The Cyclery of Bikes

Well everyone, I'd like to thank you for your contributions (or aspirations to contribute) to a new bike for me. My current one is on its last spokes. I bought it for $40 a couple summers ago, and I estimate that I've ridden between 1000 and 1500 miles on it now. At four cents a mile, I think that's about as cheap as transportation comes. With your generous gifts, rest assured that my next bike will be obscenely expensive and nowhere near the cents-per-mile ratio of my last.

I don't have the new bike yet, though I would have loved to post a picture. Being a shrewd blogger, I know that photo posts attract the most readers. Here then are two bike-related pictures that I've been meaning to post. The first is from 1992. The second, 2007. Fifteen years and the bike has come full circle again. Lest Ben think it was abused during the years outside his care, I'd like to remind him that the bike received a comprehensive tune-up around the Christmas of 2002.

The view from my window

For anyone I didn't talk to before I left (almost everyone) I am in the Bahamas with Casi and several of her friends and family. She decided to have her next birthday in the Bahamas (her 30th) so we all got cheap tickets and rented a big house to stay in. 

Here's the view from my window:

So far everything has been good - although we went through most of yesterday without any water...which meant no toilets.  Apparently it was an island-wide problem.  Now that the water is back on, I've been going as often as possible to ensure that I will have just gone if the water goes out again. That's what I call smart.

David gets a new birthday picture

Last weekend, David and Amber made their way out to Aurora in search of thrift stores, perhaps a little food, and a scrabble throw-down.


They were successful on the first two counts, but as the last picture will show, scrabble was a lot more fun for Andy than anyone else. Fortunately, as a consolation we had a cake decorated with David's two favorite pastimes: Nascar and beer. Very small beer.

Happy Birthday David!

Better late than never?

I feel sheepish even writing this because I don't have a catchy poem like Mom always creates and there is only one hour left of David's birthday. However, I happen to really like the tradition of making birthday blog posts, so despite my poor blogging skills, here it is. Happy birthday David!

Simple Kitchen Project

I have a simple house project, if anyone is looking to do some light work.

I need to take these cabinets–



–and put them in this room–



Nothing to it, right? In fact, if I wasn't wasting all this time blogging about it, I might have half of them installed already.

I've been keeping an eye on used kitchen cabinets, and this set just came in to the local ReUse Center. They're in pretty good shape, and the kind of style I was hoping to find in a used cabinet. They look like they came out of a 1950s era kitchen. Now I just need to get the wiring and plumbing in place, and then figure out my layout. Here are a couple of closeup shots, to show the finish and detail:



And this one's my favorite – the onion and potato bin cabinet.

Sun-kissed Beauties Return to Unfavorable Weather

Stepping off the plane into 80's and brilliant Florida sunshine...easy.

Coming back to blustery snow and battleship-gray Michigan winter skies...well, I don't suppose we're going to get much sympathy somehow.

Nevertheless, I share with you a few select photos so you can join in the experience of a late winter escape to warmer climes.

We flew to Ft. Lauderdale and spent a couple days just north of Miami relaxing on the beach. From there we drove south to the Keys, spending a night at a State Park in the middle Keys. We drove into the everglades to spend a night camping on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and had some magnificent (really!) bird sightings. We finished up back at Ft. Lauderdale (at the yellow hotel, Ella will say) relaxing by the pool and playing with our sticker books.

On the beach at Bahia Honda State Park in the Keys. Beautiful weather and no Jellyfish incidents.

Exploring on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. Ella and Elisabeth both enjoyed finding shells, crabs, rocks, and assorted treasures though Elisabeth was much less discriminating (cigarette butts, seaweed, bits of trash...).

Sisters in the sunshine. What more can be said?

Enjoying the wildlife at the Flamingo gardens. The astute reader will recognize that the girls are posed next to a Peacock, not a flamingo.

Those are just a few photos and if we don't get sucked into 'normal' life too quickly we will post some more later.

It was a little harsh coming back to cold and snow, but comforting just the same. It's good to be home and know that at least we're not stuck in Minneapolis with 14 inches of snow.

Elisabeth, Coffee, and Matches

Here are a couple photo sequences that I found interesting.

Her fondness for coffee:

The joy of birthdays and matches:

Sowing the Seeds of 2009

Some of you may recall my attempt to garden last year. Don't be fooled by the photos. I think I got about four ripe cherry tomatoes off that plant, total. I started the plants from seed...in July. That was the problem.

Vowing not to make that mistake, I put down my first set of seeds about a month ago. Last summer, I found a cool tip for starting new seeds. Get an old egg carton, fill the cups with dirt and plant a seed in each. The problem is that the dirt dries out so quickly. It needs almost daily watering, and any mishap casts genocide de sécheresse upon the fragile little things.

