It was a beautiful day and a great day to be out on a bike. Yesterday was just as good. So I know the distance is hard on all of us, but Emily and I get a lot out days like this.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Home
So I don't know if all of you guys know this but Emily and I really like living in Colorado. It's hard for us to be away from family and friends. This blog helps (and would help more if you jamooks would leave a comment or two using the comment button at the end of the posts) and trips home help a lot. When you guys get to come out here and see us that helps the most, for me (Jon) at least. Emily and I get a chance to share with you all the great things that we love about CO. That's sorda the plan with the blog as well. I had one of those "This is why I love Colorado" moments today on the way home from lunch. I pass this view every day going to and from work:
It was a beautiful day and a great day to be out on a bike. Yesterday was just as good. So I know the distance is hard on all of us, but Emily and I get a lot out days like this.
It was a beautiful day and a great day to be out on a bike. Yesterday was just as good. So I know the distance is hard on all of us, but Emily and I get a lot out days like this.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
POSram Crank Rant
***UPDATE***
So I pulled all the washers out of the system that weren't needed and put the whole thing back together. It seams to be working pretty well now. Got 50 miles in on it and felt good so I think I have it pretty well dialed in. Thanks for your concern.
***UPDATE***
So, most of you don't know that I have Sram Force Crank set. I doubt that any of you are as disappointed with it as I am. Being who I am and that I am superior to instruction manuals I put the crank on all by myself. It was great for a while. Then my knee started hurting. So I found that the drive side crank was 1/8" closer to the frame than the non-drive one (I am going to double check this again). Not a big deal, until your hip and ankle are fighting about where you leg goes. Just so you know your knee looses. So I went to my LBS (Local Bike Shop), mine happens to be former employer Golden Bear Bikes. My old roommate Tyler had some parts and suggestions for me. Back into the garage I crawled. After several attempts and a few chunks of fragile precious carbon fiber removed I again tucked my tail and sought answers. None were to be found on the Internet so I acquired a phone number for the saviors, so I thought, at Sram technical support. I was told there is absolutely nothing I could do to fix my problem and that there is no way to adjust the crank to meet the spec's that Sram defines. As an engineer I find this to be, well, infuriating. So, back together the crank shall go. I'll remeasure to verify if there is a discrepancy. Also the alignment of the frame comes into question as well and will be checked. Whew. Ok, I feel a lot better. Thanks for listening to that
In an update to the FGI I haven't driven my car all week. I figured out a way to get all my FF gear in the trailer for my bike and can take it to the fire house for my scheduled crews. Me and the trailer even survived a slight creek crossing. The route needs a bit of a tweak, sometimes the lake is there sometimes not, yesterday it was along with it's feeder creek. Still working on the compost bin thing, got some education coming down the pike on that.
So I pulled all the washers out of the system that weren't needed and put the whole thing back together. It seams to be working pretty well now. Got 50 miles in on it and felt good so I think I have it pretty well dialed in. Thanks for your concern.
***UPDATE***
So, most of you don't know that I have Sram Force Crank set. I doubt that any of you are as disappointed with it as I am. Being who I am and that I am superior to instruction manuals I put the crank on all by myself. It was great for a while. Then my knee started hurting. So I found that the drive side crank was 1/8" closer to the frame than the non-drive one (I am going to double check this again). Not a big deal, until your hip and ankle are fighting about where you leg goes. Just so you know your knee looses. So I went to my LBS (Local Bike Shop), mine happens to be former employer Golden Bear Bikes. My old roommate Tyler had some parts and suggestions for me. Back into the garage I crawled. After several attempts and a few chunks of fragile precious carbon fiber removed I again tucked my tail and sought answers. None were to be found on the Internet so I acquired a phone number for the saviors, so I thought, at Sram technical support. I was told there is absolutely nothing I could do to fix my problem and that there is no way to adjust the crank to meet the spec's that Sram defines. As an engineer I find this to be, well, infuriating. So, back together the crank shall go. I'll remeasure to verify if there is a discrepancy. Also the alignment of the frame comes into question as well and will be checked. Whew. Ok, I feel a lot better. Thanks for listening to that
In an update to the FGI I haven't driven my car all week. I figured out a way to get all my FF gear in the trailer for my bike and can take it to the fire house for my scheduled crews. Me and the trailer even survived a slight creek crossing. The route needs a bit of a tweak, sometimes the lake is there sometimes not, yesterday it was along with it's feeder creek. Still working on the compost bin thing, got some education coming down the pike on that.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The yardwork never ends!
