Well, Jim asked what happened to my wheel. It's best told in a whole swoop on my weekend.

Friday night I was going to see my aforementioned pal Orrin play with Seana Carmody at the Knitting Factory. It was a horrible night, it had been raining all day. I've been to the Knit many times. It's a great club. It has about four different venues inside of it, though, and Seana was playing in the Alternknit Theatre. I got there at about 7:00 and the place was already hoppin'. Seems that The Bevis Frond were playing in the main room that night and it was sold out. I milled around for a bit and then decided to find the Alternknit. Baaaa... Downstairs. Steep, no elevator. Crap. I had also forgotten to take Orrin's cell number with me. I waited around until 8:00 hoping to see him until I almost literally got crowded out by the Frond folk. Drat...

Fast forward to Saturday morning. It's still nasty - it had been raining all night and it was, well, just really disgustingly wet. I was going to hopefully hook-up with my friend Matt for brunch. No luck. You suck, Springer :-) I met up with my friends from Atlanta at about 3:30. By then I was DRENCHED. I mean, DRENCHED. Think about it. I sit down. My pants were completely waterlogged and my jacket just didn't repell water like the fine folks at Calvin Klein claimed. I was pretty miserable.

We decided to go to Grimaldi's Pizza in Dumbo. Dumbo? Yes, Dumbo. It's a Brooklyn neighborhood that stands for D-irectly U-nder M-anhattan B-ridge O-verpass. Cute, huh? Anyhow, we grabbed a cab in the Flatiron District. We only marginally knew where we were going and the bridge was completely backed up. The cabbie had even less of an idea. In the end, we got out and walked the rest of the way. The pizza was, of course, amazing.

Now, Brooklyn isn't exactly crip friendly. There are very few curb cuts and with all the rain I can't ever really tell if one exists. I just see a puddle of dirty water. Ick. So at some point I just hit a curb too hard, I guess. The actual frame on my right front tire cracked. I didn't notice it until I got home from getting a bagel this morning and, when I did, it simply snapped off. I need to get it welded, I think, for a temporary fix and then find a permanent one which will probably involve buying a new chair as this one's about four years old. Would you believe I can balance almost expertly on three tires, though? Weird, huh? I gots mad skills.

The craziest thing also happened on our way back from the show. We were having a really hard time finding a cab when a car pulled up and asked if we needed a ride. It was two kids from MIT who were at the Bowie show. Good karma for them. They were really cool and that was such a bizarre happening especially in New York.

So, an eventful couple of days...