The Finished Product

10 days - probably a world record

Now We Sand the Living Shit Out of the Floors

I must have sucked in 10 lbs. of sawdust in this lovely process ....

OK, Now the Carpet is Ripped Out

What you can't see are the double carpet tacking strips that came out maybe 6 inches at a time or the thousand tacks, nails, brads and staples that had to be pulled from the floor by hand.

Pre-Filthy Carpet Removal

In these pictures the carpet looks OK. Upon closer inspection - disaster. The house had been owned by one of those "cat ladies". You know, the old woman who has 2 cats, then 8 cats, then 20 cats and then 83 cats. Cats until she dies and the cats crap and claw everything in the house. Pulling up these carpets (until I cleaned the cooktop in the kitchen) was right in there with my high-school job of plunging out the sewer lines under the Redwood City Elks Club ... but that's another story. Anyway here are the marketing pics..

Where Have I Been?

Rode the bike today for the first time in almost three weeks and, man, I missed it. Let's see. I was sucked into the vortex of a 1957 rancher in La Jolla. Since my last post I have;

• Moved off of Mt Soledad (no more deck views or bicycling up the mountain)
• Refinished 1,500 sq feet of beat up wood flooring at the new house
• Moved everything from a 3,600 square foot house to a 1,900 square foot house (interesting furnishing environment right now)

New place is maybe 5 blocks up the hill from Wind an Sea Beach (yes, that's how it is spelled). We can see the ocean from the house and the weather is much more beach-like. Anyway, I am going to try to post the chronology of the floors ...

Political Stupidity Juxtaposed

This past week has seen two political events/proposals that kind of represent how damned stupid politics generally gets. The first is Clinton/McCain's brilliant idea for a gas tax holiday for the summer ... why not just send everyone who votes for you $300? Why even bother to hide that there is any difference or that you are somehow not pandering? The second is in Africa (although it has a kind of "Florida hanging chad" ring to it). Does anyone think Robert Mugabe really didn't get his ass kicked by the opposition party in Zimbabwe? It has only taken him a month to appropriately "recount" the votes, begin a campaign of rampant violence against the opposition and begin the "electoral" push for a run-off. I wonder who's gonna win?

bugness

Monday was super warm and on tuesday morning all "bug" broke loose. Everywhere you looked (especially near the Torrey Pines Park) there were these stink bugs running all over the place. They were after one another from the looks of them and by the end of the week they had petered out.

it will be 90 degrees today ....

7:30 in the morning on the deck - panning west to east

rundown for the week

Filling in the blanks for what I saw on the bike commute this week. The weather has turned a sharp bit warmer ~ makes everything better. The beaches have more people on them and Torrey Pines beach has been no exception. People doing everything; swimming, surfing, running and just laying out on the beach. No real super-highlights. Yesterday met a kid of 15 years old cranking up the Torrey grade; about the only person I can pass ;-). Spoke to him a little and told him to keep riding. The day before on the way home gave some directions to two guys, maybe mid 20's, adonis-bodies riding modified road bikes (nice ones) - they had begun riding at about 10:30 AM in Huntington Beach and were headed for the Gaslamp district. I saw them in La Jolla at about 6:30PM. Just having fun. I thought about it and at first didn't believe them. I thought Huntington Beach was too far away. After checking the map - its only 85 miles from La Jolla so - I am sure they did it. Have made a mental note to ride up there someday - although it just reminded me on how close LA is...

paulson seems a smart man, unlike his boss

Bush normally appoints idiots like himself as advisors. I just read Henry Paulson's suggestions for changing the Federal Reserve System. Seems pretty smart to me. Click for the link.

something we should all pay attention to; and be ashamed of

Click for the link

on bicycle commuting

I am getting the route and routine of my bike commute down and wanted to comment on a certain aspect of it that came out in a discussion with friends the other evening. Specifically, it is that, when commuting on my bike, almost every day/night, I see something or someone that I would never have run into were I in a car. These are not necessarily "big" things, just experiences that make life a little more interesting. I'll use this last week as an example. I commuted on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesday I was on the road earlier than usual because I was having dinner with friends and it was light my entire return ride. About a third of the way through, near UCSD, I noticed I was cycling with a young woman who, when I asked her said she was riding home to Pacific Beach. I offered to show her the best way to go and we shared the ride for about 10 miles or so. Didn't ask her name and I'll probably see her again out on the road. Wednesday was my usual later evening ride. At the base of Mt. Soledad, as I was heading up Muirlands Road, I could see a young woman walking down the sidewalk to my right. She perked out, "Wonderful evening isn't it?" in a friendly sing-song kind of way. I responded, "Good evening", and then it got weird. She came walking at me quickly, "Why won't you help me, Sir?" she barked. My bullshit meter went off big-time and I zipped to the other side of the road and pedaled uphill as fast as I could. She continued, "What are you doing, Sir?", to which I replied, "Riding away from a crazy woman". I finished my ride wondering what the hell I had just experienced, coming to the conclusion that spring-break LSD or X had juiced the poor girl into some kind of dementia. Thursday, not much until very close to home when a guy ran out of his house squawking, "Dude, where did you get that light?", "You light up the whole street!". After multiple "Dude" -peppered exclamations from the guy (I think he had a couple drinks in him), I showed him my light (the "light & motion" brand headlamp that has changed my life and DOES, in fact, light up the whole street) he seemed satisfied and I pedaled up the hill. Admittedly, differing experiences -- but all interesting and none would have happened had I been insulated in my car.

oh, and some classic children's books

Just a couple postcards

meat rider

I have been thinking lately how attached I am to my road bike and riding and the way I feel about it. I got to thinking about fisherman and hunters, how some do it for sport and some for meat. I ride for the meat, not for the sport. Although I love the concept of sport road cycling, and certainly my love for the experience is a combination of both; I am primarily a meat cyclist. I do it to replace my car and would sell my stupid car altogether were it not for children and board meetings.

edward abbey ...

