A gearhead's proudest moment...

Today my wife had an all-day meeting for the Social Studies honors program that she's teaching this year. It was a teacher inservice. They were working on developing curriculum for a part of the class where they teach kids about how different systems. The idea is to teach kids about how different inputs are combined, acted upon by a system and result in a desired effect and additional outputs.

The person giving the inservice had this group of 25 Social Studies teachers the example of an automibile engine. She asked about inputs, processes and outputs.

My amazing wife raised her hand and when called upon, described the entire function of a 4 cycle, internal combustion engine. The person giving the inservice was skeptical and asked her specific questions, thinking that she didn't know her stuff. Laura answered all of the questions in detail.

At first many people asked her how she knew that. She said her husband was a car freak and that it just rubbed off on her. The whole group then got a good laugh out of that.

I'm so proud. My wife is a freak. ;)

Pete

Race Car of the Day 1/25/2008

Happy Friday!!!

 

American Muscle wins the Race Car of the Day today. It was a tough choice.  There was a Viper RT10 that had been used as an agricultural modifcation tool that was pretty tempting.  The price was right for sure.  There was an Ex Michael Andretti Indy Car that was definitely in the mix too...  It would be cool to show up at SCCA Solo Nats in one of those things...   But the winner for sure is the 1994 Z06 Vette.

 

Enjoy and I'll come up with some more tomorrow.

 

Pete

Street Car of the Day: 1/25/2008

Only 11 more months of Christmas Shopping left!  You can use my "Street Car of the Day" or even the "Race Car of the Day" blog entries as a shopping guide for the ones you love.  Hopefully I'll make SOMEONE's list this year. :D

 

The Race Car of the Day blog idea was such a HUGE success yesterday (9 people read it.  No-one commented) that I thought I'd add in a street car of the day blog entry too.  We'll see how this goes.

 

The choice for today is a BMW 1600 from the late 60s.  Most of the time I realy don't like old cars that are updated with some modern stuff in them, but this thing could be my ideal daily driver.  Obviously this owner has put in a ton of work on this car.  It is pretty dang cool. 

 

This Austin Mini Cooper may be one of the best that I've seen in a long time.  It freaking rocks!!!  Some might be tempted to put this under "Race car of the day" but not me.  That thing has daily driver written all over it!!!!

 

If you're looking at this blog entry and the links no longer work, that is because they're links to e-bay auctions.  These entries are definitely "You snooze and you lose" in nature. 

 

See you later.

 

Pete

 

 

Race car of the day. 1/24/2008

Welcome to a new feature at AUSOE.Blogspot.com.  It is called Race Car of the Day.  I love Ebay and thought I'd post some of my favorites as I look at different race cars that people are selling. At times I might venture out of the "race" area of interest, but I think most anything posted here will be at least a good candidate for a race car.

 

Today was a tough choice for me.

 

There's a Spec E30 car or a 57 Bel Air Pro street car. 

 

I'm leaning towards the Spec E30.

 

Very Interesting. :D

 

Pete

Smithereens at the State Theatre

Every year the band The Smithereens play the State Theatre in Falls Church, VA... about 10 minutes from our house. I've been saying that we should go see them for the last 5 years. Tonight we did. OH MY GOD were they great.

We prepared for the show pretty well. We listened to their first three CDs as well as their Beatles tribute CD all afternoon. Last night we watched "A Hard Day's Night" on DVD, which got us in a musical mood.

All the old songs that we love were performed perfectly. They did 4 songs from their Beatles tribute CD. They played "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who and even gave "Sweet Home Alabama" a try.

After 28 years together, they still obviously enjoy performing. They were having as much fun as we were.

The State Theatre is an awesome music venue. The 1940s movie theater was converted to a music hall in the late 90s. The accoustics are great. You can reserve a table and have dinner and drinks before the show if you like.

By far the best place to be is the floor right in front of the stage. We arrived at 8:30 for a 9pm show, walked down and were 10 feet from the front of the stage. They started a little late, but played for 2 hours straight.

