Well, with the stimulus coming in, and BlueIndy going away, and word having it that a biking trail that would connect me almost directly to where my brother and sister-in-law Aaron and Karen live will soon be completed to stretch all the way across instead of petering out halfway, my thoughts have once again turned to the ol' ebike. I got a Juiced Rider ODK2 some years back, and rode it all over town, until the battery gave out two years ago. At the time, replacing the battery was beyond the scope of my finances, so I shoved it in the garage and made do without. The cheapest battery I could possibly get would run $650, and the best replacement battery would be $1200—and I only paid $1600 for the bike.

But suddenly I got that $1200 stimulus check, combined with my tax return and some entirely decent quarterly/yearly bonus payouts from work. And I'm suddenly thinking about how nice it would be to have that longer-range cargo bike back at my disposal, especially if I could upgrade the battery so I can take longer trips. One nice thing about the e-scooter craze of the last couple of years is that it's taught me some things about how small electric motors should be treated so I'm sure I can do a better job of not abusing the battery this time around.

The problem is, just who to get to work on it? The fellow I bought it from, who ran an ebike dealership out of his garage, passed away. I contacted the manufacturer, and they pointed me at a moonlighting mechanical engineer in Indianapolis who even did house calls…but he cancelled my order through the Velotool website without a word of explanation offered. Maybe he's just social-distancing for the moment. Fortunately, there's an ebike shop in the area, eBoom, who I contacted and they said they will work on it for me. So I've asked Aaron to drive me and the bike up to it on Saturday, and we'll see how it goes from there.

Getting out on the ebike will also help me get some exercise during the quarantine, if I keep the motor on low and pedal for part of the speed. Work on shedding these quarantine pounds I'm sure I'm picking up. And with the weather getting nicer, it'll be a good way to go. I'll be able to do Trader Joe's runs again, and get out to other businesses when they're open.

I had some great adventures on that bike while it was running the first time. Am really looking forward to seeing how it runs again.

Work just emailed me tonight that one of the workers in the office building where I used to work before being sent home has tested positive for the Coronavirus. Anyone known to have had direct contact with them has been notified, which apparently didn't include any of my co-workers. That's why they had the building shut down for the week for deep cleaning.

Of course, there's no way of knowing who else in that building might have had casual contact with them that was sufficient for transmission but not sufficient to warrant notification. Even someone who just shared an elevator could have been exposed. Hopefully they'll send as many of them home as possible now, so that they can self-quarantine and keep from infecting anyone else if they are. And I'm more thankful than ever that I'm out of that place and safely sequestered in my attic work-and-play space.

Something like that really brings it home to you. The world's changed outright, over just a couple of weeks. Who knows what it'll look like in a few more?