Welcome to My Underground Lair
It's currently snowing outside. I don't mean snowing as in "a nice white covering to remind us it's still winter" snowing. No, this is "I can no longer see my cars, the basement windows are obscured, and the mailbox appears to be covered by 2 feet of snow" snowing. It's a real mess. So with that, I am confined to the house today until which point it stops snowing, when I will proceed outside for the better part of 2 hours to shovel this shit up. Having already eaten breakfast, failed at installing Linux on an old PC (CD-ROM not recognized as a boot device), dismembered the front brakes of the road bike and cleaned all 32 pieces, jogged for 40 minutes, eaten lunch, and brewed 2 cups of espresso (blog about that surely to come in future episodes), I am now left with the 9 hours of the day. So I probably have enough time to write this Underground Lair entry I took pictures for a week ago.
Here's a picture of the basement, my current (cold outside) and future (pregnant wife) home:
I recommend clicking on the image, which will take you to the flickr page that hosts the image. There, you will be able to see all the notes I added. Since I just signed up for this free image hosting account, I went nuts with the silliness. You can be sure that in the future, I will probably tail off a bit. But right now, it's still a novelty. Thus, notes.
That's one view of the basement. Missing from that is the TV, the treadmill, and the coffee roaster, which also helps form part of my impenetrable Underground Lair, aka The Basement by mere mortals. Standing guard over my workbench (which you can scarcely make out in the above picture) are the Mythological Creatures known as The Two Homers:
It may not be a good idea, but they stand guard over the beer-in-waiting lineup, and some random bike parts sitting on the workbench:
This is the collection of the beer I cannot currently fit into the fridge. When I drink one of the good ones, I replace it with one of the warm ones above. I try my hardest to buy all my beer warm, because I like to have variety and I don't have a whole hell of a lot of room in the fridge:
In general, I keep 2 of every beer I have cold. There are 2 reasons for this. First, I might want to drink 2 of the same thing, though this rarely happens. Since I tend to only drink 1-2 on any given night, I usually opt to switch up the second beer, unless I'm going to post a review on beeradvocate.com, which I don't get around too all that often. In general, I probably don't have enough drinking experience to go on. Well, I guess I should rephrase that, having been nicknamed after the biggest drunk in the history of television. I've only been into this craft brewing thing for a few months, so what the hell do I know? The second reason is if a friend comes over and drinks, we can have the same thing. Of course, you can't follow that up with another of the same if you so desire. Tough shit. If you're getting free beer why complain?
But the bulk of my time down here is spent spiffing up the road bike in preparation for the 2006 biking season, a season which probably kicked off a few weeks ago when I hit Chimney Rock and nearly puked on my shoes. Yesterday's ride was much better, and if it weren't for the snow things would be looking really good rolling into spring. As it stands now, this will likely set any riding back at least 3 weeks, which means I'll have to spend another month pounding my knees on the treadmill. Anyway, here's the full bike, with nothing but frame, fork, handlebars, bottom bracket, cranks, pedals, and seat post with seat:
Since this picture was taken, I have added the front derailleur, rear derailleur, front wheel, and rear wheel with a new shiny cassette. Sometime this week I should have both sets of brakes on. At that point, I'll be about ready to install the shift levers, the only real intricate part of the assembly. Putting them on shouldn't take that long. Running the cables and adjusting them properly should take roughly the next 8 months however. Anyway, look at those pretty chain rings!
Is that sweet or what? My last set turned black because I'm too lazy to clean it regularly. But they lasted 10000 miles, the middle one having been replaced once. The chain was so stretched the chain tool couldn't even measure how far it had gone. So it's safe to say that all parts of the drive train were ready to be replaced. If you tool around in the flickr sets you'll also see a nice shiny pedal, and a solo shot of the Right Homer, plus the white board which I added notes to but has no place in this entry. I figure I'm wasting enough bandwidth already with this post. Of course, the 3-4 people who read it aren't going to push the Internet over the edge. Besides, I'm sharing quality moments of my life, not superfluous moments just because I can. Oh, I forgot, this was breakfast on New Year's Day:
Mmmm, breakfast hash. Homer would be proud. Like I said, quality moments of my life. Next up, pictures of my feet.
Here's a picture of the basement, my current (cold outside) and future (pregnant wife) home:
I recommend clicking on the image, which will take you to the flickr page that hosts the image. There, you will be able to see all the notes I added. Since I just signed up for this free image hosting account, I went nuts with the silliness. You can be sure that in the future, I will probably tail off a bit. But right now, it's still a novelty. Thus, notes.
That's one view of the basement. Missing from that is the TV, the treadmill, and the coffee roaster, which also helps form part of my impenetrable Underground Lair, aka The Basement by mere mortals. Standing guard over my workbench (which you can scarcely make out in the above picture) are the Mythological Creatures known as The Two Homers:
It may not be a good idea, but they stand guard over the beer-in-waiting lineup, and some random bike parts sitting on the workbench:
This is the collection of the beer I cannot currently fit into the fridge. When I drink one of the good ones, I replace it with one of the warm ones above. I try my hardest to buy all my beer warm, because I like to have variety and I don't have a whole hell of a lot of room in the fridge:
In general, I keep 2 of every beer I have cold. There are 2 reasons for this. First, I might want to drink 2 of the same thing, though this rarely happens. Since I tend to only drink 1-2 on any given night, I usually opt to switch up the second beer, unless I'm going to post a review on beeradvocate.com, which I don't get around too all that often. In general, I probably don't have enough drinking experience to go on. Well, I guess I should rephrase that, having been nicknamed after the biggest drunk in the history of television. I've only been into this craft brewing thing for a few months, so what the hell do I know? The second reason is if a friend comes over and drinks, we can have the same thing. Of course, you can't follow that up with another of the same if you so desire. Tough shit. If you're getting free beer why complain?
But the bulk of my time down here is spent spiffing up the road bike in preparation for the 2006 biking season, a season which probably kicked off a few weeks ago when I hit Chimney Rock and nearly puked on my shoes. Yesterday's ride was much better, and if it weren't for the snow things would be looking really good rolling into spring. As it stands now, this will likely set any riding back at least 3 weeks, which means I'll have to spend another month pounding my knees on the treadmill. Anyway, here's the full bike, with nothing but frame, fork, handlebars, bottom bracket, cranks, pedals, and seat post with seat:
Since this picture was taken, I have added the front derailleur, rear derailleur, front wheel, and rear wheel with a new shiny cassette. Sometime this week I should have both sets of brakes on. At that point, I'll be about ready to install the shift levers, the only real intricate part of the assembly. Putting them on shouldn't take that long. Running the cables and adjusting them properly should take roughly the next 8 months however. Anyway, look at those pretty chain rings!
Is that sweet or what? My last set turned black because I'm too lazy to clean it regularly. But they lasted 10000 miles, the middle one having been replaced once. The chain was so stretched the chain tool couldn't even measure how far it had gone. So it's safe to say that all parts of the drive train were ready to be replaced. If you tool around in the flickr sets you'll also see a nice shiny pedal, and a solo shot of the Right Homer, plus the white board which I added notes to but has no place in this entry. I figure I'm wasting enough bandwidth already with this post. Of course, the 3-4 people who read it aren't going to push the Internet over the edge. Besides, I'm sharing quality moments of my life, not superfluous moments just because I can. Oh, I forgot, this was breakfast on New Year's Day:
Mmmm, breakfast hash. Homer would be proud. Like I said, quality moments of my life. Next up, pictures of my feet.
