Another of those Winter in Spring days

I'm beginning to wonder when Spring will actually arrive.  The last of couple of days have been wonderfully bright and clear.  Unfortunately, the temperatures have been in the low to mid 30s during the warmest part of the day.  Hardly like spring.

BB and I went by the library to pick up books but unfortunately it was closed.  They've reduced their hours in an effort to save money.  Between that and the fact that for whatever reason we were out earlier than we have recently been on Sunday we'll have to pick up books tomorrow.

BB had dropped off some shoes at the cobbler in Marlborough last week.  I'll need to pick them up tomorrow as well.  It's interesting that cobblers are a vanishing trade since shoes are increasingly seen as simply cheap expendable things.  I find that curious as I've several pairs of well made shoes that are 40 years old and still going strong.  I suspect that shoes aren't made as well as they once were, but even so it is curious.  About the only shoes I replace on a regular basis are tennis shoes.  Not so much because I wear them out as I generally don't, but because they get so dirty that they can't be worn outside the yard.  I've tried washing a couple of pairs but they haven't taken well to water.  Perhaps the thing to do is to get shoes designed to be wet and wash them.

Will Spring ever come?

Bright and sunny today.  It's an illusion though as the temperature is well below freezing.  I'm beginning to wonder if Spring will ever really arrive?

The planters that I store under the second floor overhang next to the house have begun to sprout.  Hopefully, the plants will be OK with the freezing overnight.

This should be as quiet Saturday as BB is off with her office friends having a girls day in Hingham.  I'm not really sure what's in Hingham but I suspect it's about shopping.  For my part I'll spend the day reading and tending to a few inside chores around the house.

Just an average Thursday

Keeping a daily blog is rather more difficult than one would expect.  What does one write about when life is, well, just life as it is much more often than not.  Today is one such day.

As usual, BB is off so we spent the day together.  This mourning we ran errands as usual.  There wasn't all that much to do but do it we did.

I had three books at the library to pick up.  I'm somewhat surprised about how reserving books at our local library works.  It's a very good library and part of the Minuteman system of Massachusetts libraries.  One nice thing about the Minuteman system is that between the member libraries almost any book one would want.  The entire catalog is available online and one can order books from any of the libraries delivered to your local library.  That's really convenient.  I've taken to having three books in hand and ordering another as I finish reading each one.  On the whole that's worked well.  But, every once in a while I don't have a book to read then all the books I've ordered show up at once.  That's just happened.  I am finishing reading The Sea Hunters II and had no other unread books.  Then yesterday three books I had ordered came in and today another three.  From none to six in two days.  One wonders how the system works.

Speaking of The Sea Hunters II it's an interesting read based on the stories of ship sinkings that the author, Clive Cussler, has looked for.  Cussler has organized the book around a pair of chapters about each sinking.  The first is a fictionalized semi-historical account of the event and the second a description of his effort to find the ship.  There is a fair bit of nautical history about each sinking and I've found it really rather interesting.

We stopped by the coffee shop.  I've been talking to Dave about the possibility of going to work for him and learning more about coffee including possibly roasting.  He's talking about possibly something this summer.

We also stopped by the grocer to pick up a few things.  Eighty dollars later we had six small plastic bags of food!  Gives one pause about regularly eating!

This afternoon BB was off to the doctor.  Just routine but it gave me a chance to do an chore or two around the house.  I've gotten rather behind and need to focus rather more to catch up.

Marinated steak tips for dinner.  We'll have left overs so there'll be good lunches or another dinner.

Spring 2011: don't you just love it?

So the 20th was the first day of spring 2011.  Good news.  Right?  So here's what the yard looked like.

Fairly encouraging with the snow mostly gone.  Near the house and driveway where it's a bit warmer there is actually some green showing.

Good news?  Well, it's New England.  Here's whats happening today:

That's right, it's snowing relatively heavily!  It's fairly warm so it shouldn't be overly long before it melts, but goodness I'm just a bit past wanting more snow this year.

So what to do?  To heck with the snow, I'm going to smoke some salmon since it's really spring.

I'd planned to put out the deck furniture today.  Guess I'll wait a bit.

Bike project 1: Still more gears

A bit of investigation showed that I can fairly easily replace the existing 6 gear cluster on the 20" wheel with a 7 gear cluster.  If I use a 7 cluster mid gear here's what I get:

This looks like a fairly good arrangement with perhaps a somewhat smaller mid drive gear, say a 26 or 28.

Bike project 1: More gears

Spent some time sorting through gear issues.  The wheel diameter issues can be dealt with by a 1.3 gear that makes the 20" wheel equivalent to a 26" wheel.  The issue then becomes the gear range.  Here are some of the spreadsheet results.  The key seems to be the mid and rear gear ranges and the drive gear on the mid.

Switching to 9 speed cassets gives these results:

The key here is the 11 tooth which gives good high speed and the 34 tooth that gives good low speed.  The mid gears also provide a very low low and very high high gear.  As a practical matter reducing the mid drive gear to a 22 or 24 gives better range with a low speed below 2mph and a more reasonable high of around 30mph.

Bike project 1: Got a line on Baltic birch plywood

I got a line on Baltic birch plywood thanks to a friend of HB's.  Here's the contact info.  It looks like they can provide 5 ply 1/4" at a fairly reasonable price.

The two suppliers in the Boston area that everyone uses are Boulter Plywood in Somerville, Toll Free (888) 9 LUMBER (888) 958 - 6237, www.boulterplywood.com and Downes and Reader in Stoughton, www.downesandreader.com. 

I think I'll give the Somerville bunch a call and drive down.

Meanwhile, I revisiting the issue of wheels.  I've got a set of 20" wheels.  The rear has a 6 speed hub. I'd planned to use a 3 speed crank.  Using the sprockets from the bike here's what I have for available speeds:

The good news is that there are some nice low speed gears.  The bad news is that there are no high speed gears.  I could use a larger crank gear or use an intermediate gear.  A bit of playing with the front gear suggests that an intermediate gear is a better solution.  I'd like the low speed to be somewhere around 2.5mph for hill climbing so I'll need a step down gear of about 1.6 to 1 or so.  I'd like the top speed to be around 25 mph so I'll need a step up gear of around 1 to 2.

Dinner and auction with HB, Max, and Allan

BB and I drove out to Leeds to visit with HB, Max, and Allan.  It's a bit of a haul, about 2hrs drive in the rain, but it was nice to see them.  We had a nice visit and I had a chance to play with Max.  We spent some time learning to juggle and then worked on slight of hand.  The last was really quite fun as Max at age 6 still believes in magical thinking.  I took a coin and made it disappear then pulled it from his ear or dropped it in his pocket. It was really priceless.  Allan made a very good Minestrone soup for dinner then we went to an auction sponsored by Max's Montessori school.  All in all a nice visit.