Back on the Road

I'm sorta back on the road.

The weather hasn't been cooperating, much, but three weekends ago, I got out with my daughters for our first ride of the season.  Then two weeks ago, I managed a 48 mile weekend.  Last weekend I did nothing (well, not on the bike - was busy doing other stuff), but then this weekend I got a quick ride in to retrieve my car from the office.  It was cool and wet this morning, so I didn't get another ride in today, but 17 is better than none for this weekend.  With any luck, the rain will thin out a bit, and the temps will climb a bit, so I can get busy training for the PMC!  Even so, it feels good to be back out there, and I'm feeling pretty strong, despite the shortage of miles.

This week, I'm going to install my new toe clips onto the Motobecane.  They should help keep my feet on the pedals, a bit, which will be a help.  I've mentioned before that I'm getting tired of my feet flopping off the pedals at opportune moments.  Actually, there's really no good time for that to happen.

The toe clips were a gift from a friend whose wife's bike I worked on a few weeks ago.  It needed new bearings and grease in the headset, bottom bracket and hubs, and a good dose of oil for the freewhel internals.  Took me all of 2 hours to tackle, one Friday night, while the girls slept -- no big deal at all.

A day or so after I finished it, I took it for a quick spin around the driveway while getting Juli's bike ready for its inaugral ride.  Apart from not fitting me, I was really surprised and how good the bike felt.  This is a mid-1980's basic steel Fuji 12-speed, fitted with a basic Suntour groupset.  The derailleurs are mostly steel, the seatpost is steel, it has a derailleur adapter claw on it, the wheels are 27" -- you get the picture.

But despite what should be handicaps, the bike rode really nicely.  It desperately needs a humane saddle, it could use new brake pads and cables, and a 7-speed freewheel with a narrower range would give its fly-weight athlete owner better gearing for her needs than she has today.  Maybe a set of bar-end shifters and a better set of brake levers, too -- but really, not much more.  It's a great example of how a well-done bike can feel really good, even if it's not overly complex or sophisticated.

Not a lot more to say today about bikes.  I do have a couple of car posts that I'm churning over, though, and I have a project that I really need to get to with Juliana's Schwinn, that I'll have to come back to.

All for now,

J

"Eh, it's more purply."

That was the reply I got when I asked Juli, "Not so bad for a pink bike, eh?"

Hopefully that'll be the end of the arguments about the frame color.

As you can see, Juli and I finished (sort of) her bike last night before she went off to bed.  I spent a bit more time thinking about what to do about the rack that I'd butchered, rendering it useless for the time being, and scheming solutions for my own carelessness.  But first, the bike.

I've talked about Juli's little Schwinn before, and in truth, the bike has been rideable for a couple of months, now.  Missing until last night were a trio of accessories, and a day warm enough to coax Juli outside for a spin.  It wasn't warm today, but it was warm enough for coaxing.  The water bottle cage and holder went onto the handlebars in mere minutes, as did the bell.  And so equipped, Juli swung a leg over it and made a single lap of the driveway before scampering back into the warmth of the house.  She paused long enough before setting off to smile for the camera.  Note the dandy cycling shoes, and the frame-matching piping on her fleece jacket.

Most of the work last night went into trying to fit a Pletscher CS rack to the rear of the Schwinn, in much the same way that I'd fit one to the Fuji -- by shortening the struts so that the rack would sit level on the small frame.  Unfortunately, I didn't test the brakes while positioning the rack and marking the struts for cutting, because while the location of the rack with the short struts is low and level, the straddle cable doesn't clear the rack in that position, rendering the rear brake both stiff and weak.  Not good.

The bike doesn't need a rack to be ridden, of course, so it's now out in the barn, ready for warmer days.  But Juli wants a rack, and I found it handy for her to have one on rides to the state park for a kayak or swim last year, so I do, too.

I tried splicing ends back onto the struts, sweating the strut and the severed end inside of a quarter-inch copper pipe.  Sadly, my pipe-sweating skills are nearly as feeble as my dancing skills, and it didn't work.  So I ground off the pivot rivets, and removed the struts from the rack altogether.  I'm going to pick up some long struts for a Nitto rack, plus their hardware, and use those instead.  That retrofit will definitely work, and I won't have to throw the rack away.  I'd have felt badly about wasting a classic (even if I recycled it), though the cost to replace the rack is roughy comparable to the cost of the struts.  Oh, well...

