Doug the handyman, utility biking and a new personal best.

This is one evil looking cat.

Susan has been scrap booking for several years. The past few weeks she has been scrapping with a co-worker who's scrapbooking skills are very advanced. She is a cat lover and decided to make scrapbooks for us of both of our cats. She's doing alpahbet scrapbooks. Which means there is one themed picture for each letter of the alphabet. Sounds corny, but this woman does amazing scrapbooks. Susan was down to two or three letters, "y" being one of them. She said she needed to get a picture of Ciro yawning. I told her that would be impossible. You'd have to catch the cat in mid-yawn while holding a camera ready. Yesterday Susan proved me wrong by gettng the impossible picture. I can see it with my own eyes, but still can't believe she got it.

We've only been homeowners for 3 years. I rented for 20 years. Until getting my own house I was not a handyman. It's one of the reasons I used for not buying my own home. I used to say I couldn't even hang a picture. Turns out I do have the aptitude for repair work and a decent level of common sense, just not the experience. So every project is new to me and I take my time and think my way through it. Often I process the problem in my head for months at a time before actually doing any physical work. Case being the bathroom sink. The water pressure level dropped to almost nothing coming out of the faucet a few months back. After much thought I decided there was something lodged in the faucet itself. The faucet was too old and rusty to repair. I thought it would be a good excuse to buy a new one. Sunday was the day I spent time replacing the old faucet. What I didn't realize was the new faucet came with a new drain tube.

After pulling all the old parts off I found out I needed plumbers putty and tape. So much for the one hour job I was expecting. I had to run out to get the supplies and a new j-trap for the drain pipe. The old one was split and duct taped. Fortunately our local big box home center is only 1 mile away. Now I have become a fully comitted bicycle commuter when it comes to getting to and from work. As much as I like to think that carries over into other areas of my life and transportation needs, it hasn't yet. Susan has a car. We have gotten very good at combining all our errand running into a once a week trip. It's what I've used to rationalize my car usage. This summer I've been looking at this usage as more and more unreasonable. There are many errands I can run on the bike. Earlier in the summer I made a grocery run with my fixed gear. I pushed the limit on how much I could carry in my commuter panniers and a backpack. I decided that wasn't a good option. An Xtracycle is in my future for those kinds of errands.

Sunday I was about to do what I've always done when Susan's car is available, borrow it to run out and get what I needed and call it a time saver. For some reason yesterday it just struck me as totally foolish to call myself a bicycle commuter and then turn around and drive a car 1 mile to pick up something at the home center. Specially since I can ride that 1 mile in about the same time it would take to drive it. So I did it! I got on the Surly and rode over to the store in the rain and got what I needed and rode home. I even combined another errand with it and rode an extra half mile to the drive thru ATM machine to replenish the very low cash flow in my wallet. Now I no longer feel like a wannabe. We all take little steps forward now and then, yesterday I took a couple of my own.

Today I managed to set a new personal best in the area of SPINNING MY ASS OFF! My Surly has a fixed gear of 41 x 17 or about a 65 inch gear. Back in April I set a new personal best speed of 33 mph going downhill one day. Now that's really spinning. Today I had a 1 mile descent with a tailwind coming down to my house. I decided to let it go and see if I could top that 33 mph best. I topped out at 36 mph. Yessirreee!!! 36 f'ing miles per hour in a 65 inch gear. I can't imagine what it looked like to the car directly behind me who was trying to get around me, but couldn't because of the on-coming traffic. Any one know how to calculate my rpm's in that gear at that speed?? My feet must have been spinning better then 3 times a second. It's all those years of roller riding. I can top out at over 200 rpm on rollers. I've always been one hell of a spinner. Maybe that's why riding a fixed gear in hilly Duluth never concerned me much.

Mileage update:
Friday: 21 mi
Saturday: 33 mi
Sunday: 0 mi
Monday: 40 mi

August: 370 mi
2006 Total: 4,805