Garage With a View

"Oh, hi. How's it going?"
"Great. That's good to hear. Yeah ... thanks for stopping by."
"Where have I been? Oh, I dunno. Around ... you know how it goes."
"Yep, thought so."

I'm gonna ease back into this thing, the blog that is, with some miscellaneous and sundry updates. Nothing very earth shattering has gone down. I wasn't in the hospital with swine flu or locked up in detox. Just kickin' it with friends and family y'know. Fall is a time for revelry and irreverence. Plenty of both going on and, well, maybe they've just sapped my energy for writing. Personally, I blame Vegas, but that's just me.

Since we moved into this house in July 2008, I have been on a mission to create the perfect woodshop space in half of our two-car garage -- all 217.5 square feet of it. I think I've mentioned this before. In fact, I know I have. You'll just have to bear with me, I guess.

Woodworking is no new hobby of mine; I grew up tinkering with wood. My Dad was a carpenter who in his spare time built reproduction muzzleloading rifles and period accoutrement patterned after 18th century designs. Later he restored furniture and built a number of fine pieces himself. I suppose I inherited from him no sums of money or fancy possessions, but I did gain a love for working with my hands. For that I'd barter not even a king's ransom.

I can't shake it. At times I feel it is the thing that drives me most passionately. I've had a string of "professional" jobs that I've been fortunate to love in one way or another. I think he would be proud. What blue collar parent isn't happy their kids are working with their minds and not their hands, after all?

My jobs have tied me to the outdoors and allowed me to peddle in things I pedal -- bikes now, but previously canoes and kayaks, climbing and backpacking gear. It's not like I'm a guide or something -- living in dirtbag glamor out of the back of an oxidizing Land Rover, gracing the glossy recycled pages of a Patagonia catalog. I sell stuff. It's fun stuff, stuff that isn't going to overdose people or rot them from the inside as they sit glued to electronic gadgets and LCD flat panel screens. For that I am thankful. But, still, I sell stuff. I make my living in front of a computer screen writing emails, compiling reports, laying out processes, policies, plans and documents. I am a cog in the capitalist machine and we all know what oils the gears of that machine. (Kinda tough when you also carry Marxist tendencies in your heart.)

Anyway, I think I was talking about my garage and maybe leading up to what it means to me. Members of the fairer reproductive set (no, not the Kennedy clan) can say things like "man cave" or "man space" but I believe that belittles the deeper implications of what my garage shop means to me. I want to throw out two caveats: 1) I've spilt plenty of beer in said garage with my guy friends telling stupid guy jokes and whatnot, and 2) I admit I fully grasp that what I am about to describe will mean nothing to some people. I don't get you people, but I am trying to become more tolerant and open to those who care little about systems and order -- those who think "work triangle" means gossiping in the office about a certain office mate, not achieving the most efficient use of a limited space that supports a subset of highly repetitive tasks.

This is the fourth woodwork-specific shop space I have designed. My first was on the back porch of a tiny rental house my first wife and I occupied from 1997-1999. My Dad came into town for a weekend and we bought the lumber and materials to frame, deck and wire the 6 by 12 foot concrete porch within the span of 2 days. Most of my experience working alongside my father had been while I was younger. He'd explained things like roof pitch and how to mark it out with a framing square. As a kid, that stuff would go in one ear and out the other. But that weekend I absorbed volumes. It was to be the last time he and I would work so closely together, ever. I've since thought back to that experience and wished I had a dozen more tutorials like it. But I won't. Even though I went on to study calculus, probability theory, differential equations, statics, dynamics and physics I never grasped the proficiency with which my Dad and his peers were able to perform such "simple" math on the fly at a jobsite.

I grew into that first tiny shop and my skills grew some too. My next space was the basement of a large rental house. I had so much room but still too little experience. My father-in-law lent me a bandsaw and a jointer and I had no idea how to use them or maintain them. I was still of the belief that power tools weren't supposed to need adjustment from the factory or occasional sharpening and tuning. He gave me a decent set of bench chisels and I sharpened them all wrong. I bought my first plane and set it on a shelf when all I did with it was butcher wood marginally better than hacking through it with my poorly honed chisels. I was spoiled though with space. It was pretty nice while it lasted.

