Winter slumber

Well, in typical Doug form I have been hiding out for the winter. At some point in the winter I find myself taking a minimum of 2 weeks hiatus from riding. It wound down with some crammed for time short rides. The last couple of weekends I haven't even rode. I have been happy being lazy, hanging out with the family, and working on the computers. Between that and waiting for some parts on order it was pretty easy not to worry much about the riding.

Pile of parts:
Well, my parts arrived on Saturday. I will need to build the rear wheel. After my recent string of flats I decided to go back to a tubeless setup. We will see if it fares better out this way or not. I also punked out and got an easier granny gear. This will be my first trial of Stan's Flow rims. The company throws convention to the wind and designed their own rim. Supposedly the design locks the tire on tighter and gives it a larger profile. I will give it a try and report back.

Yes, I am still tinkering with the computer. Now it is computers. With the buying and swapping I have amassed enough spare parts to keep the P4 running as a spare/Austin computer. The P4 works fine, but it has some serious drawbacks since it is from a fairly busy period of hardware changes in the industry. So I moved on and put a bit more money into the system to bring it into the new millennium. Basically this means new multicore processor, a good Abit motherboard, PCI-e graphics card capable of HD output, and RAM compatible with the above. So much for keeping it really cheap. I guess if it even lasts half as long as my last machine it will be worth it. It will also be compatible for upgrades for a while too.

Score:
Microsoft 1 / Doug 0
I broke down and bought a retail version of XP Pro. I had a good run on oem operating systems, but my oem XP was not letting me install on another system. So after more than a decade of getting away with running windows 98 and 2000 on multiple machines I figure MS can have my money for a legitimate license. Hard to shell out for one, but the upgrade in performance and driver support of XP can no longer be denied.

The family is well. Not much to report here in AL. Faith and Austin are doing well sharing a room. As Faith gets older Austin and her are playing more together. They are fairly good playmates so long as sharing of a prized toy isn't involved.
I did get a call yesterday from my mom in CA. Both my sisters and some additional family were in a pretty serious accident this weekend. Thank God they all came out of it with only bumps and bruises. Sounds like the equinox took the brunt of things and may not make a comeback. Someone ran a red light and t-boned the front end of it. Our thoughts and prayers are with them in their recovery.

Resolutions update:
Not a ton of news here. Despite the lack of riding I have been able to drop almost 10lb. If I can get back into a routine again I think that progress would be a bit faster. I have also been drinking less. Oddly enough I can't say that it makes a huge difference in my day to day life, but there are less 6 packs passing through the fridge. Still working on drinking better. I gotta try one of the online beer retailers to try and get some good 22oz beers shipped out this way. Kind of expensive, but apparently the only way to get some of the nicer micro brews that were so prevalent in California.

Anything else?
Well, the Tundra has been losing pressure in one of the front wheels. So I took it in on Friday for a quick service and to get that checked out. It turns out that the leak is actually through the rim itself. I don't even know if I can get a replacement for the TRD edition rim. If I can it would most likely be cheaper to buy a whole set of steel American Racing rims for it. I dropped it off today at a company that does wheel repair. They may be able to repair it for $100. Fingers crossed there.

that's all I got for now.
keep the rubber side down...