My daughter and I had our trip to the city today. Feeling very thankful for air conditioning! The city is even hotter than we are right now. Here at home, we reached 34C/93F, and while the city hit 37C/99F. It’s also incredibly muggy. Like walking through soup. My daughters have a friend in Texas, who is apparently having the same conditions we are right now!

One of the things my daughter had on her list of things to pick up was a new set of wheels. Of all the bikes we have around the farm, including the mountain bike I got at a garage sale for $10, it would cost more to fix them up than to buy a new bike. At least the sort of bike that meets my daughter’s needs. We still plan to fix up the garage sale bike; basically, the only thing good on it is the frame and the seat. !! My husband says it looks like someone had scavenged it for parts. A new bike like it, however, would be very expensive so, for my husband, it would be worth fixing. He’s also the only one tall enough to ride it!

We went to Walmart, and this is the bike my daughter chose.

It’s a Huffy “Beach Cruiser”. It’s single speed, with a rear coaster brake. You pedal backwards to stop. Since we have no hills out here, a single speed bike is adequate. It has a very comfortable seat, according to my daughter. The pack on the handle bars is an insulated bag that has a weather proof cell phone holder on the top of the lid. Apparently, the clear plastic is touch screen enabled. Plus it has mesh pockets on the sides. The bike was also on sale, making it under $200, so that made it easy on her budget.

She got herself a helmet, too. There are bike helmets here, but they’ve been sitting in the barn and we have no idea how old they are – or how many spiders have made their home in them!

After we finished the rest of our shopping, we discovered a problem.

Getting it into the car.

The handle bars kept getting in the way. We finally figured we’d have to remove the handle bars, but didn’t have the tools for it. So while my daughter finished bagging up our other shopping, I dashed back into the store to find a tool. They had a single bike multi-tool in stop, so I snagged it. When I got back to the car, though, I discovered my daughter had managed to get it in! It took some twisting and turning, but she was able to work around those handlebars and get it in with room to spare.

It’s amazing what we can fit in the back of my mother’s little car!

My husband had picked up some bike tool kits so that he can work on cobbling together the garage sale bike, so now my daughter has her own bicycle multi-tool she can keep in one of those pockets on the insulated bag.

Once we got home and unloaded, my daughter rode it around the house a few times. It’s been years since any of us have ridden a bike. Testing out the garage sale bike doesn’t count. She and I both tried it out and basically fell over immediately. 😆

For now, we’ve set aside the makeshift table we used for the transplants to make room to store it in the sun room. Eventually, it’ll get stored in the garage. She wants to be able to take the bike into town and explore; something that’s more convenient to do with a bike than a car.

Hmm… According to the weather app, we’re raining right now. Except, we’re not. I’m seeing blue skies and a lot of wind out my window. Interestingly, the updated weather app that came with my computer now has a “Seeing different weather?” link on the mini-map. I was able to actually submit what we’re seeing here, rather than what their weather stations are reading. None of those weather stations are near us.

A large part of our province is currently under a severe thunderstorm watch, though much larger areas to the north and east of us are under extreme thunderstorm watches. It’d be nice if this system went further north of us, first, with rain to help quell the forest fires up there, but it’ll move out of our province well below where most of them are.

Meanwhile, we’ve got fans going all over the place, including in some of the windows, blowing air out of the house, rather than pulling hot, muggy air into the house! Even at night, the girls are really struggling upstairs with the muggy heat. We’ve got to find some way to get an air conditioner set up for them up there! It would have to be a portable one. The problem is, figuring out how to set one up with the types of windows we have. The other problem is, those things are frikkin’ expensive! Especially one powerful enough to cool down the entire upstairs. Maybe, at the end of the summer, we’ll be able to pick one up on clearance or something. Just in time for when the upstairs turns into a freezer for the winter. 😕

Ah, well. We’ll get it worked out, one of these days.

The Re-Farmer