First Spam

Well, just got the first spam comment on this website. Askimet caught it, something about student loans. It’s actually funny, since this is a personal website – a place for my stuff and a place for me to tell friends and family how we are doing. Speaking of which, perhaps I should get those pictures sorted out…

Watched the Taekwondo Black Belt Exam

Well I was able to watch the Black Belt exam at Big Sky Martial Arts. Wow! I only saw the last 2 1/2 hours. The 2+ hours I missed included 90 minutes of kicking the bags. I watched the self-defense portion, poomse (and Taeguk Il Jang backwards), sparring and board breaking. The boys were with me and they behaved very well. Everybody passed the test! I hope get my Black Belt at next years test, I see that I need to work on aerobic/anaerobic conditioning and self-defense. One student (now a 2nd Dan Black Belt) suggested getting a Jujitsu tape for the self-defense portion, which I will certainly do.

I love going to Taekwondo, it’s inspiring.

Photo Album now Working

In creating my last post I fixed the non-errors causing photo uploads to fail. So we now have Photo Albums. Not many pictures at this time, but I will add more. Enjoy.

Many One-Liners for a Laugh

I was digging around in my wiki and came across my humor page, with various funny pictures, jokes and one-liners. Since laughter is the best medicine, I’ll share some here.

• There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.
• About 25% of integers are divisible by 4.
• The beatings will continue until morale improves.
• The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything.
• A good friend will come and bail you out of jail…but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, “WOW…that was fun!”
• Change the world – move a rock.
• If all else fails: “rm -rf /”

And finally, a joke in honor of winter, which comes whether I want it to or not:

Feel better?

Photo Album

FYI, the photo album plugin is not uploading pictures. Nor is it giving an error. I am attempting to fix the issue so bear with me.

2007 Trek T900 Tandem

While I liked my setup on the Trek 4300, I soon realized two things:

1. that a rear mounted child seat on my small bike was uncomfortable – I had to slide forward on the seat.
2. that my almost five-year-old was not content as a passive rider in the trailer.

So after a lot of research online, especially on Bike Forums, I narrowed my options to a tag-along bike (like the Adams Trail-A-Bike or the Trek Mountain Train) or a Tandem. I was worried about the stability of a TAB, especially with the length of that, my bike and the trailer. Of course, finding an inexpensive tandem to fit a 5′2″ captain was also a problem. I chose the tandem option, as I have three kids that can use it with me. My options where a Trek T900 ($950) or a stock Bike Friday ($1350). The local stores don’t stock tandems, so we drove to Spokane, WA to make sure the T900 would fit me before we bought it. It did, barely, so we bought it home.

The first changes on it were for fit. To fit me:

1. I changed the angle on the handlebars, so that the I could reach them comfortably.
2. I also went to a Brooks B-17 instead of the original padded saddle with springs, that was so I could reach the pedals. (Also a good excuse to get another Brooks.)

To fit my son:

1. I replaced the suspension seatpost and padded saddle with a child’s BMX saddle and shorter seatpost.
2. I bought child crankshortners on eBay, and attached standard pedals with toe clips.
3. The leg reach was still to long, so I added some 2×4 wood to the pedals and re-attached the toe clips to that.
4. His feet come out of the toe clips often, so we also use a heel strap. My son is pretty happy on the “big bike”.

Other changes included:

• a rack that will hold the rear child seat if needed
• a cycle-computer (the basic Trek model)
• clipless pedals for me
• a front light
• a bell for the stroker
• 2 bottle cages (one each, strokers is handlebar mounted)
• frame pump
• a frame bag with flat repair kit
• I moved the trailer mount to the tandem

Its quite a train.

2007 Trek 4300 WSD

This was my first non-Walmart bicycle, I bought it from Wheaton’s. I made quite a few changes to it.

• Trek Cycle-computer
• Kickstand. Yeah, uncool. But I’m not laying a bike like this on the ground.
• The Springer Dog Jogger Attachment.
• Frame Tire Pump. No I didn’t have a manual tire pump at home.
• Topeak Rear Child Seat (Includes Rear Rack). Its a nice seat that attaches to a rear rack, so you can remove it easily. It is pretty big for my bike frame, I later discovered riding with it was not to comfortable. Of course my old child trailer wouldn?t work with the rack (the trailer mount overlaps the leg on the rack), so I had to upgrade my trailer …
• Trek GoBug.
• Bottle Cage. At least this was cheap.
• Front and Rear Lights. Visited to long and got caught in the dark once, luckily I was VERY close to home. Don?t want to do that again though.
• Brooks Champion Flyer S. Everyone raved, so I had to try one, Wallingford Bikes has a 6 month return policy, so there was no risk.
• Flat Kit in Underseat Bag. I got tired of the handlebar bag, so this covers the basics.
  Bar Ends.
• SPD Clipless Pedals The main reason I got these was to (hopefully) get extra power on the tandem. I didn’t want to learn to ride clipless with my 5 year old as stroker, so I started here. Yes I fell (once).

Here is the full train at a local park, this is before I got the Brooks (which looks so stylish). The baby is sleeping in the trailer.