Month: May 2006

My ride home last evening was much easier than the ride out. I was carrying less weight in my backpack (though still around 15lbs or so), had eaten something, and tightened the rear shocks up. And I noticed during the ride home that the rear tire would occasionally slip out of the dropout slightly and rotate sideways about 25 degrees, such that the edge of the tire would rub against the frame of the bike. Surprise, losing half of your energy to friction really makes a difference. Correcting this made the ride much easier. Though I’m still going to stick to the car for now: externalities aside, oil is just so much cheaper than food, and I’m lazy.

Hmm… I forgot how much bike riding sucked… or how much I suck at bike riding. So I think after one half of a commute, this idea is dead. I’ll try and dial back my suspension some though and see if I can’t make the return trip a little more comfortable this evening. It probably would have helped if I had a) worn shorts and b) had any sugar in my system to speak of this morning.

I don’t know why I never did this before, but I took the time last night to compute the gear ratios and shifting patterns for my bike. It has a 22-32-44 chainring up front and 32-11 in the back. Interestingly, only two gears on the 22 cog are even useful, and in practice I can’t ever see using them anyway. 32×17 seems to be the starting point for any real riding, and I get too easily winded even four or so gears above that.

So…aren’t cars awesome?

Some days I feel a distinct lack of purpose. I call them weekdays! Hah-hah. But seriously ladies and gentlemen, your narrator is out of shape. It seems going to the gym only on presidential birthdays isn’t the best health plan. And while I may weigh less than this time last year, I’m certainly not as fit. So next week, provided it doesn’t rain and I can hit the bike store this weekend to get a lock [note copious outs], I’m going to try this bike-to-work thing. Well, not all the way to work, but at least to the bus stop. Someone’s got to use that bike path. I’ll apprise readers of the results of the experiment as it progresses.

I spent a vulgarity-filled evening last night installing a new microwave oven into the formerly blank area above my stove. This last and final piece of kitchen project 2005-6 may well have been the most annoying of the bunch. To begin with, I had to patch up the drywall holes left by the electricians when installing a new circuit — they had reattached the cutouts but left the putty work to me. So I embarked on the now-familiar task of covering a wall in joint compound, then sanding it into oblivion, priming and painting. This naturally left me with a nice thin coat of sheetrock dust throughout the kitchen. After the paint dried, I began drilling holes as needed in the base cabinet. My drill’s battery died after approximately three seconds of this. Why do they even make cordless drills, I ask you?

Once the battery charged up, I made the 2″ cutout for the electrical cord, then began attaching the mounting bracket. A sharp, pointy bracket that made my knuckles bleed. The toggle bolts that came with the bracket were of the exceedingly cheap variety, so I managed to (ahem) bust a nut during this procedure. And once on, the broken toggle bolts were impossible to get back off, so I had to haul out the dremel to cut the screws. I ended up using two of my own drywall fasteners that were much stronger than those supplied.

With that behind me, I hefted the microwave oven onto the bracket (a two person job, according to the manual, but since I am virtually five men put together, I managed on my own), then faced the prospect of my pre-drilled cabinet holes being about 1/4″ off of where they should have been. Nothing is easy. I cursed the screws, the microwave, the cabinet, my drill and everything else nearby as I spent the next twenty minutes correcting this mistake. Ultimately, I succeeded.

May the popcorn making commence!