Even in Kyoto

Here has been my dilemma: I want to go and pick up 5, 4x8 sheets of half-inch plywood for some boathouse construction projects. I did originally buy Big Mama for the purpose of being able to haul my own plywood. However, Frodo, my top choice for hauling big and heavy loads, is still in the shop in the midst of a major overhaul/spa day (very much needed after so much winter riding!).

Looking through the other currently available bikes in the stable:
S's GT: more reach than I'm comfortable with, and I'm not so familiar with its condition (e.g. brakes) and handling.

Froinlavin: There was that one time in Texas when I attempted to haul a heavy load of mulch with her. A bike friend who was with me, right behind me, exclaimed, "I just saw the entire rear wheel FLEX!" That rear wheel had to be completely rebuilt shortly thereafter.

Princess TinyBike: Um, yeah, nope. If for no other reason than inadequate gearing, but also inadequate braking ability. Yikes.

Old Faithful: That's why I test rode Old Faithful with Big Mama this past Sunday, hauling sandbags and the EZ-Up tent back from Tulip Fest. Also a hard Nope. (gearing slippage, definitely not enough brake leverage, whoa so clunky, et cetera).

Bikes in the pile at work: Hmmmmmmm...lotsa mountain bikes to choose from, plus the various vintage bikes I got from the co-op, plus...oh, wait. Wait just a minute. The answer has been right in front of me the entire time!!!!

The Jolly Roger.

Step one, however, is getting the Jolly Roger back home.

Now, I know, I could drive in to campus, hitch on the bike rack, load up the Jolly Roger, and drive home, just like I did to get S's green Bianchi and Old Faithful home again.

But where's the fun in that?

Besides, that doesn't allow for any shakedown ride.

So instead, I present to you:


Looking at this setup, you might wonder about the precarity (okay, fine, precariousness) of Princess TinyBike perched on the Jolly Roger's rear rack.

In practice, it was very thoroughly bunged in place, and so rock solid I hardly noticed it was there.

Instead, the bigger challenge was the heavily loaded front rack, because the (rather heavy) Brompton T-bag does not have *quite* the right strap configuration to easily attach in place at both the top and bottom. But once I added a second compression strap, it was fine.

The Jolly Roger isn't in quite as good a shape as I might like, but that's why I rode it home yesterday.

By this point I'd totally forgotten what it feels like to ride. It has really great low gearing for the purpose of towing heavy loads, so that's good. And I love the shifters.

All I can say for Saturday is, wish me luck...

I have been wanting a good, big utility trailer for YEARS. Finally, last fall I bit the bullet and ordered a 9-foot trailer from Bikes at Work. With supply chains being the way they are, BAW got in touch to say the soonest I'd be able to get my trailer would be sometime in the spring. Two and a half weeks ago, I finally remembered, hey, it's spring, and I haven't heard from BAW yet! When I emailed they said they'd be shipping my trailer out that Friday. Hooray!

When the box showed up I was impressed by how compact it all was. Opening it up, I discovered why:



Extremely well-packed.

I finally had some time this afternoon to work on putting it together. Assembly was a breeze, as far as these things go.





These trailers are modular, which has so many advantages for something like this. Parts can be replaced easily, and everything assembled in a smooth and straightforward fashion. If I want to, I can also shorten up the whole trailer for hauling smaller loads. The adjustment isn't instantaneous but it's relatively fast, all things considered.





There are tons of great anchor points on this thing.



And it's big enough to carry a sheet of plywood...or a rowing machine.


It should also be able to haul a kayak, helping to expand our kayaking options.

In the near future I'm planning to use it to haul supplies to a festival where we plan to have a table to try and get more people to try out rowing. I have to figure that the act of hauling the supplies there by bicycle will do as much to support the idea of using bicycles as a practical form of transportation, as it will help to get supplies there to promote rowing. A double-win in my book.

S is also already eyeing it for his next trip to the hardware store, heh. To which I say, the more, the better!

I could also see this trailer being amazing paired with an ebike.

Sometimes, good things come in big packages:



New oars!

I don't think I've ever held brand-new oars before, where it's still possible to feel the little ridges from how the fiberglass is wrapped around the shaft. Mostly, I have just held oars that are too old and that leave little bits of prickly fiberglass behind on my hands. Not ideal.

I gave the new oars a little scuff at some point this morning, unintentionally, but that's for the best. I aim to treat them very well but not be too obsessive about them, if I can help it.

Getting them to the boathouse gave me some flashbacks to the last time I transported oars from home to a boatyard (Texas, 2012):






This time I did not have scrottie there to be my follow car, so I had to be sure I had a giant red bandana flag hanging off the back. You'd better believe I kept checking over my shoulder paranoiacally* as I rode.

But I made it to the boathouse just fine.





The oars are thirsty for water, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. It was enough to just get the length adjusted and collars set for today.

The plan for tomorrow morning is to do a series of boat time trials, testing out speeds of our various and varied equipment. Stay tuned.


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*Probably not a real word.

Ran errands with scrottie this morning.

When I got home from Austin, I learned that we'd lost our trash can lid somehow. Between that and a half-dozen other things, we were due for a trip to the Despot.

I now have wood for making the new slip seats for the dining room chairs, a piece of wood to become a plant shelf in the kitchen, and a coping saw to make curved cuts in the slip seat wood.

The replacement trash can fit conveniently inside the two storage bins that S wanted to buy.



