Tag Archive for wrx

Day 13: Your Mode of Transportation

November 3, 2010 Life No comments

As a typical American, my primary mode of transportation is a car. We’re a two-car family, of course. I’ll begin with describing mine.

My personal car is a 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX. It’s the wagon variant, and it’s a nice blend between utility and fast-as-hell. It’s got a few aftermarket mods, like a catback exhaust, and so on. In the future, I’ll be replacing the up-pipe and down-pipe on the turbo, and doing a Stage 2 tune to it. This will be the car I drive for at least the next 18 months, and while I enjoy it, I’m already looking at possible replacements.1

Kate’s car is a 2009 Honda Fit Sport. We picked it up because the situation with her Ford Focus had become untenable. It’s a zippy little car, and a not-bad driving experience. The only extensive driving I’ve done with it was for most of last summer while she was in Wilmington, NC, for work. It’s definitely reminded me of why I like Hondas.

Then there’s my fleet of bikes. Right now, the complete ones are two Salsas (a Campeón road bike and a Las Cruces cyclocross rig), a Cervelo P2C, and a Pallas Athena custom 29er. I’ve got a commuter frame in-progress for myself that I should be wrapping up this weekend, as well.

And then there’s my feet. I do like to walk when things are within a half-mile to a mile, and the weather’s not harsh.

1. Under consideration are the Subaru Legacy, Acura TL, BMW 328i, Audi A4, Volvo S40, and a few other family sedan-type cars. These are all either standard with all-wheel drive or have it available as an option. I’m also considering going back a Nissan XTerra, as I do miss the conveniences of an SUV.

August Awesome 1st

August 1, 2010 Bike No comments

Hell yeah, what a day. What a weekend, really. Been rocking the bike stuff hard.

Friday night started with Minnecycle 2010. Showed up and had an awesome time. Hung out with Paul and Vincent, met Curt Goodrich and had a good chat with him after a bit of a go-’round on a mailing list. Took a bunch of photos, which are here.

Saturday was more Minnecycle, while Kate was off at her bachelorette party. As I write this, it’s 8pm and she’s sound asleep on the couch. Beyond the Minnecycle stuff, my only other real accomplishment was getting the WRX super-cleaned. Thank you, Mr. Car Wash. You are awesome.

Today. Oh, why can’t all days be this productive? I got up. I made a quick entry over at the wedding site, noted that there’s only 35 days left until THE BIG DAY™. Then I loaded up the car and got over to Paul’s for framebuilding. During that time I accomplished the following:

  • Frame modification for paying customer.
  • Started on custom fork for paying customer.
  • Removed 31mm from length of 29er fork, re-sleeved socketed dropouts and re-built.
  • Cold-set/aligned the back end of the 29′er frame.
  • Faced the head tube for installation of the headset.

Tonight, I’m going to start prepping the 29er for a quick build-out tomorrow, and I’m going to take it for a short test spin and see how it goes. There’s a few cosmetic things I’m waiting on before she can definitely go to paint. But yeah, so incredibly stoked about it.

I’ll shoot some pictures of it tomorrow after the parts are on it.

Item #102, One REALLY Important Thing, and the 29′er Frame

July 20, 2010 Bike, Life 2 comments

Item number 102 for the “101 Things in 1001 Days” project: stop taking shit too far. Just because a joke is getting laughs doesn’t mean it needs more laughs at the cost of someone’s feelings.

I’ll let you chew on that one without being specific.

The important part of this post is Kate. Yesterday, she was informed that she is getting an interim promotion to a manager role at work. I’m really quite proud of her — this is something she would have avoided going-for a few years ago, and she took the leap, and was not only successful, but was a unanimous decision by the hiring team.

The last big item is the 29′er frame — it’s basically done. I could, in theory, ship it off to paint today. However, the perfectionist in me insists on touching up a few spots on the fillets. And I’m waiting for a couple of waterjetted pieces to braze onto the frame, which I should be picking up today.

An addendum, unrelated to the above:

  • Had to put a spare tire on my car this morning. I am so fucking filthy. And at the office. I should probably go home and change.

Weekend Update

March 22, 2010 Life No comments

Friday night, I played a lot of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (hereinafter to be referred to as BF:BC2), which was a good thing. Kate had the day off and spent time at her parents’ place before helping Allie with her wedding invitations. I was asleep before she got home.

Saturday, there’s not much to report. It was pretty cold and I had a nine-hour shift at Penn Cycle. We weren’t super-busy, but we had bursts of activity. Fixed some things, built two bikes (the third had to be sent back on warranty due to a fork crown that was fractured before we touched it). Not much to report there, either. Before the shift, I cleaned up and organized the bike room, which sorely needed it.

