Ride Lugged

So you may have seen a post last year about some training obstacles I set up in my backyard to help Christine improve her bike handling skills. This year I added another rock/log pile for her to crawl over and she tried it out today. Here’s the shots…

The course overall…over one pile, around the tree, and over another pile…(while dodging the bushes and clothesline)

Upclose of the older pile…

Christine on the approach…

Up and over…

This little training course in our backyard is an excellent lunch break escape…it’s really improving her bike handling skills and more importantly, her confidence.
Thanks to Casey for the bike on loan.
Please don’t let the fork comments outweigh the cheers of encouragement for Christine’s riding.
Rob

So Hutch ventured around on the wooden velociped today. This was the first time he actually spent more than thirty seconds on it. He pittered around the yard and driveway for like a half an hour! He even tackled the obstacle course I set up for Christine’s mountain bike training in the backyard (I’ll reveal those pics in another post). He went all over the place and I was almost more amazed by watching how the thing teaches balance than I was by what he was doing on it.
Here’s some shots….trying to be artsy…

The velociped power…

Finding his stationary balance point…

Posing on his bike…

Motoring around the yard…

Flashing the look…

Tackling the obstacle course…

I’ve got some video footage of him rolling around too. I’ll post the link to it in the comments section once I get it up on my YouTube channel. He definitely makes us proud.
MOTIVATOR!
Rob

so the 24 hours of big bear is coming up. 2 months in which to lose 50 lbs, learn how to grind for 2 hour internals, and to make incredibly complicated lists and prepatory plans. last year i took a series of steps to make life more comfortable at the camp, including but not limited to: bringing a giant blue tarp that took the better part of a day to set up, and then took the rest of the day and night to maintain due to high winds, a hollow core door table with sawhorse legs, and huge wood clamps to clamp down the stove, paper towels, ect. it was the most planned trip yet. and it payed off, although it took over 2 days to fully set up. practical? schmactical. not tactical. wackticle? yes. wackticle. wackticle.

as you can see from my handy diagram, there is always a big mess, big waste of door/counter space, etc. this lead me to remember that thing called boy scouts, you know, where you light small trees on fire and stuff them into latrines, or maybe you remember it as your first introduction to smut. or perhaps you remember it as the time that you told the newbie to put his tent on the ant hill, or the low ground in a rain storm, or put logs under the scout master’s tent to improve his sleeping ergonomics. whatever your memories might be, one that almost all cool scouts share is the memory of the chuck box, which lesser troops called the patrol box. we were more democratic than that. now even though my troop, 443, thought that winning the klondike derby was simply a matter of stealing the other troops flags and burying them in the woods, we did know how to wield a power tool. or at least someone’s dad did. we had the nicest, heaviest, most tiger tank-esque chuck boxes this side of a d-day pill box. i think the guy who put them together adhered to the following rules: the box must contain as much plywood as possible. normal patrol boxes might take 1-1.25 sheets of plywood. our had at least 4 sheets, as well as all brass hardware taken from a clipper ship, and sized appropriately. our hinges alone weighed more than a coleman stove and 2 weeks of fuel.

the carpenter also thought that if 4 scouts were needed to carry a normal patrol box, and more is better, why not make it so that at least 8 scouts were needed, plus a sixteen scout relief crew. inevitably, our camp grounds were muddy or snowy, or perferably both, so footing was dubious at best, and scouts constantly fell and were tramped by the remaining 7. you couldnt stop, or the whip would fall! when camp was finally set up, there was the inevitable roll call, and the ‘where’s robbie?’ questions. well. we never found him. presumably the mud got him.

if it wasnt raining, sleeting, and or well below freezing, we werent camping. what were we doing? practicing knots. not! ohhhhhhhhhhh that was bad. mainly we watched robbie chew (true story) on the asbestos columns that supported the ceiling the squalid basement that was our troop headquarters. that was before the mud got him. then later, brandy johnson got him. but thats a different story, involving bad haircuts, knife fights, and assault rifle wake up calls.

right so, chuck boxes are fantastic.  instead of schelping  (spell check starmer?) 4 boxes of supplies, a table, saw horses, clamps, and so on, you can make a really heavy wooden box that has compartments to organize everything, and becomes a ’strong like bear’ table.  also, chuck boxes have room for the kitchen sink.  er the camp kitchen sink.  we always brought two tupperware bins for the dishes.  tight.  so i have been pining for a chuck box for a while now, not unlike how i sometimes pine for cheap gold colored bolos and scratchy polyester knee high socks.

i sat down, did some net research, poured a dram for my fallen scouts, and drew up some plans.  i happen to have a grade A- piece of maple plywood in the shed.  its appropriately heavy, although i’m sure i’ll have to add some ballast.

FYI, starmer has one that sounds appropriately huge and hard to use, but claims we dont have the man power to move it.  i suggested he crank out a few dozen kids in time for the race, or at least steal them from mexico.  his response is pending.

Guinness World Records - Yahoo! News Photos

I’d be more impressed if he was riding on of those stupid tall bikes

Looks like the tall bike disease doesn’t discriminate against Canadians.

Here it is for all of you who aren’t on my email list.
Three and a half years old…ripping.
He’ll be jumping it by the end of the summer….
over trashcans on fire…
Q

Calfee claims its $3K bamboo bike will save the planet. Riding lugged makes mother earth cry.

maybe this will tempt you all into coming!

hey i am starting a music blog.  its going to be sort of like this joint, but with less bike references.  actually what i mean is, i hope to run it as a collective.  get lots of contributors, so lots of people roll through.  i want to cover the following genres: not shitty folk, bluegrass, hip hop that doesnt suck, punk they dont play on the radio, indie that contains no tight pants, electronic shit, jazz, soul, and some other shit that doesnt include christian rock, top 40 gospel, toby keith or any of his brethern, ect.

it will be super easy to contribute, thanks to starmer’s ingeniousness.  maybe it will become rad enough to warrent its own domain name and spin of merch.  get on it nick!

the address, for now:  broknrecord.wordpress.com 

i’ll be posting content tonite and tomarrow, a bit.  let me know what you think.  I havnt (starmer hasnt) hacked a way to let you down load the content yet, but maybe this will give you inspiration on bands to support and or steal from.  maybe we’ll make a monthly newsletter.

i want to say, emphatically, that this doesnt mean i will be writting less for this blog, as some of you might have been hoping.  fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

see you on side B.

Photos that bring me back to 3rd Grade that I have been ‘working’ on recently.

I wont provide lengthy explanations, because I think it’s all pretty self explanatory, ya know. Everything is availible for sale or trade, as per usual. More or less name your price, as if you want to hang any of this on your wall.  These have proved oddly popular on Flickr, although I am not sure why, except that people seem to like mini things, and apparently photos of mini amputees.

They have morbid titles and everything.  I think you can click on them and it takes you to flickr, but if not, here is the linktion.