Red, soft and adopted

Adopting a puppy is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. Not quite what Forrest Gump said, but freakishly close.

We’ve been missing something in our lives lately. Shedding, slobber, barking, vet bills, dog food spilled about; we’ve been missing four-legs and a wagging tail. We’ve searched rescues, SPCA, and Craigslist for the right puppy that needs a new home.

Minutes after joining his new family

We found this crazy guy. Lucky is a 14-16 month old Redbone Coonhound with a “Marly & Me” streak of crazy in him. Squirrels of Downtown Sacramento: consider this your warning.

He was found roaming Rollins Lake, hungry and sad, by a family of eight kids under 13 (yes, eight!). They decided to find a permanent home for him. With the joys of adopting, we know almost nothing about him and he knows nothing about us. Someone trained him a little, but those eight kids did their sure best to ruin it.

Me, Flat Stanley and Lucky, with some possessed look…

Everyday we learn more about each other. He is getting used to us and his new routine, but the work left to do in frightening. I’ll save you the time of listing bad habits and say this: taking two steps forward and one step back counts as progress. It may be slow, but it’s better than nothing.

The good news? His breed loves the outdoors and he is no exception. Heck, he’s a hunting dog! That doesn’t mean he’ll do it, but it means he won’t mind long hikes in the wilderness. His breed is described as quick, agile and athletic. Once he’s command-trained, we’re hitting the trails.

Don’t worry dog lovers, Lucky received his full health check-up and the chopping of the man-parts within two weeks of adoption. He’s mircochipped, claw clipped and ready to flip—out, that is. He’s going to flip-out if I don’t take him for a walk soon. Time to wrap this up, for his sake.

It’s unanimous, all dogs HATE the cone!

Quick! Switch to the doughnut-ring and he’s much happier.

That last post about apartments? Disregard. We have a dog again and it’s time to have a place with a yard.

Oh yea, he’s a Giants fan too.

Bike thieves tried and failed, mostly

The rare Sacramento night, crisp cool air and a flowing breeze. Fall is coming and we’re happy. Except for what we didn’t know. While we were enjoying a dinner with friends, someone was trying to steal our bikes.

The dirty bike thieves tried their best, using bolt cutters, socket and allen wrenches to strip parts and cut pieces away. We found our bikes, somehow still locked to the bike locks, hurting the next morning. Kari’s took the worst of the abuse. Bolt cutters snipped the cable going around the rear tire and frame and cut right through the front tire, tube and rim in some lame attempt to open it up enough to slip past the U-lock.

My bikes got off a little easier. My fixie was stripped of nearly all its parts, except our thieves got lazy and stopped half way. The handlebars are loosened and flopping around, the bolts connecting the front brake are missing, but the brake is in decent shape and the entire bike flops like a dead fish if you pick it up. The icing on the cake? The rear rim was removed to steal my chain tentioners, then put back on without the axle bolts.

So far, my 24 speed only had the handlebars twisted, let’s hope that’s it. Each bike got some scratches from being thrashed around the steel bike locks in our parking garage. Today brought us a terrible mix of disappointment, anger, violation and insecurity. Our living room is now clogged with bikes that we’re too scared to leave downstairs.

I’m not sure where we go from here, but I know I won’t be over this anytime soon. After locking up to anything remotely stable during my days at UC Davis, this experience has left me shaken to say the least.

Tires, tires, go away. Please come back a snowy day

Living in an apartment again  has been alright. Minus one rule: not using your balcony for storage. With all the camping gear/hockey pads/tool boxes/car parts I’ve collected, this spells trouble. Luckily, I condensed a lot of stuff, donated even more to Salvation Army and found creative ways to hide it from view. Warning: don’t look under the couch, my extra set of front brake rotors are relaxing.

The biggest challenge also got us a nasty-grahm from the property manager. My s4’s snow tires had to go. But where? Not inside, those types of stains never come out of carpet. Plus, there’s no room. Then it hit us, turn the tires into a cocktail table. Yes, a cocktail table for the balcony with tires inside. Here’s how we did it:

The table goes like this: two separate sections that, when looked at from above, resemble C’s being pushed together. They wrap around the tires, avoiding the back breaking lifting that would have resulted in a one-piece table. After a trip to the store for the lumber (2×2 and plywood) and wood screws, it was time to cut all the pieces to length.

