Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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Last night while just after taking the photo used in this post I noticed a dead bird in the lawn. I’m not sure why it died, and poking around online last night showed me that testing for Avian Flu isn’t really being done anymore on a federal level, and Michigan delegates it to the counties. Macomb County, where I live isn’t testing either, so I guess I’ll just have to leave the bird there.
Also, here is a close up of the dead bird’s head.
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This weekend didn’t really end up as hoped. To summarize, as
Before we get to that, a bit of background. My absolutely wonderful girlfriend Danielle’s mom (Linda) managed to get through a bout with breast cancer back in 2004, but last summer it came back in her legs. Since then the cancer has been managed with a combination of surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy, but last Wednesday she was admitted to Henry Ford Hospital because the pain in her legs was overwhelming her.
She had been in the hospital since then, with Danielle and various family members staying with her, and on Sunday Danielle and I went for a visit. Danielle’s mom’s oxygen was a bit low (SaO2 of 86), and she was acting really confused, and her mouth didn’t seem to move properly when she was talking. Additionally, she was making a bunch of gurgling sounds when breathing, so it was ordered that she get an MRI and a chest x-ray to figure out why both problems were occurring. Danielle and I headed off to a BBQ at my aunt and uncle’s place and everything was okay for a little while.
Right as we were thinking of leaving, Danielle received a call from her dad saying that “it spread to her brain”, and that she should get to the hospital as soon as possible. We got right in the car and headed down there as quickly as safely possible.
Once at the hospital we found that Danielle’s mom had been moved to the ICU, as the x-ray found that she has pneumonia, and the MRI found a number of tumors in her brain. All of the tumors were under 1cm, except for one 13mm tumor in her brain stem. I imagine that this, coupled with the hypoxia (and all the morphine) is what was causing her confusion.
We ended up staying at the hospital until sometime after 3am, and throughout most of that time there were at least 10 family members there, including Danielle, her dad, her grandma (Linda’s mom), her brother, Linda’s brothers and sisters, and lots of cousins and friends. Throughout the night while people were visiting her blood pressure and O2 levels were very low, but she was able to talk to everyone and tell them goodbye. As the evening moved on she made everyone leave except Danielle’s dad, who spent the night awake next to her.
Today we returned sometime in the afternoon with a couple bags of food for everyone who was at the hospital, which I would estimate at around 25 people, some of whom flew in from across the country. The food was very useful, taking care of a problem yesterday where we were all eating things out of the vending machine and from the Little Caesars in the lobby, which was open until 3am.
Early on in the day a priest from the parish Danielle’s aunt attends arrived and performed an Annointing of the Sick, or Last Rights while everyone Linda knew was in the ICU room. People had more time to visit Linda, and at one point she told me to be good, and I was able to tell her that I’ll be sure to take care of Danielle.
This afternoon Linda was moved out of the ICU and back to a private room, and tomorrow she’ll be transported home whereafter she’ll be under hospice care until she dies.
Oh, and that picture up there? I’m not trying to be overly cheesy, but I was noticing the building beautiful sunset and clouds while in the way home, so I went outside to take some pictures. If you’d like to see the other photo which I considered using to top this post, look here, at a photo taken out the window of Linda’s hospital room, just before we left so that she could go in for the MRI. And yes, I know this post is a bit scattered. Sorry. Lots has happened recently.
One final thing, before I forget, the staff at Henry Ford seemed to be some of the nicest folks I’ve ever delt with at a hospital. From the security folks, orderlies, and other people who I’d just asked for help to the nurses in the ICU and people working in the cafeteria, everyone seemed just great. That really, really helped.
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Today Brian (
The final result, per my bike’s computer, is 41.29 Miles. This ride really wasn’t very difficult. The wind and gradual hills weren’t the most fun, and crossing Gratiot and Schoenherr feel risky, but it was quite nice overall. It’s also a completely different feeling from mountain biking, which seems to be more about huge bursts of output followed by nice rolling breaks as opposed to a few hours of relatively consistent pace.
Here is the KMZ: 24-May-2008_partial.kmz. Unfortunately the batteries in the GPS gave out about 1/4 of the way back from Metro Beach, so it’s only a partial plot. It still illustrates the route between the parks, though. The batteries had reflected 3/4 charge when I left the house, but clearly that didn’t represent how long they would last.
