rebeccmeister | Weekend Expeditions (with photos) (Reply)

I should really begin this by describing Thursday evening. After dinner,

scrottie and I sat around for a few minutes, trying to come up with a nice way to spend the evening. Eventually, S declared that, since he was my guest, it was my responsibility to show him around town. Given that I haven't been here for very long, I wasn't too sure about what I could show him, but it seemed like a good idea. So I suggested walking over to The Ptarmigan (I've learned that at least a few grad students call it "P-Tar," which seems appropriate). We brought along books to read - our own little Bryan, TX reading party. The Ptarmigan, well, had some unusual and interesting decor, including these lovely little dimly-lit four-person booths with antique photos on the walls. They also had beer coolers stocked full of Bud Lite and other similarly unsavory beverages that masquerade as beer, so we ordered mixed drinks and sat down in a booth to read and drink.

While all of that was tolerable, another thing was not. I've lived in smoke-free cities for so long that I actually forgot there are still places in the US where it's legal to smoke indoors. The P-Tar was smoky to the point where it made my eyes burn. After we finished our drinks, I suggested to S that we extend our walk up to The Revolutionary, a bar in downtown Bryan that plays live music and has a couple of decent beers on hand (in bottles, at least, if not on tap). The Revolutionary provided a much more pleasing experience, especially when the bartender noted that we were reading and adjusted some of the track lighting for us. I may just have to keep up the reading party on my own.

On the walk home, we passed by a pile of old doors, and I remarked that I still had plans to pick up a couple for desk- and table-making purposes. S suggested using his rental car to come back and pick up the doors, so we did the next day (good to use it for more than just carting S around). These were doors made of real wood, though some of the wood was weathered.

So now, the weekend. I followed through on the Saturday plans I blogged about; I got up early and rode out to Lake Bryan, with only one hitch in the route: a train blocked one roadway, and it was impossible to tell how soon it would start moving again. My attempted detour put me onto state route 20, a four-lane highway with zero shoulder. Fortunately, it was still early, so traffic wasn't heavy. I think I made it to the lake with an hour of riding. A long trip for rowing expeditions.

On the return trip, I detoured again, this time over to the Bryan Composting Facility. There are signs at the entrance instructing visitors to check in with the office, so when I reached what looked like the office, I was surprised to note that the sign on the door said "EMPLOYEES ONLY." I was standing with my bike and trailer in the middle of a truck scale, looking for somewhere to prop it up so I could go find the visitors' entrance, when two guys popped out of the office to say hello. When I explained that I wanted to fill the two plastic tubs on my bike trailer, they said not to worry about paying for the compost, and loaned me a shovel.

One guy also wanted to check out my trailer hitch; he said he was building an air-powered bike, and had a seatpost hitch running back to a bike trailer to carry the gas tanks. I cannot tell you how happy it made me to hear about somebody else having a good time building crazy contraptions. I may have a lot of philosophical/political disagreements with people here, but at least we humans have a few things in common.

One other good thing about the compost guys - I expressed my reservations to them about biking on the farm-to-market roads out there, and they just pshaw'd and waved their hands dismissively. It sounds like I'm not the only bicyclist out there, and they thought the bright-yellow vest was good and useful in that respect. I've got to say, I definitely feel like drivers out here (1) pay attention while they drive and (2) are relaxed enough that they're willing to give slower road users a break. I don't think I've been buzzed out here yet, and that's something which happens on just about every single ride in the Phoenix area.

After collecting my compost, I took a different route back so I could stop by the farmer's market for some eggs. Ah, again, people with whom I can relate, people with chickens and who grow vegetables and fruit. I bought an incredibly delicious bargain melon from a Texas A&M Extension student who is part of a program on campus that grows completely untreated produce (no organic-certified compounds or pesticides). The woman who transports her wares by bicycle was there again, too, and her husband was impressed with my bike trailer. This woman sells hand-sewn animals and colorful aprons; the sewing isn't perfect but the items are charming and I am thinking I may have to get something from her just because I like her business method.

