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Monday, December 11

Settling for 92% settled

I was kinda grateful for the shitty weather to start the weekend.  Not so much the thirty something degree rain and total darkness on the commute home Friday night, but definitely the sleet/snow/rain/cold/shit on Saturday.  It was the impetus required to force me to deal with most of the undone things around "house."

Roll outta bed when I feel like it, coffee, breakfast... out the door to the hardware store with a list.

Come home $100 lighter and with loads of things to keep me busy.  I save the cool bike stuff for last because... burrito?

I swear that for every five minutes of effort I thought would be required for some of the simpler tasks, I spent twenty.  Putting a latch on the attic door, replacing a dead bolt in the laundry room, decorative toilet bolt caps...

If something could go wrong, it does.

But eventually, efforts are rewarded, and I get to move on to putting my bikes in order.

The Topeak Dual-Touch bike stand couldn't go exactly where I wanted it without a bunch of rolling around in the attic insulation, but fortunately, it didn't matter. Droop the saddle on the upper bike, tilt them both a bit, and they take up the amount of room I had in mind.

Unused space in a small home is a sin.  If your body is never gonna occupy it, fill it with something.  Behind the couch was never a place I planned on hanging out, but a fine place for my mountain cycling bikes to do so.  I like that the Dual-Touch can be moved from room to room pretty easily, but I'm hoping that even when The Pie and I are DINKS, I get to still keep my bikes in the living room.

I know you get it.

I got a little creative with the Solo Bike Holder.

I wanted the By:Stickel Meatplow V.6 (and an old messenger bag) to be super handy to grab and get out the door for beer runs and urban rides about town.  I was gonna put it in The Pie's office, but when I figured out with the Dual-Touch that a tilted bike can take up less horizontal wall space, I decided to put it in the temporary bike room behind the kitchen.

I did massage the install a bit.

The Solo would probably work better with the narrow bars of a road bike.  Mounted directly to the wall, I would have to turn the 690mm flat bars a bit... which would hurt my head to look at.

So, I thought about the materials I had at hand and my current lack of hipster re-purposed pallet furniture, and I made that extended shelf thing-a-do.  I spent way more time building it in my head than with my hands. 

And like that, there are no more time consuming things to do... aside from hanging all the photos and art stuff on the wall... which is where the rest of the day went.

Other than eventually converting the porch into a proper place to work on bikes (and other crafty things), from this point on, if it ain't broke, I ain't fixing it.  Well, I do have to install a Swing-Up Bike Holder in the new bike room for my tarck bike, as I've vowed to myself that I'd keep all my work shit from cluttering up the living room... like I'd been doing for years.

I'm no longer staring into space thinking about what "house" thing to do next.  I'm just super itching to go on a ride now.

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