daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Today I received a bicycle bell that I’ve coveted for a while now. It’s a brass Crane Suzu Mini. I really like it! The bell is made in Osaka, Japan, which is cool since that is my wife’s hometown, and the brass color matches Sophie’s gold decals and lug details nicely. Also, the name “Suzu”, which means bell in Japanese, is the same as of my favorite Japanese actresses, 広瀬すず. 😆
Today’s photo is of our tea tray that sits next to our espresso machine. Every day I like to sip on tea while I work so I visit here a lot to fill the tiny tea pot with hot water. We have an electric kettle which makes it so convenient.
I’m not a tea connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy the taste, especially green teas. Besides being tasty and calming, green tea has health benefits as well. Win-win-win!
🌅
Tonight I made some Chinese-style seasoned ribs and Oyster-sauce greens for Mariko’s birthday. She didn’t have a specific request, but I offered to try a new dry rub recipe on a tried-and-true baby-back ribs cooking method, and she said that sounded good. The ribs turned out great!
At the same website where I found the ribs recipe, I found a recipe for the greens and they also turned out nicely:
I hope Mariko enjoyed her birthday dinner!
Here are the recipes:
I rebuilt the rear wheel with the new spokes and now I can say that I am just about finished with the bicycle restoration. Sophie is in great shape, with shiny new spokes, strong brakes, and new cabling all around. One thing that has changed from the original setup is that I removed both chain guards. The rear chain guard is pretty rusty, and it also rubbed on the chain when the bike was in its lowest gear. I think it looks a lot better without those! I am not too worried about keeping those for authenticity’s sake. After all, they were an optional component that was installed at the bike shop according to the receipt I found (and online catalogs).
After I took the photo, I re-installed the Christophe toe-clips that I used when I rode from San Francisco to Los Angeles back in 1982. The dark blue leather straps are still in decent shape, but I have a pair of brown ones on the way that will match the bike a bit better. It’s cool that Christophe/Zefal makes the same straps after all these years!
Of the three bicycle that I have, I definitely have the most affection for the Peugeot. And I have even received a couple of compliments about her when we are riding around the neighborhood! 🚲💜
