Pirate and I dropped in at Tip Top for a bit of maintenance today — the jankety Oakland streets are vibrating the bikes to bits, one bolt at a time. We had thought it would be just a matter of popping a couple new bolts in place (preferably with a large gloop of Loctite). Three hours later, I'm making an appointment to bring it back on Friday for a new chain and possibly new cassette. They wanted me to leave it with them until then, but c'mon, tomorrow is bike to work day, and even though I'm on vacation this week, Pirate and I are definitely planning to roll downtown early tomorrow morning to pick up our Bike to Work Day swag bags and take advantage of the free pancake breakfast. I promised to ride carefully between now and Friday ("I won't let her go jumping many curbs," said Pirate), but really — leave my bike? No, no.

While chatting with one of the mechanics, he said that basically the problem is we're riding the hell out of our bikes. "We check bike computers when we get bikes in for work, 'cause we're nosy like that, and you've got almost a thousand miles on yours. That's more than a lot of our customers do in a year."

I am exceedingly pleased to be one of their higher-mileage, hard-riding customers. :-D