yesterdays ride

http://veloroutes.org/bikemaps/?route=34465

Zoe's first successful potty

Zoe's current favorite book is A potty for Me, which I have gotten tired of reading, but chloe can't get enough of. We didn't really think she understood very much of it, but then she started ripping off her diaper, like the child in the book, so Zoe and I went potty shopping last weekend.

I pulled them all off the chelves and had her sit in each one (no Jackass style shanigans -- she kept her diapers on!) and then choose one. I put the Chosen Potty in the cart, and she started frantically saying "THAT THAT THAT" and pointing to the potty, so I gave it to her

which also did not seem to satisfy her. It turned out that she wanted to have the potty in the cart with her sitting on it.

Anyway, from time to time since then she has had a seat on the potty, but since we just bought it, we hadn't given much thought to how we were going to train her. Tonight we were getting her ready for a bath, when she sat down daintily on the potty, smiled, then grimaced, and peed in her potty.

We are very proud of her

a nice rainbow

parade

Dutch flat parade:




The highlight was a very generoud fireman from the Placer County FD, who threw a plush stuffed bunny out the window to Zoe

Thank you guys!!


From there it was back to the cabin for some chainsawin' while Terry and Ian took the ZZN off of our hands for a few hours (THANK YOU GUYS!). Since the last visit, the local deer had eaten the apples and almost every leaf off of my newly planted fuji tree. I think the tree is dead, but I made a makeshift fortress around it and gave it around 200 gallons of water.


Little bastards.

American River

We drove down to the American River with Terry and Ian for an easy access river dip. Most of the yokel population had the same idea, but it was still a good time. The water is warm, and Zoe seemed to really enjoy it.

Alta

Alta and Smart's Crossing with Matthias, Monica, Christina and Terry. That water is sooooooo cold!

friday after work ride

route here. Along the way, I passed the Canyon School: 4 teachers for 69 students -- pretty good! I also passed a guy on Pinehurst who had set up a full drum kit and was practicing. Thankfully, he was pretty good.

diaper soundz

part of our evolution from normal people to parents has involved a modification of our aural awareness; sounds (or lack of sounds) that would have no significance at all without kids now take on profound significance. Suspicious lack of crying? the soft squeak of a forbidden pantry door opening? We're on it.

Occasionally, despite our better judgment, we might ignore one of these disturbances in the force, and we always end up paying for it. Tonight was just such an occasion. I was most of the way through a new hangboard workout, when I heard an almost imperceptibly soft ripping sound coming from the crib. "Bah", I thought. "I'll finish the last two 20 twenty second hangs and THEN check it out".

After the penultimate hang, I thought better of waiting and gingerly crept into Zoe's bedroom, where I found a fully awake and smiling Zoe standing in her crib. As I walked in, she held something out to me. In the low light, it could have been a bottle, but it wasn't. It was a diaper with a full poo payload, and by some miracle, the crib was not a nightmare of smeared excrement (although a lot of cleaning was still required). I guess it's time to buy her a potty.

drool

It's enough to turn you into a fixie riding hipster doofus!

you give me the frame, and I'll buy the skinny jeans and studded belt. and stop showering.

lesson 1

Lesson 1:

the lens is the thing with "Lens" engraved on it.

whee!

another slow but fun ride
http://veloroutes.org/bikemaps/?route=33683

Bike repaired!

Today I bought some parts to undo my ham-fisted "repair" yesterday and take care of a few other things. A new chain was at the top of the list, of course. I bought a SRAM chain from wheel girl and Performance was having a sale on the excellent Forté dual sided pedal (SPD on one side). I also had bought new brake pads to replace the ossified pads from Montano. After an hour of work, everything is working great! The brakes actually stop the bike now, and the pedals down creak and pop like they used to. It took an 18" pipe wrench to remove the old pedals. One thing that I discovered about converting a "normal" frame to a ss/fixie: those track frames with long horizontal dropouts are looking GOOD!

Bike "repair"

I got a flat tire during my lunchtime ride today, and it was on the rear wheel. I guess it hadn't occurred to me, but changing the tire is a little more of a pain in the ass with a single speed. Not having done any bike work for a long time, I managed to completely screw everything up. I managed to pop one of the chain pins out (first time ever for that), and spent the next few hours trying to get it in. Predictably, the chain was too short -2 links :(.

more light stuff

A 1 hour ride showed no signs of heating on the lamp.

Run length should be 5 hours, unless I calculated something wrong.

Also worth noting, a similar output NiteRider lamp (110 lm) costs $130, compared to the $10 driver + $8 LED + 3$ optic + 2$ PVC + 10$ niMh batteries.

cheap and easy bike light

I built a cheap and somewhat easy bike light for my new twenty year old KHS bike. The design principles were:
1)Relatively bright
2)Efficient
3)Small
4)Lightweight
5)Low power
6)Makes me a sammich

I came up with this: 350 mA micropuck driving a Cree XR-E R2 bin ( a bit brighter than q5 bin, so 114 or so lm). I decided to use the same plastic lens that I used for my previous headlamp, and bought the R2 pre mounted on a star from DealExtreme (it took AGES to show up, as usual, but their support is ok). I'm still working on what to do with the battery back, but this is what I have so far:

1)use hole saw to drill handlebar radius hole into a PVC angle

2)Drill holes at the front and rear for zip-tying

3)solder together micropuck and star
4)cut slot in side of angle,insert metal washer (I actually used a random piece of metal from one of our Ikea dressers that was left over)
5)Bond star to washer with thermal adhesive: thin layer only, as usual.
6)Figure out some kind of removable battery pack: I ripped a plug out of an old nonfunctional wifi router

7)Mount to handlebars with zip ties, and small piece of rubber. It's the same idea as mounting a bike computer, for example.

