It was
a lot more work than I had thought it would be. We did a full tear off, fixed a couple of bad spots in the wood and put down 34
bundles of shingles before we ran out, he needs to get another 14 bundles to finish, someone miscalculated. I got back to my folk's
house late, ate some Chinese food I picked up on the way, and crashed out. Early Sunday morning Eric came by and we headed out to
do some trail riding with the wheelers. We chose the Success Pond trail in Berlin, a good overall trail that covers a lot of ground
and had lots of different terrain types. There was a fair amount of mud, which is always fun, some washed out sections with lots of
rocks and even a big area of very fine sand. About 25 miles into the ride the temperature light on my machine came on, we were close
to his in-laws house so we stopped by to use their hose. The Rincon is known for having the radiator plug up with mud and overheat.
We cleaned it up but only a few miles later it did it again. Each time we would stop, shut it down and wait for the fan to stop, which
was about 15 minutes each time. It did this no less than another 5 times on the way back. After looking at a couple of things, I
have a couple more to check out, I came to the conslusion that the tuning that was done on the machine for me a few weeks ago was way off,
way off! It is running very lean, which is what is making it overheat so much. The mud in the radiator didn't help but it wasn't
the only cause of the problem. I got back to the house pretty late and still had to drive back to MA, it was a long trip home, thinking
about all the hassle I have to go through to get the machine running right again, after paying someone to do it for me, I would have been better
off doing it myself in the first place I guess. Well, it's going to be a busy week at the house, gotta get it ready for the party on
Friday, looks like the weather might be good to us too. Enjoy the week!
July 21, 2005: I'll tell you what, the weeks seem to go by slower and slower, this one might
have the record. It was damn hot this week too, well over 90 degrees almost every day. Work has been pretty nuts
for everyone here but the network and systems team. New England set an all time record for electricity use on Tuesday at
26,749 megawatts, which means the guys in the control room have been running like maniacs. That doesn't directly effect us
unless something fails, then we have 50 people standing over us asking things like "is it fixed yet, what's wrong with it, why
did it fail, is it fixed yet", you get the idea. We have been spending a ton of time in the pool every night after work and
running the air conditioning steady, thank god we have it or we would be a couple of ornery people, correction, more ornery than
we are from just having to live in this state for 3 years. Isis has been pretty good
about not going in the pool, at least until the other day. She normally runs around the edge and whines a bit when we are in
the water and sometimes tries to reach down and lick it but she hasn't jumped in or anything yet. I guess she must have had
it with the heat the other day because as we were standing in the shallow end before getting out she just walked down the stairs
and swam over to us, like it was something she'd done a hundred times. July 17, 2005: Hey again, what a great, relaxing weekend. The rest of the week went ok,
it took me at least 4 days to recover from the hike, the stairs at work were murder! Friday night we just hung at the
house, Lisa was spent from a super long week at school so she was in no shape to go anywhere but to bed. Saturday she
had to work and I stayed around the house and did my normal, boring weekend stuff like vaccuum and bring the trash to the
dump. I spent the afternoon either in the pool or in the house watching coverage of the Tour de France and eating
popsicles. We just stayed in that night too, watched some TV and spent some time together just hanging around. Today,
Sunday, was just more of the same. In the morning I listed a bunch of stuff on Ebay that's been building up in a pile for
the last few months, things like a very old digital camera, old gps case, stuff like that. Later we went for a swim
and after a crazy rainstorm cleared out I made my locally famous chicken kabobs on the grill for dinner. We don't
doubt that this all sounds pretty lame, but it was just what we needed. When I was in NH last weekend I picked up my
old Cannondale mountain bike from Eric's mom's house and worked on it each night last week after I got home.
I've just been going over all of it, cleaning and replacing anything that was either broken or worn out.