So besides triathlon training, I've been work in the yard plenty too. All those Saturday's while Jon was off playing firefighter, I was sitting in the yard. And not always with a beer in my hand!
Most of my time is spent picking the leaves out of the lava rock.... oh what a joyous task. I seriously would rather scrub a bathroom than do this! Here's where I'm at... you can see on the left where the lava rock is a lovely leaf color, and on the right where it looks black, like lava rock! Underneath the tree is the worst spot of course!
Our first real "landscaping" were these barberry bushes we planted. They survived the winter and are growing again! I managed to not kill them! They are planted in the lava rock, and yes I'm not good enough to get ALL of the leaves out!
I planted some Dahlias a couple of weeks ago, and they are starting to come up as well! So guess I haven't killed those yet. Hopefully we'll get some pretty flowers out of these!
And finally, after visiting Indiana and seeing lots of Hostas, I decided to try some in our yard. I heard they are pretty easy to maintain and hardy as well. For now they are tiny baby hostas.... hopefully they become grownup hostas one day!Hope so, cause I can be pretty good at killing plants. Just wish that talent also worked on dandelions!
I planted 3 hostas total in front of the house, if you look VERY closely you can see 2 of them. (yes the grass here is a little shaggy.... but cutting the grass isn't my department!)
Most of my time is spent picking the leaves out of the lava rock.... oh what a joyous task. I seriously would rather scrub a bathroom than do this! Here's where I'm at... you can see on the left where the lava rock is a lovely leaf color, and on the right where it looks black, like lava rock! Underneath the tree is the worst spot of course!
Our first real "landscaping" were these barberry bushes we planted. They survived the winter and are growing again! I managed to not kill them! They are planted in the lava rock, and yes I'm not good enough to get ALL of the leaves out!
I planted some Dahlias a couple of weeks ago, and they are starting to come up as well! So guess I haven't killed those yet. Hopefully we'll get some pretty flowers out of these!
And finally, after visiting Indiana and seeing lots of Hostas, I decided to try some in our yard. I heard they are pretty easy to maintain and hardy as well. For now they are tiny baby hostas.... hopefully they become grownup hostas one day!Hope so, cause I can be pretty good at killing plants. Just wish that talent also worked on dandelions!
I planted 3 hostas total in front of the house, if you look VERY closely you can see 2 of them. (yes the grass here is a little shaggy.... but cutting the grass isn't my department!)
Sunday, June 1, 2008
What's been going on
So we haven't had a lot of time to work on the posts lately. Emily has been training her little butt off for a quickly upcoming triathlon. She is going to a class to get pointers twice a week. Here is a preview from last year’s tri.
In the picture Emily is making her transition from the swim to the bike portion of the race. She will be doing the Mini Haha race right here in Broomfield.Emily has also been handling a lot of the issues with Maggie. She is still sick and was causing a lot of extra work for her, taking away from the blogging time. Maggie was super lazy again and not feeling very active. Here is a pretty good shot of Maggie making our lazy dog look like a marathoner.
So, we decided that Maggie needed more attention than we could give her. Some days she needed to go out more often than once every 3 hours. So we have resigned from the Great Dane rescuing business. It was pretty sad for me to see Maggie go she is a great dog! But the lady taking care of her now will do a much better job than we ever could. Hope fully Maggie’s tumors, worms, and bad teeth will all get cleaned up and she’ll make someone a great companion.I have been busy helping out with the Louisville and Lafayette Fire Academy. So, pretty much, all of the Saturdays were taken up for me. That is finally finished up. I missed out on the picture and final burn building because I make poor decisions.They are a rag tag crew but they’ll do in a pinch. I guess I hadn't taken enough abuse so I decided to take a Wildland fire fighting class. That ended up being every bit of free time I had from Monday night to Sunday afternoon, including the final day of structure academy. But it was pretty cool. Here are some photos from the prescribed burn we did.