I have only a few bike purchases planned for myself this year.  The rear tire on my Motobecane is looking perfectly serviceable for the coming season, so I'm not going to swap it like I'd initially planned.  That leaves me with a need for just some toe clips and straps for my Moto and Schwinn, and a new helmet.  Easy!

Next up is my friend Carol's bike.  It needs a repack of all of its bearings, and today I picked up the balls I need for that job.  It feels good to be wrenching again, after a few months' hiatus, as did the 15 miles on the rollers this morning (21 average), after a weekend off at the canyon.

All for now.

J

Canyon

I'm not really what you'd call an outdoorsman.  It's not that I don't like the outdoors, mind you -- cycling, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, tree climbing, exploring... there are tons of things I like to do out there.  But as I said in my last post, I don't have one of those hiking goals you sometimes find among people you know, and back when I was a scout (I was a Cub Scout of the various grades, and a Webelo, but punched out of the Boy Scouts after one meeting), I never really went for the whole camping thing.  I enjoy an occasional night in a tent and with a camp stove, but you won't catch me out there every weekend or anything like that.  I don't like having stuff stuck to my feet, maybe -- sand, evergreen needles, etc.  Think what you will. 

That aside, as I was discussing (virtually) with a friend of mine, today, I do appreciate the diversity of the landscapes of our planet -- or even just the continent I call home.  Coming from New England, I've found the dry hills of northern California, the flatness of Florida, the glaciers of the Canadian Rockies and the deserts, buttes and canyons of the American southwest just fascinating.  And I've had the chance to see some amazing stuff out west -- Bryce and Zion, Moab and Sedona, Yosemite and the Columbia River Gorge.  And twice, now, the Grand Canyon.

It's an incredible place, if you haven't been.  I've posted a few pictures, here, rather than try to describe it.  Its vastness is impossible to comprehend through photographs.  Most of the big features in any of these pictures are miles away.  Even stuff up close is out of snowball's reach (I checked that).  And a hike to the bottom on the Bright Angel trail you can see in these shots is something like 17 miles.

This week I spent a fair bit of time thinking through some letting go I need to do -- really painful stuff that I've tried hard to avoid for a year.  And I've got more coming in the next few months, which I mostly haven't been trying to avoid.  All of it necessary to getting on with life, none of it easy, and some of it impossibly hard.  I'd like to be able to tell you that the trip to the canyon made everything easier -- that the vastness of the place and the geologic time scale made all of the hard stuff I've been wrestling with seem unimportant.  But I can't lie like that.  It's an incredible place that inspired awe over and over again, simply by shifting my location or casting my gaze in a different direction.  But it's just a place.  It doesn't make things go away, and it doesn't make them easier or hurt less.  Even so, it's good to get a dose of awe, and a pair of 3-hour hikes equals six useful hours of thinking time.

The last time I was at the canyon, I hiked to the bottom with my ex, and it was a good and memorable experience.  This time, the canyon received snow just before my arrival, which lent the south rim a different feel than it had the last time.  I didn't have the right gear to hike down in, or enough time to get very far, so I just hiked the rim, in both directions from the Bright Angel lodge -- one per day.  It would have been nice to get down in there, but my only real regret is that I didn't have someone to share the experience with.  Rather than swapping impressions, I spent last night reading Hemingway.  Good, but not as uplifting.  Maybe next time.

Back to bikes next week -- I promise.  I'll be finishing the fitting work on Juli's Schwinn, and doing the overhauling work on my friend Carol's Fuji (possibly with her husband and son), and hopefully(!) getting in some outdoor miles on the Motobecane.  Maybe Juli will even get to test out her new bike?  Time will tell.

All for now,

J

Living in Service

The kitchen will be done today, and the roof wires will be back on the roof where they belong.  The kitchen looks fantastic, by the way, in red and white.  Then the house will go on the market, again, next week.  I'll still have to do the pantry, and replace and prime/paint a few rotten boards on a fence gate.  And if I were to get started on a list of "shoulds" for the house, the list starts getting pretty long.  And that's just indoor stuff -- by May I'm going to have to start cutting the grass again.

