Saturday, June 21, 2008
A trike. We haz it. Sort of.
So The Clone decided she wanted a bike. A comfy, grown-up bike, not the kinds available here aimed at kids or sporty adults. Naturally, we went shopping on eBay.
You may recall I have a virtually unused wheeled eBay purchase of my own under wraps in the barn, a moped. I had chickened out trying to ride it because my knees threatened to walk off the job if I even THOUGHT about it hard. I had a vague plan to work on knee strength and come back, but it stayed in the planning stages...until I spotted the TRIKE!
It was only $269 including shipping! Being a trike, I could NOT fall off it and damage myself irreparably! So I could use it to go to the store and the PO and save money and strengthen my knee and get exercise! Naturally, we ordered it!
What I hadn't quite realized was that I would get so much of the exercise just doing the assembly. Like so many other things, bike mechanic-ing is a young person's game. If I ever have to get a job doing this, I want to be paid by the hour, not by the bike.
So far I have about six hours invested in the project. I have to take the blame for some of the delays, because a couple of times I put something on crooked, backwards or upside-down, and had to re-do it.
But part of THAT is due to the instructions. I think this trike's instructions take the prize for the WORST I have ever seen. Here they are, you tell me.
The corner bit tore off in the wind when we were first unpacking the box. Mike managed to catch the rest of the page, but he might as well not have bothered. There are three blurry illos and less than 100 words. That's it!
Luckily we had read the seller's feedback on eBay before ordering, so we had one of the secret tricks for success already planned. A company that makes a somewhat similar trike has assembly instructions available online for downloading and printing. Not an exact match, but it helped, especially considering where you have to start in the assembly process.
When I quit for the evening last night, I had assorted muscle strains and some pinched fingertips, but also a trike-shaped object. Today I plan to see if the air stayed in the tires, connect the hand-brake to the back wheels, do a final tightening up on all the nuts and bolts, and put on the fiddly bits -- the baskets, reflectors and the jingly bell!
I'll keep you posted!
You may recall I have a virtually unused wheeled eBay purchase of my own under wraps in the barn, a moped. I had chickened out trying to ride it because my knees threatened to walk off the job if I even THOUGHT about it hard. I had a vague plan to work on knee strength and come back, but it stayed in the planning stages...until I spotted the TRIKE!
It was only $269 including shipping! Being a trike, I could NOT fall off it and damage myself irreparably! So I could use it to go to the store and the PO and save money and strengthen my knee and get exercise! Naturally, we ordered it!
What I hadn't quite realized was that I would get so much of the exercise just doing the assembly. Like so many other things, bike mechanic-ing is a young person's game. If I ever have to get a job doing this, I want to be paid by the hour, not by the bike.
So far I have about six hours invested in the project. I have to take the blame for some of the delays, because a couple of times I put something on crooked, backwards or upside-down, and had to re-do it.
But part of THAT is due to the instructions. I think this trike's instructions take the prize for the WORST I have ever seen. Here they are, you tell me.
The corner bit tore off in the wind when we were first unpacking the box. Mike managed to catch the rest of the page, but he might as well not have bothered. There are three blurry illos and less than 100 words. That's it!
Luckily we had read the seller's feedback on eBay before ordering, so we had one of the secret tricks for success already planned. A company that makes a somewhat similar trike has assembly instructions available online for downloading and printing. Not an exact match, but it helped, especially considering where you have to start in the assembly process.
When I quit for the evening last night, I had assorted muscle strains and some pinched fingertips, but also a trike-shaped object. Today I plan to see if the air stayed in the tires, connect the hand-brake to the back wheels, do a final tightening up on all the nuts and bolts, and put on the fiddly bits -- the baskets, reflectors and the jingly bell!
I'll keep you posted!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Neon Health Update
I don't think I mentioned it here, specifically, that I celebrated finalizing all the political stuff for the first half of the year by picking up some sort of virus that went straight to one of the more problematic parts of my body (no, NOT my brain!) and gave me bronchitis. Happily, I am mostly over it now, other than the occasional mad coughing fit.
I've figured out I suffer from bureaucratic body parts. These guilty parties do the least they can get away with, complain about that little smidgen of work they DO do, and generally fail to get along with the other body departments.
So it seems the body-in-general decided to fight the rising bitterness by holding onto every molecule of sugar passing through, hoping this would restore our former sweetly sunny disposition. The brain TRIED to tell it this was a bad idea, but you know bodies....
Anyway, after teetering on the brink for years, I'm now considered Officially Diabetic. My doc prescribed Glucophage, and since he has confidence in my willingness to keep to a med schedule, and also knows I want the cheap version of things whenever possible, he set me up with the kind where you break one large tablet in two, and take half twice a day.
The only problem is that these tabs are roughly the size and consistency of bricks. The first day it sort of half broke and half crumbled on me. The second day I used one of those one sided razor blades, which worked okay except that it CUT the pill instead of breaking it, so the two halves weren't quite equal.
Today I found that using the razor blade and a HAMMER worked perfectly. As in the old adage, if force doesn't work, you aren't using enough.
More health type updates later...I need to pack and mail some books before I run out of afternoon!
I've figured out I suffer from bureaucratic body parts. These guilty parties do the least they can get away with, complain about that little smidgen of work they DO do, and generally fail to get along with the other body departments.
So it seems the body-in-general decided to fight the rising bitterness by holding onto every molecule of sugar passing through, hoping this would restore our former sweetly sunny disposition. The brain TRIED to tell it this was a bad idea, but you know bodies....
Anyway, after teetering on the brink for years, I'm now considered Officially Diabetic. My doc prescribed Glucophage, and since he has confidence in my willingness to keep to a med schedule, and also knows I want the cheap version of things whenever possible, he set me up with the kind where you break one large tablet in two, and take half twice a day.
The only problem is that these tabs are roughly the size and consistency of bricks. The first day it sort of half broke and half crumbled on me. The second day I used one of those one sided razor blades, which worked okay except that it CUT the pill instead of breaking it, so the two halves weren't quite equal.
Today I found that using the razor blade and a HAMMER worked perfectly. As in the old adage, if force doesn't work, you aren't using enough.
More health type updates later...I need to pack and mail some books before I run out of afternoon!
Monday, June 16, 2008
Oh hai! I haz a returnz.
It would take a long time to explain everything I've been doing, although some of you have seen some of it on my political sideline blog, codeneonblue.net . Basically, I have been trying Real Hard to be all things to all people and get everything I have ever agreed to do or wanted to do done, in a timely manner.
No doubt you will be shocked and dismayed to find out that I didn't succeed at that goal. Although I HAVE gotten quite a few things done, and am pleased about that.
Anyway, I am going to try to post SOMETHING regularly again. Except on days when I run out of energy and something like this happens:
(Just keep watching....)
No doubt you will be shocked and dismayed to find out that I didn't succeed at that goal. Although I HAVE gotten quite a few things done, and am pleased about that.
Anyway, I am going to try to post SOMETHING regularly again. Except on days when I run out of energy and something like this happens:
