Author: lief

Fairings aren’t very fair

Fairings may not be fair but they sure are warm.
As I think I have mentioned, I was the lucky recipient of a front fairing for my recumbent bicycle. If you don’t know what a fairing is just think of it as a windscreen that blocks the wind from my feet to my neck and is a semi-permanent fixture on my bike. I am lucky because I expect to ride through the winter and the fairing will keep the wind off, keeping me warm.

Last Thursday when it was about 2°C I proved it was warm by riding to the train in shorts. On my top I maintained the requisite three layers but even then I was a little overheated. Definitely warm.
This morning, after fixing the broken wire on my speedometer last night, I finally am able to use all of my gear to it’s fullest measure for some proof, if it exists, of just how unfair it is to cut through the wind like this.*

This AM I ‘coasted out’ down the hill to my north and found my speed increased from an average of about 35 mph before-fairing (BF) to an anecdotal 36.7 mph this morning after-fairing (AF). I will keep an eye on that.
The more sucky-for-others part and unfair proof came on Alaskan Way in downtown. I found myself alone, no cars, with a mild cross-wind. I decided to see what kind of top speed I could achieve on the flat. I expected to top out at about 27mph without a vehicle to draft. Imagine my surprise watching my speedometer fly right by 27mph and head on into the 29’s? Being that close to a round, yet abritrary, number I only needed one last kick. I pushed harder and crested at 30.5mph before I ran out of burrito.

That is just plain ‘ol unfair…and fun.

* When I say unfair I don’t really mean ‘unfair’ in the traditional sense I only mean that it is gonna suck so bad for BopOp and anyone else I ride with (on a wedgie) until April. Suck because I am gonna maintain what may seem like a blistering pace and still look like I am sitting in a lounge chair. And I limit the suckishness to April because by then the ambient temperature will require removal of the fairing or the removal of all my clothing to avoid overheating. My thighs may look good and all but even my most ardent admirers would veto a pure Lady Godiva. And lastly, the implication that it will only really suck until April when the fairing comes off is because the first week after I take that thing off is gonna really suck for me. But tha’s okay, I’ll trade a week of lame April for a winter of warm.

Bunnies in the hizzaus

Nishi and Agirlbunny have taken up residence in the only free space available in our garage, namely where Ace used to sit. Oh that…let us divert a second.
Ace is what Abby named our new Toyota Sienna van. She really digs on the buttons that activate the sliding side-doors. Her sister does too and in fact, that is how she defines the vehicle.

The one that has the buttons.

When we asked her if she wanted what she wanted to name the van she thought for a second and settled quickly on Ace, after the character in the most recent Chicken Little movie.
She isn’t old enough to know the original Ace, the 1965 red Chevy truck that BopOp sold years ago. I wonder if the age-old moniker will stick on this new van that seems to lack a personality as yet?

Anyway, Nishi and Agirlbunny have displaced Ace for the time being…until The Daddy finishes the Rabbit tractor for the back yard. I am shooting for this weekend. I am going to split it into at least two phases so that the little rodents can be outside, sooner, during the day. I don’t want to hinge their exit from the dark* on finishing the entire structure. I will deliver something usable, as a pen, this weekend at least and then construct the sleeping quarters separately and connect the modules together at a later date as necessary. Iterative development. Oh yeah, and agile as well since I only have a rough idea how the structure will look at the end, my requirements are fluid to say the least.

* I say the dark because we sorta forgot that the garage is a cave and for the first week of their stay with us they may as well have been in the Antarctic for the amount of time the sun was up in their world. We have established a good family habit of turning off lights and I am loathe to fell-swoop that habit simply because a couple of rodents need light. I don’t want to leave the lights on all day (and inevitably all night on accident) nor do I want possessed little pink-eyed antarctic bunnies. I have motivation for my phased approach.

Endnote: I wrote this last night and I am posting it this AM at about 20% complete on the tractor/hutch/pen. I have already broken one drill bit. I now feel assured of success.

Seven thousand words

In an effort at maximizing the transfer of information I have decided to make this a pictorial post.
If a picture is worth 1000 words then this should be a humdinger. This chronicles the past three weeks or so.

A girl after my own heart.
In the waning days of summer Emma proves corn is no match for a determined tooth.