I didn't really know who Ed was. He showed up on a Patagonia blog post so I did the usual Wikipedia search. A very interesting human who spent time in a very interesting part of the world. Here are some quotes of his from Wikipedia. I especially like the abortion, off-road vehicle and war quotes. Click on the image to the left and it will expand to be large enough to read ....

shots off the deck a few days ago

Have been working like a madman the past couple of weeks - taking the day off (working tonight, though) and catching up on StumbleUpon and my usual web-surfing. Here are some pictures off the deck the other morning...

crescent moon in the eastern sky at sunrise

Also, just off the shoreline out by Marine St. beach is the line of boats. They started there about a week ago and are fishing for something but I don't know what (found out - LOBSTER). Kind of eerie late at night because they are out there with their lights on doing something. Warm finally on the ride in this morning. Dropped down the Torrey Grade into a "gnat explosion". I suspect the warmth woke 'em all up and I was peppered with them (still am a little).

lower yosemite falls last winter

bryce canyon video

my grand canyon video

so let's ride our bikes from Mission Bay to Crystal Pier

wind an sea sunset surfing

One of those sublime evenings while I was riding my bike home ....

imperial beach

Here's another video I did of the Mexiacn border and the beach town of Imperial Beach. Also some interesting stuff around the Tijuana estuary. J

coronado island tour

Click on the opening screen at left for a Yahoo Go! early release tour of Coronado Island J

lost my posts

In switching back to Blogger. I took too long and Yahoo is holding my prior site hostage. Screw'em. For the money it ain't worth it - but I just procrastinated myself out of a year's with of blog entries. I will try to put up some of the videos now - the ones I remember anyway.

efficient transportation

Not difficult to see which is the most efficient.

why the remarkable stupidity

A terrifying piece in the NYT this morning about what is going on in Afghanistan and what our government is doing to our boys and the Afghan people in the countryside. Pure destruction. Read the article - the Tao says that weapons are instruments of fear and the story this morning confirms it. Send the idiot Bush and his ilk to the Korengal Valley ~ he might last 5 minutes.

adventure cycling people

On our lunch ride the other day we met Tammy and Chuck, Adventure cycling good people. A little rain, but it looked like a lot of fun...

something new every day

I am going to try to import 2+ year's of WordPress blog back into Blogger.... We'll see.

ANyway, unrelated. I commute in to work on my bike whenever I can and this moring I saw something (which I did not take a picture of) that I have never seen before and hope I will never see again.

On the side of the road on the shoulder - a flesh-tone dildo .... I guess somebody threw it out the window of their car??

just think this one's funny

musings on my commute

With my new job my bicycle commute has gone from 16 to 30 miles, round trip, and now includes some serious elevation. The new route is traffic-nuts, but also sublime, taking me right through Torrey Pines park, beaches and estuary. To my point; things one experiences on a bike vs a car. Riding home the other night (with my Light & Motion headlamp beaming) I had a bat come zooming in from my right and miss my head by just a couple inches - got my attention. The night was cold (for here) near the water and I made my way down to the coast highway. Then, not a couple miles further as I began to climb the Torrey Pines grade the temperature changed suddenly, becoming for some reason quite warm. Immediately my glasses and rear-view mirror fogged-up and I rode blind for a few meters, chuckling to myself at the experience. Insulated in a car, I would never have experienced any of it. Just the little things.

ahem, just coincidence, I guess

we must get out now, no more excuses

These boys lost their father in the bombing of a popular pet market in Iraq yesterday. I don't imagine they will think kindly of the criminally misguided efforts of the Bush Administration to occupy their country to control undeveloped oil markets in the name of democracy. Yesterday's blast was particularly heart wrenching because its reporting contained so many classic elements and human miseries of this debacle. "Many children were killed in the Bird Market" ~ Probably trying to find a small window of beauty to forget the horrors of daily life which for 65 people (many children) is over now. Condi condemns, "The absolute brutality and bankruptcy" of the terrorists ~ Look in the mirror Ms. Rice. An earlier article I read this morning talked about the success of rooting out insurgent strongholds (ALL of which are Al Qaeda, NEVER anyone else?). One example was given where to begin the "rooting" 40,000 pounds of bombs were dropped in the "insurgent stronghold" in 10 minutes. Precision attack, no doubt. Women suicide bombers carried out the attack. The Iraqi police claim they were "mentally impaired". Apparently after inspecting their severed heads this was obvious. A shopkeeper who survived the blast describes one of the women as quite normal, with the chilling twist that she had been shepherding a small boy in a completely normal manner, adding, "the child had vanished and I can't forget the innocent look in his eyes" "Later, someone covered the bomber's head with an empty cardboard box of Wonder potato chips" "Its chaos" A critical observer can draw the correct conclusions despite the propaganda: Violence is "down" because the media is less able to report all but the most horrific acts, the Shia militia stopped its overt attacks, we have befriended Sunnis who will be our buddies while it serves their short-term interests and the collapsing economy at home has diverted people's attention. The sins of this Administration's idiotic forays will fall hard on all of us for generations. As my paycheck goes a shorter distance and my tax dollars go to waste and greed, I could not be more disgusted with my political leaders. Send them and their children to watch the beautiful birds and tropical fish in the Baghdad pet market.