I'll probably keep it as an around town bike, one that I won't care a great deal about. The company that
made the frame decided that they would use a different size head tube than everyone else did that year and every year
before it since, well forever. That means that it needs a different sized headset, fork and stem than any other bike
made today so getting those parts is near impossible. Of course one of the only parts that really needed to go was
the headset, it was worn pretty bad. I never expected to find one but after a quick Ebay search I found a Shimano
XTR headset, still in the box, for a fraction of what it cost back in the day. The auction ended early this morning
and I was lucky enough to have the winning bid. It's coming from Quebec, Canada so it should get here by the end of
the week and I can put the last part of the bike back together. It's going to be a boring week, nothing really going
on at work or here. Next weekend I'm meeting an old friend in NH to do some riding, he just picked up a new wheeler
and we haven't hung out in quite a while. Hopefully our plans don't fall though or the weather doesn't go bad, even
though we will probably still go in the rain, more mud that way! I added a map containing our GPS tracks from the hike
last weekend and you can also download a 3D fly through of the route. The video is really cool but be warned, its
a huge file to download, almost 50Mb if I remember correctly. You should definetely check it out if you can, I think
its worth the wait to download it. We heard from our friends Chris and Maryellen back in
Rochester this week, they are having a baby!. We are sooo happy for them and excited that the baby will be born before
we move away next year. We will be making a couple trips west to visit this winter for sure. Well, I guess
that's it for tonight. Have a great week!
July 11, 2005: It's Monday morning, I can barely stay awake and I can't walk up the stairs on
my own power, what did I do this weekend you wonder? What didn't I do this weekend is a better question. Lisa has
another week of hell coming up, well it's here right now actually but let's pretend this is Friday. She stayed home
to work and get some stuff done for the upcoming week. I went up to NH to do some riding and hike Mt. Washington with
Gregg and some friends of his on Sunday. Now the inability to walk is starting to make sense huh? Saturday night
I went for a ride by myself and almost ended up regretting it. I was about 14 miles from the parking lot and had to
cross a very large mud hole. I checked for some solid stuff to winch to if I got stuck and saw a nice big stump on the
other side of the hole, about 30 feet away. It seemed to be ok until I was a litte more than halfway across and the left
front wheel dropped 2 feet and the right wheels all came up off the bottom of the hole. I gave it as much throttle as it
had and rocked it side to side sending mud 12 feet in the air until it broke free. While catching my breath after
getting back on solid ground I noticed that the stump I was going to winch to if necessary was completely rotten and would
have pulled right out of the ground if I put any tension on it. It was about 8pm so I only rode a few more miles before
turning around to return to the parking lot and deal with that mud hole again, I couldn't get it off my mind.
July 6, 2005: The 4th of July has come and gone, that always makes it feel like summer is
half over. We had a great weekend, Brian came up, we went biking, had a BBQ at Gregg's house in NH, and went to Todd
and Carla's party on Sunday. The weather was perfect all weekend too, not as hot as it's been but plenty warm for spending
a lot of time outside. Isis came with us to the party and was a pretty good dog, especially considering that their was a
pig being roasted in the yard, we figured that was a little distracting.
She did get quite a few ground scores and handouts from the dozen or so kids that were running around. She wasn't all that
fond of the fireworks display later in the evening though. Todd takes the 4th of July as serious as I take Halloween, or at
least used to take Halloween before we moved here. He had set up a couple grand worth of stuff, including his custom built
electronic ignition system. You can see pictures and even a video of the grand finale under the 'Adventures' section to the
left. 
It was tough to pick her up and get her over the rail
but out she went. She hasn't done it since so I think she was just too hot and needed to cool down. We're planning a
get together for my team at work for next week, just grilling and beers by the pool. The company picnic this year is going to
be real lame so nobody is going, it seems that they are all coming to our place instead. It was going to just be a couple of
people, some burgers and dogs, and a few sixers. Now it's getting close to 20 people with more being added each day, a case
of burgers and dogs, and a quarter keg of beer to start with. Apparently we can still plan a good party, this won't be quite
like the Halloween parties of the past but who knows, maybe we'll throw one of those this year for old times sake, though I'm sure
it won't be quite like the Rochester days. This weekend should be a good time, Lisa finally has a break in her test schedule
so she can catch up on homework and sleep. I'm going up to NH again to go riding with an old friend and bring home the
wheeler. It's been up there for a couple months and I need it back here to do some work on the trailer and clean it up a
bit. I'm going to replace the rotting plywood with plastic plywood, it's just as strong and has a lifespan of 250 years,
much longer than the steel the trailer is made of. We're going to join the NHATV club on Friday night to ride the Mount
Washington Auto Road for a sunset ride. The cool part about that is that the only way to get up the mountain for the
sunset is by reservation or with a large group. The local ATV club in that area went up last Sunday and they had 182
machines total, this should be smaller but will still be a good time. I'll do my best to get some sunset pictures, hopefully
it will be clear enough. Although being in the clouds like this picture from their website might be cool too. Sunday
we are going to do some more riding further north at the NCATV trails, should be a good weekend overall, it's been a long time
since I've gotten out and really ridden that thing. Next week is going to be a slightly slower week for Lisa, she might even
be able to enjoy a cold beer or two with us at the party on Friday afternoon. Have a great weekend!
