Ckucke, Kevyn, and I met for a quick St. Louis ride on Monday afternoon. JT was still nursing a cold (Influenza-A H1N1?), and Root had some kind of stomach abnormality, so they were not available. The weather was clear and sunny, and the tradewinds did their best to keep the temperature down, but it was still on the evil-hot side. We dropped upper Dumps, then continued up the old roadway and switchbacked up to the park road. Back at the parking lot, we bombed down mainline and taco jumps and got back on mainline to the junction and hung the right to the hammock tree. We backtracked up to the rock waterfall and dropped to agave. It was still early, and there was a lot of daylight left, so we worked our way back up to the top. If we felt good, we planned to hit Dumps again. Of course, by the time we reached the top, we had little motivation to grind back up yet again, so we called it quits and went down the hill to The Fat Greek for dinner. Continue reading ‘Drudge Trudge’
Monthly Archive for June, 2009
Page 3 of 3
Yesterday was the closing of the 30th Pan Pacific Festival with the parade down Kalakaua Avenue. I’d been lazy to catch the other days, but made an effort to catch the parade. I think the highlight of the parade for Derek and I was Bamp! Who/what is “Bamp!”? I didn’t know. A web search turned up nothing relevant. I still didn’t know. When they came up in the parade, all we can figure that their performance is is to be cute, and they are extremely good at that! 
And this cutie gets extra special bonus points for her fan, check it out! If they have a fan club, we want to be in it!
Oh, and the rest of the parade was pretty cool.
With the return of trade winds, the weather was perfect for Tantalus Thursday. Yesterday, the moist air brought in by the Northeasterlies turned to heavy rainsqualls because of ground heating. There was less humidity and stronger winds today, so some fluffy white clouds developed, but there was no rain. The wind was welcome to bring down the heat, but it unfortunately resulted in headwinds on the steepest parts of the climb. Ckucke had to babysit his niece, JT had come down with something (Influenza A H1N1?), and Kevyn was otherwise occupied. That left Root and me, but nothing ever goes smoothly. Root broke his chain last week and bought a new one at McBike that night. He neglected installing it in the intervening week, and didn’t have any tools to install the chain. I had my full kit as always, so I told him to drive over to the meeting place and put the chain on. Continue reading ‘Missing’
Testing the mask
Buzz packin'
So tonight was my second attempt at fixing the crack in the AE86 exhaust manifold. Being only a welding monkey, MIG was easy, but going back to the big old school buzz box stick welder was a bit harder. It takes a bit more skill to strike the arc and keep the stick at good spacing. What I was trying to fix is the all to common crack in the stock cast iron manifold for these Corollas. This lets nice buzz packing fumes go where they’re not wanted, like the front of the car! On Sunday (after wrestling with getting one last nut off on Saturday) I had my first attempt at welding the crack. I had to monkey around with the welder, get used to the blinking on and off of the helmet, and try not to get the stick stuck to the manifold. Continue reading ‘Welding Monkey’
It’s been a while since we hit St. Louis after work on Monday. Other commitments, weird weather, or holidays conspired against us since the strawberry guavas were ripe. The unseasonably hot, windless weather dehydrated the guavas on the tree before they could even fall off and rot! I got there early, but Kevyn beat me there since he lives just down the hill. Ckucke and JT showed up and we all geared up. Some time later, Root rolled in and we got started. We decided on Dumps, since we hadn’t gone that way in a while. The conditions were awesome, and the surface recently groomed. Lots of the annoying roots were gone, but there were a couple of low overhead obstacles to look lout for. We went through the stunt garden but bypassed lower Dumps and sortied up to the inner loop and crossed over to mainline and went back up to the jumps. Continue reading ‘Bigfoot Stink’
Wonder what this was all about? It’s not on the local print or TV news sites yet. Half-a-dozen HPD units, HFD ladder and Rescue unit, and the HFD NOTAR responding. Someone fell or drowned at the outlaw Kalihi swimming hole? I was stuck in traffic for a while, but it was gloomy on the Windward side, so I wasn’t going riding anyway.