Things went on hiatus as we moved into and then out of a small house from 2000-2001. I packed everything up and mothballed it in my mother-in-law's greenhouse. When I moved to Minnesota in 2002 I sold to friends the tools that were too big to carry (tablesaw, router table, miter saw) and kept the rest in boxes. Except for occasionally breaking out the cordless drill or saw, most of my stuff didn't see the light of day again until July 2008 when I began moving into this garage.

That is where our story resumes. (Lucky for you, I'll stagger your monotony with some photos!)

Previously, my workspace had three sources of light: 1) A generous assortment of fluorescent worklights. Nice if you need them but far from ideal on their own. 2) A garage door on the west wall. A beautiful option for nice days but less than adequate for cold or rainy weather and what if you want to fire up the table saw at 10p.m. on a summer's night? 3) A small 2X2 window pane on an anchored door (I don't even have a key if I wanted to remove the 3" drywall screws holding it closed) on the southeast wall. I'd been daydreaming of windows and skylights and anything else that could bring some real sunlight streaming into the shop since I began outfitting it over a year ago. With the basic space allocation finalized this summer I knew where I needed to place a natural light source. I built my final bench and shelves in anticipation of popping a window smack in the center of the east wall.

Here's the interior view of the east wall with the bench moved away. Dark, eh?


And here is the exterior view of the same wall. A lot of bland siding. This is also the view from the kitchen at the back of the house. (Some dark gray touch-ups indicate where I had to patch holes from pesky woodpeckers attacking the garage. Placing a suet feeder out there was the instant remedy for that problem.)


Making progress with new king studs, jack studs and sills in place. After measuring once, twice, three times ... hell, I think I measured nearly a dozen times because there was no going back from the next step -- cutting the hole all the way through. One website I'd consulted referred to it as "violating the building envelope." Yes, that is a descriptive phrase.


Once you're sure of the whole deal, grabbing the reciprocating saw and plunging it through the masonite is a cool feeling. I was even more pleased because our annoying neighbors who like to argue and play loud music at all hours of the night were hanging out on their back porch the entire time. Perhaps the next window will be installed on a full moon at midnight just for effect.


Marking the rough opening to square it up with the circular saw. Compared to cabinetry doing something where a sixteenth or even an eighth of an inch mattered little was fun.


Here's the trimmed, finished product complete with bird feeder. The new window is nice. I find myself spending some time staring out of it at different times of the day. Most mornings, as I'm loading my bike, I take a few minutes to walk over and see the birds going nuts at the feeder while I notice where the light illuminates previously dark recesses of my shop. I sink away in my mind to imagine a time when the projects of the future -- the moments that will be spent there with perfect golden sunlight guiding my pencil to mark boards or position material to make a cut -- are all that will occupy my mind.

I also think about how the proficiency to install the window, simple as it is, would not have been possible without my Dad. Years ago when we'd built my back porch shop we didn't quite finish it that weekend. I distinctly recall some of those final tasks seemed extremely daunting to me. I called him to ask for advice and instruction. In one of the clearest moments of wisdom I ever recall my father displaying, he calmly told me, "You know all you need to know. You can do it."

The window, and the shop, mean something intangible to me. Those who get it, get it, perhaps. But I'll keep thinking and keep writing in hopes of better realizing it for myself.

WHY

I'm gonna rip off Pinch Flat News courtesy of friend Paul. (Thanks, Pinchie, in advance. That reminds me, I should add a link to yer shot on my blig.)

I'm gonna rip off this quote only because of Paul. Otherwise, I'd have never known it was there. He sends me emails at work, but his are some of the emails from friends and co-workers alike I never mind receiving at work. Even though they are hardly ever related to work. Let's face it -- who ONLY wants to get work related emails at work? But, then again, some of those non-work related ones are worse than the "Does anyone have a safety pin?" missives sent en masse to 400 co-workers. (Yeah, guy ... at least 379 of 400 co-workers have a safety pin or know where one can be found. Try asking a minimum of two people before you disrupt the whole company next time.)

