Winter experiences

Well, with that last post I pretty much described the silly and not so fun part of living in cold country.  Time to balance that with some really cool stuff!

Like watching the eagles:

Yes I took this picture.  Too bad the damn camera focused on the hill instead of the bird :(

Interestingly when perched in a tree, the eagles always had their backs to us. Maybe that's eagle body language for "go away, jackass".

And there is also fun stuff you can do in the snow.  We haven't set aside a day for skiing yet, but we will.  For now, there is sledding!

And spectacular scenery...

So while it may be a challenge to get to work in the early morning...

The positives totally outweigh the negatives.  Happy New Year!

Snowfall

Sooo...

We got a couple of feet of snow over two days in mid-December.  Because I was on shift at the time, I didn't have much opportunity to clear it out of the driveway (which is long).  As a result, I only cleared a little of it before daylight ended and I needed to get ready for work.  As I left for work, the truck got stuck in the driveway.  I had to take the wife's AWD to work that night.

The following day I shoveled snow from under the truck's tires and pulled it back to the garage using the tractor.  I decided that I needed a lot of weight above the rear axles and some excellent snow tires - to replace the crappy snow tires that were on the truck.

I was still on shift however, so I continued to take the wife's car each night until I got a day off.  Meanwhile, the weather warmed up enough to melt some of the snow, then froze again.  So the snow that I didn't get removed is now clumpy and icy.  Due to the ice and the slope of the driveway it still sometimes requires 4WD to get the truck rolling after I back out of the garage.

We also had a really cold snap where it got down to 5 degrees overnight, but fortunately I wasn't on shift and just had to sleep through it!

The Christmas decorations that we used to put up in the yard in Bakersfield were totally buried in snow (which is now snow with a thick icy crust).  They also tripped the GFCI circuits.  Digging them out would be a total pain in the ass and would probably damage them.  So I guess they will remain encased in ice until spring thaws them out.

I used to have something like this in front of the house:

Now I have this:

On the bright side, it's nice not having to pay a lawn guy year round :)

One day, not long after the big snow, we were in Coeur d'Alene doing some last minute Christmas shopping.  When we returned home, we found that a snowplow had cleared the road in front of the house, leaving a 4 ft wall of snow blocking the driveway.  I hopped over it and got the tractor out while the rest of the family waited in the car on the street.  After about 10 minutes I had enough snow removed that the car could get over the hump without bottoming out.

Guide to Wheelies

Not my guide, but quite funny!

The World Famous Phuzzy's Guide to Wheelies

By: PhuzzyGnu

Wheelies are an integral part of the motorcycling experience. Within the next few paragraphs you will find information on wheelies gleaned from more than 5 minutes of wheelie experience by that world-famous stunter, PhuzzyGnu.

Part One: Overcoming Mental Barriers

Perhaps one of the difficult aspects of wheelies to master is the fear of what scientists call "Busting Your Ass (BYA)." This is a very real and likely phenomenon associated with wheelies, other stunts, and motorcycles in general. Here are a few hints:

1. Start out small. You are not, and will probably never be, Gary Rothwell. So don't go big until you think you're ready.
2. Never confuse your intentions with your capabilities. See #1 above.
3. Wear safety gear. Helmet, gloves, boots, jacket, and back protector are my usual gear when riding, and as a matter of fact you should probably wear full leathers. If you do not wear these items and you mess up a wheelie, you will be scarred and misshapen and unattractive to the opposite sex. Wearing safety gear also makes you feel more confident.

Part Two: Equipment

To do a wheelie, you will first need a motorcycle. Any kind of motorcycle will do. I personally have a friend that wheelies his Gold Wing. For our purposes I will assume you ride a bike with some sporty capability, though the process is the same for all bikes. Dirt bikes are good to learn wheelies on, because they crash cheaply. Friends' bikes are similar in this regard.

Here are questions to ask your bike:

• Are you in basically good shape?
• Do you have a smoothly operating throttle?
• Do you have a clutch in working condition?
• Do you have a rear brake in case I need to save my ass?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no," you might have to find a new motorcycle. If your motorcycle does not answer, don't worry, motorcycles don't usually answer anyway.

Part Three: Where should I practice my wheelies?

Practice wheelies somewhere you can be an idiot on a motorcycle without many people minding. Also look for good pavement and, most importantly, a total absence of police (see section 4 below.) Alternatively, in front of girls' schools and in front of hospitals are good places to practice wheelieing.

