Bastille Day

Today was a good day in many ways, but very stressful for me (Lee). Several hours were spent on responding to an offer for Mom's condo (good to have an offer, bad to wrestle with the scanner, etc.)

Terri called and raved about their recent trip--they visited Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, and Arcen. Next week they'll leave on their cruise of the Greek Isles.

Ken got an email from his daughter, Rebecca, reporting that she had gone to Vegas and gotten married last weekend. Definitely a surprise, and he'd like to know a lot more about her new husband.

Then we went to check out comfort bikes. We're still undecided between the Electra Townie 21 and the Day 6 Dream.

We finally got an offer on Mom's condo that we decided to accept (not as high as we had certainly hoped, but enough, already!). Sis Silverman, our realtor, sent a copy of the contract signed and initialed by the buyer via email. I printed it out, signed and initialed, and then scanned it. Our small, lightweight printer/scanner is extremely slow. The resulting scan was way too big to email, so I had to break it into separate pages. Each one took 2-3 minutes or more to send on our slow uplink, and Sis called to say that she couldn't read the scans, but I should continue to send them plus overnight the hard copy to her. When all the pages had finally been emailed, we drove to the post office downtown, where Ken dropped me off. The line was quite long and slow moving . . . but I finally managed to express mail the contract. Now we just wait to see if it closes as expected on August 18.

The first bike shop we went to was very difficult to access. Madison is a great city for biking, but not so good for driving a large truck when you're unfamiliar with the one way streets and such. When we finally managed to get to the shop, they didn't have either of the bikes we wanted to test ride. The helpful assistant went online and found a rival shop that was listed as stocking the Electras. The Williamson Bikes shop did have a Townie 21 Commuter men's bike, which Ken and I both test rode. We agreed that we could see ourselves riding it--and we liked that it came equipped with fenders, rack, and lights. The riding position is much more upright that on our Trek 820's, and the broad saddle seemed comfortable. Then we drove to another shop that carries Day 6 bikes. They had a Dream (21 speed) which we rode. With the contour saddle we liked, it was $150 more than the Commuter, and we'd have to buy fenders and rack and lights. At this point we're leaning towards the Townie.

The final frustration of the day has been trying to navigate through IRS forms to figure out how to report an unexpected long-term capital gains distribution from Mom's trust. Enough to make me cross-eyed.