I rode to work but had to get my chauffeur to bring me home. I still don't know how to shoe Shadowfax and its rear tire was flat. Again.
Saturday when RDC inserted the Tuffy strips, he unknowingly pinched the tube when he reset the rear tire; Sunday we were going to ride our bikes to the gym but Shadowfax came up lame. We had no spare tubes or patches, so we drove instead, and first to REI for supplies. Sunday night I finally had a lesson in bike maintenance, learning how to pop the bead of the tire out of the wheel, find the puncture in the tube, apply a patch, etc. Biggest obstacle: filthy hands.
Monday I rode to work, without patch kit or pump, and in the afternoon the tire was flat, the patch having skittered off its mark, which was on the inner, concave wall of the tube. Perhaps those patches adhere best where they don't get wrinkled. So I have a spandy new tube.
Now all I need is my own patch kit and pump and willingness to get road mire all over my hands.
RDC's timing was perfect: he pulled up just as I finished the last paragraph of The Book of Evidence. I read it yesterday and today, once I finally started. Frederick Montgomery reminds me of a Nabokovian protagonist in his inability to perceive and treat other humans as humans, and specifically of Pale Fire's because of his unreliability.
Unlike most books (in their small numbers) told in a single first-person monologue, this one worked. The monologue suits a megalomaniac well. The narration paused as, I the reader sensed, he gathered his thoughts or put down his pen and took it up again the next day. He used asides and addressed his probable readers--his solicitor, the judge--personally.
Really good. Plus it kept me, at least at the start, skedaddling for a dictionary.