This year, I enhanced the growing environment by picking up a cheap plastic container at the hardware store. By closing the lid, I can pretty much lock in the moisture and keep the plants from drying out. It's a balancing act, though, since you also don't want them to be perpetually soggy and rot.

So back to the story. About a month ago I was chopping up a red bell pepper and decided to keep the seeds, which I planted in two egg cartons:


About a week later, I could see the little heads coming up, and another week later, the seeds were looking pretty good:



Today I gently peeled each sprout out of its shell and put most of them down in a more permanent home in a planter tray. The dirt will give them more nutrients than the seed starter in the egg cartons.



So this year will be different. I expect to have the bell peppers in full swing just in time for a surprise May snowstorm to take them all out. Now that these seeds have left the egg carton phase, I've got the next round already underway.

Orange tree

Rosemary

A rose by any other name…

On Valentine’s Day, I gathered with some people at Church to make Valentine cards to deliver to residents at an assisted living center in North Aurora. Each of the residents would be getting a card and a carnation. Though the residents vary in age, all are incapable of living on their own due to mental or physical disabilities.

I am not a “believer” in Valentine’s Day, so I generally disregard anything associated with it. To be honest, as I was gluing little pink hearts onto purple cards, I was thinking that it was all kind of cliché. I thought the residents would look at the card and carnation as a novel gesture, but ultimately as somewhat impersonal and trite. I could just imagine them saying “Wow…you shouldn’t have…really”.

When we got to the home and began passing the cards and flowers out, I saw that my misgivings couldn’t have been further from the truth. I could see the joy on the residents’ faces as we handed them our hastily constructed cards and inexpensive flowers, things that most people would disregard as trivial and bothersome.

As I watched some of the residents hold their carnation to their nose, taking in the scent as if it were the most beautiful fragrance, I was struck by a thought…my unwillingness to slow down and appreciate small, seemingly insignificant things, like a carnation, is unfortunate. They treated a carnation the same way we would treat the most exquisite rose.

While there are a number of thoughts I can take away from this experience, the one that sticks out the most is that in all of the “important” things we find to fill our time with, somewhere inside us is that same level of appreciation. As trite and cliché as it may be, we need to be reminded to stop and smell the roses…and maybe even the carnations.

The floor beneath the floor

Spurious comments regarding my criminal activity notwithstanding, I'm glad to see that my posting privileges to Barnhart Central have not been revoked. And I suspect you'll be glad too (at least in an empathetic sort of way) when you see the photos of my weekend's work. I decided to use Lisa and Ann's upcoming visit as a good excuse to refinish my living room and dining room floor, and here's a brief photo journey along the way.

The drum sander (with 12-grit sandpaper), about to make the first pass (Friday night).

What 12-grit sandpaper hath wrought.

Another photo of the living room after the 12-grit pass (Saturday evening).

After a pass with 36-grit sandpaper, I found myself needing to fill a few gouges and cracks. Thanks for the wood glue/sawdust tip, Steve. That's worked well for me.

Au revoir, purple paint (Saturday evening).

The living room floor after passing over with a 50-grit sandpaper (Sunday morning).

Winter sunlight shining on a smooth, "nearly-new" floor.

The dining room floor, ready for a final screening and the first coat of polyurethane (Sunday afternoon).

The hard work's done. Applying the polyurethane should be much easier and quicker. The hardest part is just waiting till its fully dried. But I should have a newly-refinished floor by the time Lisa and Ann get here Saturday evening. Which reminds me, Lisa, do you still wear golf cleats indoors? I might need you to take those off at the door.

Update from Wednesday evening:

I applied the final coat of polyurethane this morning, letting the floors dry while I was at work. Here are a couple pictures of the finished living and dining room floor. Now they just have to dry for a few days before I can move furniture into these rooms.

Benjamin, Steven and Daniel: Suspected Criminals

It's a dark day for Barnharts everywhere, but I must dutifully report that there are wolves among us sheep. Have you been wondering why your checking account seems abnormally low? Puzzled by the recent loss of all your finest jewelry? Have you recently walked out of Meijers to find yourself a victim of grand theft? These are all signs of crime. And the following article will helpfully guide us toward the perpetrators:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090128-names-crime.html

Interesting. Both myself and Dad are the only upstanding fellows in this whole bunch (according to the first line of the article, which is all I read). Things are starting to make sense now. I'd always wondered why I felt a vague sense of dis-ease around Daniel. In the presence of a crimial, I now see! And here I'd already assumed my discomfort could just be attributed to his prolific activity in the post-gastronomic regions.

Show Us Your Snow!

Alright, it's time to see who's got a real winter and who doesn't. Please add your picture to this post with a short caption. Make sure to include some young children for scale or tell us how many childs the snowbank is.