HeyHeyHey! Look it's ReRun!
Abby picks her clothes a week ahead of time and then sometimes modifies her choices depending on her daily mood. This went to school and you know…either way she’s stylin.

Lullaby League
Emma keeps things in perspective: Potty training? ‘I don wanna.’, Dancing? ‘where’s the music?’

Tic Tacs!
It’s hard to say which part she likes the most: Tic Tacs or Baway.

toofless in Seattle
Abby has been losing this tooth for nigh onto two months now…since before it was really loose at all. Through dogged determination and a fair amount of tooth grinding (ach, it’s like two bricks rubbing together I tell ya…gives me shivers) she plucked it out with her tongue on 10/2. She was very proud…and she kept it. She wears it around her neck in a plastic tooth necklace she got from her teacher at school.

This past weekend we went to visit The AmboyObserver and had a great time. Especially the girls who batted their eyes – literally – and convinced me to fill our new van with two little bunnies for the ride home. These pictures are pre-convinced pictures. I will have post-convinced pictures up later I am sure…maybe after I finish constructing the rabbit tractor that will be their home.
Abby uttered the classic line “Thanks Daddy! And they were FREE TOO!”
One bunny
Two bunny
Abby named her brown bunny Nishi.
Emma named her white bunny (with dark ears) Agirlbunny.

Note: the bunnies (and the ticks…yay!) that came home with us are not pictured. Those pictures were somehow corrupted so I will have to get some new shots when I can.

We TRI-ed it

As previously posted, in the warmer days of summer, I convinced Tony and Tom to swim, bike, and run with me, all in one day.
Now, in the colder days of near-fall, we did it.

A short recap before we get to the nitty gritty.
Cold, Wet, Windy, and Tired…pretty much in that order.

Cold
We arrived at oh-dark-thirty to get our stuff readied. We were about sixty minutes earlier than we needed to be. So we hung out and chatted with our support team. When we thought it was a good time to take off our warm clothes and wait for our turn to dive in…well…we were about sixty minutes earlier than we needed to be. So we froze and the lake water almost felt good…at least on our feet…when we actually did dive in.

Wet
Mind you it thought about raining all morning but never really got going and after standing in the misty cold mornin’ air for darn near three hours we got the green light…or should I say the air horn of death. The 1/4 mile swim only took about 11 minutes to complete but based on the number of times I was kicked, swallowed water, and well…shivered I would have guessed it at more like 20. In the end of that stage I was certainly ready to do something I was more familiar with; ride. Tony wasn’t talking to me, that’s how much fun he had.

Windy
I was most worried about getting really cold riding the bike after being wet. Turns out that wasn’t what I should have worried about; more on that later. The ride started out flat, and turned hilly quick. Tom and I were accustomed to our rides and quickly out-paced Tony. His conveyance, let’s call her Bessie, was borrowed, heavy, shift-challenged, and generally not well suited for a time trial. Milking maybe, time trial – no. After it became clear that we were too far ahead to simply slow down for Bessie to catch up Tom and I stopped altogether to maintain the brotherhood. That was the point after all; more, again, on that later. So finally Bessie made it ’round the mountain and promptly cursed us and our steeds.

At least he was talking to me again.

So we made our final descent more or less together (apparently Bessie’s udders were draggin’) and dismounted for what was billed as ‘the easiest part of the whole thing’…by a marathoner.

Tired
Lemme just say that after biking about 3,500 miles since February I was feeling, well…fresh after the bike section. A twelve mile ride to me is like chocolate milk, it goes down smooth. About 200 meters into the 5000 meter run I was acutely aware that my chocolate milk had gone sour with a consistency of cottage cheese. I guess I should have trained for this and this is what I should have worried about.

And loping along in front, just out of reach, like a school boy on recess was Tom. Run backwards in front of me again punk, see what happens. So the marathoner in training with his quaint advice

Just hold your fingers together at the tips, like you’re holding an egg.

and Billy Elliot prancing around just out of reach of my gasping fingers prodded me along like a recalcitrant mule. I think I would have rather had a clothespin on my lip and a pair of roller blades.

I am not a runner, I mean look at these bowlegs for chrissakes! Eeee-hawwww!

