New Bike!

And I now have a new bike.

My 2009 Bianchi Cortina has been replaced with a 2015 Raleigh Venture 4.0. It's a "comfort hybrid", a category that I don't think existed when I got my last bike. (The hybrid did, meaning that it's intended for both street and dirt riding, and I do use it on both; the comfort is newer though.) Like my last bike, it focuses on comfort over speed, meaning I can sit upright. It's also been pushed further in that direction; for example it has a much wider seat that makes me feel like I have a fat ass.

The new bike rides smooth as silk, but that's not unusual for a new bike. The real question will be how it's operating in a couple of months. I have high hopes, though. It looks like the Raleigh Venture 3.0 would have been pretty comparative with my old Cortina, but I was able to get the 4.0 for the same price, because it's a close-out of the 2015 model. The 4.0 should have better parts than the 3.0, which hopefully means better operation and less maintenance.

(Overall, I'm very proud of myself with the purchase, as I researched it online, and went in to Mike's Bike to try out the Venture 3.0, and then to have them order the 4.0, which they only had in very limited supplies at certain stores. If I'd just gone in without the research I would have gotten the slightly worse model.)

The new bike went to EndGame and back well last night. The other big test will be on the hills, which I might do on Saturday (though I'm already totally over riding in this winter cold).

So, new bike. I'm ready to put another 12,000 miles on this one.

The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie

Tonight we saw The Mousetrap, a murder-mystery by Agatha Christie, at Shotgun Players. It's (now) a rather delightful period piece, set in England just after WWII. Thankfully, the Shotgun Players didn't try and modernize the play, so it kept all of its classic appeal.

It is such a traditional mystery (by today's standard), featuring a house full of people, one of whom is (presumably) the murderer. Every one is even called together by the detective several times.

Toward the end of the play, I came up with a complex explanation for what was going on that fit everything together in a way that I thought was quite clever. It also ended up being not the answer to the mystery. Ah well. Later on I told Kimberly that I felt like Christie had done a great job of setting up yet obscuring a mystery ... but at the same time she did it by making everyone a very possible suspect. Fair or not fair? I dunno, but I liked it.

I'd love to see more of Christie's mystery plays (though this is apparently the big one).

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Sadly, this is our last Shotgun play for the nonce. After three years of subscription (I think), we're ending our relationship with them for the moment due to considerable lack of enthusiasm over the next season.

It's being conducted in repertory, which enthused us, but ..

• It includes Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, which you'd have to pay Kimberly and me to see again.
  
• They're ruining Hamlet by randomly selecting who plays which role at the start of each performance, which is the exact sort of superficial post-modern bullshit that I hate at the theatre, and which also produces travesties like this season's Antigonick, which I think is the only play I've ever walked out of.
  
• The rest of the season is totally uninspiring based on the play's descriptions.
  

If any of the individual shows get great reviews we may decide to just go see those (but the horrible Antigonick got some good reviews too, which suggests to me that Bay Area theatre critics would laud the emperor's new clothes if they didn't see them).

Longer term, it looks like we won't be continuing our two-year tradition of plays on New Year's Eve, which was kind of cool, but we may not even be in California next 12/31.