Air in tire GOOD!

11.22.2009

About a month ago I got a bicycle and was amazed at all the advances in the bicycle sciences over the past 20 years. Disc brakes, shocks, GPS, and there's probably heated seats out there somewhere. It came time yesterday, after trying to take a ride around Matt's neighborhood, for me to air up the rear tire. I'm paranoid about tires and wheels since that's where all my weight's going, so I pay special attention to those first couple of hundred feet of a ride. Yesterday, I heard the distinctive noise of too much rubber under low air pressure on the road. As such, my ride was almost a minute long before I loaded up and came back to the house.

One of the accessories I got was an overly complicated air pump. The tubes in the tires have a Presta valve, which I had never heard of before getting the bike home and trying to figure out what that funny looking valve stem was. So, I hooked up the pump to the tire, pushed down, and not a damn thing happened. I had gotten a spare inner tube on my last trip to the bike shop, and I could inflate it fine. What was I doing wrong?

Thanks to Al Gore's Information Superweb and Yahoo, I found that I needed to unscrew a tip of the valve that I didn't even know was there. Afterward, I was able to pump up the tire to the recommended 40-65 psi (I picked 60!), up from the 30 psi that I managed to get down to. Part of that 30 was probably me letting air out while fiddling with the valve stem trying to figure out how the silly thing worked.

So now I have properly inflated tires. It's raining and I probably won't go for a ride today. I'm ready for tomorrow, though.

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Gift Card Deposited

11.21.2009

Last week I got an email from Amazon asking if I would like to trade in any of my movie purchases. I scoffed at the idea of course. The next sentence said I could also trade in video games. I started to scoff, but then remembered the cache of Playstion (1 & 2) and Xbox games that have been sitting in a closet for years. Next I remembered how I finally traded in VHS tapes a couple of years ago that had just been sitting in the garage taking up space. Although I could go trade in games at the local video game store, with Amazon I get Amazon credit. And I loves me some Amazon credit!

I got stacks of games out of the closet and began to see what I could trade in. Some games didn't exist for trade-in (like Warhawk for the PS1 - one of Jerry's favorites). Other games I would rack up 50¢, $1.00, and sometimes $1.50 in credit. A lot of these games were still in the shrink wrap from when Sam Goody closed. to file under "things to make you laugh" I saw where the Terminator 3 game cost $8.09 and I hoped to get my moneys worth. I traded it in for $1.50 still in the shrink wrap. I think I came out on the short end of that one.

Now I have some Amazon credit to play around with. Christmas is coming up, and I'd like to say that I'd spend it on others, but the odds are good that it'll be spent on some frivolous electronic doo-dad by the time you, the internet, read this. Hopefully I'll have not used it to buy another copy of Terminator 3 for the Xbox.

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Talking to Mom

11.15.2009

Mom, Xmas '99

The above picture is how Mom is when I think of her, which can be taken in lots of ways, most of which are true. The above was 9 years before she died from cancer, before the chemo, before her hair had fallen out (mostly twice), before she had gotten weak and frail. Those were the parts that Mom was afraid of when she was first diagnosed, not that all of that would happen, but the way people might look at her, pity her. I guess it makes me feel good that the Mom I remember is the vibrant one that I grew up with.

I have been thinking about Mom a lot over the past month to month and a half. I'm not really sure why she's been on my mind more than normal. My emotions have been a little harder to control too, so maybe I'll just check it off to hormones. I had a couple of dreams with Mom in them, which I haven't had since she died last December. Various people have told me of having a "good-bye dream" after someone close dies. I hadn't really thought of it, but I hadn't had such a dream even though I hadn't really been expecting it.

Dream #1 was about 2 weeks ago. I was at Dad's and he was having a cookout. This was at Dad's current house with his current wife, with kids and grandkids cavorting about in the yard. I was inside in the kitchen washing something at the sink - not sure if it was my hands or a dish. I looked out the kitchen window into the backyard and saw the aforementioned kids and grandkids cavorting, when I saw Mom walking up (from the left side of the yard, which really has nothing but a big lot of trees) with a casserole dish of potato salad, looking about like she does in the picture up top. I turned off the water and quickly thought, "Hey, Mom's not supposed to be here!" and turned to leave the kitchen. In my dream I paused a step and thought "Wait, there's something else" and that was the end of my dream. As I woke, the dream was fresh and I finished my dream-thought with "... she shouldn't be here because she's dead." It wasn't as morbid as it sounds, just trust me on that one.

3 days later I had another dream. I'm sitting with Mom in what was an amalgamation of all the houses we've lived in. It was primarily the last house in Harvest, and we were sitting at the kitchen table having an argument. The first thing to point out is that Mom and I never argued. We were too passive aggressive for that. Mom still looked like she did around '99, and it looked like I was still living with her and Terry in the house. In the dream, Mom was telling me that we were moving to Minnesota and that it was a good idea because it was going to give us all a chance to start over and it would be a good opportunity for Terry. I was telling her I didn't think it was a good idea. She was telling me it was a good idea. The conversation kept going back and forth like this - neither of us really had a good argument, but that's why it was a dream!