So I dragged my sorry butt up that long stretch of pavement footstep by footstep, wishing I could spin into another gear, dreaming of a world where wheels ruled the land when at last we rounded the final turn. And lo and behold, if there wasn’t some fight still left in me. We managed a furious and objectionable sprint for the finish line and finished bang, bang, bang – 1, 2, 3 – alphabetically.

That really made it all worthwhile though and even my immobile and lactically challenged legs today aren’t enough of a reason to keep me from another start.

And by cracky, we all did better than Jennifer Lopez. (Never mind that she did a longer tri.)

Place 111 (out of 143)
Swimming split – 0:10:20
transition – 8:34
Biking split – 1:06:35
transition – 4:08
Running split – 0:28:52
Total 1:58:29

Black Ruby

A little history:

We have a Roomba Red, a robotic vacuum that is red. Or rather we have a formerly-robotic and rather inert piece of red plastic that is indeed referred to as Ruby Dumbo.

Ruby Dumbo, may she rest in peace.

The name came about in something of a bidding war for names between myself and the older mermaid when she was not so ‘older’. Neither bid won outright and so the aforementioned, aforeworking, aforerobotic vacuum was named.

Along came another mermaid who, incidentally, has never known a day without robots [ok that is just weird]. Despite this life-long familiarity, she hasn’t lost the innate sensibility to be distrustful of the little thing that moves on it’s own and lacks a certain mammalian nurturing tendency. In fact, only recently has the wee mermaid been able to stay perched on the couch by herself while Ruby Dumbo doth clean. And she hath cleaned very well I might add.
>>|  Fast forward to current day.

Ruby Dumbo is now aforementioned and the service her little red exoskeleton so dutifully provided is sorely missed. So The Daddy jumped at the chance to introduce more time-sapping technology into a 21st century house…all in the name of time savings. Another story might be the historical view [in 50+ years] of all the time burned up with ‘time-saving’ technology. Another story I say, because this is not one of them.

Enter Black Ruby Dumbo, Black Ruby for short.

She's not a pirate...but she plays one on TV.

She isn’t mean, she’s just black and she does some things above and beyond Ruby Dumbo (besides vacuuming). She can self-dock (going to bed), adjust her height for floor conditions, not get tangled in tassles or cords, bring me coffee in the morning with cream and sugar, and project-manage the washer and dryer. But beyond all that, the most impactful thing for The Mermaids is that she talks.

I had only just opened her box (literally only opened the top) and Emma bolted for the couch with intent. She looked on in eerie fascination from a safe distance, asking whether she talked up until we woke her up. And talk she did. Black Ruby gave a little demo of the things she can do and then the lines were smudged to a smoky shade of gray as Emma began [still from the couch mind you] to have a conversation with Black Ruby.

Black Ruby…I have…look…at my…blue…toe..nails…Black Ruby.

Not much later, and with only a little hesitation she petted Black Ruby on her…shell [?]. It seems Black Ruby is part of the family now with all due respect to her predecessor Ruby Dumbo, may she rest in one piece.

Records…and not the vinyl ones.

Much like gambling I only report the fast times…but this time I earned it through persistent semi-fast times rather than lucking into a good result with a roll of the dice.

This morning I awoke late (alarm clock usability + up till 2AM + up again at 5:30AM with a crying mermaid) so I took off on my ‘bent with a mission: Try to make my 9:30 meeting.
I could do it, undoubtedly, going normal break-neck speed. I was, after all, leaving at 7:45 but considering the way I snapped out of bed when I heard the time…I was instantly in the mood for some abnormal break-neck speed. I still didn’t run stop-signs, that’s the third rule, right after “no women, no kids“.
So I pushed the whole way…only checking on my average and rolling time once (at the Mt Baker Tunnel). It was looking good, 41 minutes rolling time and something over 18 mph average. The true test would be how much sprint I had left in me for the stop-n-go through Seattle.
In the end I needn’t worry, I beat my best time (59:46) by over four minutes with a time of 55:38 and I rolled in at 8:55.
My average speed was a whopping (for me) 17.8 over the 16.8 mile distance which included the freakish cliff of a hill at Massachusets.
I was/am tired but I am recovering nicely.

If I ever get a Silvio I will have a pretty healthy benchmark to beat.

P.S. My meeting was canceled before I arrived.