Tuesday Night Ride

Another good ride!

Painted lady

Got a coat of primer on the Tweedle Dum, got the oars to the point of needing a little more glass and they'll be all caught up.

Lily even helped with the painting!

Tweedle Dum

Tonight I finished the last of the epoxy and fiberglass on the boat*. Tomorrow I'll start the final sanding and then painting. Got some paint at Home Depot. Pretty sure I've shored up, epoxied, and glassed more than I need to on "it's just a rowboat" and I am really confident the Tweedle Dee will take about a third of the time to do now that I know what I'm doing.

Jill and the kids are visiting relatives tonight, so I enjoyed some late boat work and the rain. I've done my obsessive reading about boats and boat building, and when I'm not working on it I'm thinking about working on it, or the next one, or the next next one. But when I'm in the garage working on it time stands still and the only thing I'm thinking about it wood, water, epoxy, and sandpaper. It's nice to have a meditation like that.

* The oars still need some epoxy and glassing, but since I'm clamping one of them with every clamp I've got right now, it'll take a few more days to finish up the second one.

Catching Up: Part 1

The photo album server took a nosedive late last fall. It took a long time to recover the drive, then get the server working again, get the network set up properly and debugged, and get the new photos indexed. And then there was the whole sewer incident. It's been a long road. But things are moderately stable and I feel maybe a little somewhat hesitantly confident that they're back in working order. We'll see. :)

But in order to catch everyone up, I'm going to make some posts here in my blog summarizing and linking to all of the photo albums you've missed since then! Enjoy! (click on the links to see albums, or the year/date to see the whole month.

2008 - November

Robert and Jill in their Wii Halloween costumes

Thanksgiving

2008 - December

December was a happy holiday month, of course. The kids made gingerbread houses, christmas wish lists, and artistic and toylike creations. We put up a tree and took portraits in front of it. Robert had a couple of different birthday parties, since he was turning 40! We got to see the Michigan cousins, bubbles, and pretend northern lights. After a traditional Christmas Eve with the Hubbes families, we had a nice little new years eve. (I can't believe we managed to miss taking pictures of the Mipros, will check back on that one. We were having a bit of a house plumbing meltdown problem at the time..)

2009 - January

The month of the sewer issues. We took a lot of pictures of the long, drawn out drama. Thirty days without a fully functional plumbing system - in January! We went to Bear Lake with the McAneney's, Lily graduated from a gymnastics class, and Robert connected with his TNR friends by bowling.

Lily had a birthday, received some great presents, and later dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. Robert is still working at Nazca, the kids are still kinda crazy, and it's cold out.

Next installment: February 2009!

.. progress ..

It's always a good thing to make some progress.

• Finished filleting the inside seams
• Taped inside seams
• Began work on supports, finished mid-ship support and fore-side supports
• Rough cut all support pieces
• Removed braces, boat didn't snap in half or anything traumatic, yay!

Got some more hardware, clamps, drill bits, etc. That was exciting, as always. :) And I'm not counting it on the boat total. In fact, I'm not counting the prices or hours of the boat. I've learned that it's all about the process, all about the craft, and all about the journey.

I'm also so much more embedded in the idea of a chugger. Oh, and did I mention the Tweedle-Dee won't likely nest in the 'Dum? Those added supports and all. But that's ok. The intention of the two was that "there is another one somewhere", just like in the movie.

New Mantra: "It's just a rowboat" - replaced "that's for the shop, it's not included in the cost of the boat"

FLIPPED!

Sanded the rest of the bottom and flipped* her. Got another gunwale on and the inner and outer gunwales on the transom. Also got a whole side of the inner seam filleted and glassed. I know already that I'll have to go back over it and do the epoxy thing on the stitchpoints a bit, but otherwise it looks good. Used a little different tape as well as a new mantra ("It's only a rowboat") and the fiberglassing job looks better already.

Jill's dad is coming to town this weekend and I'm rushing to get as much done as possible in an effort to get her painted before he can see my shoddy glassing and sanding job. :) Actually I want to get the grunt work done so I can work on some of the detail stuff and show off with the scrollsaw.

