Summer's Flying By

Hello, Sorry for the total lack of posts lately. I've been busy trying to pack as much fun stuff into the summer as humanly possible. With only about two months or so of true summer weather, and most of that being taken up with work or house work, the remainder gets jammed full quick.

Last weekend my little sister was in town with her 1yo baby, and my other siblings made the trek down to RI to see her. Kaptain Krunch and the Mrs made the trip down from Vermont for the week, and my sister in connecticut came down to stay with her kids at our place. Even BBW and Garden Girl made the trip down for kayaking and the saturday night bonfire. Since it ended up raining, I mean Absolutely Pouring, for two of the four days I took out of work, I was slightly annoyed until my annoyance was drowned in 16 gallons of beer. We said Screw-It and continued our plans of boating, rope swings, surfing, and general fuck-around-a-ry in the rain.

We had great surf for two days of the week, it was great to get out there. I used to spend all summer surfing until I switched over to mostly mtbiking and kayaking. I'll be trying to mix in some more surfing now that I've knocked the rust out.

Other than that, not much to write about. I was able to get out for the dawn-patrol mtbike rides this weekend. Saturday I took off on the usual PoDunk, Pardon Joslin loop. Felt great! Sunday morning I dragged Snoopy out of bed at 5:30 and made the trip down to Burlingame. Can you believe it was the FIRST ride around the lake since the winter NEMBA FunRide? Just haven't been staying at the lake that much with the change of family arrangements down there.. I've been missing the lake ride alot. This was Snoopy's first big loop. He did the entire off road loop. When I got to the inlaws at about mile 7, he stayed with them while I rode out on the road to get the car. I couldn't believe it... that is one tough little dog! Afterward, he and I went out for some father-dog fishing time on the lake. He was trying to eat my hand-dug worms from the compost pile (The compost is FULL of worms....sweet!), and when I caught something, would try to eat the perch. After a couple hours of that it was time to head back to shore to get Mrs 40.

Other than that, we need to pick a weekend for the 5th Annual RAMHADAB. I can't wait. many changes to biking portion were discussed...I'm sure we can figure out a decent compromise.

see ya.

Very Local Summer

View from the deck of Peace IV... typical perfect RI sunset...

Lately we haven't been going far. Most weekends, at most we drive or bike the grand total of 18 miles to the lake or salt pond. During the week, pretty much we go nowhere except home, and stuff within bike riding distance from home. Not that I've been riding my bike much... Kinda got stuck in a ride-less rut.. this heat and humidity and deer flies drive me a little insane lately on top of real and imagined work or family reasons i've been packing on the gut, and getting slow. btw, I may propose a RAMHADAB course adjustment this year to include more mellow trails. Some members of the pandapas folk are in the same boat as me.

Anyway So, about 1/2 the nights after work, Mrs 40 and I will head over to Wickford harbor to putz around. The other night I made it out of work early enough to go kayaking in the fancy wood boat. I've been using the wood boat more these days... even though after ten years its starting to show its age.

The other night it was pretty calm, so after a hot lap around the island, I headed out past the breakwater and figured it was nice enough to start paddling south. My rough plan was to cross the cove, and then was planning to check out all the beaches etc on the way back. I only had about 1.5 hours of sunlight, so I was going pretty fast. About 1/2way across the cove, I noticed a pretty classy looking catamaran anchored in further, so I headed over to check it out.



When I got closer the women asked if the boat was homebuilt. I said it was and asked if theirs was too.. It was. 'Come Closer so I can see your boat', she ses. No prob. After a few minutes of mutual admiration, I was invited aboard via the elegantly simple dinghy dock that was lowered down like some sort of modern pirate gangplate you can see in the lower part of this pix.. Sweeet.

We chatted for quite awhile, this classy ship is a Wharram designed Tiki 46, Hull #1, Peace IV. The brilliant simplicity of the design had me speechless. Plywood construction, hulls LASHED, yes LASHED, to the main deck, basic tiller steering with stuff you could pull together at home depot (no kidding), with performance on par with a scaled up hobie 16. yeah... freaking amazing. I was in awe. I kept snapping pix.... here is the view down the 46 foot hull at their wind turbine:


Anyhow, I took way tooo many to post here, but for more info about this Tiki 46 go check out this webpage. The long story short: this world cruising pair met, built this machine, and is travelling around the world on a shoestring budget, living like royalty, all from income from selling Wharram Plans! Even I know I'm waaaay to much of a dreamer to pull off buulding something this sweet... I have a hard time enough keeping up with the garden.

