Ahhhh.......

I finally got outside on a bicycle this weekend. Last night, I went to the Nerds on Bikes Parade for a Friday night ride. The ususal suspects showed up. This TCBC ride leaves from Sunrise Cyclery, an establishment I have left plenty of hard earned dollars at. Jamie, the owner, is a really good guy, and he deals more used bikes than most anyone else in the Twin Cities. He is in the process of moving his shop from near 35W and Lake St to the corner of Lake and Bryant. I had arrived to the ride early to chat with him for a bit, but he was out taking care of some moving related business. I ended up standing around outside for about 20 minutes or so in my biking gear. It's really hard to stay warm in bike clothes when your just standing around in 20 degree weather. I ended up being chilled for the whole ride despite the fact that it was relatively mild.

This morning I went out with the boys (plus one girl) from Hiawatha Cyclery. Great group of people to ride and converse with. We ended up at Kramarczuk's Deli, a legendary institution in NE Minneapolis. Had a really cheap, really good breakfast there served up by some young women with heavy Eastern European accents. It's funny, but that was kind of shocking. The accents one hears from non-native speakers in the Twin Cities are normally either Spanish, Southeast Asian or East African. In decades past, that part of NE Mpls was heavily Eastern European. All you have to do is drive up and down the streets and count the churches and fraternal organizations that were started by different Polish, Slav, Croat, or whatever group. I've been Kramarczuk's a couple of times before, and it used to be just a little shop where you could get homemade sausage, kielbasa, pastries and imports from Poland and other European countries. They have expanded and added a huge dining room, cafeteria style. I'll definitely be back there.

When I got home I had to rouse KyKy out of bed. It was 10:40 and she was still dead to the world. She told me the night before that she wanted to go and get her drivers permit today. I agreed to take her, but I made her go on the bus with me, hehehe. It's really not that far to the county service center, just a few blocks, but it's those car trips in particular that make me crazy. If it hadn't been so sloppy and icy, we probably would have walked. If it had been summer, we would have biked. I made sure I pointed out to her that we were taking the bus to get her one step closer to being able to drive a car.

With that out of the way, we came back home, I gathered up 'Nika and The Madster and off we went to Brooklyn Park to get hairs cut by our friend Tanya. We arrived at about 1:15. Presently it's well after 7:00 and TOYH and the younger two are still up there. Tanya does a great job, but it takes forrrrrr-evvvvvv-errrrr to get out of her place. I wasn't getting my hair cut, since I decided to start going to Phil's Barber Shop on Nicollet and Diamond Lake. KyKy and I did not want to spend 8 hours up there sitting around while Tanya futzed with everyone's hair. TOYH had paperwork to take care of and she did not want to spend the whole day up there either. Madster and 'Nika don't mind hanging around there as much since Tanya has kids about their ages, plus a 5 month old baby to pay attention to. This brings me to a painful admission. We drove two cars up there today. There. I said it. Sure we did it for convenience, but in reality, TOYH and I admit to this abomination because we want to keep the crabbiness level down in our house. When we are all up there, all day, it's just not much fun. It's the weekend. This should be a happy time.