Part Four: The Man Hates Wheelies

Cops HATE wheelies. It brings out some primal reaction in them. They will throw the book at you. It may be called "failure to control vehicle" or "not in complete control of vehicle" or "improper start from a standing position" or "exhibition of acceleration." DO NOT DO WHEELIES IN FRONT OF COPS. Mothers also dislike wheelies. On the other hand, young children (young boys especially) love wheelies. Most other women do too, though they usually won't admit it. It is best to do wheelies for women at every opportunity. (If you are a woman, by all means do wheelies. It goes without saying than guys love wheelies and a woman doing a wheelie could probably manipulate most men into doing most anything.)

Part Five: To Clutch or Not to Clutch?

If your bike has big power and/or light weight, you don't even need the clutch- you can get the front wheel up with just the throttle. GSXR-750s, Bandit 1200s, Blackbirds (my bike), TL1000s, VTR1000s, R1s, ZX-9s and other bikes with Lots-o-Torque or Not-Much-Weight can bring the front wheel up with just a big, or even not-so-big twist of throttle. Simply riding forward, rapidly closing and opening the throttle can get the front wheel WAY up on some of these bikes. Some bikes just require you to open the throttle. Other bikes require the use of the clutch, which is that lever on the left clip-on (or handlebar if you ride on of "those" bikes.) I'll assume if you have a bike with big power you don't need my help anyway.

Part Six: Will this hurt my bike?

Wheelies done right are harmful to neither bike nor clutch. Use low revs and torque to wheelie, not massive revs and horsepower. Slower speed wheelies are also easier to control. Wheelies done wrong can damage chains, head bearings, forks seals, and, in worse-case scenarios, bodywork and even you.

Part Seven: What if it all goes wrong?

If it all goes wrong, hopefully you have the back brake covered, you mash it, and the front end slams down, smashing your grollies into the tank (if you are a guy) or smashing those mystical parts into the tank (if you are a girl.) If it goes REALLY wrong, and you ether didn't have the brake covered or you miss it completely (it happens), the bike will bodyslam itself into lots of expensive pieces, from about 5 feet up. It might also land on you. Try to fall off to the side. If you are not wearing gear, you will be in a world of pain, even at 20 miles per hour. Even wearing gear, you can still get hurt bad, okay?

Part Eight: The Wheelie

Having read this far, you're ready to try wheelies. Briefly, the following are the steps to the Wheelie.

Cover the back brake. It will stop you from flipping over backwards if you go too far.

Accelerate at about 1/4 throttle through 20-30 mph.

Squeeze the clutch.

Roll on more throttle.

Let out the clutch.

Steps 2-5 are almost simultaneous:

Step 1- The back brake will save your ass if you start to go over backwards. Until you are very proficient at wheelies, you should always cover the back brake just in case.

Step 2- You need to be accelerating gently to get the weight on the back wheel. Once you become proficient, you can do a wheelie from any speed, but we'll start like this, ok?

Step 3- Squeezing the clutch gets the engine spinning faster and making more power, of course. You don't have to squeeze it all the way in, just enough to get it slipping, thus spinning the motor up and getting more power.

Step 4- Giving a little more gas increases the engine spinning as noted in step 3 above.

Step 5- Letting out the clutch is the key to a smooth wheelie. Don't just pop out the clutch, or the front end might leap in the air and scare you away from wheelies for a year. Let the clutch out smoothly and quickly, as if you were pulling away from a light really fast. If you have ever been in a stoplight drag race and had the front end come up on you as you left the line, that's exactly how the clutch should come out.

In any case, unless you are really ballsy or just stupid, the front won't even come up the first time. You'll just kinda jerk forward a bit. No problem. Now, do it again, with a wee bit more throttle, engaging the clutch a wee bit faster, sneaking up on the wheelie. It probably won't come up this time either. Just keep on giving a wee bit more gas and a wee bit quicker (but still smooth) clutch engagement, and eventually the front will come up more and more. More throttle- more air.

Steering wheelies is just a matter of centering your weight. You lean to one side, you go to one side. Turn the front wheel one way, you'll go the other way, just like countersteering. Stick a knee out and you'll go that way. Simple. Just sit straight up and hold the bars straight at first, ok?