Before long, the sun had set, and I was a good mile or two outside the breakwater with no lights except my small bike blinker. I thanked Ann and Neville and headed back home right as the schoolie bluefish started popping out around the harbor.


Looks like that is the last pix bloggers going to let me post, so I'll end for now. More posts to come now that I have a computer at home (it is sweeeeeeeeeeeet if you were wondering). Long overdue, more garden musings, my latest Greeeeen rant, and ideas about Slip N Slide-ADAB(oh yes... begin thinking of candidate weekends this summer.....) and er, well.. a post about the new tarmac they layed down on Interstate Liberty Church Road and The Hallville Turnpike.

-40

Finally, new computer

Fate of the old computer..


Mrs 40 and I had been clunking along for the last 7 years with a very old celeron desktop with 512 meg of ram. the hard drive crashed about annually, thoughh after the first time we got wicked smaaat and bought a USB backup hard drive.

Well, two months ago it died once again, and I'm giving up fixing it. Its amazing what you can get for a laptop these days, price and performance wise. Long story short, I can finally update the blog (can't use my work computer for that), upload vacation and trip pix from the last 2 months. Thanks to my credit card cash back bonus deal, the laptop was free!! whooo hooo. Anyhow, I just finished setting up the critical stuff, like downloading firefox to avoid the evil internet explorer, and finding an ancient copy of winamp that works just fiiiiiiiiiiine. Tomorrow I'll probably get to putting itunes on it... yeahhhh. nice.

Stay tuned for updates! -40.

I'm Back!

Hey,

Thanks CTLP for posting the FARTAB Vol 5 pics and recap!!!

Ouch.. My head hurts just *thinking* about my Cinquo de FARTABO performance... I swear I knocked something loose in my brain on that trip. Just not right. After the trip Baldboy Wonder emailed the results of his cooler autopsy.. between Kaptain Krunch, BBW and I we somehow consumed 1.5 bottles of Gin, and only 1/2 bottle of Juice. Could explain the early sleepy act...when we got to the campsite. Just a thought.

As the title of the post, I just got back from being away from the southernmost point of the Beermuda triangle. I spent a few days travelling for work, then took off on vacation with Mrs 40 up to Montreal, then up to Vermont for a kayak and camping trip with BaldBoy. I still have to download my pictures from those adventures and will post a recap when I get time.

In the meantime, Check out the video of this f*cking moron....You have GOT to be kidding me??? How did this chump get elected???

I'm beginning to agree with J Howard Kunstler, that GW b*sh and republicans will be going out of business if we make it out of the energy/food/global warming/housing crash/economy crash/insert ongoing disaster here.

On a lighter note: stay tuned for vacation and maybe more fartab pix!

-40

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 3

The camp was set up, an unadvised but surprisingly injury-free round of fire swinging occurred and cooking commenced. However, around the time dinner was served (thanks to the excellent cooking by BBW and KK), the sleepsy twins started nodding off:

It was barely 8:00, and in their defense, it was a long day on the river in the sun with G&J as their chosen beverage. That being said- it was not enough to stop us from entertaining ourselves at the expense of the one who decided to nod off in front of the fire instead of the relative safety of the tent...

Due to 40 worrying that some of the less tame pictures would make it on to the blog they were summarily deleted by him the next morning. I am still working out the punishment... Breakfast was a little tough for yours truly after an extra couple of barley pops and a late night of revelry. After breakfast was finished we heard the thunder start in, and kicked into high gear taking down camp and getting on the river. Seems EVERY time it rains during the final 'mile' of the river trip. And by 'rain' I mean 'epic storm':

All in all- it was a pretty great trip yet again. The iBucket delivery from 40 was JUST in time and operated perfectly. I was so psyched for that! Sleepy managed to stave off the sandman longer than two or three of our compatriots. Kaptain Krunch and Dogg had their first FARTAB experience and said that they might actually be willing to subject themselves to it again. BBW fell out of his kayak more times than I could count. GUDG got to fling a soccer ball around with reckless abandon and took full advantage of the 'family pass' staying up until the wee hours with yours truly in an attempt to lessen the amount of liquid cargo that would need to be transported the next morning.

So- until next year...