Sunday, we had a shorter shift at the framebuilding apprenticeship, as I had to leave by 4 p.m. However, we got a ton of stuff done. Cold-set and tuned the fork for the commuter frame. That was for starters. We also took the twist out of the head tube and aligned the down tube on the 29′er frame. Started mitering the mounting points for the canti posts, and TIG welded the upright onto my welding stand that we started a couple months back and never finished. Starting to figure out that TIG thing a little better — would be easier with a water-cooled system as the gun gets incredibly hot (even through heavy gloves).

After framebuilding, I drove home, and Kate and I hurried our asses over to Williams Arena. We had tickets to the women’s NCAA basketball and watched Nebraska blow out Northern Iowa by almost 40 points.

The stadium food really fucked with my stomach, so I didn’t do much afterward. We watched TV and I went to bed early.

Bikey Bikey Bikey, Plus One Other Thing

July 7, 2009 Bike, Life No comments

New training wheels should be finished tonight, and I’m pleased about that. I’ve got them all laced-up, but would rather pay Andy a case of beer to do the tensioning/rounding/truing, as he’s much better at that stuff than I am. I’ll be giving them a hard ride tomorrow, rain or shine, just to see how they play out. Will post the resulting data here, just to show you how out-of-shape I truly am.

Got the Birchwood Cyclocross Clinic on Saturday. Yeah, I’ve already raced ‘cross a few times, and yeah, I love me the crap out of it. It’ll be good to get out there, though, and sharpen my skills. I could be a lot faster on my dismounts than I currently am, and I’m sure that there’s a LOT that I don’t know that I need to learn before the season kicks off in September. This means I should tune-up the Salsa Las Cruces this week.

Related to ‘cross: I need to start running again. Hills and sprints, mostly, but I want to do some endurance stuff to get the legs used to it again. Also, I need to find some better MTB shoes. Every time I run in my cheap Nikes, I injure my foot. Sidi Dominator 5s, maybe? We’ll see.

Unrelated to bikes: the new struts for the WRX should be here today, thank Christ. Hoping to get that work done on Saturday morning.

An Update of Sorts

July 6, 2009 Life No comments

So things have been crazy lately, and I make no apologies for not updating this blog more often. I’ll give you a quick recap on what’s shakin’, though:

1. The WRX. After spending almost $300 on fluid changes in the Subaru, I took it in to Car-X for a look at the struts. They wanted $1600 for struts and labor — highway robbery at its finest. Some research indicated that OEM struts were about $700 if I ordered them from a Subaru dealer. I bought good-quality aftermarket struts and found a highly-recommended mechanic who’ll do the work for $100. You can’t argue with that, can you? Struts should be here today or tomorrow via FedEx, and I’ll have the work done this weekend.

2. Kate’s still traveling for business, and as a result, whenever she’s home (usually for a 36-hour weekend blitz), the last thing I want to do is go near a computer.

3. Also, language. I keep coming across the word “brifters,” a stupid-assed contraction used to describe integrated brake/shift levers on a bicycle. I hate the word “brifters” so much that I frequently put the laptop to sleep after encountering the word. It actually took me two hours to write this paragraph because I kept typing the word “brifters.”

Christ. There I went again. It is now another hour later and I can just barely stand myself.

Honestly, there’s just been lots of shit going on lately and I can spread blame around, but the bottom line is that I just haven’t felt like updating.

Another Weekend in the Books

June 1, 2009 Life No comments

So I had this awesomely huge to-do list for the weekend, and was all gung-ho about getting through it. Saturday morning, I woke up, attacked it and lasted until about 1pm before I decided that I was done. I did manage to get in a good ride, hit up Target for some necessities, and wash both the WRX and the Fit.

I did read a few hundred more pages of Stephenson’s Anathem. Like everything he wrote after Cryptonomicon, it’s kind of slow going. It’s not that it’s boring, it’s that it’s dense with ideas. And that slows me down a bit. There’s the paperback edition of another book (not by Mr. Stephenson) I’ve been wanting to read and that’s coming out tomorrow, so I’ll be hitting up B&N and shoving it to the top of the to-read list.

In addition to my reading, I also watched the entire first season of Big Bang Theory, which I scored at Target for $16 on DVD. (Awesome show. Something you should really be watching, particularly if you’re a geek.)

Dinked around with the money a bit — planning and thinking work.

Had a great talk with Kate. Aired out some of the emotional difficulties surrounding her long business trip, and as a result, I think we’re on the same sheet of music, and stronger for it. Have I mentioned that I love that woman? Yeah, well, I do.

So I’ve gone and done it again — another post laden with trivia about how I spent my weekend, and how I’m goofy-in-love with my fianceé. I’ve got some more interesting/substantive stuff forthcoming, I swear.

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