so next time nacho and i go riding, i’m going to have to make him come meet me at my apartment. last friday i met him at the regatta by riding down nasa 1, and good lord, that stretch of road is so incredibly crappy. there are too many potholes and such on the shoulder, where we were riding, and it messed up the gears on my bike. last night i went for a 14-mile ride, and while the gears weren’t so screwy that i couldn’t ride effectively, the smallest three cogs on my rear wheel don’t shift smoothly, and the derailler will try to shift between them at random times. sigh. it’s ok though, because the bike store told me to bring the bike back this week to test on the trainer anyway, so i’ll just have them readjust the gears. and i’ll watch them so i know how to do it myself.
but yeah, i rode 14 miles last night. it was awesome! aside from the momentarily out-of-whack gears, my bike is sooooo cool. people have been asking to see a picture of it, and i already posted the link here to specialized’s webpage, where there’s a picture…but i guess you want to see my actual bike. it doesn’t look any different from the picture really, except that i’ve added a little computer and two water bottle cages. but i’ll try to remember to take a picture soon and post it.
i also have a couple pictures from the u.s./mexico soccer game last week that i’ll try to remember to post soon.
tonight i’m supposed to go to rehearsal for the league city symphonic winds, but after last week’s first attempt, i am not enthusiastic about tonight. see, i first heard about this group back in january, and thought “hey, it’d be nice to play my flute again, i’ll check it out.” then work got crazy, and i never went. so i finally got back in touch with the director at the end of april, and he told me to come to rehearsal last week. the group practices every tuesday, and performs about once a month (which is really more of a time committment than i want to make, but i figured i’d worry about that later).
so last week after nacho and i got back from the bike store, i grabbed my flute and went to rehearsal. i was uncomfortable from the moment i walked in. once i found the director, he greeted me literally with “oh, flute, hi, sit over there.” he was so abrupt that i didn’t even know how to respond. so i went and sat and got out my flute while everyone else milled around gathering music and folders. after 5 minutes, with the director looking like he was about to start, i got up again and asked him if he had any music for me to play. again, he barely glanced at me before handing me a score and telling me to just read off that. ugh! sight reading is hard enough without having to separate the flute part from the clarinet, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.
so i attempted to follow the score, with mixed success. about 15 minutes into rehearsal, the flute section lead arrived. before she had even heard me play, she asked if i could play in a flute ensemble next week (which has since been cancelled). then on sunday night she called me and told me that tonight the director is having a get-together at his house, and that he asked the flutes to bring a fruit or veggie, and did that work for me? i mumbled something about not being sure if i could make it after rehearsal.
maybe i’m just being insecure, but these people really freaked me out last week. and they weren’t friendly! i was obviously the new person, and not really sure what i was supposed to be doing, and yet only two people (both flutes, definitely not the director) said more than two sentences to me the whole night. i was just going to say screw it and not go back at all, but i figure maybe i should give it another chance this week. even though i don’t really want to.
i am already looking forward to my lunch today. i went to the grocery store last night, and they had some really good strawberries. so i brought some for lunch today, along with the stir fry i made last night. mmm.