On my approach
to it this time I saw that a nice trail had been cut to go right around it and I never noticed it earlier! So because I
wasn't paying attention I may have either spent the night out there until someone found me in the morning that could pull me
out, or had a 14 mile walk back to the Element. The moral of that story is not to go riding alone I guess. Sunday
morning we met at AMC bright and early. They wanted to take the Boott Spur trail because a book someone had said it was
easier than the others. It's certainly a lot longer but less steep so they say. We took that trail alright, if you
can really call it a trail, more like a path of rocks on a 45 degree angle. It was brutal, but we made it to the summit
in one piece. The book said it should take 4 hours 50 minutes, the GPS said we did it in 3 hours 1 minute. We were
hurting when we sat down at the top for a break. The weather was very clear, about 48 degrees, and 35-45 mph winds.
The trip back down was another story, we took the Tuckerman's ravine trail back down. That trail in the Spring is actually
quite pleasant from the Hermit Lake shelter to basecamp. In the summer it's hard to know it's the same trail. As
rough as it was, that part was the easiest, we had to come down from the summit to the headwall, come down the headwall which
is almost vertical, and then through the ravine to Hermit Lake before we got the "easy part" of the trail. There was still
a couple patches of snow in the ravine too, at least 6 feet thick, you can see it in the pictures under 'Adventures' as
always. We didn't get back to basecamp until after 5pm and I still had to drive back home which takes almost 4 hours.
I made pretty good time but was in such rough shape Lisa had to help me out of the Element, I couldn't have done it by myself.
A hot shower helped me realize what spots I should have used the sunblock, right arm, left neck and behind both
knees, weird. So that brings us to today, long day at work and the icy hot is calling my name, have a great week everyone!
Throughout the whole show, which
lasted about 45 minutes, cars were stopping along the road to watch, it was one for the
books that's for sure. Now that he has the controller built next year's budget for actual fireworks can go up, at least
that's the plan, we all know what they say about great plans though. Monday Lisa had to work so she got up super early, Brian
had to drive back to Rochester in the afternoon so he slept in and I got up to clean up the house a bit. Bernie and his
girlfriend were going to stop by on their way back to NY. They haven't seen our place and we haven't really spent
much time with any of our friends since we moved so it was cool that they could come by. Lisa ended up getting out of work
early, just as they got to the house.
We went out for lunch in Amherst and they left to get started on their long trip home. Brian took off a little while later and
Lisa got started on some studying for a big test she had yesterday. I just sat around the rest of the night, we did a ton of
driving all weekend and it was nice to be home and have a second to relax. Isis was completely wiped out, she barely moved a
muscle from the time we got home until this morning, even then she was still moving pretty slow. All those kids chasing her
around and all those things to smell, compared to sleeping all day in the air conditioned house its hard work. This week has
been mostly a daze so far, just trying to recover from the weekend. I'm going up to NH this weekend to hopefully do some riding
with my friend Eric and climb Mt. Washington on Sunday with Gregg and the guys we went biking with a couple weeks ago. We got
a new digital camera yesterday, the batteries in our old one are dead and not worth replacing, so I'll be sure to get some pictures of
the hike. Hopefully the weather is as clear as it was last weekend but with the summit being in the clouds 70% of the time, I'm
not holding my breath. Have a great week!