Steam Bath Sweetness

This photo really says everything about these two kids. Both beautiful, one wide open and vivacious, one pensive and observant.

Sure hope Elsie doesn’t join Declan with an asthma diagnosis, and I also hope Declan grows out of his, as we’re told kids often do.

It’s been two trips to the ER in 72 hours for the E. Poor little thing can’t get much rest, is coughing a lot, has a fever that comes and goes, doesn’t want to eat…

We cleaned the hell out of the house, bought a cold air humidifier (thankfully Walgreen’s is open at 3am), are giving the meds as indicated, giving vapo and steam baths and doing lots of cuddling... so let’s hope she starts to get a little peacefulness. She deserves it.

Strawberry Pickin'

Left work early Friday night so we would have time to get to a local strawberry farm on the last day of pick-your-own season.

We went with Declan's girlfriend Anna and another kid from the neighborhood, Merrick. Elsie slept through most of it, but rallied at the end, in time to look adorable and knock big brother's basket over.

Phase I: Demolition

The first phase is done.

Pulling off most of the components was fairly easy. Some unscrewed screws and bolts, a little WD40 here and there, some yanks with various wrenches and, in the case of the stuck stem, some bangs with a rubber mallet, and it all came off.

Except for the cranks. Which brought me down to this:


Normally there’s a bolt running through the center of the crankset that you can unscrew and this allows disassembly of all the pieces (called the bottom bracket). But not so on this one.

So I posted a question to bikeforums.net with photos and got some helpful info quickly. Turns out I’m dealing with what are called cottered cranks – a difficult and complicated system no longer used for obvious reasons. One guy who responded wrote, “Man, good luck! The only thing worse than removing cottereds is reinstalling them.”

I went to altruistic bike guru/genius Sheldon Brown’s webpage (sadly Sheldon passed away earlier this year but left behind a shockingly detailed and comprehensive online breakdown of all things bicycle) and found what I needed.

Here’s the pin I had to remove:


Sheldon’s always right – always – so I did what he said: support the crank arm, aim steadily at the pin, and hit that freaking thing with all your might with a claw hammer. Do it right the first time because if you pussyfoot around it’s just gonna bend and get tangled up worse and you might end up having to drill it out.

So I did. Lowered the workstand and supported the crank arm with a piece of 4x4, then hauled off and smacked the shit out of the pin.

Success!

(Though the other side required two strikes...)


I was gonna leave it at that for the night, but in spinning the forks I heard lots of grit in there. So I removed those, too. This made me commit to a more complicated rebuild, because this (and the bottom bracket) are the two places where important and easily-screwupable things like ball bearings and thick grease are. I was hoping not to mess with the fork and headset, but if you’re gonna go, go all the way, right?

So here’s where it stands now.


The more I think about it, I’m getting more worried about the size. It’s several inches smaller in both height and length than my road bike – which is itself a tad small for me. Even with a long seatpost and a long handlebar stem, it’ll feel cramped.

But even this demo was a great exercise. Even if I stop here with this frame, it’s worth it. Taking everything off really demystified the machine for me – a bike is not something way beyond me that I’ll always need a mechanic to work on. It’s complicated, but not impossible. I’m already feeling more comfortable with the mechanics of it.

Amy said one of her coworkers is willing to donate her husband’s old bike to the project. I can’t wait to get it. Maybe the frame will be a better fit – and at least I’ll have more parts in the pile to Frankenstein from.

I do like the front badge on this though:


More as we go.

Father's Day Weekend

Had a great Father's Day weekend – still buoyed from it. Thanks family!

My girls were beautiful and sweet.


My boy was charming and fun.


My wife was generous and lovely (letting me sleep in an extra hour on Sunday and going on a date with me Saturday night).

I'm a lucky bastard.

We took advantage of the family pass Nana and Papa gave us to the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk where they have this section called World of Wonder – with water fountains both wee ones loved.



We also went to a Norfolk Tides game, but due to the heat and Declan’s being antsy we left in the seventh. It was fun though – and the Tides snapped their 33-inning scoreless streak. Though we only heard this on the radio because the two-run double happened in the bottom of the eighth.

Amy and I both left at 7 this morning, so Kaleigh’s taking the kids to school. I’m picking Declan up at noon and we’re going to another Tides game – with my boss and his four-year-old son.

The game starts exactly when Declan’s nap usually does, so we’ll see what happens…

Our excellent friends Jake and Skye are coming over for dinner tonight with their cool kids Nathan and Lily. They’re down from Delaware visiting Jake’s parents at the beach. Should be a fun time – made more interesting by a disruption in nap times.

The Fixie Project

A few weeks ago I decided to try to build a fixie/singlespeed.

A singlespeed is a one-gear bike that allows coasting. A fixie is a one-gear bike that does not – i.e. if the back wheel is turning, so are the pedals. (A little scary, that idea, but still intriguing.) With what’s called a flip-flop hub on the back wheel, you can have both. Turn the hub one way, it’s a fixie; turn it the other, it’s a singlespeed. Cool.

I like the idea of this super-efficient type of bicycle. No shifters or derailleurs. Only one gear. Only one brake (on the front, necessary for when it’s in SS mode). Simple. Clean. Neat.

Here’s a beautiful one to take a look at:


You can buy them brand new for less than $1000 -- or in the case of high end stuff, much, much more than that. You can buy previous conversions for as little as a couple hundred. There’s a guy in the area who converts and sells them. He actually has one that is the exact Panasonic frame I bought in high school. Which would be kinda nostalgic. But I didn’t want to just buy one.

For one, I can’t spend the money on it.

