It's been wonderful in Ames since last week's constant rain finally eased up. It hit 88F yesterday. Unbelievable.

The ride this morning was plagued by an incessant squeak coming from... somewhere on the Bridgestone. While riding, it sounded like it was coming from the crank, so I rode to the workshop (3 miles across town) and we pulled the bottom bracket apart for inspection. There was a bit of horizontal play and a telltale groove on the spindle, so we repacked the grease and gave it some new bearings. It felt a lot better after putting everything together, but the squeak remained. We put it back on a repair stand and listened while turning the crank, isolating the sound to somewhere in the rear cassette. There was a lot of dirt in there and on the derailleur, so they were cleaned out. The whole length of chain was hit with White Lightning for good measure. Put back on the ground, and she's silent and trustworthy as ever.

The ride home was "fun". I concluded my morning by helping out with some yardwork, moving 40lb bags of topsoil around the yard for flowerbed placements, so I was rather tired out. The ride home is roughly five miles, and it was pretty hot out by the time I hit the road. The very last crosswalk on the way was blocked by emergency vehicles, as there had been a recent crash. Two cars, both crunched like a soda can and belching black smoke into the sky. Two fire trucks, about five police cruisers, and two flatbeds picking up the pieces. I was informed that it "wasn't safe" to cross at this point in time, so I was forced to double back to the trail and ride another mile just to move essentially one block over, cross there, and zip past the accident site from the other side of the street. It took me about an hour to get home because of this stupidity.