I'd kind of lost sight of how home ownership essentially means living in service to a building.  That's no way to live, and it's something I have to be more vigilant about.  I grew up working and watching my parents work around their place rather than getting out and exploring, and that experience is definitely part of my core.  Just look at my last post:  It's about painting and finding the bright side of something that that I know full well is devoring time I should be spending doing other stuff.  Bad habits.

While I was priming molding this morning, I realized that I've never really had a lifestyle "dream".  There are things I like to do, yeah, but I don't have a "climb all 10 peaks higher than X feet in North America" sort of thing that's guided my path.  Most of my goals have been centered around stuff, or work.  Apart from my kids, cycling is probably the closest thing I have to a lifestyle locus.  It's a good one, but it's not clear to me that there's a path to personal exploration and growth that stems from bicycles.

So what do I do about all of this?  Getting out of this house will be a great start, and with any luck I'll be moving this summer.  From there, I'll need to make time to explore new places and spaces, both with and without the girls, to see what feels right.  The potential for fun is tremendous, of course, but the challenge feels strangely daunting, too.  Habits are hard to change, after all.  But it seems really important that I focus on this one.

I had 7 resolutions this year, and I'm doing pretty well against them.  They weren't unimportant or minor things at all, but given the realization this little post is wrapped around, it feels like I missed a pretty important one.  I guess it's never too late to add -- or maybe just reaffirm -- an eighth.

All for now,

J

Color

The kitchen project is moving along.  Slowly, but moving.  The walls have come out smoother than I'd any right to expect them to, and the gray primer on the walls right now makes the kitchen look very different than it has in the 12 years I've (mostly) lived in the house.  The stained and polyurethaned wainscotting, trim and doors will be painted white to match the rest of the house, and the walls will be red.

Every time I paint a room, I ask myself why I don't paint rooms more often.  A room with a fresh change of color remains a little treat to the eyes long after the color should cease to surprise.  That compounded treat is well worth the time spent painting, and the process of emptying and refilling offers a great opportunity to purge crap, as well.

12 years in this house, and I've painted 4 rooms, the front hall, and the three secondary stairwells. Also, both bathrooms have been re-papered and otherwise redecorated.  Now the kitchen and pantry.  And that leaves the dining room, parlor and master bedroom untouched.  Anyway, that's not so bad, numerically, but it's still a third of the rooms unchanged since I moved in.  Seems odd, when I look at it that way.

Note to self:  Paint my next place more often.  A little change of color can be a very good thing.

Still no progress on finishing Juli's bike -- or starting Carol's.  The weather is changing fast (I've no snow at all in my yard, now), and I need to set some time aside for that work.  But I think I'll be busy with paint for a few weekends, yet.

Happy spring everyone.

All for now,

J

All-in

I worked out on the rollers yesterday morning (21.2 over 15 miles), but am not going to today. I've been working on my kitchen the past couple of days.  Just a quick spruce-up before I re-list the house in April.  The trim is down, the wallpaper is down, and now I'm patching the walls up, and replacing sections of the wall where the horse hair plaster has come away from the lath.  Then the whole kitchen will be freshly painted, and that'll be that.  Except that I have to do the same to the pantry.  Either way, it's not a huge amount of work, and my hope is that it'll make a difference in selling the place.

I was completely exhausted last night and had a hard time getting up this morning -- thus the no riding today. Working in the kitchen is giving me plenty of exercise, and I don't want to fall asleep at dinner tonight (going out with a friend in Cambridge -- it's restaurant week in Boston).  I may tackle a couple of bike projects if I have time though.  Just quick ones -- trim down Juli's kickstand, mount the rack and bottle cage holder on her Schwinn, etc. The snow is melting very quickly, now, and we may have a weekend soon where an outdoor family ride will make sense!

While I've been working, I've had a lot of head time.  And one thing I took away from yesterday is that I don't like working on my house anymore.  Most of my house projects over the past dozen years have been solo, but I didn't mind so much when I was married -- first, because I was working towards making house better for us, and then later because it was an escape.  But I'm only working on the house now to make it more appealing to someone else, which isn't nearly as much fun.