Back to the rip off ...

I've never read any Carl Sagan. In fact, I owe all I know of the guy to a comedy skit by Robin Williams overheard many years ago ('cause I was young and probably should have been asleep instead of listening to it). In short, I know nothing. But this quote makes me want to learn more: "Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others — for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein — considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."

Holy Jehoshaphat, that's rich! I say that because Sagan's quote is within me. Despite an upbringing that leaned heavily toward christian fundamentalism, as a young man (perhaps about the same time I was eavesdropping Robin Williams' uncensored comedy) I began to think how preposterous an uber-man-shaped-god concept sat within the confines of a ripe intellect. Throughout my adult years I've sought solace in eastern philosophies which (although too readily generalized and mislabeled by many westerners as pantheistic and denigrated as 'pagan') are perfectly comfortable with the notion of energy as god-like force, and humans as a self-contained, fully realized vessels that direct said energy.

I had no intention of going anywhere with this entry. The sole purpose was to circulate this quote in a form much more graceful than a preachy junk forward email. I get enough of those from my family. Fortunately, you can just click away from my blog.

Me? Well, I rarely check that email account anyway.

Eating the Nuts, Saving the Raisins for Sunday

Winter's coming and don't we know it in the Upper Midwest. We got our first snow Saturday morning. That was followed last night and this morning with a steady blanket of wet, slushy pellets that accumulated a couple of inches on the grass and in the trees. The pavement was mostly wet melt. It would have been just like riding in the rain except for tree branches lining the path regularly dumping their heavy loads on unsuspecting riders passing beneath. Oh, and the wind-driven ice projectiles pelting my face incessantly. Don't get me wrong -- the experience, as early season snow usually is, was quite beautiful. But it's only mid-October. I'm not ready for this stuff yet.

If someone had walked up to me in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, while I was sweating my way through the oven-dry heat of midday in the desert, and told me I'd be commuting through snow in exactly two weeks I'd have thought they were loony. But, then again, I never would have believed I'd walk off and leave my digital camera on a bench either. (It's a shame, because I missed a lot of great photo ops this morning.)

Softness and whining aside, I have begun to tap into my favorite thing about off-season commuting in MN -- the solitude. All of a sudden I have the bike trails to myself and I kinda like that. I no longer have to play nice with blissed out wanderers, chatty path-hogging walkers, overzealous and impatient skiers on wheels, tight-dudded weekend warriors or canines guiding their retractable human yo-yos. The few cyclists I do pass seem to have the same idea. We mutter a short 'Hey', or perhaps nod silently and roll on.

Of course, the seasonal change affects other areas of life. "Shop season" is over. I say this because my tools and workspace are housed within an unheated garage. That's probably best since I tend to hurl myself toward projects like a brakeless train, working into the wee hours of the morning and beginning my "real" work week more tired than I went into the weekend of supposed time off.

I was able to complete my last project -- a set of sawhorses. I did the old hem and haw for months before settling on a design and getting down to work. I could have knocked out a set in a day with simply a Skilsaw and some drywall screws. But of course I didn't go that route. Instead, I resawed and handplaned the hell out of some 2X6's from Home Depot in order to create a slightly more elegant set of horses that are held together with pegged mortise and tenon joints.

Given a plunge into the freezing temps, I decided to haul the project into the house for the glue to cure overnight. As you can see, the kids enjoyed that. They seem to have no problem making light of Dad's hard work.

Perhaps I could learn a thing or two. After all, there's no stopping winter from coming.

Friendly Cycling P.S.A. (Rerun from last season)

Darkness is upon us, friends. It seems like just yesterday we had twilight until 10pm. Now it's dark by 8 and the days are shortening as I type. It's getting chilly. Returning from Las Vegas I plunged my body from a week in the 90s(F) to the 50s in a matter of hours. Instant autumn. Man, that was fast.

