We pottered about the house, went shopping, pottered some more. I went for a nice long bike ride: out west, intending to go up Lookout Mountain, but I got distracted by the trail up North Table Mountain. I'd tried this once before when it was snowy and gave up halfway up because I was slipping more than I was going forwards. It turns out that when the ground isn't frozen, sandy gravel is just as difficult: 11% grade on a road bike is painful no matter what.
On the way back down that bit I melted/glazed my front brakes, so the bike is hors de combat until I can refinish them. Hence, no Lookout Mountain, because having lousy brakes on that descent would kill me.

A couple km further, I was on a trail and took a sharp turn to see a big black line stretching across the concrete. I thought it was a crack until it went all slithery. It was a snake, over a meter long, and very skinny, a very dark green/black on back fading to a light green/yellow on its stomach.

It is possible I let out an alto yelp.

Cruising along by the Clear Creek watching people pan for gold. Fifteen people down in the river today. I came across two different people who had broken bikes and needed help: both flat tires with technical difficulties. One woman's glue container had failed, leaving her stranded, but she had everything else she needed. The other guy... he was trying to put a patch on his tire, rather than his tube. The patch he was trying to stick on there requires glue (and, y'know, doesn't go on the tire) but he was trying to stick it on without glue.
So I sat down and we went through a quick how-to-fix-a-puncture lesson. He'd also managed to pull the rim strip off the wheel, and had no idea what it was or where it went, and his pump, a cheap Schwinn, flat-out didn't work. ("I don't know what I'm doing wrong with these weird valves..." because he had Presta stems; I'm all "you're not doing anything wrong: this pump just doesn't work.") So I showed him why expensive European pumps are worth every penny and we went through sanding and gluing on a patch and he rode off happily.

I built a version of the rotary encoder board to fit inside a mini servo. It's stupid small, and I hate working on stuff this small. I particularly hate it when I don't have the right parts, so I have to fit on other parts that are a shade too large.

Most all the parts are supposed to be 0402 for clearance but I had to use 0603's because that's what I have. 0603 LED's are really physically weak: they come apart during soldering if you're not fast. Or, uh, if you load them the wrong way and have to rotate them.