Here you can see my bike in the foreground, loaded with compost. The husband and wife selling sewn goods are in the background. You can click on this photo and the remaining photos to view larger versions.

I also checked out a local, mom-n-pop hardware store, where I picked up some door-painting supplies. This place can't hold a candle to Hardwick's, but it will still get my business, that's for sure. It also looks like there's an old-fashioned soda fountain next door. I will have to take visitors over to check it out and see if the soda fountain makes butterscotch malts.

After all that, I spent a good chunk of the rest of Saturday out doing even more shopping - shopping, but not buying. There's a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store near here, and after walking in I wished I'd waited on buying paint and primer for the doors, because the Re-Store had a much cheaper and more extensive selection. There are a few other items that I will eventually buy there as well, like an old box fan and a filing cabinet. A good resource. Same goes for the Goodwill further down the block, and the hospice thrift store, too.

Today included a mixture of at-home projects and expeditions. I finally reassembled my push mower and mowed the front and back yards. The grass wasn't all that shaggy, but with the push mower it's easier to maintain grass if it's kept fairly short. [Insert a few sentences here about my feelings on growing grass and how much I dislike it - growing and maintaining it]. And o, how I love my push mower! It really is fun and easy to use, and so much less dangerous and wasteful than electrical or gas-powered ones.

I also rolled the blue, 50-gallon compost barrel into the backyard and spent time rearranging objects in the backyard. My gardening philosophy involves relying on the materials at hand to create a garden (added compost excepted). This is also known as "how one gardens when on a budget of no money." Also, I don't want to invest in building anything elaborate in the yard when I'm not sure how long I'll stay here. The yard came with a loosely-piled woodpile, some cylindrical concrete "pool noodles" (as S called them), and concrete edging pieces. After hauling and chucking around heavy things for a bit, I decided the concrete pool noodles will eventually be used as support pillars for benches of some sort, as they look too ugly for flowerbed edging. The concrete edging pieces are curved so that four of them will interlock to form a circle, so I created four planting circles out of the available edging pieces, and filled in one of them with the compost I collected on Saturday. It will provide a good home for some beets or turnips or other winter vegetables.

The concrete pool noodles are in the foreground, in bunches of four; the area that will grow vegetables is behind. This yard is fairly shaded, which will be a challenge.

Another view of the circles. Two of them are filled with soil. It will take at least one more trip to the composting facility to fill the other two.

I also uncovered three tiny brown snakes while I gardened - that's my gloved fingertip on the left, for a sense of scale. Does anybody know what kind they are?

After all that, I went into the garage and set things up to start scraping down the doors to repaint them. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Initial scrapings led me to the conclusion that I need to revise my prep strategy, for two reasons: (1) I can't scrape off all that much with this cheap scraping knife I got, and (2) I may want to scrape these doors all the way down to the bare wood because wood looks pretty. In another This Old House article, I'd read a suggestion to use less-toxic wood-stripping compound*, and so I decided to set off for Home Despot to look for that plus a few other things. Well. The ride over was predictably unpleasant (as bicycling to strip malls generally is), as was the shopping experience. They only sold the toxic stuff, they only had ugly and/or expensive planters (for upgrading a recently-acquired Meyer lemon tree**), and, well, ugh. Self-checkout kiosks.

So. If you have any suggestions on paint-stripping methods when dealing with stuff that probably contains lead-based paint, I'm all ears. The product recommended by This Old House only comes in expensive 5-gallon buckets, which I neither need nor can afford. I'm not in a hurry to get these doors done, but it would be nice to eventually have them turned into a table and desk. Certainly not elegant furnishings, but unique, better than a lot of the crap that's out there, and easy to disassemble and move.

The garage at work, hurrah.

*Years ago, my mom hired me to refinish a desk. Step one involved stripping the desk with this toxic goop. It creeped me out, horrified me (it's carcinogenic), AND it didn't work very well. The desk is still sitting in my parents' basement, unfinished.
**Have i mentioned recently that my boyfriend gives me the best gifts ever?