January 20, 2009 (Ben)

Well, Steve, thanks for kicking off this Arctic challenge. Scientists have shown that unwarranted pride can actually generate a small amount of heat for the human body. So take pride knowing that you're doing your part to make sure each of us stay warm. In addition to the pride you can derive from that "nothing but snow" forecast.

Unfortunately we Minneapolitans are not blessed with the deepest and coldest Great Lake on our doorsteps, so we have to settle for numbingly cold temperatures. This is a little graph of our temperatures over the course of the last week.

Pay special attention to that stretch from midnight Tuesday to midnight Friday where our highs were zero degrees. Man, I'm feeling a little warmer already.

January 21, 2009 (Rachel)

Here are a couple of photos to give evidence to the vast quantities of snow we've been blessed with (these were taken on the Friday of the posted weather forecast for Houghton). Our girls LOVE the snow (thankfully!). Please note that the snowbank to the right of the girls is significantly higher than either Steve's or my head, and completely dwarfs the girls. But it does make a great sledding hill down the other side (into our yard, not into the road).

January 22,2009 (Lisa)
Well, I didn't PERSONALLY take this picture, but this WAS taken somewhere in Kalamazoo. I think we have about 2 feet of snow right now, which doesn't seem like a lot compared to Steve and Rachel's pictures...

January 23, 2009 (Steve)

In case you all were wondering what the rest of January's weather will be like, I just pulled this gem of a forecast off the National Weather Service website.

JANUARY FORECAST

THE CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER (CPC) IS FORECASTING EQUAL CHANCES OFABOVE AND BELOW NORMAL PRECIPITATION AND AN ABOVE AND BELOW NORMAL MONTHLY AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OVER ALL OF UPPER MICHIGAN IN JANUARY2009.

Februrary 1, 2009 (David)

I know I'm a little late to the game, but I figured I'd save the best for last! Although we might not get as much snow as Michigan, nor as cold of temperatures as Minnesota, I still suffer immensely. Four times a week I set out on my bike for the four-mile trek to class. When temperatures are around 20-30 degrees, I'll actually arrive to class sweating. In the teens and below however, parts of my body begin anxiously volunteering to bail ship and venture back to my warm apartment without me. Friday night, I decided to take my camera along for the ride to get a nice clip of how it feels to be riding my bike right now. I quickly learned that the videos I tried to shoot were rather boring and lacked the bite of that wind chill. By chance, though, I just happened to spot something at the side of the road and had my camera with me to document:

Floor Revival

I felt a little like the character in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" this weekend as I started tearing up damaged floor boards. But I didn't find any beating hearts underneath my floor. Or money, either. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I find that stash of Confederate silver.

Here are some photos of the process.


1 - Cutting out the center of the damaged floor boards so I can remove them individually.


2 - A clean opening.


3 - There were three damaged boards together, so I took them all out.


4 - Nailing in the replacement floor boards.


5 - Almost good as new. Just needs to be sanded, along with the rest of the floor, and poly'ed.

There are bigger gaps between some of the boards than I'd like, but I think it will all blend together a little when it's finished. I was a little bothered by them at first, but then I started noticing gaps between boards all over the floor, and I didn't want to show up the previous high-quality workmanship.

Happy Birthday Ben!

I hope you aren't this cold on your birthday.

Thanks for being the kind of brother you always want to have around. (for the record, I have three more of those, but it doesn't happen to be their birthday today)

Bake it - make it - take it - blog it

As Steve hinted at in his previous post, our blogging activity has been sadly lacking. Personally, I always feel the need to have a meaningful or at least funny post, which doesn't always make itself readily available to my mind when I'd like.

So I thought I'd try an experiment. I've created a new blog where I plan to chart the progress of my baking projects. As there is no lack of creative talents among you, I'd like to invite you to post as well about anything you can bake (cook, saute, fry, etc.) make or take (as in photos - not whatever you can steal).

This is my 2009 blog activity stimulus package. Use it wisely my friends.

For Comment

It seems there hasn't been much activity on the blog this past month so I will present this photo for your comment.

You can provide interpretive insight, compare and contrast, try to tell a story - it's wide open.

Have fun!

A side note on the lack of posting activity herein:

I've checked the stats and found that the posting frequency has taken a dive during this blog's three year life. The numbers are simply shocking:

• 2006 - Average 11 posts per month
• 2007 - Average 6 posts per month
• 2008 - Average 3 posts per month

Now I don't know whether to blame this on the economy (why not?), the removal of internet service at 1208 (a little more likely), or lack of writing talent (perhaps, but... no). On the other hand, maybe we have gotten so efficient in our communication that we are now posting what took four times as many posts just three years ago. If I interpret these statistics correctly, we will soon be posting only once a year. Worse yet, the blogobots will start to deploy negative posts and that would really hurt. Let's hope for a rally in '09!