I've been out on my bike every day this week while I'm on my spring break. Longest ride was only about 28 miles, but it adds up.

Mostly my regular rides out to Saguaro National Park and the base of Mt. Lemmon. The brittlebush are in bloom right now- gorgeous yellow everywhere.

Today's ride was more of an adventure though. Wednesday I realized my chain had over 3000 miles and thought I should get it checked. Thursday it seemed like shifting wasn't going right, but hadn't gotten it in to the shop. Today-- I started on the 8 mile one-way loop at Saguaro National Park and as I started the series of rollers, I realized I was no longer able to get into all my gears. Suddenly, I only had ONE gear in the back

Fortunately for me, I was still able to shift the front into both chain rings and I was stuck in the next to lowest gear. Good thing, as there is a mile+ climb that starts around 5 miles into the loop and I am almost always in the lowest gear. Today, I rode it in the 2nd lowest gear. But did a lot of coasting on the downhill.

I took it to the bike shop and the cable was shredded inside the mechanism that the hoods cover up. First they were talking major tune-up, replace all the cables and housings, replace the bar tape, check that chain.. OMG I was seeing $$$ and they told me they were so busy they wouldn't get to it until Weds. Not so bad if I was working next week, but that would be 5 days off in prime cycling weather. I left with a sad face ...

But then the shop called and they fixed the cable, saved the bar tape, didn't need to replace the chain... $24.01. Picked it up at closing time on the same day. Wow- I gave them a couple of my cds from my old band as a "tip"- that was all I could think of but I was so happy about how it turned out.

So now I can ride tomorrow and all next week