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Carbonating / Kegging Supplies

While planning a New Year’s Eve party I realized that it’d be particularly handy to have supplies for dispensing kegged beer with CO2. Well, after a run to Cap n’ Cork I now have everything needed: a CO2 tank, regulator, thick-wall PVC line, a corney keg, picnic tap, keg rebuild kit, and ball lock fittings. I also picked up cherry and cream soda mixes and a special cap that allows one to carbonate things in plain plastic bottles. Now I can make carbonated water, juice, milk, or anything else whenever I want. Hmm. I think I could even try carbonating fruit…

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טרײף ארוחת בוקר

If my Yiddish subject line is correct, this is today’s forbidden breakfast: a sesame bagel with bacon and mild cheddar, served with a cup of typical-for-me coffee. The bacon is an uncured, nitrate/nitrite free vareity from Trader Joe’s, the bagel is a random item from Meijer‘s bakery, cheddar is some random prepackaged slices from VG’s, and the coffee is typical generic (Sumatran?) dark roast purchased in bulk from Costco.

This is a not-bad meal for a day of working from home, tying up loose ends, and perusing deals on late-spring vacations.

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Vegetable Biryani for Boxing Day Dinner

For Boxing Day dinner I made vegetable biryani for Danielle and I. I ate mine with a bottle of Rogue Yellow Snow IPA and Danielle had hers with Magner’s Cider.

I used this recipe from the wonderful Manjula’s Kitchen; an outstanding online resource for both Indian recipes and videos showing them being prepared. Despite leaving out the mint and not preparing any raita it was quite tasty, and roughly half the dish is left. It’ll be excellent for lunch this week.

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Bottom Bracket Replacement in the VooDoo Dambala

After the bottom bracket issues on the single speed I ordered a new FSA Platinum ISIS bottom bracket to replace the failed RaceFace SRX. This evening after a shorter than expected Christmas I fitted the new bottom bracket and now the drivetrain is working just as it should. Installation went smoothly and after cleaning the chain and slightly readjusting the tension it’s ready to ride.

Now to wait for spring time to come and single speed weather to begin again… Or maybe my neighbors (spanning the four miles to River Bends) will properly clear their snow

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Walkies!

As she’d been cooped up mostly in the house for a few days I decided to take Roxie for a Christmas afternoon walk at River Bends. We walked a bit of two track, all of the non-seasonal single track, and back via the pavement. There was one tree down on the single track and a bunch of deadfall, but nothing major. I was able to break the downed tree in two then drag it off the trail, and (as typical) the rest of the deadfall was kicked or tossed aside.

The photo above shows four (or maybe it’s really five?) downed trees on the first piece of two track. There’s quite a few downed things on the two track that’ll need clearing. All are ridable / easy to step over, but the park will definitely have it’s work cut out for it.

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Toilets of the World 2011

Someone, signing their name as S.C., and mailing from the Flint ZIP code has sent me a 2011 calendar containing photos of numerous toilets from different places around the world. Immediately upon seeing the return address being the same as the from address I knew something untoward was awry. Knowing a few folks up Flint way I have my suspicions about who this might be, but I’m not (yet) sure.

This will be perfect to hang up at work where I’m (almost) constantly needing a calendar to glance at.

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Thanks for the Snow, Neighbors!

Today I headed out for an afternoon ride up to River Bends on the Titus fitted with studded tires. Thanks to my neighbors who seem to feel they have no obligation to clear the path/sidewalk that runs along their house, much of the riding near my house was absolutely terrible. The lack of snow clearing was not the issue as I can easily ride through 5″ of snow, but with most of the sidewalk being partially frozen, lumpy footprints covered with dusty snow riding on this segment was simply unfun. Due to the balance, constant pushing, and careful pedaling required riding this stuff was more difficult than the hard climbs at Holdridge.

After making it to River Bends the ride was rather uneventful and typical for the park. The pavement was snow covered but smooth, and the two track had a nicely worn 12″ wide flat section perfect for riding. I attempted to ride the single track, but it was snow covered, soft, loose, and generally unfun. I think I’ll leave that to the hikers until things thaw or melt a bit.

While out in the park I saw fresh trails and the car of a friend who I know from MMBA group rides, but I wasn’t able to catch up to him and only saw him driving out of the lot as I finished riding through the park. It’s good to know that there other folks who are getting out there to ride this time of the year, even if it’s not on the single track.

As residential streets and some sidewalks (mostly business and township-owned) were cleared the rest of the ride was uneventful. I encountered the typical surprised drivers who didn’t expect to see someone at a crosswalk, much less someone on a bicycle, but there were no notable encounters. Weirdly cars seemed very cautious about passing me on the residential streets, but perhaps they saw me riding on icy patches were afraid of me falling in front of them. I’m really glad they chose to be cautious of just plowing past.

