Year: 2012

Mountain Biking Mama

Lori and I went up north for our 11th anniversary, and took the mountain bikes. This is the first time Lori has been on a mountain bike since before the kids were born - maybe even before we moved to Texas. She did good though! All that Zumba is paying off!

Carter’s First Day of (Public) School

Carter's first day of public school was a couple of weeks ago. Doesn't she look excited? She's been enjoying it so far. She gets to ride the bus, which she was pretty stoked about. She's starting to make some new friends too, which is good - almost all of the kids from the preschool she used to go to are from other towns, and don't go to her new elementary school.

Bike Work Stand

Can I still call this a work 'stand' if it doesn't actually stand on the ground...? Lately I've been needing to adjust both my front and read derailleurs, and have been trying to figure out how to jury-rig a work stand without shelling out a couple of hundred bucks for a half-decent one. I read a few ideas online this morning, one of which mentioned that 3/4" black steel plumbing pipe is actually the exact same diameter as a seat post. Bingo! What I did was attach a 1" pipe flange to the main beam that runs through the garage, and I threaded a 30" x 1" pipe into it. At the end of this pipe is a 1" to 3/4" reducer coupling and then a 6" length of 3/4" pipe which I slide into the frame and clamp using the seatpost. It's very rigid and sturdy, and when I'm done working on the bike I can just unscrew the whole thing from the pipe flange and put it on a shelf!

Vacation 2012 – North Sugarloaf

I climbed up North Sugarloaf - at the northern end of Crawford Notch - while we were up north this year. On the way up, I looked around for the old, open-pit mine up there. I had brought along a brick hammer, and managed to find some nice samples of both white and smoky quartz, as well as a couple of nice pieces of feldspar. Pretty fun! I also found somewhat down the hill a ways off the trail a big chunk of solid white quartz as big as my torso! It would have been awesome to bring that thing home to put in the garden, but it easily weighed a few hundred pounds - so not likely to fit in my backpack. :)

Vacation 2012 – Echo Lake

This year we went to Echo Lake a couple of times (first year we've tried it), and really enjoyed it. The scenery is intense, with that giant cliff face right behind the lake. The water wasn't very cold at all, either. I kept letting Sean stand on my shoulders, then I would crouch and stand up quickly, and he would try to jump off at the peak of my push. It was sending him really high into the air sometimes - I'd swear he was at least 6 feet off of the water on a few of best ones!