Next time I do this route I think I’ll just leave from home and go to Metro Beach and back. That should push it to a 50 mile ride.
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I’m scheduled to go for a ride on paved trails today around 2pm, so yesterday I spent some time putting the Continental TravelContact 26 x 1.75″ tires back on my bike. While this isn’t normally too difficult, the combination of the steel wire in the bead, the rubber, and the anodized aluminum sometimes makes it a bit difficult to do. I’ve also run into problems with getting certain tires seated properly in the bead during inflation, which I’d normally solve by inflating the tire near the max, and rolling it with my hands or going for a short ride to work it into place.
Normally I was just able to muscle the tire over the rim or finesse it into the bead, but I wanted something easier. I’d read that applying things like soapy water or Schwable Easy Fit to the rim and tire make everything slide into place more easily, but I didn’t want to worry about mixing the soapy water correctly (and having to wash it off) or finding another product.
In the Seating the Tire portion of Sheldon Brown’s article on Flat Tires he mentions that he uses spray window cleaner for lubricating the bead. I grabbed my old bottle of Target’s blue glass cleaner, spritzed a bit in between the rim and the bead, and started inflating the tire. At around 25 psi I looked at the bead and noticed that part of the bead wasn’t in the rim properly. I kept inflating, and just below 55 psi (these tires are recommended for 55 psi with a maximum of 85 psi) I felt a little thump in the tire and it’d wholly seated itself, no manual coaxing required.
I also tried using some window / glass cleaner when fitting the tire over the rim and although the extra slipperyness was a bit of a hassle at times, it helped. Then after the wheel was put back together I just grabbed a cloth and wiped off the extra cleaner, using it to clean up the rim.
I’d definitely suggest that others give this a try if they need a bit of help seating a tire. Also, if you have an interest in bikes and haven’t given them a read yet, check out Sheldon Brown’s articles on tires and flat tires.
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Since the weather is finally consistently nice, while out shipping Ivan’s P3 back to him Danielle and I stopped off at Deneweth’s and I picked up some celosia, coleus, and three kinds of chilis. These have been planted out front along with last year’s rosemary plant, which was kept indoors during the winter.
Instead of salvia, as I’ve normally placed in the rectangular concrete boxes along the edge of the porch, I put some nice, furry red celosia. The area around the tree has two colors of coleus in it, and the skinny plastic box along the edge of the porch has three different kinds of chilis, all of which I hope to eventually add to the garlic / chili / salt fermented concoction that I’ve had living in the pantry.
I then washed the chairs and table on the porch and rinsed the dust / poop / seeds / whatever off the porch, so it’s nice and clean and ready for summer.
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This is what happens when there is a thin layer of trail colored dirt covering the bottom of a downhill area, right in the area I need to turn at. Oops!
I was heading down a slight, maybe 20′ hill, which has a 90 degree right turn at the bottom, then immediately crosses a partially buried corrugated metal drain pipe. The center of the pipe is nicely covered and smooth to ride over, so I aim for this area. I’ve ridden down this a number of times in the past, but this time a portion of the bottom of the hill was very sandy, with a slight covering of dirt over it. As I was starting my turn on this the bike slid a bit, and I instead pointed at the mud just beyond the wholly exposed end of the drain pipe.
When the front wheel hit the mud it too slid, and I went falling / sliding on some mixed dirt and gravel. Thankfully I didn’t hit the drainpipe like the edge of my seat did, otherwise I might have a bit more than a skinned knee / shin. Thankfully it didn’t hurt at the time, and now it’s only a mild (but widespread) sting caused by a whole bunch of parallel scratches. And yes, that large clump at the top is a blood / dirt clot.
I’d also fallen two other times today causing other mild scratches, but these were because I was being dumb and trying to climb over ~5″ logs while going way too slow.
All in all, it was a nice ride today.
UPDATE: If you happen to want it, today’s KMZ is here: 22-May-2008.kmz. Unfortunately something somehow glitched and made it look as if one of the points on my route was at 19 Mile and Ryan, quite a ways from where I really was.
Oh, and the damage to the seat helps answer the possibly-selling-the-bike question. I think I’ll keep the bike and do what I can to work with it. My torso is longer than normal for someone with 30″ legs (I’m made weird, or something), and pedal reach is just fine, so I think (hope) that just a bit of tweaking will help things out. Maybe something like On-One’s Mary could help as well.