Final stats for today’s ride were departing at about 14:30, traveling 13.08 miles over 1:22:50 for an average of 9.47 MPH with a max speed of 19.97 MPH.

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Successful Ceiling Fan Modification

For the last two or three works the ceiling fan in my bedroom hasn’t been responding to signals sent by the remote control leaving us with only a dim table lamp to illuminate the room. Not long after cleaning the contacts in the remote the fan would occasionally fail to respond to signals from the remote unless its power was cycled by the light switch under the remote holder. After flipping the switch off then on it would then work for a few days before needing another reset, but this failing state only lasted for a few weeks before the system simply failed leaving neither the light nor fan usable.

Frustrated by this I decided to bypass the wireless entirely and switch the unit to a typical fan/light dual switch setup on the wall. I figured that the light kit and fan motor itself were still fine so I set to work eliminating the failed fan control module. Having a spare dual-switch for the wall and a third (red) wire already between the electrical boxes made the house wiring part easy, but I still had some work to do modifying the fan. By reading Ken L. Klaser’s article Ceiling Fan Capacitor Solutions I was able to understand the basics of fan speed control, but this this schematic which he linked to was most helpful.

After looking over the control board to understand how the wires to the two coils in the motor were connected I came up with this schematic of how I felt the fan would be powered when set to run slow and in reverse. Removing the capacitors and building a test assembly showed that my initial thought was right, and this resulted in my building the assembly shown above. The fan now runs in reverse and on slow speed when powered and the wireless circuitry has found its place in the trash.

I could have purchased a new selector switch and capacitor assembly to have variable speeds and fitted both it and DPDT switch into the housing to offer the original control selection, but throughout its life the fan was almost exclusively used on low and in reverse, so I didn’t see the need. The fan also looks as it originally did with no new switches sticking out of the side or bits hanging off. I may add these selectors in the future if they are needed, but I don’t see that happening. Thus this was a $0 modification, costing only a few hours of time to learn something new and then redo the wiring.

(Yes, I realize that I should have used a longer piece of clear shrink tubing to better facilitate potting the ends. By the time I realized this I had most of the harness together and decided that simple stress relief and a bit of insulation should be sufficient.)

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XC Skiing in Roscommon

This Saturday (yesterday) Erik, Kristi, and I headed up to cross country ski on the trails across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters. This ended up being a really nice location where we were able to ski ~7 miles on nicely groomed trails. There were even a few bigger (for me) hills where I got to play around with different techniques for climbing, snowplowing, and skiing down hills without tracks. It was really fun and makes me anxious for more skiable snow to fall in this area.

To split up the trip we drove to Kristi’s parents’ place in Frankenmuth on Friday night, stayed there, then drove up to Roscommon and the skiing on Saturday morning. This worked out very nicely, as it was nice to sleep in for a bit, get breakfast, and then go skiing as opposed to simply driving up and back in one day. We then headed back home-ward after eating a nice (but very filling) dinner of pasta-covered pizza (from Tiffany’s Food and Spirits), curry soup, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.

Here’s a few more photos from this trip:

· Riding in Kristi’s car (with Erik driving) heading up to Roscommon for XC skiing.
· Kristi and Erik looking at the wooden map for the R and L Trail Network across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters in Roscommon.
· Me / Steve on the Manitou loop after taking a photo of Erik and Kristi.
· Kristi showing an icicle that developed on the neoprene sleeve covering her CamelBak hose while skiing.

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Bottom Bracket Failure

Today I headed out towards River Bends to try out the studded tires on the single speed (VooDoo Dambala), but as the sidewalk was more impassible than I’d thought I ended up riding around the partially-iced roads in local neighborhoods. The Nokian Gazza Extreme W294 studded tires worked out very well, but problems on the sidewalk showed that a geared bike is likely a better choice for deep snow winter riding. (Being able to shift down to a very low gear and slowly push forward through deep snow is rather nice.)

While riding around the neighborhoods I was able to get a bit over 10 miles in and explore some areas I hadn’t been to before. Not long before getting back home I felt like I was having a harder (than normal) time pedaling, but wrote it off as winter riding on super-knobby tires making me tired. It was only once I got home that I noticed an extreme amount of drag when pedaling backward. removing the chain showed that the cranks were rather hard to turn; a sign that the bottom bracket has failed. After sitting and warming slightly things are moving a bit more freely, but I think I’ll be replacing it before the next ride. Unfortunately it’s an Octalink [Edit] ISIS Drive, which may be a little harder to find.

One upside was that the CamelBak Podium Chill bottle that I was given at Iceman did a fine job of keeping my beverage from freezing during the ride. I’m still not convinced that insulated bottles are useful during the summer, but if they keep beverages from freezing in winter I’ll probably keep using them.

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