Playing Landlord

The new house needed a few things done before the new tenant moved in.

First we had Michelangelo throw some paint on the walls.

Then it was my turn to steam clean the carpets.

But there's a problem. Being new at this whole landlord deal, we missed the water contract. That means no water in the house till next week.

Without water, how do you steam clean?

You haul water over there.

Very carefully with everything else.

Yeah. My life has been exalted to precariously hauling water in cat litter boxes.

At the house I vacuumed while the water was at a low boil. Fired up the steam cleaner and had it all done in a couple of hours.

The carpets still need replacing.

Maybe next year.

- b

More Bike Maintenance

You'd think I was riding more or something.

The other day, while swapping the clown tire back to the normal one, I noticed my bottom bracket (bearings between the cranks and axle) was bad.

My cranks had a little swagger in them. The left side bearing felt like a loose bag of marbles opposed to the tight/smooth piece of machinery it's supposed to be.

Luckily I had a spare set of semi-used bearings just lying around, which is great considering my aversion to spending money on this thing right now.

I honestly wasn't sure what the condition of the spare bearings were, but was willing to try.

Hell. It's not like the bike wouldn't appreciate the handling anyway.

It's really a quick job. I think I spent more time cleaning off all the crud then actually removing and installing the new set of bearings.

The verdict?

The new ones are good. My cranks peddle straight again.

- b

Bike Maintenance Cont.

Clown tire isn't going to work in the rear. It rubbed.

The brake was rubbing too. I thought I'd try a different caliper position, but the pads had been worn to fit the rotor a certain way. With the caliper in a different position, the pads were rubbing differently and creating resistance. Climbing sucks more then usual when your rotors are dragging.

So I changed the tire and put the caliper back to its original position.

All in time for a snow ride.

- b

Some Bike Maintenance

Since my riding average had gone from three times a quarter to three times in a week, I decided it was time for a little maintenance.

My chain had dropped on two different rides. Considering my ride average, that's not a very good statistic for equipment failure.

So first thing to do was check the condition of my chain. Eyeballing it I knew there was some slack, but had no idea it was this bad.

For those that don't know, this is a chain checker and it says the chain is bad - really bad.

Great! So it's bad, time to replace it. Not quite.

It's so bad, technically I should replace the cog and the chain ring. Simply throwing a new chain on the old gears could make things worse or just wear out a new chain faster.

So I checked the cog. Unfortunately there's no cool technical gizmo for checking cogs. It's all eyeball.

And my eyeballs have an astigmatism, but what's supposed to be little half circles between the teeth now look like little half ovals.

At this point it's not even worth looking at the chain ring.

So what's a guy do with some messed up bike parts, a kid due the end of the month and a house closing next week?

Flip the cog around (so the ovals stretch the other way) and tighten the chain via the sliding axle adjustments.

Voila! Single speed bike is fixed. Riding three times in one week isn't worth new stuff. If I start to average that per week, maybe I'll reconsider.

Since I was playing bike mechanic, I decided some different (notice I didn't say new?) tires could make things interesting.

I should just call them clown tires. They're huge. The bike is more rubber then it is steel.

There so big, I had to be careful how true the rear wheel was when fitting in the frame.

Considering my aversion to bike maintenance cost, I had better got the wheel true or I'm buying a new frame.

- b

Headlight Hell

The passenger side headlight went out in Jen's car.

That's easy enough. The way headlights are today you just pop a clip, pull out the bulb, put the new one in and reset the clip.

It took me nearly two hours to do that in Jen's car. If it had been the drivers side, it would have gone much faster.

In her Prius, to change the passenger side bulb, you need to first remove an engine cowl then an air intake. Once that's done, you have a tiny little space you can't see to work in upside down.

The next step is removing the waterproof cover. The instructions say "turn counter-clockwise (but it's backwards) and pull. If it sticks wiggle it a little". I pulled, wiggled, pulled, wiggled, cursed, threw some tools, etc before the damn thing popped off.

The next step is the clip (locks the bulb in place) - like any headlight clip, just unclip it - but it's backwards and upside down. Fumbling for the clip I managed to dislodge the bulb from under the clip, but not enough to remove the bulb - only enough to prevent the clip from being unclipped.

