If you don’t have hypertension or cholesterol issues, I strongly suggest 1. always adding salt to pizza and 2. learning how deglaze a pan and mount the resulting sauce with butter. Life just gets better after.
I’m a stubborn “success is about the rider, not the bicycle,” but the other day I realized chunky West O pavement and old freight rails is practically singletrack when you’re on skinny 25mm road bike tires. So today I bought a cheap used gravel bike off FB Market and whoa, y’all. Whoa.
I did it, I waited until a loud huffy “reverse sexism” dude went back inside the brewery, then walked over to tell his clearly exasperated girlfriend “Hey, it’s not just you, he’s being REALLY salty”
“You’re brave for camping alone,” from the second set of campers today who saw me and my tent and my motorcycle and brought me double armloads of extra firewood.
Bar patron saw my corduroy jacket with the pointed yoke and was like “I like your jacket, it’s kinda western!” I looked at my White’s roper boots, 1910-style canvas backpack and flat-brimmed fedora with an old sheriff’s star on the hatband and was like, thanks?
Got sniped with a “Can you take a photo of us?”, turned off the flash and herded the whole group into better lighting, got THE most appreciative cooing when I handed back their phone for review
Spent awhile adjusting the carb on my 40-year-old little thumper of a dirt bike and it’s now idling so strong that the vibration makes it slowly roll backward on its kickstand
I know this is not an everybody problem, but I’m trying to find a frame for a poster from a Charley Crockett show at the Crystal Palace and dammit, “country and western” used to mean something other than “barnwood.”
Click wrenches are great, don’t get me wrong, but if you’ve got the room to get your face way up in the mix as you tighten a bolt, creeping up to the correct torque with an old-school beam rules.
Flailed away kicking for an hour and almost got the old Honda dirt bike to start. I love the “braap” of modern dirt bikes, don’t get me wrong, but nothing beats the sound of that little dude lighting up with a throaty carbureted “BLEEEAAAARGH”
Spent like four hours today wrestling with a replacement refrigerator door gasket. Finally thought to check it for size and discovered no, I’m not nuts or bad at home repair, the fucking thing is 1/2” too small in each direction.
“Buddy, sit.”
“I KNOW you have freeze-dried minnows.”
“Yeah, and they’re treats for getting your nails trimmed. But you can have one if you sit.”
*butt touches floor for 1/14 second*
“No, a real sit.”
*butt touches floor for 1/1000 second before cat launches himself up my leg* “GIMME”
Well, so much for that dual sport rally this weekend. Anyone wanna show me how to replace the clutch in a `97 Ford Ranger once I’m done feeling sorry for myself?
Oh shit I think the teacher has quietly bumped me up to “only needs supervision intermittently or when showing signs of distress” and I didn’t realize it so I spent today’s lab acting like a lost puppy
Teach showed us how to use a die grinder in our lab on chain breaking the other day! I did great, probably because I’m the only student who’s used a grinder or chisel before and I’ve been changing my own bicycle chains for 25 years. 😬
My elderly dad, a lifelong mechanic who’s completely lost even basic diagnostic skills to dementia, wanted to get out and help his caretaker pick up their car at the shop today. I guess auto shops still feel familiar to him when not much else does.
Got a call back from the shop about the truck and learned my private diagnosis of a blocked fuel vent line was correct, and my “annnnd … something? Fuel leak maybe?” hunch was a crunched filler neck seal. 💪
Me, googling “pinky hand numbness”: I wonder if this is another weird motorcycle problem
Google: yeah so another name for that hand thing is “handlebar palsy”
Me:
My ADHD meds wear off during my noisy evening class and it fucks with me - forgetting tools, books and people’s names; labs and concepts taking so much concentration that I feel hung over afterward. Finally messaged my my doc with a request to up my dose and it was unexpectedly nerve racking.
My camping style is sloppy, impulsive and informal but I’m starting to get why smart people ask me for advice about it because tonight they are all at home and I am drinking under trees and listening to owls
I wish I could get across to non-ADHD people that unlike for other people, the meds aren’t actually fun for us. Imagine all the hassle of buying coke but the high is “being a normal amount of bored about doing the dishes.”
Got some basic leatherworking books from the library to improve my saddle stitch and in the intro one was like “When you’re starting out do you want to learn from an expert or from someone who’s new enough to remember what parts are a struggle?” and I was like the first one, definitely the first one
Yesterday following my friend’s car on my motorcycle, I spotted an unusual bird on a shop awning across the street while we waited at a red light, so I pulled up to her window, pointed it out and said “I think that’s a hawk” and it WAS and it was eating a PIGEON
