gerry gainford
The new Mitzi
My last bike died a long, slow and painful death last year and I didn’t get around to replacing it until this weekend. Say hello to Mitzi 2.0, a 2005 Kawasaki Concours. Going to test it out properly next week.
Skyscraper – the movie for our time.
We went to see Skyscraper at the weekend. Excellent, brainless fun. Great overly-clichéd The Rock movie. The first five minutes gives the whole thing away, you know who the bad guy is going to be, you know the secret to saving the day. Everything is obvious but still great fun. Go see it.
But why is it the movie for our time? It teaches us an important lesson. Long ago, Sean Connery showed us that if you want to take over the world, you shouldn’t have an unnecessarily long and complicated way to kill the secret agent. Especially after you explain your evil plans in depth.
Since then baddies the world over have learned from this. Want to take over the world? Shoot 007 in the head and we’re good. Slow death with sharks? You’re going to prison.
Now the new lesson is best shown with this diagram.
Are you planning to take over the world / destroy the world / steal something?
So why is this the movie for our time?
Well these guys didn’t look at my handy flowchart.
About to get their asses kicked.
About to kick asses.
Real men don’t do dishes
A man’s place is not in the kitchen dammit, it’s in front of the tv, drinking beer and watching sportsball. So when I bought a house and discovered dishes didn’t clean themselves it was time to earn man-points and not do them. As herself wasn’t going to do them, there was only one thing for it, a robot beer glass washer. A robot’s place is in the kitchen.
So we checked the internets and found a dishwasher on sale and waited for it to come in. “We offer installation” said Lowes. At a price. No Real Man ™ would need that. We have tools and things. We have YouTubes. We can do this. I looked at the video, it looks easy.
So then it arrived and the instruction manual was in some kind of kitchen speak. I don’t know, my place is watching sportsball, not washing dishes so I don’t speak kitchenspeak. Anyway it was a lot more trouble than the two minute video I’d watched on the Google machine.
I called Lowes back. “Oh we don’t install them, we just replace them.” I called a place that repaired them. Nope. No one installs dishwashers. Sure, they’ll charge you a hundred and seventy bucks to swap one out, but a new one? Nope.
So I found the longer video. Manly plumbers with tool belts and ass cracks that go through it step by step. I made a trip to Home Depot for a T-junction pipe. And then another for a thingey-ma-bob that connects a 1/4″ line to a 3/8″ line or something like that. And then another for a GFI socket. I tripped switches, I created sparks as I wired things, I connected hoses. Leaks were sprung. I found it wouldn’t fit because my counter was 1/4″ too low. I bought my first angle grinder, a fancy ass one with a diamond blade and filled the kitchen with dust. Next up is a robot dust remover machine. I pushed, I shoved. I cut some more and grinded some angles and shoved it in. I discovered what PTFE pipe tape is.
Leaks stopped, taps got turned on. Things were plugged in. Sparks stopped sparking. Dishes were given to my cleaning robot and a day after I started things got cleaned.
Just a manly guy with power tools having a beer and thinking about sportsball while robots clean the dishes.
Ripping down walls
I’ve been slowly working away at this. All the furniture, cabinets and the shower is gone. I decided to take off the interior shell too. Get to check the insulation, make it easier to rewire everything. First thing, there are a million rivets. I’ve been drilling them out slowly one by one.
What originally looked like smaller sheets are actually folded into each other so come off as one huge sheet.
Wall off and rolled up.
Wheel arch uncovered.
Insulation off.
Progress
I’ve been chipping away at the trailer most weekends. I go there for a few hours and pull out more stuff. Last week I removed the shower and the last wall so now nearly everything is gone. I’ve since cleared up the junk and lifted the carpet which makes a huge difference. Really yuuge. Bigly even.
For now here’s a 22 second video of the mess I’ve made. Pretty happy about getting that shower out and the wall with a million rivits. Now I have an excuse to be smelly.
Best Wife Ever
Once again Urs has outdone herself with the Advent Calendars. From beer advent calendars to beer and Star Wars Lego advent calendars we now have the whiskey calendar. Each day has a 30ml bottle, sealed with wax for that authentic feel (and to piss you off as you try to remove it), of an American whiskey.
Since I’m leaving for Ireland on the 21st I have to start early. Last night’s Balcones Texas Single Malt was quite good. Cheers.
What was I thinking?
10 miles? Really? What the hell was I on? I even decided on this before California decided to legalise weed.
Anyway, I’ve been training for it. Mostly. I built up to 3 miles and then just hit the wall constantly. Which isn’t meant to happen at 3 miles. Using the same plan as I did for the half marathon 2 years ago in Vancouver. This time though I had extra time to prepare and it’s not working out. Managed 5 miles on Sunday before I stopped due to rain. And I’m going to run in Ireland?
Now relying on Ireland legalising speed / coke and replacing the water stops with lines. It’s going to be a tough 10 miles.
Couch to 10 miles
I’m going to be back in Ireland for Christmas and what better way to work off the turkey and meet up with people than running 10 miles. So I signed up for a race, a 10 mile in Ardagh, Co Longford on the 27th. Want to come join in the madness torture fun? You can sign up here.
So now I have to start training, the full Couch to 10 mile. I’m looking at the Hal Higdon plan here. So far I’m just back from a weekend in Canada, sitting around, drinking and eating. So I have the couch part of the whole plan going well.
De – Construction
The first job was always going to be to get everything out. With a hammer and a screwdriver I filled the car with pieces of cabinets and seats.
Just drive slowly past any bins I see on the street.
After unscrewing a half a million screws that were over my head my right hand was shot…. and it was my strong one…. While a crowbar and a large hammer would have been faster, I needed to unscrew everything from the walls or it would rip larger holes in the shell.
I looked at getting battery power tools, a drill, a saw, whatever but instead found a 1500W inverter that I could connect to the car battery. What a difference. Ripping out shelves with a powersaw and taking out a million screws with a drill is much easier. I held aloft my magic inverter and screamed “By the power of Greyskull…. I have the poweerrrrrrrr.” Yoda and Nalls declinded to be Battlecat.
Come on Yoda, turn into Battle Cat.
Anyway, after 3 days I’ve removed a little less than half.
There was a bed, a cabinet and some shelves here a minute ago.
Vanishing cabinet and seats.
I may get boring…
… So I’ve created a new blog. See the link at the top for Silver Streak. Well that’s this trailer that I’m going to be fixing up, attempting to fix up, OK wasting my time on for the next while and I may blog about it. Very boring unless you like that kind of stuff.
