So, remember how I bought a bike the other day? I haven’t even been able to take it for a test ride yet.

On Friday night, when I actually bought the thing, I neglected to buy an air pump for the tires. So, after spending all that time fiddling with the shifter adjustments, I couldn’t even take it for a real ride to see if I got it right. No big deal, though, I figured I’d just get one the next day.

So, on Saturday night, I went to Wal-Mart and bought what I thought was the best pump they had. I brought it home, and immediately had a very difficult time getting the nozzle seated properly on the valve. It took about ten minutes to even get it on there in a way that allowed air to go into the tire. So, I started pumping up the front tire, and it seemed to take a very long time. Oh well, it must just be a smaller-capacity pump than I thought. I inflated the tire to about 60psi (max on these tires is 70, and I’m heavy), and when I gave it the last pump, the innertube exploded. Quite loudly. I have a hard time believing that it could do that at a relatively low pressure like that, and my pump was a royal pain anyway, so I decided to take it back and get another one.

I returned to Wal-Mart to exchange my pump, and brought the valve stem from the dead innertube with me to make sure that my next one would be a proper fit. While in the bicycle section, I noticed that they have a much bigger selection of innertubes than I thought, so I figured I’d go ahead and get one. I didn’t know the exact size, because I hadn’t planned on getting one at Wal-Mart, but they seemed to be pretty universal, so I grabbed a 26×1.75-2.15″ (biggest they had, since they’re big tires) as well as a nice mini-pump that included a frame mount.

Upon returning home, I started to replace the tube on my front wheel, only to find that the old one was 26×2.3″. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about bikes, or innertubes, but I really didn’t want to find out the hard way that .15″ makes a difference. So, I didn’t even bother unboxing it. I turned my attention to my rear wheel, and noticed that the valve stem had gone sideways somehow. Despite my best efforts to re-align it, it wouldn’t budge, so I took the tire off of the wheel, rotated the tube, and re-seated the tire. Yay. I started inflating it, everything was going peachy, except that, as the tire became more firm, the gauge on the pump continued to read 0. Great. I inflated the tire to a point where it didn’t collapse when I sat on it (no clue what that point is), and decided not to bother returning the pump. I want to get a real compressor here at the house at some point anyway, and if it acts properly inflated, what do I care about the number?

So, I went to Wal-Mart for the third time that night, returned the innertube, and called it a night. I want to hit a bike shop soon anyway, I’ll just get it then.

I was going to do it today, I even got up bright and early for a change, only to find that over the few hours of sleep I got, the rear tire had completely deflated. Apparently, I punctured the tube in the process of trying to fix it. And now I have to deal with the god-awful process of removing and re-installing the rear wheel in addition to replacing two innertubes. That kinda killed my motivation to actually do anything with it, so I went back to bed and slept through the day. Screw it.

Oh, and the pump I got, with its handy-dandy frame mount? It requires built-in water bottle holder mounts, it’s not the clamp-on style, and my bike doesn’t have those mounts (yay for weird frames). So I can’t even mount the thing.

I know it’s been way too cold to ride anywhere lately, but I wanted to at least take the thing around the block a couple times, ya know? I didn’t buy it to decorate my living room, and since I haven’t actually ridden a bicycle in over nine years, I wanted to get a feel for it again before it gets warm and I get the urge to go on a long ride.

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I never really thought of things this way, but this makes a lot of sense

Ever seen those cartoony Christian tracts in bathrooms or other miscellaneous places? Well, today I stumbled across the website for one of the largest publishers of them, Chick Publications, and they have all their titles available to read right on the website. Quite interesting, if you can stomach it. They have several dedicated to converting muslims, hindus, buddhists, catholics, and other spiritual religions. They even have one that calls the holocaust a “catholic inquisition”. And what’s the solution for the jewish holocaust survivor in the story? Well, convert to Christianity, of course! That one seemed even more convoluted than the rest of them.

Oh, and in this one, written to encourage christians to distribute these things, they basically say “The communists in China figured out that they could brainwash kids by distributing their propoganda in comic form, so that’s what we’re doing!”

Anyway, thought some of you might like to see what Christian propaganda looks like. Have fun

This weekend, at the invitation of fox_cub and lilkitt, I got to go to the Beltaine celebration at Four Quarters Farm in southwestern Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t really describe my beliefs as “pagan”, or anything resembling the spiritual background of this group, but I try to be open-minded as much as possible, and I like trying new experiences, so I decided to go.
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Happy Easter to all my fellow Christians!

And to those who aren’t Christian and celebrate Easter, why are you doing so? This holiday is when Jesus was resurrected, therefore it seems awfully hypocritical for someone who doesn’t believe in Him to celebrate one of the key moments in His life. And the commercialism of this day is enough to make me puke.

In case y’all didn’t know, I used to be a very devout Christian. I was raised in the Church of the Brethren (an offshoot of the Mennonites) with a heavy Southern Baptist influence from my dad. I’m now a Unitarian, but I still hold to some core Christian beliefs, and this is one of a few things that really grates on my nerves.

Bleh, I broke my own Code of LJ Conduct and brought up religion. Oh well, life goes on. I don’t believe it’s nearly as easy to go to Hell as the fundies like to make it seem, so don’t worry about me saying you’re all going to Hell

Hmm, need more rants…

A friend of mine is conducting a survey of what it means to be a Christian. Please go and take it, it’s easy, and judging from the format of the quiz you don’t have to be a Christian to take it. However, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT give him joke responses! This isn’t an opportunity to play “let’s screw with the fundie”, so DON’T!

The survey can be found at http://bdhamilton.com/christianity/