Car-Free Happy Hour, March 10th, recap

For some reason, my link to the CFHH poster in a prior link was only working erratically. Maybe it sensed my feelings about karaoke or something.

Aikiko's is a karaoke place. I knew that before attending, and went anyway. I don't much care for karaoke, for a number of reasons I won't bore any of my three followers with here. I went because I could, and to show support for the CFHH concept. I got to see some friends, show off the new bike a bit, and enjoy a couple of bottles of Woodchuck Hard Cider.

On the way home, I stopped by BBC in St. Matthews for a chat with Ron Schneider and others who were at Drinking Liberally, and enjoy a pint of Dark Star Porter.

Yes, I drank a few adult beverages last night. Over the course of five hours, I had four beers and some meal-sized quantity of food. It was NOT enough that I would have gotten up to sing karaoke--I don't think I could drink enough that I would do that, and still be able to stand up without fighting off the effects of alcohol poisoning. Also, the semi-cold air was bracing as I rode home.

Earlier in the day, I ate lunch with my long-time friend Harry. He likes to take me to lunch to celebrate my birthday, and this was the first chance we had gotten to do so. The fish and sweet potato fries at Flanigan's are quite good, by the way.

As I worked my way to Flanigan's, I stopped by Jackie Green's bike shop on Frankfort Avenue to get a new rain jacket. Dave Morse, who now goes by 8Dave, has one of the Endura Luminite rain jackets, and is quite pleased with its effectiveness. I tried working a way to order a single from the distributor for evaluation purposes at the store, but without success. I wound up buying my own from Jackie's Bike Couriers shop. So far, I like it for wet weather. It keeps the rain out of my jersey. It ventilates better than a solid vinyl jacket would, since it has pit-zips. It is bright yellow. I mean yellow as in, "Don't you DARE hit me, you idiot motorist!" yellow.

I'm still fond of my yellow Illuminite reflective wind shell, and will likely keep wearing it most of the time. But if it's going to be a wet-weather ride, I now have another weapon in my arsenal for being less likely to drive a car that day.

On the way home from BBC, I broke the 1200-mile mark for 2011. Not bad for the tenth of March. Just for giggles, I set my 2011 goal at 6000 miles in mycyclinglog. It tells me I'm fifty miles ahead of where I need to be to get to that goal at this point in the year.