There I was with a bike in one hand and a chihuahua in the other...

...and my phone started ringing. Isn't that always how it goes?

I let the call go to voice mail while I finished my business with the chihuahua and the bike. The owner of both had come in to get a basket for the dog to ride in. It was part of a mass-casualty scenario that had overtaken me hours earlier. At the height of it I had three jobs open and checked in two more.

The dog and his charming owner passed the time nicely. Max is a half-grown long-haired chihuahua with a beguilingly shy manner.

A dog should either be small enough to transport easily or big enough to take care of itself. Max fits the pocket-sized niche. We had a nice visit before I returned to the rest of the docket.

The bike on which I did about $500 worth of conversion work for the Mount Washington Hill Climb had come back to be turned back into an ordinary all-Ultegra Trek Madone. That job kept going on and off the stand as the other crises came in. I'll finish it tomorrow when I have someone to intercept many of the interruptions from the floor.

It felt like lunch time early, but didn't really get to be lunch time until late. It was the good kind of busy day. I didn't spend a lot of time spinning my wheels, trying to figure out how to work around the lack of some vital tool or part or waiting for a call back to authorize some major item overlooked when the bike was checked in.

I enjoy the hot summer weather. The temperature this morning was perfect. By mid day I'm sure the heat was brutal. That can be fun in its own way. But on the morning commute it was in the low 70s, perfect for jersey and shorts. A day with a mid-day high like that would start much colder and probably be shorter.

Inside the house right now it is still and steamy. Even with all the windows open, the heat built up through the day takes hours to flow out. Tomorrow begins a series of three fixed-gear days with an increasingly showery forecast.

A couple of good jobs wait in the queue. More will arrive once I call a couple of people to tell them the parts they ordered have come in.