The pictures above are my crew watching a fire line and the one below is a fire whirl. That’s a tiny little tornado of fire. A prescribed burn is used to safely thin out the forest to it's appropriate levels without endangering any of the community around it. We got to see a lot of pretty fun stuff and sucked a lot of smoke.
After all that Emily and I had a couple of days to get our stuff together to go to Fort Wayne. Emily put together an informal BBQ for her Dad. It was a fun gathering of the closer friends and family to say “congratulations” for Mike’s retirement (Congrats Mike!). Hopefully he is stress free and spending less time picking out ties and more time picking out hobbies! The kids got together and got him a tent. It’s conditional though, he has to come out and go camping with us. As you can see Mikey Likes it!
I managed to sneak out and see some friends and take in the 500! Here I am with Carl, Justin and Me, from Right to left.
Don’t worry, it’s Carl’s hat, and it looks a lot better on him. Speaking of Carl, he met his Dream Girl, too bad he’s married and she didn’t really care that he existed!
It was a whirlwind trip to Indy, as they always are. Sorry I didn’t have time to meet with family. I caught enough guilt from Mom as it was, so don’t worry about that. It was sad to leave but nice to be in our house again. The offer always stands; the guest room is ready for company at all times! We just need like a couple hours notice so we can be home.
That pretty much covers what all we have been up to. Emily has been as busy as I have and we’ll both try and make more updates. Hopefully they won’t be this long!
In the picture Emily is making her transition from the swim to the bike portion of the race. She will be doing the Mini Haha race right here in Broomfield.Emily has also been handling a lot of the issues with Maggie. She is still sick and was causing a lot of extra work for her, taking away from the blogging time. Maggie was super lazy again and not feeling very active. Here is a pretty good shot of Maggie making our lazy dog look like a marathoner.
So, we decided that Maggie needed more attention than we could give her. Some days she needed to go out more often than once every 3 hours. So we have resigned from the Great Dane rescuing business. It was pretty sad for me to see Maggie go she is a great dog! But the lady taking care of her now will do a much better job than we ever could. Hope fully Maggie’s tumors, worms, and bad teeth will all get cleaned up and she’ll make someone a great companion.I have been busy helping out with the Louisville and Lafayette Fire Academy. So, pretty much, all of the Saturdays were taken up for me. That is finally finished up. I missed out on the picture and final burn building because I make poor decisions.They are a rag tag crew but they’ll do in a pinch. I guess I hadn't taken enough abuse so I decided to take a Wildland fire fighting class. That ended up being every bit of free time I had from Monday night to Sunday afternoon, including the final day of structure academy. But it was pretty cool. Here are some photos from the prescribed burn we did.
The pictures above are my crew watching a fire line and the one below is a fire whirl. That’s a tiny little tornado of fire. A prescribed burn is used to safely thin out the forest to it's appropriate levels without endangering any of the community around it. We got to see a lot of pretty fun stuff and sucked a lot of smoke.
After all that Emily and I had a couple of days to get our stuff together to go to Fort Wayne. Emily put together an informal BBQ for her Dad. It was a fun gathering of the closer friends and family to say “congratulations” for Mike’s retirement (Congrats Mike!). Hopefully he is stress free and spending less time picking out ties and more time picking out hobbies! The kids got together and got him a tent. It’s conditional though, he has to come out and go camping with us. As you can see Mikey Likes it!
I managed to sneak out and see some friends and take in the 500! Here I am with Carl, Justin and Me, from Right to left.
Don’t worry, it’s Carl’s hat, and it looks a lot better on him. Speaking of Carl, he met his Dream Girl, too bad he’s married and she didn’t really care that he existed!
It was a whirlwind trip to Indy, as they always are. Sorry I didn’t have time to meet with family. I caught enough guilt from Mom as it was, so don’t worry about that. It was sad to leave but nice to be in our house again. The offer always stands; the guest room is ready for company at all times! We just need like a couple hours notice so we can be home.
That pretty much covers what all we have been up to. Emily has been as busy as I have and we’ll both try and make more updates. Hopefully they won’t be this long!
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