Finally I looked at her and said "Well Mom, I think I'm just going to stay here." She stopped for a second and looked back at me and said "Well, I understand. If that's something you feel you need to do then you need to do it." I then said to her "Well, I think you need to stay too." to which she responded "Well I don't think that's a good idea, I need to go since it's such a good opportunity." and we once again started to go back and forth, this time me trying to convince Mom to stay. About this time, Terry comes in the back door with a vibrant "Honey I'm home/What's for dinner/What's on TV?" with which I give him a quick "Terry can't you see WE'RE TALKING HERE." Terry stopped in the doorway and said "Well. hmph, I can tell when I'm not, hmph." at which point he turned around and left, closing the back door. Mom and I then heard the lawn mower start up.

I turned to look back at Mom and one more time told her I didn't think she should go. She leaned forward in her chair and asked "Well why not?" In any place but my dream this would have been one of the first questions. I leaned forward and put my hand on her knee, and in my dream I suddenly realized why. I looked at her and tried to figure out how to say the following, but it just came right out. "I'm not sure how to tell you this Mom, but... you're dead."

Mom sat up a little straighter and covered her mouth with her hand as she gasped a little. "Oh my" she said. "I knew I had gotten worse, but I didn't know it had gotten that bad." She leaned forward, this time to put her hand on my knee. "Are you doing ok?" I held her hand on my knee as I answered "Yeah, I think so."

The sound of the lawn mower grew louder at this point, and I looked at Mom and said "I should go apologize for yelling at Terry." She nodded, and I went outside to where I saw Terry standing behind a lawn mower with some headphones on. I came up and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. "I'm sorry Terry, I need to apologize" I told him. "Aw, no need for that. The yard needed mowing anyway. Plus, I need to get in and get those bushes trimmed back." And with that Terry went back to his yard work.

I went back inside and talked to Mom some more. I've got no idea what else we talked about, just that we did.

That dream gave me a little closure. Mom and I always talked to each other a lot. Well, a lot for me since I'm generally kind of quiet (I have to force out my extroverted side more than most people imagine). I like to think that we had left nothing unsaid between us. I had even made it a point after she had been diagnosed to make sure I said things I normally might have kept to myself. I've missed talking to Mom. I'm doing a better job of turning to my friends and talking to them to make up for it, and hopefully I'm not a pain in their collective asses when I do it, but I still miss talking to her. I still talk to her when I think about her. Whenever her picture shows up on the website, I'll smile and say "Hi Mom" every time. But now if I need to talk to her, maybe I just need to fall asleep and call her, she's in Minnesota now :)

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No More Flats II

11.03.2009

59 months ago I replaced my Nissan pickup with a Ford Explorer. I hated that pickup. I found I liked the feel of the Explorer after renting one on a trip to Florida, and when it came time to replace the pickup the Explorer was the route to go.

Over the past 5 years I haven't really had any trouble out of the Explorer. Regular oil changes and tire rotations, 1 tune-up, 1 new set of tires. Not bad for 5 years, since it's the mechanical problems that make me want to trade cars in. Over the past few months, as I've been nearing the 100K mile point, I've remarked at how little trouble I've had and how I still like my Explorer. 2 months ago I noticed that it felt like the transmission was slipping a little (jerking between high and low gears sometimes) and that I needed to get it looked at.

Last week I looked at my payoff on the Explorer and say that I actually had some equity built up (a first!) now that I have a year of payments left. The next thought was how if I really did have transmission problems, it would cost a pretty penny, piss me off, then make me trade it in, thus losing money on fixing it. So I did what anybody would expect of me.

I traded the 2005 Explorer in on a 2010 Explorer. The new one is the same as the old one, except it's red, has a 2nd row DVD player (just what every single guy needs), and has 2 miles on the odometer instead of 95,000. There are cosmetic differences between the two that I'm getting used to, but I'm holding off labeling the pros and cons until I've driven around for a week or two.

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I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

10.27.2009

After talking about it with Gina and deciding to follow through, I finally have a bicycle.

For most people, a bicycle wouldn't be that big of a deal as far as purchasing. Pick a price point, go find one, begin riding. For me, due to my metric tonnage, I had to have a special bike. Bikes don't have weight limits, it all comes down to the parts, most importantly the wheels. The wheels bear the weight, so that's where you have to start. Ever scouring the interweb I found a good forum that has a big & tall section that got me started on what to ask and how to ask. I eventually went to my local bike shop in Madison and put them to work customizing a bike that would hold me. Here's a quick summary of what I had done:

• The pedals and rotor (or whatever the big thing the pedals are connected to) all got upgraded to metal parts.
• Custom made 40-spoke wheel - I had asked about wheels for tandem bikes since they're supposed to hold upwards of 400 lbs, but these wheels would cost about he same and be stronger.
• Thorn resistant/thicker inner tube.

After I picked the bike up and rode around Gina's block a couple of times, I needed my own nerdy upgrades!

• Bag to go under the seat to hold keys and whatnot.
• Seat that doesn't poke me in the testiculars.
• GPS because it's a speedometer I can plug into the computer.
• Headlight because it's about to get dark just as I'm getting off work.

I've also got gloves with gel in the palms and a helmet that fits my huge melon, so I'm being safe! Once I figured out how the GPS works, I found I like keeping up with my trips:

10 miles in 2 trips! And I didn't die going up a big friggin' hill on the way to the cemetery. I know, irony. Gina had a flat coming back from that one, though.

More updates as I progress!

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