After the show we stood around out front for about 10 minutes. The band walked out and we got to shake hands with them and talk for a few minutes before they headed off to sign autographs.

What an amazing night.

I can't wait till the come back next year.

Pete

National Trolley Museum

Oy folks.

We did a little touristing this winter and one of the places we found was the National Trolley Museum. It is pretty dang cool! I was a little confused by touring the museum at night, but once we got there, it all made sense. Those crazy Christians and their train obsessions.

Anywho.. You can read about it HERE.

Later! Pete

My new bike frame... A sign of how much I'm working.

I have a new bike frame.  It was ordered in February.  It arrived Friday.  I picked it up Saturday.  I unwrapped it.  I looked at it.  I showed it to Jason and Brian.  I stuck it in the basement.  I confirmed that the paint indeed glows in the dark.  I haven't looked at it since. 

 

It is a Niner RIP9 full suspension frame.  Google will get you all you want to know about the frame and more. I've got about 60% of the parts that I need to build it.  I probably could put it together with crap I have laying around.  That wouldn't do the frame justice. 

 

I need to buy brakes, cranks and handlebars. I'll probably get that stuff early next year.

 

Okay.  Time to get back to work.

 

Pete

No Pants, No Money, No Job.

Roy Pearson, the judge who brought a $67,000,000.00 law suit against a dry cleaner for losing his pants lost his job yesterday.

While I wish evil on no man, I'm smiling a little inside.

Hugs and Kisses,

Pete

IPOD Touch

I got one. I like it. It is pretty darn cool. The 8gig seems to do all that I need it to... if the word "need" can actually be used along with an IPOD.

Pete

Oh My God

I've got THIS song in my head and I can't get it out.  Oddly enough, I don't really mind it.  :D  It is the song that turned me on to Lily Allen and I am enjoying that too.

 

Hugs and Kisses.

 

Pete

I'm slightly less boring this weekend.

I didn't hardly work all weekend.... only for a few hours Sunday night. I spent more time working on my car than on my laptop this weekend.

La and I went to the sprawling metropolis of Clifton, VA to be tourists. It didn't suck.

We played poker with friends Saturday night. I was exhausted enough that people mistook my face for a good poker face. I freaking cleaned up! I walked out of John's house $13.05 richer. I'm going to invest it.

Monday morning was kind of a rude awakening. Did I mention that I HATE daylight savings time? The Fuzzbutts (aka "cats") just don't adjust to new schedules that quickly.

Later!
Pete

I never realized how lame American Football was until today.

Hey doods.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I still watch football when I can (meaning when the Broncos are playing).  There's a new thing on DirecTV that takes an NFL game and deletes all the time between plays and boils it down to the actual time between when the ball is snapped and when the guy is tackled.  They include a brief shot of the referee if there is a penalty or a challenge.  They cut out ALL stop time.  Any guesses on how long these programs are for a football game that has a broadcast of 3 hours? 

 

 

The answer is......

 

30 minutes. 

 

Kinda adds a little perspective on the game, eh?

 

Pete

The Spork of the Gods.

I've had numerous "my life was incomplete before I found this" finds lately. I wasn't sure I could go another day without the LED bathroom faucet that makes the water coming out apear to be blue.

That pales in uselessness when compared to the titanium spork.

I'm going to have to order a few of these. They're just too cool.

Love,

Pete

The Politically Correct way to tell someone that you're staring at their ass.

Okay!  So I'm standing in line to get my coffee this morning and there's a rather striking looking Latina in line in front of me.  I somehow managed to notice that her Metro-rail pass is about to fall out of her back pocket. 

 

I am faced with a serious dilemma.  If I tell her that her metro pass is about to fall out of her pocket, it will be EXTREMELY obvious that I've been staring at her ass.  If I don't tell her, she could lose her pass and it could be a real hardship for her.  It wasn't just a metro card, it was one of the passes that give you lots of access and is paid for by your employer.  Those things are valuable and a pain to replace. 

