A weekend of Grand Openings (part 1)

On Saturday, I tried riding via the North Side's RiverWalk, but the recent rains caused the Allegheny and Ohio to flood thier banks.

Amazing Cafe Grand Opening

I rode over to the South Side for lunch at the Grand Opening of what was already my favorite restaurant. Amazing Cafe! It was an official opening with fanfare, free samples and balloons! I sampled the vegan cupcakes... I hadn't known they had desserts there!

  I chose a rosewater/pistachio cupcake, which was divine.

Also stopped in Thick Bikes to see if they could replace my almost-broken mount for my B&M taillight. My favorite mechanic not only found me a replacement mount, but he fixed my stripped screw issue for the plate cover... at no charge! I think the tipping is working.

The merits of a 'girly' color.

I saw they had in stock an item I'd been looking for for some time: a hi-viz pink short sleeved jersey! I had to get it. I'd fallen in love with my hi-viz pink winter jersey. I'd gotten tons of comments from everyone about how awesome it's hi-vizzyness was.

Pudge likes the hi-viz pink too!

Can you see me now?

 Adam and Chris at Thick have often said they want hi-viz pink items for men and have asked their vendors to start making them in men's sizes. Yale even commented that he wanted to get some HVPink items, and weighed the pros and cons of a man wearing pink. In regards to the harassment from drivers, he said: "Well, they give us cyclists enough grief, wearing pink won't make much of a difference."

I'm still on the lookout for a HV pink small size reflective vest. The adult size yellow reflective vests are way too long for someone of my height. The vest gets caught on the saddle every time I stop at a light. HV pink seems to be very popular in the UK, I gets tons of hits on eBay UK when looking for pink vests.

I noticed the "heART THIS CITY" mural has been moved over by the Hot Metal Bridge.

I got hit with a cloudburst on the way back, but I was prepared.

WASH ME!

The grime and gunk on Ruby was bugging me. I decided that since I was bringing her back to the house for tomorrow's trip, I would hose her off in a do-it-yourself car wash. I spent $1.75 to see if the tire soak solvent would get the black brake goop off the rear wheel. It got some of it off, but not as much as I'd like.

Before

After. Meh.