With the pieces cut. I used a dab of wood glue and two inch wood screws to connect my four “C” pieces. With those done, I cut and connected three vertical supports between the “C” pieces for each side.

Repeat for the other side and you’ve got the skeleton in place. If you’ve measured right, they should fit snuggly around your tires. From here, cut and place the plywood over the back and sides of the individual frame halves. I didn’t use any wood glue here and switched to one inch wood screws to mate the quarter inch plywood to the 2×2.

You can see my first frame fit very nicely around the tires. At this point, I made sure the tire stack was in the right place and lined up our umbrella stand inside the spoke holes of the bottom two tires. Slide the umbrella down through the tire spokes and into the stand. We needed a flashlight to make sure the rims weren’t scratched on the way down.  Then, slide the other half over and you’re almost done.

It’s looking like a beauty. Time to take a break. Put a temporary top on this bad boy and have a beer, you’ve earned it.

We went to Tap Plastics for a permanent top with a tempered look. It turned out great. We raised the top up a bit by cutting extra 2×2 into one inch think spacers, set on top of the frames. Be careful when you place the umbrella back into the stand, don’t scratch your rims.

Throw some knick-knacks on this beauty and you have yourself a great cocktail table that doubles as tire storage. I hope to put some nice wood stain and seal before the first rain this year.

Until then, if the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

Knee injuries mean downtime

Well, hello there. It’s been a while, sorry I haven’t been coming around lately. Trust me, it’s with good reason yet unfortunate circumstance. Two weeks after our triumphant return from the honeymoon, still daydreaming of Colorado skies and Rocky Mountain highs, Kari and I joined some friends for a car-camping trip at Lake New Hogan. That’s where things took a turn.

More like my knee took a wrong turn while the rest of me stayed still. I’ll spare the details, but a fall off a jet ski, the water felt more like cement, left me badly swollen for a few days with very little range of motion. Even walking was a chore.

Speed up a few months, plenty of physical therapy, stretching and stetch-band routines and I’m 85 percent of normal (in the knee). I’ve switched running shoes to the Saucony Kinvara 3 for a little more cushion and support and they’ve been what I needed to get running again.

Big thanks to the folks at Fleet Feet Sacramento for the recommendation and showing me the light on Trigger Points, more to come on this in the future. If you haven’t tried it, check it out!

But the tragic lack of backpacking, and pretty much anything active, has left me to fill weekends with different kinds of fun. Have no fear, I’ve found ways to keep busy.

Around the same time as my injury, we decided to move across downtown Sacramento, into a small two bedroom apartment, saving us needed money on rent. The downsizing was a challenge with all our gear, but having closets that look like Tetris games is cool, right? Much cooler than cleaning our old, empty, place was.

We spent the September long weekend in Brookings, Oregon visiting with my new in-laws. The trip up was good, especially unloading some fast corners through Highway 199 in the s4. We jarred salsa and had run up the Rogue River, relaxing and enjoying some of Oregon’s best local product: beer.

Instead of sending my Dad a standard birthday card with an insulting joke inside and terrible handwriting, Kari and I invited my folks to see the new apartment. Great timing too, the Capital Air Show was flying at Mather Field. What’s better than walking in and around huge planes flown by our nation’s heros? Those amazing men and women hanging around their jets, in flight suits no less, answering questions and chatting up civilians.

Seeing a KC-10 Extender, a long-haul re-feuler, do a low level “dirty” wing wag (gear down and fueling boom extended) was mind blowing. Then seeing them pull back into an unrestricted climb and with the gear up in was just beautiful.

As my folks headed back to lovely Seattle, they handed us our new friend for the week, Flat Stanley. This little dude will be the most traveled Stanley. He belongs to a cousin in London, England and has already seen New York, New York, Seattle and now Sacramento. He’ll see L.A. and beyond as our family passes him around.

Lastly, I’d like you to meet Stanley and my new bike. It dawned on me that fixed-gear bikes don’t work well for people recovering from knee injuries and long bike rides. What better time to buy an entry-level 24 speed and see how I enjoy riding more than 20 miles. So far, 11 miles have been taken down and my legs went south with them. Oh recovery, you cruel, cruel friend.