After doing a bunch of riding at Stony Creek with a group of seven others last night, I’m really thinking that my bike is a bit too big. Looking at the posture of others and feeling quite stretched out at times, I’m thinking that what I have just isn’t right for me.
So, what to do? I don’t think I can move the seat up much more and the stem is already pretty short (38.1mm), and one can’t really shorten a frame.
I’m thinking that I should probably sell the bike and either buy or build another one with a more appropriately sized frame. Seeing as I paid $797 for the bike after tax and it only has 400 miles on it and is well cared for, I’m thinking that $700 would be a fair price. I wonder if I could get that amount for it, and how it would / should be sold?
That also brings up the question of a replacement. I’m not sure if I’d want to get another built up bike, and if so where I should go? Seeing as the person at Fraser Bicycle and Fitness had fitted me to a 21″ frame, I’m not sure if I’d want to go back there either.
Looking at parts makes me think that something like a Surly Karate Monkey frame, fork with lockout, Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes, and some Shimano Deore XT drivetrain parts would be nice. Wheels / tires could be sorted out a bit later, but might be a bit strange to work out being as the frame is designed for 29″ stuff.
I just don’t know what to do.
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That right there is a screenshot of MIDI-OX displaying data coming into a MIDI port, including a START and STOP message. This wouldn’t be anything too special, except for that it’s coming out of the SYNC port of Ivan’s P3, which means that the MIDI Sync issue which I’d previously mentioned is now resolved.
It turns out the problem was related to some changes which Colin had made in order to eliminate unintended triggering of the PICs inputs. It appears that this new code was mostly a backport of the firmware for the v1.6 boards (these are v1.5) which included the function for DIN SYNC passthrough, but doesn’t seem to default to having MIDI sync on.
The solution is to boot the P3 while holding down the 1 key. It will then tell the PIC to flip into MIDI mode, the PIC will write 00 to the first byte of its EEPROM (so it always goes into MIDI mode in the future), and then as soon as it first receives a RUN command it’ll start spraying out the clock / start / stop commands seen above.
I guess if I had been better (or more thorough) at reading disassembled PIC code I could have seen it doing all of this, but I’m not really that familiar with it yet, and I didn’t want to spend six hours looking up opcodes I didn’t understand and what each register written to was. Ah well, at least it’s working and I know what happened. Now I just have to pack it up and get it back to Ivan.
Leave a CommentSo, I have a 21″ bike frame. After trying out
Then again, I’m shaped kinda weird. I have relatively short legs for my long torso. Pants that I buy typically have a 30″ inseam (and they hang a bit), but I’m about 5’9″ – 5’10”.
Maybe my next bike should just be custom fitted / have a custom frame.
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After all the riding around near my grandparents house and at Stony Creek a bunch of times this last week my bike had become pretty dirty. The area inside the rim around the spokes looked particularly bad. While it really wasn’t that bad compared to some I’ve seen photos of, the built up crap in the cassette and wheels and down tube (and everywhere else, it seems) had me wanting to wash it. So, I did. A bunch of time was spent with car wash soap in a bucket, brushes, some diluted degreaser, and a few rags to get the bike nicely clean. After concentrating on the frame and various other bits I gave the drivetrain itself a detailed cleaning.
After the rear cassette was shining brightly and the chain properly oiled I took the rear brake caliper bolts out one at a time and applied some Loctite Blue to hopefully hold them more solidly. I’d rather not have the problem I had last time, or the inverse, where my rear brakes would have simply stopped functioning. (Because of how the front calipers bolt on, this can’t really happen there.)
The rear frame was then put back on, and I was actually able to identify the source of the extra noise while riding over bumps. It seems that it wasn’t the bag / rack, but instead the place I had chosen to put my pump was rattling against the rack itself and had even worn a small hole in my bag. I repositioned the pump into the middle of the bag and wrapped the extra tools in two rags to both take up space and give me useful rags. A test ride around the neighborhood up and down some curbs (and managing to slightly bunny hop a few times) I didn’t hear anything more than chain slap, so I guess things must be better. (I do need to build a chainstay guard to eliminate this, but that can come later.)
If things go as planned, tomorrow