Leaving work last night I opted to blink my front and rear lights all the way home. That still did not prevent two trucks facing opposite directions at the same intersection from pulling directly in front of me. I have enough experience to anticipate these things and simply braked hard to avoid any real danger. All I was left to do was give the 'attaboy' wave and shake my head. Ignorant drivers.

Tonight I opted for an extra spoke light to increase my side visibility. That was the theory anyway. Halfway home a vehicle gunned it to cross four lanes of busy traffic. I was on the main road crossing the lane the car was destined to end up in. I watched the timing and grabbed the brakes at the last moment. So did the driver who was already 3 feet from hitting me. I slowly rolled in front of the Lexus SUV and stopped completely. Peering through the windshield I spied a woman, cell phone pressed to her ear, staring back at me with an expression that read: "What the hell are you doing in my way?" I shouted "What the hell?" and making the finger phone with my thumb and pinky motioned a quick hang-up gesture. I then rolled slowly away and said, "Hang up your phone and learn how to fucking drive!" Without missing a beat, she deftly stretched her left arm out the window and unfurled a boney, bejewelled middle finger at me as she drove off.

I guess indignance is the fallback reaction when someone calls out your shit. Funny though, it's a bit different than cutting in front of someone at Starbuck's. She broke the traffic laws and almost ran me down. Would a simple 'sorry' have been too much to muster?

Drivers in general are negligent enough with regard to non-motorized traffic. But the more I bike the more I support a law that prohibits cell phone use while driving. Furthermore, why not instate the death penalty for drivers stupid enough to text message while operating a moving vehicle?

So folks, one message: BE SEEN. If you think one little LED front and back is enough, it's not. Be seen. Lights are cheap. The batteries last a long time. Wear some bright clothing. Put reflective tape all over your fenders, rack, frame, helmet. Dork out. Ride naked with your body painted dayglo orange. Do anything to BE SEEN.

That goes for you two-wheeled yahoos who take the ninja approach to cycling not only the streets, but the very dark, tree-lined bike paths after sundown. Personally speaking, I'd rather have a dozen close calls with cars in one night than one run-in with you dim-witted fools. You're idiots. Why? Here's why: It's not just your safety you need to worry about, jackass. I'm not a violent person, but if you crash into me or I clip you because you're cruising in stealth mode I'm gonna get up off the ground and attempt to enlighten you with fists of compassion.

I reiterate: Lights are cheap. The batteries last a long time. Wear some bright clothing. Put reflective tape all over your fenders, racks, frames, helmet. Dork out. Ride naked with your body painted dayglo orange. Do anything to BE SEEN.

Good night.

Stranded in Vegas

"Vague-ass." "Lost Wages." I'm weathering the last day here coming off Interbike. Call it by any name you want but I don't like this place. Never have.

I got out of the hotel and past the casinos today. Work was finished and I had time to kill, so I went for a long walk. It was really hot but so dry that it felt pleasant. I thought to myself, "I'm gonna find something to enjoy about this final day in Vegas."

I found a local Korean restaurant where I ate my favorite dish. It was delicious. Afterward I wandered down some more sidewalks, empty except for locals, littered club brochures and homeless destitutes. I circled the block past second-tier casinos still trying to live in a heyday of yore. I kept walking, back toward the Strip, revelling in the heat, learning that even the shade of a utility pole can deliver respite from the baking midday sun.

I climbed stairs instead of using escalators. I studied the blown litter and broken glass in vacant lots awaiting new condos, shopping malls and casinos. Perhaps the economy will one day allow "progress" to continue. I quickly learned that perpendicular diversions from the Strip can grant one a bit of solace away from the noise and bustle, to places free from drunken frat boys as well as young and old women alike trying in vain to impress someone whose tastes I'll never comprehend. I thought to myself, "Maybe I've found something in Vegas to enjoy. This is not so bad after all." I was pensive about adopting this conclusion, but I marched on somewhat encouraged.