The front wheel has a gyro-effect, so if it stops spinning, turning the front can't steer you anymore and when you finish the wheelie it'll have to spin up to speed. If you are going fast enough, you'll get a chirp and a puff of smoke, but let's save that for later. If you set a wheelie down crossed up you can get a nasty tankslapper and get tossed, so try not to do that either, unless you like tankslappers.

Once you can consistently get the front end up higher and higher, then you can think about going just a bit further!

Part Nine: What now?

Okay, now you are getting the front wheel up regularly. Now you can find the balance point. Basically, it's this floaty, light point in a wheelie that is really damn high up there where you don't have to use as much throttle and you can basically keep it up indefinitely.

Part Ten: More Gears!

You aren't limited to 1st gear, of course. Once you are proficient at wheelies, you can use other gears. You can wheelie most sportbikes in 1st and 2nd and maybe 3rd gear, and some big boys like the R1 or the ZX-9 or maybe a Blackbird might be wheeliable even in 4th. I haven't brought a bike up, ever, in 4th, but it is possible.

  

Alternatively, you can start out in 1st and go up through the gears as far as your balls (or ovaries), the road, and your skill will let you. The current wheelie record is well over 175 miles per hour, so get out there. To shift in a wheelie all you need to do is twitch your right wrist to unload the gears, while having your left toe already pressuring the gear change. No clutch necessary. Some Hondas and other bikes, my Blackbird included, have a big throw from first to second. Give it a big, positive kick into second to avoid missing a shift, having the engine rev the tits off itself, and then having the front wheel slam down to the jeers of any witnesses and to your own shame and possibly mashed privates. If you do get it into second it will want to kick a little higher, so be ready to modulate the throttle. Of course, you haven't' tried to shift into 2nd until you were really familiar with balancing these things, so it's no problem. Now you can go into 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th, and you're the man (or woman) and you can make money at this.

Part 11: Variations.

Once you're quite the badass, here's some things to try.

Standing up. Easy, stand up on the pegs and wheelie away. Cool, eh?

Crossed up. You'll have to turn the bars and stick out the opposite knee to get a nice, crossed up, rad effect.

  

Waving/Flip off/other gestures. Take your hand off (your LEFT hand!) and do whatever you think would be cool. Extra points for flipping off cops, if that's your kinda thing.

Passengers. If you have a trusting friend, go for it. It is actually easier because of the weight distribution, but the stakes are higher for obvious reasons.

  

There are other variations, but if you are good enough to think of them and do them, you wouldn't be reading this, would you?

Part 12: It Ain't My Fault

Phuzzy accepts no responsibility whatsoever for anything that might happen to you if you decide to read this and go out and practice the techniques described herein. Wheelies are inherently dangerous because motorcycles have two wheels for a reason and if you take one of them off the ground, you open up a whole new realm of possible ways to maim yourself. Don't be stupid. Don't blame me if you end up having aftermarket titanium parts installed on your body if something goes wrong. Have fun.

Up to our knees...

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

I watched this video a week or two ago, and now I am completely re-thinking the Calories In - Calories Out paradigm.  After watching this, it's impossible to deny the *huge* metabolic differences in how our bodies deal with different types of carbohydrates.  I am a believer.  Sugar is slow poison.

That took a LONG time...

Yesterday our handyman finally completed the drywall project he started about a month ago.  The wife is a very tired of having to hang around the house while he was working, and I just wanted to be able to use the room again.

It's a weight-lifting and storage room, so all that stuff had to be moved out of there while he was working on it.  We had moved it into the downstairs guest bedroom for the duration of the project.  But we have visitors arriving for Thanksgiving who will need to use the guest bedroom.  The guest bed is currently being blocked by stacks of storage boxes.  I will need to move those out of the way tomorrow, so that our guest will have a place to sleep.

The drywalling is done, but there are a few items that still need to be taken care of, like finish carpentry and a couple of touch-ups near electrical outlets.

Also there is some work under the crawlspace that needs to be completed, but that can wait.

Texture and Paint

As I type this, our handyman should be two-coating the big room in the basement, and finishing the majority of the project.  Here he is on Friday night, finishing up the texture.

There will be a few things remaining to do, such as texture and paint the closet, install the closet door, and have the electrical outlets connected.  Also the crawl-space area is not finished.  But the month-long project is nearing completion finally! 

Just in time for family to arrive at Thanksgiving!  We now have to quickly move a bunch of storage boxes from the guest bedroom, back into this storage room.  And clean house.  Ugh.