8)Here's a shot of the plug


The shoddiness of the plug is purely to dissuade someone from stealing such a fine piece of hardware, and NOT because I am a disaster with a soldering iron.

The light is plenty bright, and no word yet on battery life or heating issues. The heating is a typical problem with these high power LEDs, but I have going for me: low current (350 mA), relatively large piece of metal bonded to the star, small gap around the lens through which air can flow.

zoe's new trick

Zoe has always loved baths, and is very unwilling to leave once she has started splashing and carrying on. Recently she figured out that when we started draining the tub, it meant it was bath exiting time... so she figured out how to stop the tub (a few seconds after we start it). I thought that was exceptionally clever, but I'm sure that's just daddy brain.

The KHS

I bought a used KHS as an around-the-town bike last month. It's a vintage lugged steel frame built in Taiwan, and a biking guy tells me that KHS are probably as well built as the vintage Raleigh frames, but easier to find. I picked mine up for $150. I had also recently tried a few single and fixies and loved them, despite the hipster stigma. I guess it's kind of like buying a BMW: they are great machines that drive well, but you look like a douche in one. ANYWAY, I decided that the old components were not really worth having adjusted, since they would probably constanly need tweaking, so I had Montano Velo convert it to a single speed, swap out the hobbit sized handlebars and do a few other modifications. The biggest cost was the new hand built wheel. They finished it on Friday, and I picked it up yesterday, and it is so, so sweet. It's an amazingly plush ride, and the drivetrain feels supernaturally responsive and direct. The only problem for Montclair milk runs is the hill going back up to our house.



The shop also has an amazing selection of Pegoretti frames, which are lustworthy. I guess they know Dario personally, and have carried his frames for years. They even had a freakishly beautiful lugged pegoretti frame in a glass case. I thought he only did welded frames, and don't really want to know how much that one costs.

Yes, we live in Oakland

Last Day

After another trip to Lava Java for macadamia nut and banana pancakes, we drove out to Mahaiula beach.

Even though our original intention was to walk in a bit further, this beach didn't disappoint. We even saw a sea turtle!

We relaxed and after initial trepidation, Zoe let Chloe dip her in the water




On our way out, I took a good deep whiff of a Noni fruit, but did not smell anything vomit or cheese like

From the beach, we headed South and had lunch at Keoki's (ok, but the ambiance is kind of bizarre) and then to the Place of Refuge. The Place of Refuge was a sanctuary that would grant you, well, refuge if you had violated any of the laws. Since the punishment for violation of the laws was death, you definitely wanted to make it to the place of refuge before judgment/capture. I guess it was kind of like the kid's game Capture the Flag, but instead of going to the jail area, you get strangled to death. Anyway, the park was really beautiful, and the NPS did a good job of setting up exhibits. There was a beautiful outrigger on display


Excellent stone work is something I noticed when we first arrived on the island, and the place of refuge was no exception


From the Puuhonua, we took the parents to Kealakekua Bay, to show them where we had kayaked.

And then up to the exotic fruit tour:

We also stopped at a fruit stand which we later discovered was selling mangoes from Guatemala ... BOOO!

We ended our day with a nice dinner and fabulous sunset view at Huggo's.

Papakolea

This morning we drove to South Point, parked the car, and set out for Papakolea - the green sand beach. According to the guidebook, it's only 2.5 miles each way, but the walk seemed to take forever. I think it's the fairly unchanging scenery and the rutted dusty roads. I wasn't keeping track, but based on the time stamps on the pictures, I think it took us around an hour to walk to the beach. This isn't as bad as it sounds -- we arrived at the beach around five minutes after a couple that had driven the entire way in a Jeep and had left before us.



The sand really is green, and here are a few closeups:



And Zoe's green-sandy exploits:



The beach is quite steep, and the water breaks quickly and with a lot of power, so swimming was not really an option.

After about an hour, more people started showing up and Zoe had had enough, so we started the hike back




The trail head leading down to the beach looked like a Jeep commercial! After another hour of walking, we ended up back at the parking lot. Since we hadn't looked at the time stamps yet, I accidentally sandbagged a few people and told them the hike was 40 minutes. Oops! I talked to two guys who had set up a shave ice-mobile in the lot though, and they told me that there is a guy that shuttles tired people back and forth from the lot for a small fee, so I don't feel as bad.

We stopped at the fruit stand with the awesome pasisonfruit-lemonade, and I bought two awesome white sapote, a bunch of bananas, and a star apple.


The star apple was pretty delciious -- a kind of smooth pudding texture with a sweet, but not cloyingly so, vanilla flavor