 

I continued to stare at metro card for a while longer (the line was suprisingly long for 7:15am) while I tried to decide what to do. 

 

In the end, I turned to the woman behind me and asked her if she could tell this Latina that her Metro pass was about to fall out of her pocket.  That worked out great!  The Latina chick now thinks that the woman behind me is a perv, and the woman behind me thinks I'm a perv.  No-one is going to believe the woman behind me if she tells them that I was staring at this other woman's but because she is the one that acted on her perverted thoughs. Not me. :D 

 

It all worked out well in the end. 

 

Love,

 

Pete

I am Alpha Cat (Part 2)

You may remember a post back in May about me establishing myself as Alpha cat in our household.  When we were gone for 2 weeks in Europe, I thought that Mao would re-establish his status as alpha cat.  It didn't really happen though.  I came home and moved right back into my top cat status.

 

Over the last week or so, he has been trying to assert his dominance.  He's been misbehaving, beating up his sister and generally being a naughty cat.  I needed to assert my alpha status again. 

 

When he does something that he thinks is worthy of demonstrating his alpha cat status, he rubs his face against some stationary item in the house to get his scent on it and mark it as under his ownership.  I decided that just scolding him and locking him in the basement when he misbehaves isn't enough.  I need to establish my ownership of the house. 

 

Whenever I do something that I think is worthy of being alpha cat, I then rub my face, neck and sometimes armpits on some stationary household item near where I am.  This got an immediate reaction from Mao.  He came right up and rubbed on the thing that I just claimed as my own.  I rubbed again and when he went to rub on it, I scared him away. 

 

After doing this for 2 days, he actually started recognizing me as alpha cat.  Truly weird. 

 

I took this a step farther and decided that when he's bad, I need to mark him as my property.  You can't imagine how loud Laura laughed when she walked into the sun room to see me rubbing the cat under my armpit.  Mao didn't think it was so funny.  He kinda ran away to take a bath. 

 

It is a good thing to be king. :D

 

Love,

 

Pete

No baby birds were harmed in the preparation of this post.

Goooooooooooooooooooooood MORNING VIETNAM!!!!!!!!

Sorry. I've always wanted to saythat. :D

I was working on Squirrel Girl's bike last night and I thought a few things were worth mentioning in regards to this project.

1. I hate tubeless tires. It wasn't hard getting the old ones off. Cleaning the Stan's sealant out of the tires isn't too bad. Building wheels on the Mavic 819 rims is freaking annoying though. I hate the little threaded nipple cups (sounds kinky, eh?). The wheels turned out awesome in the end. I think she'll like them. Setting the bead isn't bad at all with a compressor. (see baby bird comment below)
2. I hate old Thomson stems. That wedge thing is stoopid. It is too easy to overtighten them.
3. Titus makes a pretty damn nice bike!!!! I really like the suspension design and the way the pivots are built. I'm impressed. I'd consider an Asylum or RAcerx29er as a future bike.

The baby bird comment comes from the fact that a little bird nested just above my air compressor in the carport. I needed the compressor to set the bead on the tubeless tires. Had I turned the compressor on, the birds would have been seriously traumatized. Instead, I drove to the gas station and used their compressor.

I feel good about myself. :D

No the freaking little birds won't shut up! It drives the cats crazy.

Pete

Bad case of Morning Legs.

After last night's Wakefield ride, my commute to work this morning was less than supper inspired.  The downhill spinning was great.  I didn't have a lot of horsepower for the two steep climbs though.  It will be interesting to see how the ride home goes.  Getting more sleep at night would help too. 

 

Pete

Weird-assed shoes.

Hi people. :D

I saw these on the internet recently. I was thinking to myself, "Self? What kind of freak would buy a pair of these?"

Vibram Five Fingers Shoes

Oh yeah... I would

They're actually really comfortable. They're a little tough to put on, but they will replace my old Keens. :D

Pete

The Commuting Bike Upgrades

Oy oy. 