But apart from grumbling to myself about the house, I've been mulling over the notion of being all-in.  I'm not all-in to the house, because I'm essentially waiting to leave it behind me.  And I've realized that I haven't been all-in to other aspects of my life for a while, either.  Instead, I think I've been waiting for something.  For my next thing to come along, maybe.  For Allyson to come back.  For the house to sell, as I've said, or for the divorce to finalize.  Waiting is a very passive activity.  Not all-in at all.

And that's not really like me.  I've always been a fairly intense person, and I've lived/worked/played with intensity.  Not self-destructively, just intensely, and I generally throw myself into whatever it is that I'm doing, working to exhaustion and starting over the next day.  But not lately.

I understand how I got where I've been, and I do think I've made great strides this year to upping the intensity back to where I'm used to it being.  I feel much more in life, now, than out of it.  And that's good, because being all-in is the only mode I've ever been happy in.  This waiting bit has really sucked, by comparison.  Even more than that, the others in my life need me to be all-in.  My kids, my friends, my employer, my dog, all the women I've been meeting out for dates -- everyone.  They don't need someone taking up space, they need an active participant -- someone ready to give it (whatever "it" is, in each case) their all.  If I can't do that, why bother?

Last May, I realized I needed to start living again.  And now 9 months later I think I've figured out that it's not just about living -- it's also about how I live.  Let's see if I can do a little better than that in turning up the intensity...

All for now,

J

Five Weeks Gone

Gosh, where did February go?  One minute I was talking about fox words, and suddenly it's March.  So what have I been doing with myself?

• Riding:  Well, indoors.  And not as much as I'd like.  Still, the activity has been good, and I've logged 20.8 mph average speed sessions both of the past two Saturdays.  I hope to match that tomorrow and Sunday.  My left knee complains, but not as badly as last year -- not at all.
• Fretting:  We had a ton of snow in January and early February, and ice dams and their consequences have been on my mind.  One of my sets of anti-ice dam wires was ripped off the roof.  By falling ice, I believe.  I have some indoor and outdoor repairs to do, now, that I hadn't planned on.  It happens...
• Dating:  I've met some really nice women, and had some nice evenings out.
• Hosting:  I've hosted friends for my first dinner party since I moved back into my house nearly two years ago.  I was exhausted, but I enjoyed the cooking, the company and the sharing of food and wine.  The exhausted part came from some travel (still pretty tired, but my sleep schedule is back to normal), but it was still great fun, and it feels good to continue making connections and expanding my social circle.
• Traveling:  I've been to France on a business trip, and taken a quick trip to Versailles while there.  I've said it before and probably will again -- it's no wonder they cut Louis' head off.  The place is obscene.  I really enjoy working with folks at our French HQ, too.  There's a different dynamic, but it's interesting learning the ropes.  And though they operate differently than the organization I'm part of, it's not worse -- just different.
• Tinkering:  I've picked up another bike project!  More on that another time, but it's really just a simple bearing overhaul for a friend's wife.  This is her High School bike.  Nothing fancy -- a Fuji and more or less equivalent to Juli's Fuji, but a perfectly serviceable all-rounder.  She's an athlete, and should get a sportier bike for the triathlons she does, but this'd be a great bike for a rack and a basket for family duty.
• Renovating:  I've made some progress on some house projects, getting the place ready (again) to go on the market again (again).  Fun stuff, in the sense that I haven't done anything of the sort in a good while, and possibly not too much work.  Possibly.
• Contributing:  I've signed up for the PMC, and now have to a) get in shape, and b) raise a pile of cash.  Yeah, I'm fast on my trainer, but that's not going to translate into stamina and speed on a 160 mile ride.
• Thinking:  I've given a lot of thought to where I am, how I got here, what I need and what the people in my life mean to me and why.  And I feel pretty good, honestly.  One important realization in all of that was that having different social goals for myself doesn't mean changing my standards or expectations (of myself or others) -- it just means living within those standards to different goals.  And my heart is big enough to care for lots of different people in lots of different ways, I think.  The exploration has been fun so far (see the dating comment above), and I'd like to think it'll remain so.
• Parenting:  They're always there.  And they're wonderful.  And I think they're going to be OK, honestly.
• Working:  Too much to do.  Not enough time.  No different than most anyone, I know.

11 months ago this Sunday, I drove home from NJ, hopped on my bike on a 70-degree day and later walked Jake in shorts and flip-flops.  Time flies, as they say.  I'll try to get more up here in March.

All for now,

J