I should get to work on those oars, too.

* When building a larger boat the transition from working on the hull (upside down boat) to working on the righted portion seems to be a big deal. And rightfully so. Often it's been a long, long time and a lot of hard work to finish the bottom of the boat. It's also one of those times when you have to call all your friends and get them to help you turn it over. So when you finally get it flipped not only have you worked really hard, but it's time for the fun building stuff to start.

It's a glass, glass, glass

Tweedle Dum

Day two of the build and I'm ready for fiberglassing.  Spent too much money at West Marine but I got the West System for glass and epoxy.  Mantra of my shopping at West and Home Depot was "this is for the workshop, not the boat" so my cost is still low. :)

Went with zipties instead of screws and I really like it so far.  Looks even better than the model!  Tubbier, but "smarter" somehow.

Just call me Jethro Gibbs.  :)

The Tweedle-Dum

Tonight I went to Menards -- and then Home Depot -- and picked up the first materials for my boat. It's a variant on the stitch and glue style of a simple dinghy. A portuguese dinghy, actually.

Backing up..

I couple years ago I stumbled across a web site of a guy from Finland. He makes boats. For fun. He makes charts, analyzes displacement, spends hours and days and weeks thinking about boats. Little boats. And he has all sorts of plans for them online. One of them struck me as particularly beautiful. The portuguese dinghy. So I decided I needed to make one. (Soon after someone got featured on Instructables.com for building the very same boats -- although I'm not grooving on his paint job)

Side note..

Another idea I had revolves around walking across Lake Calhoun or Harriet. In the winter, of course. But every year I keep forgetting or postponing and never get around to doing it. (We did cross Bear Lake this year though, which was cool!)

But to convey myself across a lake in a boat of my own making? How cool is that? It both fulfills the "cross a whole lake" and involves buying things, noodling with tools, and dealing with dead trees. Perfect fit.

Ok, so for years (literally) co-workers and family and friends alike all got sick of hearing "this summer I'm going to build my boat" or "this winter would be a good time to do it and this time I totally will!" I asked for quarter inch marine-grade plywood for Christmas and my birthday. I hit Hannu's site so many times I'm probably a quarter of his traffic. For the longest time I held out for the $80 a sheet marine grade plywood, but talking to a friend on the TNR and reading up a bit more I decided screwing up a $15 sheet of plywood is better than screwing up an $80 sheet. Cost for two sheets and some screws and more titebond-3 and fiberglass fabric? $60. Woot!

Happily, tonight I'm on my way.

I'm naming it the "Tweedle-Dum" and the next one (oh yeah!) is the same style, shorter dimensions -- it's on the same plan as the 'dum, and it'll be the "Tweedle-Dee." Bonus points if you know where I got those names. No, it's not from Alice in Wonderland.

And then I'd love to build an Escargot. Or a teardrop camper for our trailer. Or maybe a little house for Lake George. Oh the places I'll go.. Or dream about. After I propel myself across a lake I want to sleep in a structure of my own making. Yeah, I'm odd.

TNR

Another lovely evening for a ride. Ton of folks turned up this week, was a more sedated ride.

TNR

One of the best rides yet. Saint Paul's streets are my playthings and we played well. No rain, except just a hint of a few drops at the beginning. Ended at Pracna and got to see a beautiful view of downtown as we talked Scoots.

The beginning of the route was a bit of a rerun from a few weeks back, but we improvised quite a lot as well.

As usual, we topped out at 286 mph. I think it's not 287 because of the hills...

Photo Pain

I have had photos online since 1996 or so. Obviously I like taking pictures, as I'm in the tens of thousands, all captioned and organized. My harddrive took a hit this last winter -- not to worry, I didn't lose any data. But the online solution failed with the drive and I've been working ever so slowly to rebuild the system in a functional manner. All sorts of things have gone awry, including network connectivity, router setup, plumbing issues, etc. (The January Plumbing Debacle took the PCs in the basement offline for a while for safety's sake)

So it's been six months and the albums are not yet available. I've been amassiing the images all this time, and as we get closer to being able to relaunch them they've been slowly sorting themselves. But there's a lot of work to be done there yet.

