A new girl in my life?

3 June - Day started with a coffee at JJ Beans, I found two lesbians sitting next to me, one of them explaining to the other how much she likes her and the other one trying to let the other one down gently with the standard 'i'm a bit f**ked up in my life right now' - poetry in motion, was just glad that it wasn’t me on the other side of that conversation for a change.
Around 12 got a call from Casey who had given me a little bit of a proposition - he has a classic Bianchi road bike frame that he eventually wanted to build into a new bike - knowing that I wanted to try to get a bit of practice on a fixie before I left town he suggested that I build it, use it for the rest of the time while i'm in Vancouver and then sell it back to him once I leave. A capital idea for all parties concerned. We drove up to Our Community Bikes, a cooperative bike shop that rents out work space, supplies all tools and has a pretty comprehensive selection of new and recycled parts. It took a little while to get started - we ended up having to go to a shop up the road for wheels, had to drive across town to get the bottom bracket tapped at a specialty italian bike store where the mechanic ended up installing the drive train and rear wheel (extremely nice high end bike shop - caters for serious triathletes and rich people - bikes were averaging about $4-5k) and there were a few other small issues as well but by the time OCB was shut we had a very functional fixed gear. Couldn't get a brake functioning by the time the store closed but I took that as a sign that maybe I wasn't supposed to have one. So, I now have a new bike - Celeste is her name and she is very beautiful (she's just too petite and sexy to be a boy, i hope Baby Blue doesn't get jealous). Rode around for a little while - riding her is so incredibly smooth and quiet - there's no noise at all when it's moving, no clicking or squeeling, just the slight hum of the tyres on the pavement - it's really quite eerie. We took the bikes down to the west end via the seawall where we met Jason and Colleen for the first chish and fips i've had since leaving home (tandoori style - very different and not bad, not bad at all) and then took the bikes back home - a few hills, downhill is so much harder than going uphill because you have to really work hard to slow the pedals that are locked into the motion of the bike, especially when there's no brake to slow down. Went out for a beer or two with Ashu, me and Casey explained the minutae of bike messengeringto him, I expect it's kind of interesting to a civilian to hear about what we do ... for the first five minutes - but it's never just five minutes - I kind of feel sorry for ashu having to put up with it but if he didn't want to listen to bike courier stories he shouldn’t be drinking with bike couriers.