However, the Despot didn't have any of the sort of wood I wanted for making planter boxes for the back porch railing. Oh well. That project can wait. My thinking is to try and grow lettuce and herbs in planter boxes so the rabbits can't get to them.

I am hoping I can be somewhat more involved in gardening endeavors this year compared to last year, even though I'm planning to be away for 2 months in June and July.

I also finished making two new hot pads. They are quite thick because I sandwiched some of that mylar heat insulating material between layers of cotton batting. So, three layers of insulation in total. The fabric on the back came from the legs of an old pair of jeans.



The semester starts up again on Tuesday. I'm bracing myself for it.

It seems my current fitness plan is simply to quax a lot.

Today:

1. Singh Farms again for more mulch. I even took a photo. Here's what it looks like to quax 2 coffee bags full of mulch. Somehow, things were better balanced this time or something, so the ride felt more smooth. People on the bike paths around Tempe Town Lake don't understand how to behave on shared-use paths.



2. Singh Farms didn't have any yard eggs, arghdarnit. But on the ride home, I saw signs up for the Clark Park Farmer's Market, so I headed over to see if they had any. One place did, but they were $5 for a HALF-dozen. I bought some anyway. A number of people were hanging out, enjoying a cover band playing some live music. Most of the booths were selling value-added products, but it seems like Clark Park is site of a number of good things, lately.

3. Then I was going to head down to Home Depot, but it occurred to me that my newly received credit card might need some sort of activation, so maybe I should get some cash. On my way up to the ATM, it occurred to me to stop at the Farmer Market to see if THEY had any yard eggs. They didn't, but I bought some other eggs there anyway, because I'd rather send as much money as possible in their direction over SproutFlour. When I paid for that purchase, I found that my new credit card did work, so I didn't have to go all the way up to the ATM. Not that it's all that far away, but I wanted to head in the other direction.

4. So then it was time to head to the Home Despot. Why there, you may ask, when I live within a reasonable distance of TWO Ace Hardwares? Simply because we struck out on drawer slides at the Aces. I may or may not have come home with a pothos plant, too. And some rebar and chicken wire so I can fence off the back patio, as I promised our neighbors in the front house.

5. After lunch, I headed down towards SproutFlower. I wanted to get there before the bagel shop closed at 2 pm, so I could ask whether I'd lost a handkerchief and gloves there the week prior. They had the gloves but not the handkerchief. That counts for something, at least!

6. Okay, home again from that, and then over to the feed store and back again so Emma won't starve. Thankfully Tempe Feed and Tack is basically right around the corner now.

7. Cat food accomplished, I had to go to Ace Hardware anyway to get some additional supplies for the drawer project.

I have no idea how many miles that was, but I was out and about for most of the day, and now I am kinda tired and sun-weary. Once I got home, I set to work on the kitchen drawer project. It was even more annoying than anticipated, but it finally works and is DONE. While I was at it, I used a long nail to FINALLY punch open the outflow valve on the junked water heater, and also fixed the rear gate latch (just needed the proper nuts and bolts). Campfire rule x 100 around here.

Meanwhile, Emma spectated from her chair:

I made it out rowing on Saturday morning. Finally. It had been nearly two weeks, thanks to that head cold. I need to keep trying out different boats, though. The shoes in the blue Hudson are too large, which means my heels are too low in the boat. The tracks are also worn out to a point where they're mildly annoying (although hoo-eee, I've used way worse). My preferred set of oars also needs new wear plates, so I should probably just go ahead and order those and replace them.

Just as I wrapped things up at the boathouse, scrottie, sytharin, and L arrived, ready to roll down to Jack London Square to check out a couple of tallships moored at the pier. That was fun and interesting. ( A few photos: )
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Other than that, I am feeling pretty satisfied with work on weekend projects. Thank goodness, because it's going to be a busy week and there's a 300k next Saturday, so I don't expect to get much of anything done next weekend. I got geared up to tackle sewing projects, which included going through a couple of fabric boxes and getting rid of stuff, although I didn't actually do much sewing. [That reminds me I need to find a place that will take old denim.]

I also applied some privacy frosting material to the glass patio doors:


The next morning, my roommate P came downstairs and cackled with glee, because one of the backyard cats was on the back porch, meowing, and Emma had absolutely no idea. So, it looks like this will work nicely.

And I installed mosquito screening over the back bedroom doors:


Notice how, if I wanted to, I previously could have ninja-dropped onto L as he stepped out of his garage-apartment door. I only tacked things down at the top and bottom, so I go back should tack down the sides, too, for durability and full insect security in the long term. But that can wait until another weekend. At least it's now possible to open the bedroom door and get fresh air without letting mosquitoes in or cats or ninjas out.

I also helped sytharin cart home some wood to build planter boxes in the driveway (you can see her working on the boxes in one of the photos above), and we came up with a plan for the garden hoops, too*.


Now THAT was an interesting trip. We learned that if you try to daisy-chain two bike trailers together, you'll have some serious problems maneuvering around corners. Fortunately, we only had to manually pivot the trailer twice on the ride home, and most of the ride home happened along bike paths. I'll need to do a bit more thinking about how to set things up for any future expeditions of this nature. It was still quite satisfying to haul all these boards by bicycle.

We'll fill the planter boxes with sweet potatoes and tomatoes.


*The garden hoops, which I used to build the Tomato Chapel in Texas, are going to be used as a shade structure for growing leafy greens during the summertime. It's nice to finally put them back to use!