In the meanwhile, you can check my Picasa web albums or my facebook albums. Most of those are pics from my phone, but the quality is not bad at all. In fact as I've been sorting images I'm becoming less and less able to determine the source - camera or phone camera. Which is either an endorsement of my phone, or a signal that I need a new camera.

I have looked at alternate hosting solutions, as well. I really really really really like hosting my own images as it offers a local, convenient, highly customizable solution. And it won't file chapter 11 and take my images with it, like an online host may. It doesn't offer instant offsite storage, links to professional printers, etc. But it's home and comfortable for me. That said, I'm trying very hard to like Picasa and their web album technologies. One of the reasons I like my homebrew system is that I have a slick captioning system. But Picasa Web Albums have an even slicker way of associating people with images, which is half the reason I caption - for the searchability. Obviously I'm picky about all of this.

But rest assured the photo albums will be back, and when they do come back I plan on having an RSS feed so you can tell when and what the new albums are, etc. I'll also post to this blog when I get them back online and stable. I'll also be trying my very best to get the daily Craig Kid Picture emails working again. I know lots of Grandmas and Aunts and Uncles are jonesing for their Craig pictures!

TNRRR

Great ride, no rain! Lots of back streets and funky areas. Way fun!

TNRkimer

Another great Tuesday Night Ride! No rain, but for a while there it felt like we were in Portland...

Sunday Drive

Took a nice ride this afternoon snooping around the SW part of the city, looking for good sections for the TNR. Found some awesome stuff! Also found some desolate stretches, but that happens..

Tuesday Night Ride

A great Solstice ride -- a little of everything, a lot of riding!

Walking

Walking days	:	110+ (estimated)
Days recorded by GPS	:	87
Daily walk length	:	3.5 Miles
Google ETA	:	1 hour 9 minutes
Average ETA	:	1 hour 3 minutes
Fastest	:	55 minutes
Slowest	:	1 hour 16 minutes
		(6" snow, 14 degrees, 30 mph winds, -7 windchill)
Lowest temp	:	-22
Highest temp	:	93
Dollars Saved	:	$350 (estimate parking ramp - bus)
Pounds lost	:	15

I'm finding that I'm treating the hot weather walks much like I treated the cold weather walks:

• I get excited about an hour beforehand and can't wait to head out
• I take the skyway as far as possible to stay in a comfortable temperature
• I follow buildings closely and think about where I'm going (winter: avoid wind, summer: find shade)
• Obsessive tracking of temperatures and hoping for "just a few more degrees" (for better shock factor)
• Pride in having done something possibly dangerous, definately ridiculous
• Extreme weather makes for a faster walk, for some reason, even in the heat.
• On days when I don't walk I feel like I'm cheating

Of course, there are some differences, the worst being that in winter I can add layers of clothing or increase my pace to generate heat. In summer all I can do it sweat. And I really miss the ridiculously cold days of winter - I was the only one outside and it was nice to have some alone time.

Overall I'm happy with my walking plan. And sometimes I like to blog about it - not for you, but for me. :) I really wish I had a concrete record of the days I walked before I started tracking it by gps. The numbers, man! I want the numbers!

My spreadsheet: Click here to see it

Walk for Father's Day

We went on a walk from Hidden Falls to Crosby, then hit Dairy Queen for a cooldown treat!  A very happy Father's Day.

Robert Craig
Sent from my G1 Android phone

D.C. Day 4

FBI building, Spy Museum (no pics there, obviously!), Museum of Natural History, and a taste of the Air and Space Museum quick before we all passed out and melted down. Had a wonderful meal in Columbia and then headed back to crash hard! Sadly, we're heading home tomorrow. A long day of trains, planes, and automobiles.

D.C. Day 3

Sailing on the Chesapeake Bay with Uncle Jim aboard the Newgale. Again simple incredible and wonderful. Followed by the wonderful generosity of the Lemanski family and their SUPER AWESOME pool! The kids were worn out completely, and Eli learned how to jump into the deep water without a flotation device!