Uggghhhh

Okay, really slacking on the blog. Guess I don't get over here as much these days. Oh well, life goes on and the blog is obviously not much of a priority. NBD.

So what have we been up to? Check out Erin's blog. She has been very active in posting since she stopped working at the preschool.

Summer is coming to an end. We have had a taste of Fall weather and honestly I want more. It is nice to have the return of low humidity and temps in the 70-80*F range. We have had a couple of hot and humid days mixed in and the difference is major. Once you get a taste of the cooler weather the hot and muggy is not fun to revisit.

Riding is picking up as the weather waxes to cool. It is becoming enjoyable to get out and ride again. I haven't been too obsessive about riding, which I am sure is appreciated by the rest of the house. The ride log has just passed the 1 year mark and the verdict is in, just over 1,000mi in the saddle for the year. Meh, that's just how it rolls out when the typical ride is <10mi. Oddly I don't think that my ride times are much less than they have been over the last 5-6 years, just a bit more rugged terrain.

I have gone back and forth on wheels and tires over the last 3 years in AL. The terrain really does demand beefier tires, but on the flip side it sucks to push them back up the hill at the end of the ride. If you can handle pinging off the rocks on the downhills and getting a bit beat in the rough then the lighter tires/wheels help keep speed up in the flats while making the uphills a lot less work. In the end I run a wheelset that is heavier than a lot of peoples downhill race wheels with UST tubeless tires. I don't spend much time truing my wheels or fixing flats though, so I guess it all works out.

This weekend I managed to make it out to the rifle range in Madison. It was fun to get out and plink off a couple hundred rounds of .22cal, but also a bit frustrating. The scope on the Remington 552 is way off. It is going to take a bit more time and prep to get it shimmed in. The gun itself is nice, when working correctly. But it was having an issue with jamming/ejecting on missfire rounds, which were plentiful on the 2-3 year oxidized old ammunition I had. It was getting better with use, but I may need to disassemble the gun and clean/lube it for best results. By the end of the day I was pretty proficient at clearing it when it jammed. On the other hand the old bolt action single shot was performing like a champ. Matt and Mike plinked out nearly as many rounds as I did despite the speed handicap of having to chamber one round at a time. Guess messing with the scope settings and gun jams is more of a handicap. Needless to say there were no bullseyes fired with the Remington.

Around the house? Nothing much new. Erin went full-bore on the bathroom face lift. The aesthetic portion is covered in her blog, so I won't rehash it here. Biggest issue turned out to be changing out the faucet. First issue was that Erin neglected to pick up connecting hardware. Not a big deal. After a quick run to HD I fitted it up and turned the shutoff valves on. Crap! Water spraying everywhere from one of the new connectors and a drip out of the valve on the other. Back to HD to exchange the flex connector with the bad seal and to grab some new shutoff valves. Can of worms officially opened. So there I am with water all over the place, cursing and crammed under the sink trying to release 10-20 year corroded swage fittings. I hate this part since the water to the house has to be off until I get valves back on. Instead of cutting off the old swage and nuts I re-used them on the new valves. I ended up tightening the heck out of them and still had some very slow drips. But I was ready to call it a day and grab a beer.

Well about an hour and a half later I walk in to find water spraying out all over. F*%_(_*(&*(^%!! One of the nuts that I over-torqued cracked. This is not good. Basically I have only one option at hand. I can remove the valve and cut back the pipe 1/4-1/2in to get a swage on fresh tubing. Okay, I skipped the step where I cut off the old swage and tried to just swage with a new crush ring and nut. That didn't work due to the mangled nature of the pipe. Obviously I am not the first monkey to wrangle with this pipe. Right about here is where we called in backup. Fortunately Mike was available to come over and solder on a new section of pipe. So by around 9pm we were in good shape. He came back in the morning and extended the other pipe as well. Done deal.

Man, I do hate it when things go awry on home repair.

That's about all I got at the moment. Already a fairly lengthy post at any rate and no pictures or anything really exciting to show for it. Thanks for reading.