The Secret Ingredient

Sometime in 2005, I believe during the short interval between leaving Socorro and moving to Durham that August, Dad offered me his spare can of anti-sieze compound. The spark plugs in the ChevOldsmobuiac had rusted into the block during it's long Virginia hibernation and years of dusty New Mexico roads. I did not wish to repeat the extraction battle with the new plugs in a few years.

"One can will last you a lifetime!" he opined.

I turned his kind offer down on the basis of not wanting to haul a container filled with a nasty, sticky, hard to clean substance across states in the same space as my precious backpack, treasured powermac, and clean underwear.

I did, however, end up purchasing my own can in 2006, when my attempts to repair sticking brakes were severely hampered by the rear wheel being firmly stuck to the axle, requiring days of bust'rloose, hammering, and rough driving with loose lug nuts to overcome.

Chaos through endurance.


Since that time, my small jar silvery Teflon slime has become something of a religion for me, as I apply it to every metal-metal contact that does not serve some critical function (e.g. like brake pads...). Lug nuts, the back of rims, sheet-metal screws, sparkplugs, the list goes on. 21 year old cars in humid climates simply want to rust in two directions: together and apart. A small coating of the silver stuff does wonders to keep things in workable pieces.

I'm beginning to suspect it should be standard equipment.

This weekend I was rotating the tires on the ChevOldsmoBuiac, and I looked into the can anti-seize, and realized that dad was wrong. I realize now that he has been aging cars in the bright Colorado sun for far longer than he did on the east coast, where 300 days of sun and low relative humidity provide active denial to the chemistry of oxidation.

Given my battles, I will likely run out in another 5 years.

It's Still Not Your Camera

Linda McCarty's Photos from the 60's

Amazingly good work.

Surprisingly, there are still places that are not rusted, even a year later.

13 year old oil filter in a 21 year old car.

Interesting shadows and tortured metal.

Varicose veins.

Grilled cheese sandwich with a slab of meatloaf on it.

The dog nuzzles his snazzy new pad.

Big box of turtles

That's not an elephant.

This is what the flowers see.

Orange orange orange orange orange. Nothing rhymes with orange. Except orange, of course.

24 ga. Fuckup.

Three weeks and still no name...

...but we call it the motorpickle from time to time.

Big Light Box

One of the rooms in my brother's house is nearly empty, containing only a bed, two speakers, and few personal affects. It faces east, and the blinds are drawn closed.

It is a giant light box.

Chinese Fire Drill

Part of the morning ritual is the morning walk. Sometimes it's the morning drag.

It is on these ritual walks that humiliating things happen.

Today, the Dog nabbed a piece of grass, and instantly starting to choke on it. He braced against the leashed, hacked, gagged, then wretched.

A few pieces of soggy kibble splashed on the sidewalk.

He briefly sniffed, then ate the surprise treat.

Chinese fire drill.

Bike Chain Cleaning

I have been neglecting a lot of things I wish I weren't. I blame the dissertation, but it's likely more than that at work.

Among the things that had gone too long was the bikes drive chain. It needed a good cleaning. The crud kicked up from 18 miles a day during the summer in Dover for 2 years, and then 8 miles daily last year had mixed with constant re-applications of lube to produce an evil schmutz that seemed to get on everything.

"I get greasy just looking at your bike," she had said.

I finally picked up the sword, erm, can of brake cleaner and a tooth brush, and got to work. Working on bikes is far easier than cars. The parts are small and light, and everything you need fits into a small toolbox.

The crankset and cassette came clean pretty easily, but the chain was a real travesty. I soaked in goo-gone, wiped it clean, soaked it in a washtub with hot water and dishsoap, scrubed it with a toothbrush several times, changed the water and did it again. Then, in an act of desperation (everything it touched was still getting greasy!), I put it in the dishwasher.

I want to say that helped, but the white towels still had light grey smudges when I handled the chain. At least it was metal-white, and not black. I thought it was black-anodized before. Apparently not.

I had heard that high-teflon lubes were essentially permanent. I now have to agree.

I re-coated it with a light coating Pedros Extra Dry, gave everything a spin, then toweled off the drips. The drive train feels much lighter now. It's so nice, clean, and mechanical now. That should have been done along time ago.

I was stupid and pushed a crossbar completely out of the chain, then dinged the bar trying to shove it back in neccisitating the removal of a link. Other then that, the drivetrain is in surprisingly good condition. I have likely doubled (or more!) the milage since replacing the stock parts (circa 1995) with the current ones in 2006, and I would have expected concommitant wear. Perhaps the combination of riding on streets and better components has resulted in a longer life span.
 
Certainly, there are parts that are wearing. The sound of grit is audible in the bottom bracket. The rubber bearing cups are dry-rotting. The rear derailure in particular is suffering from my exuberant shifting. It's loose on its mounting, and both gears have considerable play. The tires are a little questionable, but they are not giving regular flats.

