass out onto the Coal Harbour seawall. It was too nice out not to go for a ride, and fine weather for a spot of the dirty-dirty with Sascha and James through the twisties before I broke off and wibblewibblewibbled back home, thinking I'd just get it up on the truing stand for a couple of minutes.

It's never that simple. Broken spoke on the freewheel side. No replacements in the bin, even if the rim wasn't on its last legs. Called Morgan, but the Sekine is apparently in pieces and I'd be damned if I'm going to work on a tallbike, so it was looking like I'd have to switch the seatpost back and get my grind on with the .243 in the morning. Italian seatpost binder bolts being Italian seatpost binder bolts, they require not one, but two, 4mm allen keys. Grabbed one from my tool kit and one from my multi-t... Wait, where's my multi-tool? Oh right, I left it back at Water and Cambie about six hours ago.

Dug out a vintage 1990 blue-anodized Finish Line Chain Pup from the kit and killed two birds with one stone; a 4mm allen and an emergency chainbreaker to take to work. Had to wait until the liquor store was open to buy the beer to take to Mighty to drop my wheel at before I logged in at 11:30am and still ran 25 trips, including a Helijet-Beach Ave mission, on a 30lb skatepark bike. Rode extra-dirty: plateless and without full regulation Corporakit. Street MTB is dorky enough as it is without riding in tights.

Leanne is awesome for calling me up out of the blue and offering up her spare wheel(s). Mighty is awesome because they come through in ridiculous situations and have three Lynskeys hanging downwind from the Ibis. Lynskey is awesome because they're using tapered thinwall diamond-shaped titanium top and downtubes. The BMC Time Machine is even awesomer because it lacks the Lynskeys' horrific headtube-mounted cable stops and has integrated thumbwheeled chaintugs. This week is awesome because it can only end up even stupider than it already is, and perhaps my little Corporate shorts could catch on fire at some point and leave even less to the imagination than they already do.