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 2

So- with poke-a-hottt-a$$ leading the way we continued down the river.


Stopping for the occasional (read: 'frequent') rest break:


And for Kaptain Krunch to show us his best 'Deliverance' impression:


Things got a little fuzzy for me after the mouse hole. I know we did our good deed for the day in sawing a path through a downed tree- during which I guess we broke BBW's great saw...

For a good portion of the trip we also managed to invent a new 'fappy-hun ball' game involving a beat up soccer ball I rescued along the way.

The new sport was done more while paddling, but during stops along the river provided another way to continue screwing around.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with a lot of falling off coolers, falling out of boats and falling off of docks (guilty...). Gravity was a strange mistress... When we came up to the Alton dam- one that always looks like you can go over but the water never seems high enough- I was lubricated enough to finally just do it. As was proved during WIFETAB a couple weeks later (and with a higher degree of sobriety)- this is the optimum way to ford said water feature, and I will never carry a kayak around it again. By the time we loaded up all our stuff (apparently with two canoes on the trip I did not need to carry a single thing- that is not the way it should be, but probably saved me from testing my waterproof packing capabilities) at the last portage and made it to the campsite, it was nearing dusk.

At which point, someone switched the CTLP doll to 'evil'...

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 1

I know- this is a LONG time coming.


It has taken me some time to come to terms with the slightly over the top debauchery and drunkeness that marked this FARTAB. Yikes. By the end of the trip there was more falling out of the boats than piloting them... Seeing as it was Dogg and Kaptain Krunch's first FARTAB, I felt pretty bad for them at first. Until they started to contribute to and raise the stakes in the level of play.


We started out innocently enough- we put together our supplies- Lyndie style:






Then hit the river:

We made it through the portage sections quickly:

But we also were making it through our adult beverages at an alarming rate. When I reviewed the pictures from the trip I noticed that at this point a disturbing trend started to emerge. I think it is best simply called: man nipples.

It was like everyone JUST found out they had them and felt they needed to point them out to me. Ugh...

Then the silliness REALLY began.

Something tells me...

...that I should pull all the large bullfrogs out of my pond.

Not sure what makes me think that is a good idea...

Oh yeah. Maybe that... I don't know why I never figured out how it was that they were getting so big and so fat. After playing tug of war with the frog trying to pull the fish back out, I scooped him up and dumped him in the stream. He can catch trout now instead of goldfish and koi.

And yes, I am well aware of the fact that I am probably expected (received three phone calls/emails about it already) to do a bit of a FARTAB Vol. 5 recap. I will get to it eventually. Once my stomach settles from having to see some of the pictures that I downloaded. YIKES.

If we hit it that hard next year, life preservers might be mandatory...

Cinqo de FARTAB-O May 30-31

So it's just a few days away... the headline event of the year...FARTAB, Volume 5!

I must say, I'm un-naturally excited about the trip this year.

Greased Up Deaf Guy will be returning after a year of pro-creating and the associated doodies, er, duties.

Kaptain Krunch will make his inagural appearance, as will the yet to be named, N-D.

Check out the last few years worth of pix:
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

CTLP's Perspective:
Volume 4 Post 1
Volume 4 Post 2

CTLP got a video too of the event. I had a friend set us up with some FTP hosting. Stay tuned for video if we can figure out how to post a video here.

See you Thursday Night for FARTAB!!!
-40

Additions to the BFB

Front derailers drive me insane. I avoid them where possible. I've stopped using them on mtbikes a couple seasons ago but was still using one on the BFB where one is really needed... it's tough carrying all that crap or a passenger without looooow gears to get up hills. But, all that extra chain and sloppy shifting was getting old so I dug out an old SRAM 3x7 wheel I had made for the tandem recumbent project. I took apart the bike and set it up.

Nice and clean up front now!

Also, after taking a passenger, I realized I needed some handlebars and footpegs. I rigged up the handlebars pretty easy, but ended up buying the real-deal Footsies made for the Xtracycle kit.
I also broke a couple front spokes, so swapped out the front wheel for a tandem specific wheel. This is wicked rugged.

Other than that, I've been pretty busy getting the yard ready for spring... and FARTAB Vol 5!!!

FARTAB is in less than 2 weeks! I'm working to get CTLPs ibucket ready in time. This weekend I started a batch of three ibuckets. I brought the namesake ingredient over to the FlatTires for processing...via BFB of course!