Let it roll, I say, let it roll.

 

Red Sky At Morning

July 19, 2010. The Girly, examining an ominous sky.

Revitalized

My then-future-mother-inlaw commented that everything here looked new.

I hadn't really thought about it those terms. Cheap. Suburban. Overbuilt. Dry. Cultureless. Boring.

But not new.

Of course, she was right. I have hundreds, if not thousands of photos of things in New England that are rusting/cracking/drying/rotting and generally in some advanced state of decay. Here, things don't usually last long enough to do that. If something looks old, the HOA throws a fit, or someone buys it, bulldozes it, and puts in condos or a McMansion and creates an HOA.

In Dover, a house was worth plenty just where it stood, no longer how long it had stood their. In fact, tearing it down risked the wrath of the National Historic Register Nazis or some such group. The only lingering question was how much to charge for rent. It wasn't old, it was quaint.

I keep finding myself a little homesick for Dover. I miss my friends, I miss the coffee shops and places that you can walk to (and want to walk to). I miss having interesting things to look at. The irony is that I spent so long dreading New England and missing Socorro, though after a while, I made some friends and figured out how to have fun. It's how things go, I suppose.

They're Trying To Kill Me

The downside of commuting by bike is that cyclists are second class citizens on the roads of the US. Or at least, I am. Even with yellow cat litter tubs and blinking lights, people still can't seem to keep their cars in check.

Just yesterday I almost got creamed twice in the slolum (the part of my ride where I cross a highway interchange).

I am beginning to think that I need to contribute to bicycle advocacy. A fundamental force that I think I am trying to reckon with is that using a bicycle as transportation is viewed as a recreational activity and not as a real mode of transportation. . As a result, cyclist are a nuisance novelty that don't get respect. You have to follow laws written for vehicles orders of magnitude heavier than you, that have fancy safety equipment like bumpers and air bags. But the traffic lights won't even trigger at an intersection. No provision is made to think about maintaining momentum, and no one seems to want to prune back the bushes that poke out onto the shoulder.

People don't really believe that you can be a real american without a car

But they're wrong. It can be done. And, the more people that do it, the easier it gets.

If more people use mass transit, there will be more mass transit that will go more places. If more people use bikes, there will be more bike lanes. The way communities are built will change. Things tend to affect each other.

To an extent, they already are. Sales of small, fuel efficient cars are through the roof (source). This saves a lot on gas, allowing us to maintain the transportation status quo for a while longer, but I think this is a doomed experiment. The price of gas is not going to stabilize at $4 or $5 a gallon and rest there for years like $1 gas did. With 7 billion people on the planet, there is far more competition for energy. People simply want to go places. At $10/gallon, it will cost the same to fill the small car as it did to fill the suburban it replaced. What will happen to those small cars then?

That Thing I Was Meaning to Tell You About

It was the epitome of an awkward moment.

My bride was standing on my right. The officiant on my left. 8 family members milled nervously. Even in the shade of the trees, the temperature had reached into the 90's (°F), and the flowers would soon be wilting, followed by everyone else if we were not careful. However, there was an unexpected delay; two of my erstwhile groomsmen had decided there was something far more important to do that absolutely could not wait. We could plainly see them trashing the ChevOldsmoBuiac in the parking lot.

I nervously tried to make conversation whilst streamers, shoe polish, and various things were glued. Lovely.

After they were satisfied with their "work", we finally got everyone together and quiet. I stood over here. She faced me, standing over there. We looked at each other, and in a few minutes, we were married, and our family surrounded us, blowing bubbles.


From there, we crossed back and forth across the routes of Cornwallis, Lee, and countless others, dogged by August heat in the last days of May. Somewhere beyond Dulles the city stops and the farms and forest start, and it's fun to be alive and outside again. There are twisty back roads, places to explore, and quiet inns with air conditioning. Though the baking might melt chocolate bars and people, but it is good for wine grapes.

To be fair, our wedding small and simple as it was, went far better than I ever imagined it would.

I am very happy.

Dear Deer

Note to self:
Pile of data (pl.)
A datum (s.)
A data point (s.)

You cannot just have a data.

There's something I want to tell you

And that is that I am not dead.

But, it's been a busy couple of weeks. On May 27th, I had an particularly average ride home in 90 degree F heat. Yesterday I was trying to remove the drawbar from the ChevOldsMoBuiac by rocking it while the draw bar was tied to a tree with a nylon strap, and intermittently hitting it with a great big hammer.

That made the tail lights flicker.

I have so much I want to tell you.

But it probably won't be tonight.

Flamingos Grazing.

Before I killed the grass .

Another Dead Bee.

Girly.

Brain in a Bucket.

Another worthless flower photo.