After the Monday night ride, Ckucke, Kevyn, and I went by The Fat Greek at the bottom of St. Louis Drive for a bite to eat. Parking at this little strip mall is iffy at best, but oddly, a pair of tandem stalls were open, so Ckucke and I pulled in. Kevyn was dropping off his bike at home so came down a little later and also miraculously found parking! I ordered the gyros for $8.40 USD including tax. They have little pager things so when you meal is prepared, they hit the magic button and your unit goes off – a little better than yelling, since they have a small air-conditioned “inside†and a large “outside†patio. The prep time was longer than I would expect for the menu and venue. The food quality was very good. My entrée came with a moderately sized salad that included a cherry tomato, a Calamata olive, two cucumber slices, and crumbled feta cheese on a mix of romaine and baby greens (A-). The gyros pita (A) was well-filled with meat and was seasoned with that white yogurt-based sauce, and came with a tasty, spicy sauce on the side (sorry – I don’t recall the sauce names now, and I’m not going to look it up). As a means of comparison, it was a couple bucks more than something equivalent at Opa! In Vancouver, but the quality was a little better, and there was a little more meat filling. Continue reading ‘Edible Briefs – The Fat Greek’
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’
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.
The AE86 Corolla has a cracked manifold (like almost every other stock one) and it was causing me to catch some buzz when I drove it around last Saturday. So I decided to attempt to weld the hunk of cast iron. I’d done it before for practice on a different cracked manifold, and it’ll be a good test of the new fancy electro helmet! First things first, I have to take it out. No problem, I figured, having done it number of times with the FX. Pulled out the trusty can of Kroil and gave all the nuts and bolts a good squirt. Fzzzt…. Ooops, there goes the last of the propelant. Oh yeah, RWD layout is different. Fortunately they all are pretty loose (although makes me wonder about others), except one nut on the backside of the manifold to downpipe junction. It’s a long stud so requires a deep socket, but is angled in such a way that the socket can’t fit on it. WTF? Toyota is usually pretty good about not designing things like this. And there is too much stuff all round to fit a open end in. Eventually undoing all the rest, wiggling things around, I barely fit a wrench in there, and again it’s loose so after much contorting get it out. Took much longer than expected, too late to grind and weld, oh well, guess I’ll have a beer. Prob gonna have to disconnect the steering shaft when I reinstall, what a PIA.
I was a little apprehensive revisiting this place so soon after the mummifying experience last time, but this is where the office was picking up food, so the die was cast. I took a chance on the “Veal”, and was pleasantly surprised with two giant breaded ground veal patties, reminiscent of the ones that were available at the cafeterias in the UH system in the days before SoDexHo. The rice was good (B), the macaroni salad was a little runny (C) but tasted fine (especially after dumping some El Yucateco Habanero hot sauce on it!), and the entree and gravy was good (B-). The veal patties appear to be some pre-made third-party product that they deep fry. Mine (and actually everyone else’s food like chicken katsu) was a little on the dark/overcooked side as appearances go, but the flavor was fine – it just looked burnt. Maybe this is an oil issue.  I usually opt for brown rice and tossed salad on plate lunches, but I am not sure if these are offered at Queen Bee. The veal was placed over some chopped cabbage, mostly to catch any remaining frying oil, but that was like vegetables… Continue reading ‘Edible Briefs – Queen Bee Lounge Revisited’
Heavy, sudden, and random storm showers blanketed the island starting late Thursday morning. I kept an eye on the mountains and webcameras, but Tantalus remained clear into the afternoon, so the ride was on. JT called me as I was rolling out, saying he couldn’t make it, leaving Ckucke, Kevyn, Root, and I to suffer through the sweltering, windless climb. The cold start brought on the burn rather quickly, but with the fortification of Amino Vital, I was able to get more work out of my muscles, and got to the top in under 40-minutes. Having been without it on three hard rides, I could feel the difference. The Memorial Day weekend got my diurnal rhythms all thrown off by a day, so my body expected a rest day but got punishment instead. I don’t know what I did earlier in the week to cause it, but I had no strength in my arms, so when I did any standing climbs, I had difficulty keeping the bike in line. It didn’t help any that I had a salty, heavy lunch and a good case of water retention to drag me down. There wasn’t any active rain, but the pavement was wet after the bridge. After making “Aloha” with Trek-guy, Kenny, and Nancy at the top, we took the Roundtop Drive way down. Other than them anda handful of other people, the mountain was deserted. Wetness and burnt-out muscles kept the descent speeds down to whatever gravity could incite.
D = 16.35 km (10.16-miles), Vavr = 18.4 km/h (11.4-mph), Vmax = 64.6 km/h (40.0-mph), T = 53-minutes (39-minutes up, 14-minutes down)