But also, I like the challenge of building one up from found and cheaply acquired parts. It’ll help me learn more about bike mechanics, it’ll be a good project to keep my hands busy (which helps in working out screenplay issues) and if it works it’ll give me a cool bike at the end. And hopefully it’ll be a good story along the way.

I’ve been trolling craigslist, looking for old frames. (Older frames are easier to convert to fixies because they usually have what’s called horizontal drop-outs, the grooves that the rear axle fits into, as opposed to the vertical ones on most modern frames – and you need the horizontal movement to adjust chain tension…)

On Friday, this ‘70s-era Schwinn was offered for $15 on craiglist. A good candidate for conversion. Pretty cool, right?


The ad said to call after 3:30, so I set my phone to sound an alarm at that time. When it beeped I was in a business meeting and pretended it was an important call I had to take – stepped outside and called by 3:32. It had been sold earlier that day. Dammit.

Craigslist Lesson: Don’t follow the rules.

On Saturday morning, Amy and I took the kids to hit the yard sales. There was a sweet old Peugeot at one place but the downtube had rusted through where the shifters attached and I know nothing about patching steel like that. But Declan got some cool toys on the cheap – so, score!

On Sunday morning at 9:15, I was sipping coffee while checking craigslist again. This time I saw this:

Free '79 Raleigh of America Rampar R-2 (Newport News)
Date: 2008-06-15, 8:23AM EDT

I have a cool vintage 10-speed R-2 on my curb, free for the taking. It has some rust and needs rear brake and gear work, but rides. 105 Spring Trace Lane.

Posted not an hour earlier. There was a chance.

“Amy, get the kids in the car!”

We piled in and drove 25 miles to Spring Trace Lane in Newport News. Had someone taken it already?

No. We get to the end of the cul-de-sac and there she stands, on her glorious rusted kickstand. Gorgeous, despite the rust. Or because of it. Even has its 1978-80 Minnesota bicycle license decal on it.

Happy Father’s Day.

It’s quite small for me and so probably won’t be very comfortable. But I’ll give it a shot. If I get it all done and it feels too small, I’ll just look for another frame and swap out the components.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Some BEFORE pics…

Can I Retire Now?

Snapped this pic as I drove away to go to work this morning.


Amy's staying home with the little ones today. Man, life sure would be cool if I didn't have to work.

I reckon I'm not the first person to think this, am I?

Actually, I asked our financial advisor if I could retire now. His response: "Sure. If you want to live under a bridge from here on out."

Oh, that's right. Consequences.

Cars, Pools and Poppy

Elsie had tubes put in her ears yesterday and came through like the champion she is. After so many painful ear infections (and the intestinal distress that comes with the accompanying antibiotic course) we all agreed it was the best thing to do. It sure was for Declan – hopefully hers will prove as successful.

It was a fair amount of waiting at the hospital, and all on an empty baby stomach as ordered, so we had to distract her. Her favorite part was riding on the little push-car.



She won over all the other parents and grandparents there with her smile. Which is cuter in focus. Sorry, the camera phone doesn’t do so great in low light…

I guess she won over most of the parents. There was that one dad who was barking into his cell phone about the load of mason dirt I done had in my truck all goddman weekend and now what in hell'm I gon’ do widdit? In the surgery waiting room at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters. Classy.

The surgery itself took only about five minutes. Amazing. Kaleigh helped immensely by rallying early in the morning to get Declan ready and off to school while we took the E to the hospital. 6:00am is especially early when you’re 19. But she did it happily.

She’s also painting the kitchen for us right now – looks great. Will get photos soon.

It’s been crazy hot here. Africa hot. Literally record-breaking. Which means we can’t do much outside but play in the pool and sprinkler.



By the way, in that one above you can see the car Kaleigh just bought in the background. Styling and profiling.



But even the water stuff can only go for an hour or so before people begin to pass out. So we’ve been trying to stick close to the air conditioning – house, car, restaurant, library, etc.

Last night we started what will hopefully become a new family tradition for summer nights. After bath we went on a Pajama Walk – an evening stroll through the neighborhood with PJs on (after the heat has dropped to a more manageable 95 degrees…) ‘Twas great.

Hey, Declan has a new friend! Poppy is sometimes a large man with pink hair and ten legs, and sometimes he’s a pink dinosaur. Declan often says he wants to see him when he’s sad or hurt.

As in: Declan bumps his head then calls out, “Ouch! I wanna see Poppy!”

So if you see Poppy walking around, ask him to make sure to check in regularly with Declan to make sure the little guy’s okay.

Your Backyard Friends

Last night we took the wee ones to a Backyardigans live show.

Declan’s been to see Diego, but this was Elsie’s first performance.

She freaking loved it.

Declan enjoyed it, too – though in the end he said it was a little loud. Elsie was totally engaged the whole time. Not only with the people on stage but also the people in the audience. So cute to see her dancing when things got energetic.

It was a lot of fun and definitely worth keeping them up for.

Declan’s favorite part was when the dragon came out of the egg at the end of course. Because if there can’t be any lions, tigers, leopards or pumas, there at least better be a dragon.

Here's Declan at the fountain outside Chrysler Hall after the show:


And here's the two of them. I hesitate to add this one, because Elsie looks terrified, but she wasn't -- she was smiling half a second before I snapped this...

Yin For Your Yang

There's good in the world.


And there's bad.


Obama gets the nod exactly when this country needs someone like him to be our voice. Some jackass drunk falls asleep and crashes into a bike race in Mexico.

Elsie, Declan and Kaleigh are impossibly beautiful. Between the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China we're talking almost 200,000 dead.

So much potential in the world. So much sadness.

I'm glad I have my family around to keep me centered.