It's cold upstairs

So it snowed in the hills. I decided to take a little spin up Mt Um to get some pictures, and saw a few lovely sights along the way, like this slightly frosted tree.

The path was only a little damp, with some scattered snow along the sides. I could only go over to the Bald Mountain peak as the road up to the Mt Um summit was closed.

I'm pleased to say the views across the south bay were well worth the short hike.

My timing was quite fortunate, as when I came back down the mountain the gates at the bottom were closed, so had I been any later I wouldn't have been able to go up!

The road itself delivered little drama, with just a few wet patches and no ice. I did have one little slip once I was almost back in town, on some dirt that had been kicked up onto the road. It was just a little wiggle and I kept things upright though, so not a big deal.

Proper Waterflow

So last night it rained pretty hard, and much to my dismay the back yard started to flood despite having a bunch of landscape drains that should let the water out into the front street. So off to the Home Despot I went this morning to obtain some supplies.

I had intended to pick up a garden hose and new sprayer so I'd have one at the back, and was successful in finding this. I also intended to rent a drain snake, but as it turned out I could rent a fancy-pants motorized 50 foot snake for $25, or I could buy a manual/drill powered 25 foot snake for $25, and I opted for the latter. I also was hoping to pick up a small amount of landscape fabric to fashion some filters for the drains to keep the leaves and debris out, but it only came in 4' by 50' rolls at minimum, and I didn't really want to deal with having a lot left over.

I snaked the drain and didn't really find any complete blockages, but it was at least flowing better by the time I was done with it so hopefully it'll work a bit better in the next downpour.

Proper Airflow

Some people might say that stuffing a heating vent full of carpet underlayment is bad for airflow. Some people might. Not the former owners of this house though, no sir, not them.

I think what happened was that the sides of the vent pulled away from the opening (you can see this at the top somewhat) and, rather than fix it properly or even investigate what was happening, they assumed that the draft could be solved by just blocking up the vent entirely. I guess.

Anyway, I pulled out all (I hope) of the underlayment, screwed the vent into the wood properly, and taped things up nice and draft-proof. Should help keep the temperature a bit more even in the living room area now.

The Dirty Dozen

Finally my CAAD12 is in suitable shape to be christened with a name, so I herefore introduce to you the Dirty Dozen.

The cables cleaned up nicely around the bars, and while it's really quite difficult to photograph an all black bike, I did my best.

I'll probably need to adjust the angle of the seat once I take it on a test ride, but given it's storming outside I think it's safe to leave that until next weekend at the earliest.

Righting wrongs

Since it's a rainy day today, I decided to put in some time on my CAAD12 cleaning up the shitty assembly job it had been subject to at Sports Basement. I'd already tidied up the headset (the dork had installed shims underneath the dust cap, failed to correctly preload the bearings, and while I was in there I decided to flip the stem) but I'd left cleaning up the crappy cable routing until later.

That later turned out to be today, and after about 2 hours of various fussing about I discovered that the reason the dork had used brake cable jacket for the rear derailleur is that he had accidentally swapped the grommet for the rear brake with the one for the rear shifter. So I swapped them back to their correct locations and used a spare piece of shifter cable jacket as it should be.

Next up I had to unthread all the inner cables so I could clean up the spaghetti mess at the handlebars. Conveniently the shifter housings turned out to be the right length once I had swapped them to the correct crossed-routing, but the brake cables needed to be cut down by about 2 inches. A simple but slightly tedious job. Luckily rerouting the inner cables turned out to be relatively painless, though I did end up replacing the shifter inners as the ends ended up a bit frayed and were being a bit too cantankerous to reuse. They're cheap and I had spares, so whatever.

The only fuss with routing the cables turned out to be getting the rear shift cable down the chainstay, and I ended up pulling out the crankset to give me a bit more room to work down at the bottom bracket. It was then that I discovered that A: the crankset was only bolted together hand tight rather than the 50nm specified torque, and B: the bearing preload had not been set at all, leaving about 1mm of slack for the cranks to shift left and right. Great. Thankfully both of these things are easy to correct, but it would have been pretty ugly had I not noticed it.

As of right now the only work left to do is clamp down all the cables, adjust the shifting, and wrap the bar tape, but I felt like taking a little break. I'll probably get back to things a little later this afternoon, so you can look forward to seeing the photos then (I hope).

Your door is ajar

When I moved into this place one of the first things I did was shave down the top of the door to the furnace closet, as it was jamming against the frame due to the house settling at some time in the past. Not a big deal. However this resulted in the door now not staying closed because the latch was also misaligned with the striker plate due to the same shifting.

So, naturally, I went in and fixed it by shifting the striker plate up a little.

I also sanded off roughly 50 years of tarnish, scuffs, and sloppy paint, then sprayed it with a fresh clear coat. I'm happy to report that the door now closes perfectly and latches securely.

That's not to say this is the last time I'll be touching this door, however, as I still need to spackle in a bit of wood filler around the striker plate, and I'd also like to change out the doorknob for a paddle style that matches the other knobs in the house. Most of the knobs were replaced at some point with some lovely brushed nickel ones, but for one reason or another this particular door was skipped.

There's been a bit of rain lately

I think it's safe to say that this piece of scrap particle board got a bit of moisture in it.