Did I mention it was freezing outside even in the garage? My fingers felt like wooden pegs. I couldn't feel it when they cut on some sharp edge. I'd pull my greasy fingers out bleeding and not realize it till I saw it.

Finally I asked Jen for some kind of mirror. She had an old compact I was able to use and see what happened.

Using the mirror I could see the bulb, see the clip and see where it all got messed up. Unfortunately I couldn't hold the mirror and work on the bulb at the same time. I had to commit to memory what I saw, reverse it, then translate it to what I felt with my wooden peg fingers.

It took a while. It took a long while and some tool throwing before I got the old bulb back in the right spot so I could finally unclip it. The bulb came out. The new one went in. I snapped the clip back in place, then reassembled the rest.

I really hate this crap. That was two freaking hours of frustration and freezing. For two pleasant hours of my life, I would have easily paid $50 to have my mechanic do that.

- b

Almost Got it All

We started the holiday break with a lengthy list of things to do. Most of it had to do with the preparation of our new family member, which really meant - make more room.

Since Jen and I moved in four years ago, we've primarily lived on the top floor of our house (we have a bi-level), and either put or left everything else in storage downstairs. With a kid coming, with new furniture and a whole bunch of other crap on their own, we had to some reorganizing.

The main culprit is what we call the blue room. It's a room downstairs with blue carpet. It's served a couple of purposes over the four years and has been documented in this here blog. Lately it's just been a huge catch-all for stuff. It's caught so much stuff, you could hardly open the door.

What's amazed us most is that the majority of the stuff is now simply gone. We threw out a lot. We've made one trip to Goodwill - soon to make another. We Freecycled a bunch of stuff. One women called me the most generous person on Freecycle (meanwhile I'm cursing all the lousy-bastard no-shows). And we also moved things around.

We had storage in our garage attic that was hardly used. When we found something we needed to keep, but not use often, it got boxed and moved out to the attic.

The Picture is meant to be dark. That's how I saw it in all my trips into the garage yesterday. Kind of creepy. Reminded me of Samara's (The Ring) hideaway in the horse barn. No wonder all the horses killed themselves.

Items that needed to be handy, we moved into our newly organized "workroom" or the newly added shelves I put in our furnace room.

By 9pm last night our blue room had become simply another room.

Unfortunately that lasted all of five minutes. There are other rooms whose use take priority in the coming weeks, so the goal was only to get this one completely clear so we could clear out the other higher priority rooms.

Like I said - almost got it all.

At least now we're way closer to having it all clean and clutter free. More like a house we live in and not just a space we store stuff.

At least that's the effect I was going for when I hung some pictures in my gear room.

- b

Picture Says it All

- b

Miscellaneous Crap

Haven't been very project oriented over the holiday break.

I got the important thing done - getting the tractor ready to plow - in case of mid snow storm labor pains.

but after that it's all been random crap like taking the bad cleats out of my "old riding shoes", so I can replace them and stop using my "good shoes".

Like I ride enough to warrant "old" and/or "good" shoes. Don't have new cleats yet. Wouldn't really need them till it warms up anyway.

I did some website work (refresh your cache), but nothing as far as necessary improvements, just maintenance.

I also reorganized my detached garage so the truck is NOT parked on the side with access to the attic. We've been moving a lot of the crap that's been unused in the house to the detached garage attic. Having that space more easily accessible (not having to move the truck every time) will make it more viable. In the process I actually emptied three or so boxes that had been packed in the garage since we moved here. Now my workbench is almost usable.

I also started a top-secret project with my commuter bike and the trainer.

Yes I plan to start riding the trainer, but there's an added piece waiting on parts to complete the project. More to follow soon.

We've also been running a lot of baby stuff errands. We spent one morning measuring the walls and current furniture in our nursery, then looking online at various nursery pieces to see what we liked and what might fit. We settled on some things, ran down to the store and placed an order.

Jen has also been procuring and organizing lots of "cute outfits." We might actually be ready for this thing when it comes.

What to do today?

- b