I walked to Caesar's Palace because last year I found the only spot on the Strip designed for stopping and sitting a while -- absolutely free of charge. It's a small Hindu shrine to Brahma, a modest yet brilliant oasis of genuine spirituality amidst a desert run amok, heeding a quasi-religious doctrine of empty consumption. The shrine's surrounding air is scented with sweet incense instead of fake floral casino stench. I sat and studied passersby. I photographed a few groups who shuffled through to inspect this cultural curiosity in all its preposterousness. Mostly it appeared to represent another quaint photo stop along the way.

The sweat on my back quickly evaporated. Deciding it was time to move on, I shouldered my bag and went off into the crowds again, past cooler toting street vendors offering "ice cold water ... one dollar!" I paced onward, smugly sipping the now warm tap water from my stainless flask and shirking off the cards thrust at me by men whose t-shirts promised girls in just 20 minutes. After all, I had found my Vegas and it was so far above all of this.

Quite by chance I arrived in front of the Bellagio at the stroke of 4pm. The fountain show was beginning. I had never seen it before. Music cued and the jets of water shot choreographed patterns of water-dance across the previously placid pond. Camera shutters clicked around me. I, like all the others, felt this to be a picture worthy stop. Reaching for my own camera I noticed it was not where it was supposed to be. I had little time to panic because I knew right away what had happened. Oh shit, oh shit! I'd set it beside my bag while shooting photos at the shrine. Then I got up, shouldered my bag without looking down and marched away. I left the camera, neatly in its case, in open sight on the step.

I ran back to Caesar's, but five, maybe seven, minutes had passed. My lovely new Canon was gone.

In my Vegas I'd found the one spot I could sit and enjoy absolutely free of charge. Ironically, one could say that slice of peace cost me an offering of $250.

Damn, I despise this town.

Nippon

Japan is a fascinating place. I spent a week and a half there at the end of July. It was my second trip and was much more enjoyable than the first time. If you've never been to Japan, expect to be incredibly confused and disoriented the first time you go. On this second go-round I was able to fall back on much that I'd learned and observed last year. I could relax and take in more of the culture.

One of the things I find interesting, even shocking at times, is the Japanese affinity for American English slogans. I might not be able to read signs or advertisements while I'm there, but cruising the streets I would constantly spot t-shirts, posters, etc. with English phrases. Some were borderline offensive. I thought that funny in a way considering the conservative demeanor and lack of flamboyance exhibited by most Japanese. But when you realize most passersby can't read the phrases, it's bizarrely humorous to a native English speaker. Even if some Japanese folks can read the words, many of these phrases are so obscured with slang and profanity that it would be difficult to make a direct translation.

Here are a few fun sightings from Japan:

Tommy Lee Jones is BOSS. At least he's the posterchild for BOSS beverages. Kinda reminded me of Bill Murray from Lost in Translation. Similar wrinkled crusty old guy persona.

This is a crappy photo of a poster in the Kaze messenger headquarters in Kyoto. Who knew drunk cyclists had their own tarot?

I saw this gem in a respectable tea shop in Nagoya. Just a place where friends meet for a quiet beverage and some chit-chat. This poster was displayed front and center behind the counter.

Okay, I was once told by a friend that Japan is the land where they perfected the plastic fake food used in restaurant display windows to give you an idea what a dish looks like. I chose this one thinking the white squigglies beneath the tiny shrimp were noodles. Look closer. The noodles have eyes. Yes, I ate it. And it was, like all the food I've eaten in Japan, damn good.

I'm off to Germany for Eurobike. Be well, friends.

Wow: Bike Parents Challenged Part II

My last post has elicited many responses. I appreciate them all. My longtime friend and lost-soul-brother-at-birth, Brother Houts, just emailed me a link to a most disturbing story extracted from reports of an incident in Asheville, NC involving someone who chose to use a gun to show his disapproval of a parent hauling his kid aboard a bike.

"You're endangering your child, so I'm going to attempt to kill you." That's sound logic.

The moral of the story, I guess it could always be worse.