 

I haven't talked about this bike for a while and it has evolved a little.  I'm on a blog simplification kick, so I'm gonna post this here instead of on my wrench blog.  

 

At the end of last riding season, I decided to build a dedicated commuting bike for this year.  I like riding the road bike, but quite honestly it I don't get a full workout in the time that I have to ride to and from work.  The ability to coast makes it a little too easy and at 5am I'm not motivated enough to keep pedaling to push the speed and thus the workout value up.  At the end of the day, I'm dogged enough that I don't really feel like hammering home.  Additionally, I shouldn't be riding faster on the bike path since that is't really safe. 

 

The new commuting bike is a fixie.  I took an old MTB frame and put a bunch of old parts on it.  I have a 44 tooth ring on the White Ind. ENO cranks and an Eno rear hub to take up the chain slack.  Most of the other parts are ancient mountain bike stuff. I put 700c wheels on it even though it is designed for 26" wheels.  I used a Paul's BMX brake up front that allows me to line up the brake pads with the larger diameter rim.  It was originally built with flat bars and bar ends. I've got full fenders on the thing and they're great on days like yesterday.

 

I liked this build a lot.  I finally got the gearing right (44x16) so that I could fly down the hills and still have enough power to crank up them too.  Riding the fixie is a lot more of a workout and I'm not really going any faster.... in fact my commute time is a bit longer with the fixie than it was on the road bike. 

 

This week I made a change.  I wanted some more hand positions.  For road bike positioning (very low handlbars so that my back is flatter and I'm a bit more aggressive) makes it a little uncomfortable to just have flat bars.  I like the ability to crank up hills with them, but I needed more variety and the ability to stretch out if I want to. 

 

My pals at Speedgoat hooked me up with some 45cm-wide drop bars that will fit my MTBstem (made by Nitto).  They're AWESOME!  I put some 1980s vintage Dura-Ace brake levers on it so that I can grab the hoods when I'm out of the saddle.  That seemed to work great.  I raised the stem up a hair so that I had a little higher bar since the drop bars stretch me out a little more.  That ended up being almost perfect.  I might go for a slightly shorter stem.  We'll see.

 

I really prefer the feel of the drop bars for almost everything.  The positioning is much more intuitive for me on a road bike.  The one thing I definitely noticed is that they're not as wide as my old flat bars.  As a result I don't have the power up the hills like I did before.  I noticed it a little on the early morning climbs yesterday morning.  I noticed it a TON on the climbs on the way home.  It is going to definitely take more arm strength for me to stomp up the hills with this thing.  I guess that is good.  For now I'll go slower up the climbs but with time I'll hopefully get better technique and stronger upper body. 

 

I'm super happy with how the bike has turned out.  All I need is a basket on the front and I'll be set to go.  That will probably have to wait until I return from vacation in July. :D

 

See you on the trails.

 

Pete

Flattracking the Fixie.

Oy oy.

It was rainy and wet for the commute this morning and Dr. Einstein left the tire pressure set at 120psi for the ride in. DUMB MOVE! I didn't crash though. It was by the grace of god that I didn't though.

As always with an incident like this, there are many factors that contribute to the crash.

1. It was wet and slick.
2. This part of the trail has a groove parallel to the direction of travel and lots of paint on the pavement.
3. There was this headphone-wearing pedestrian walking erratically that jumped 2' to the left when he finally heard my bell.

Fortunately I was taking it easy today and moving pretty slowly. I jumped to the left to miss this guy and my front wheel skidded a little. The back tire dropped into a groove that is about the same width as the tire. That sent the front end sliding a bit more. As my weight shifted, I instinctively clicked my right foot out to balance. The back wheel jumped to the left a little. I countersteered just a bit and somehow the tires got grip and I straightened back up. The left foot kept pedaling as though nothing had ever happened. I clipped my right foot in and went on.

I don't honestly know how I stayed up. It was sheer dumb luck.

I lived to ride another day. :D

Pete