Post:Birthday Breakfast, Bakery Blunder

From Fozzee.net

Saturday was Becky's birthday, and I'd planned to take her downtown to breakfast, the Farmers Market, and then walk the pedestrian bridge to Iowa. Why would we go to Iowa? Because that's where the other end of the bridge is... AAAnyhow, It came out on Friday night that the place we were going to go for breakfast (Bickford Bakery) was [allegedly] closed on Saturdays, per their information in Google indicated that they were closed. At the time, their Facebook page didn't have enough pagerank to be obvious above the "review" sites (the hours are a bit hidden, anyhow). Their twitter page doesn't list hours. Needless to say, I didn't manage to come up with an alternative (we were looking for good pancakes), so the day was scrapped.

We made a second attempt on Sunday, running some errands, getting coffee beverages at Crane, and walking the keystone trail to finish some more errands and get lunch at Panara Bread. We finished up with a major grocery run, where Becky saved over $90 in coupons, discounts and her Target 10% Day. I'm told that it made for a pretty good after-birthday.

To finish up the suspension saga, lowering the subframe worked, and I got my car aligned on Saturday, down at the local Firestone. I paid the (somewhat extortionate) $148 (total) for a "lifetime alignment", which means that the labor for future alignments is free, but you still pay for parts if required. I figured that it cost less than twice what a "single" alignment did, and that I'd theoretically have the front end apart in the future.

Now that it's done, it's pretty impressive how much more stiff the handling is. They claim that this suspension setup is much more like the European stock suspension, in that it rides a bit stiffer. I'm just glad I'm done with it, for now.