Veteran's Day Honors

Grace's school sent home a note a couple of weeks ago, stating that they would like to honor any veteran parents who would like to attend a Veteran's Day event they were holding.  Grace asked me to come to the event, and so I told her that I would.

Today was the day that they held an assembly.  There were 3 rows of chairs at one end of the gymnasium, at which several parents were seated. 

In California and Oregon, kids are let out of school for Veteran's Day.  Here's how it goes in Idaho.

I sat in one of the empty chairs, and as Grace's class filed in, she came and sat with me.

The High School band came to Grace's Elementary School to play.  A Cub Scout color guard marched in with the US and State flags and set them in their holders.  The band played the National Anthem. 

Next, Veterans of each military branch were asked to stand as the band played each service hymn.  I hadn't heard "Anchors Aweigh" in decades.  Afterwards, we were each in turn asked to stand up, state our name, branch of military, and dates of service.  Then the band played a few more hymns.

Toward the end of the ceremony, a pastor gave a brief speech and asked for the children to raise their hands if they knew what happens during a war.  He selected one girl, who said, "People shoot at each other and die."  He said that was correct.  Then he told the children that each one of us had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution, even to death.  And that was the purpose of Veteran's Day.

After that, the entire school, and the high school band stood up and clapped for the handful of us vets seated at the end of the gymnasium.  It was very, very humbling.  And it was a lot different than having Grace out of school for one Monday in November.

Power Dieting

I started a diet on October 1st.  In about 40 days I have lost 27 lbs.  As of today I am officially no longer Obese according to the Body Mass Index.  Here is a BMI calculator.  I anticipate being to my goal weight some time around New Year's.   At that point I will begin eating more and lifting weights again.

I have a very effective diet that I have used in the past to shed weight rapidly.  It's a combination of fasting and Low Carb.  The thinking goes like this:  I can eat a negligible amount of food since I have plenty of body fat to burn that will provide energy for essential bodily functions.

There is an energy balance in the body.  Basically calories eaten minus calories burned = weight gain or loss.  What most people don't realize is that exercise doesn't affect this equation very much!  The largest part of the minus side of the equation is called BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate.  Here is a BMR calculator.  My BMR is about 2100 calories a day, with no exercise at all.  If I were to add a mile of jogging at 5 mph, I would only burn an additional 100 calories.  That's all, an additional 100 calories!  So clearly controlling diet is FAR more important than exercising at this stage.

To be blunt, you need a lot of your body to be active muscle mass for exercise to be an effective way to burn calories.  At this point, I am mostly bones, organs and body fat, not muscle!  Here's another thing people don't realize.  It's not a good idea to try to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.  Building muscle requires an excess of carbs and protien - the same things (combined with inactivity) that causes people to get fat in the first place!!!  So... first we lose the fat, then adopt a program of eating right and exercising.

Back to my aggressive diet though...  When I get hungry, I initially try to avoid taking in calories, either by drinking coffee, a low-carb energy drink, or a diet soda.  When the hunger gets too great or I get a splitting headache, I will either have a protien drink (160 calories), an ounce of cheese (110 calories), or a couple of hot dogs without the bun (200 calories).  Rinse and repeat.  I am burning off 4-5 lbs each week.  One caveat:  I am religious about eating a multivitamin and a fish oil pill whenever I am doing this, because I am certainly not incorporating all the essential nutrients in my diet.

Some folks would probably say that it's dangerous to diet this way.  I would like them to explain that scientifically.  The last time I was on this diet, I had a full set of blood work done.  My triglycerides were excellent, my cholesteral was normal, although a the LDP/HDP was a little high and the doctor recommended I eat some stuff containing good cholesterol.  I think he specifially mentioned adding nuts to my diet.

So there.  Actually I really enjoy the challenge of dropping weight, even if I don't feel very energetic or 100% mentally acute.  It's the enjoyment of tracking my progress and having clothes fit again that brings its own set of rewards.

Then too, I am also looking forward to eating like a horse and exercising like one! 

More Drywall, plus Elk

Drywall and Elk don't have much in common, other than Drywall is ongoing in my life, and I spotted a few Elk on the way home from work today :)

Latest on the big basement room - Tape is done, and mud is going on:

Tiny herd of elk.  Poor lighting conditions, large distance, and using a Blackberry camera from a moving vehicle.  Meh.