So, Gareth loves to ride his adapted trike at school. He has become quite proficient at pedalling it around the playground but isn’t able to really steer it yet.

And I have been itching to get a bike again now that I’ve ventured into the outdoors. I haven’t had one since 1997 when my last bike was stolen from a 2nd floor apartment balcony.

Because Gareth loves riding, I’ve been trying to come up with a solution that would allow both of us to ride. At first, I looked into child seats, but few will handle anything above 40 pounds, his current weight.

Then I found this:

I have to say that’s the most perfect solution ever. I would steer and provide the main pedal power, and Gareth would get to enjoy the ride while pedalling himself. Only problem is that bike goes for about $4,600 without any of the extras. I wouldn’t be surprised if it hits $5,000 once we add on the modified kickstand and child pedals.

There’s no way we can afford that. My plan right now is to enter the realm of professional begging and see if I can raise some funds so that Gareth can go bike riding. I know that’s kind of a crappy thing to do, being a mooch and all, but I really think this could benefit Gare.

I can’t tell if I’m incredibly lazy or incredibly busy, but we’ve had a burnt out element in our hot water heater for… oh… a long time. 6-9 months maybe? I never got around to fixing it because my 200lb TV sits right in front of the water heater nook.

But since I’ve been rearranging the basement, I had to move the TV. Now the water heater is fixed and our showers can last more than 10 minutes. Joy. Bummer that the reason the element died was because there’s a few inches of calcium carbonate buildup in the bottom of the water heater. Always remember to flush your water heaters, kids.

Speaking of the basement, if anybody harbored any thoughts that the LAN party room might one day be reopened, forget it. I have so much stuff shoved in there now that none of the network jacks are accessible. On the upside, if anybody needs a 24 port 10/100 switch or a 1GHz machine with a flashing neon penguin window mod, I’m looking to clean some stuff out.

And he can smoke!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM

Somebody bought us a very cheap Emerson TV about 9 months ago. It crapped out this week, completely dead, so it’s now time to replace it.

The current front runner is this set from Best Buy. It seems to be the best I can do on a $400 budget.

With as much as we’ve been watching movies in the living room (a minor crime considering the 10′ diagonal screen we have in the basement), I want to have widescreen upstairs but don’t have the money for a 720p HD set. This will hopefully last long enough for prices on LCD/Plasma/whatever’s-next screens to drop in price some more.

I love how I can rant one day about Lucas sticking it to me and then, AND THEN, not two days later, buy games and toys based on his properties.

LEGO Star Wars II is now mine, as are three new figures, and four new Star Wars “kids” figures (though, technically, they’re for Gareth - three troopers and Wedge, I couldn’t resist).

I’m guessing that this is how addictions work.

The unfortunate bit is that the basement is a bit torn up right now as I’m rearranging. The 360 is hooked up to the projector, but the speakers are not yet hooked up. No use playing a game if I can’t hear it, so I will instead have to wait until that task is complete.

George… I don’t know what to say about you…

You see, when the Star Wars OT came out on DVD, I forbade myself from buying them. I decided that I’d rather watch my old VHS copies of the films and see Han shoot first rather than buy the patched versions of the film. Nobody thought I could do it, but I did. I held out.

Today, my waiting was sort of rewarded. The OT was released with two copies of the movie in each case - one the patched 2004 version, the other the original theatrical release. Sure, the transfer of the original is from the freakin’ non-anamorphic laserdiscs, but at least it’s something, right? Right.

But then, just to spite those of us who love the original movies, George put almost no extras on this release. The 2004 version of the film has commentary, each disc has a trailer, and the OT disc has demos for LEGO Star Wars II, but other than that, nothing.

No hints whatsoever of the extras that accompanied episodes I-III and the 2004 DVD release of the OT.

But then, what should George care? He’s got my $60. And he’ll just screw me again when the inevitable 30 year anniversary mega-whammy box set of all the films is released next year. I swear, George does more iterative releases of his product than Apple does with their iPod.

At least now I won’t have to cringe when I hear the VCR make that loud chunk noise when the tape is rewound. I can watch these films over and over again without worrying about wearing out my only copies.

I have a standing offer from a local outfitter to come by and try out their whitewater kayaks in the evenings. It’s one of the benefits of spending a lot of money with a small shop as opposed to buying gear at a big box store for a lot less.

On Friday night, I visited the shop and was handed a LiquidLogic Gus, a paddle, a helmet, and a spray skirt (I had my own PFD and nose clips). After a quick introduction to thighbraces and smaller cockpits (the cockpit on my Stingray is immense), I was sent down to the paddle park to do my thing.

I should probably mention that this was my first time in a whitewater boat and that I was boating alone.

Soon after putting into the creek, I was painfully aware of how much attention one must pay to the movements of a whitewater boat. Every little change in current and flow acted to turn me in ways I wasn’t prepared to go. I came to grips with that soon enough, but during that process, the nose of the kayak got lodged in some rocks while the boat was sideways into the current. And thus occurred flip #1. In no time at all, I was upside down, hanging underwater seated in the kayak. Not knowing what might be in the creek, I kept my eyes shut and did a blind wet exit, reaching forward to grab the skirt’s release loop and then shoving myself out of the cockpit. Once my head was above the water, I grabbed the boat and my paddle, waded to shore, and dumped out the water I had just collected.

Not bad for a first time exit!

I continued to paddle around the slalom course a bit, trying to teach myself to keep the kayak straight when turned directly into the current (I never did get good at that - something always caused me to turn after a while). Then I noticed that a few other kayakers had put-in downstream and were paddling around. I stayed upstream, out of their way, but after some time, I was tired of battling the stronger current in the course and decided to head further downstream where the flow was more manageable. So I headed over the short dam in the creek, got turned just as I rode over it, and thus occurred flip #2. Since I was in heavy current this time, my paddle and boat started heading down stream. One of the other kayakers corralled my boat and got it back to me. After some thanks and an admission of humility, I got to shore, dumped the boat, and relaunched.

Turned out those kayakers were really one of the newbie classes for Mach One, a local whitewater sport outfit. I stayed down-stream of them, practicing control, leans, and turns (and avoiding flipping again), which gave me an opportunity to watch the lessons. Dave Kurtz, possibly this area’s best known kayaker, was running the session along with his assistant. I made the mistake of sidling up to Kurtz to ask a question right in the middle of his training - I didn’t stop to think about the fact that he had a bunch of kids in whitewater boats who had to be carefully watched/guided. After a quick apology, I paddled back down-stream to observe.

The class mostly went well. The kids seemed to have paddling down well enough, so the lesson moved onto exits and recovery. Rolls weren’t on the agenda for the evening (they do those in a pool), but wet exits certainly were. The first girl to do it exited successfully but was chastised for standing up in the creek. I had done the same thing, not knowing what I was doing, so we both learned a lesson here. Kurtz had her do it again, this time swimming to her overturned boat and side-stroking it back to shore.

Kurtz then moved onto a small boy who had earlier declared to his mother that this was “extreme kayaking”. Kurtz had the boy flip his kayak to do a wet exit, which the kid did. But then, the boy never resurfaced. Kurtz called out to him a few times, but there was no visible activity (it is customary to reach ones hand out of the water to tap on the bottom of the capsized boat in order to signal distress). Kurtz then had no recourse but to reach down into the water, grab the kid’s hand, and pull him up far enough to get his head out of the water. The assistant then abandoned his boat to get the kayak turned upright and make sure the kid was okay.

At this point, I returned the earlier favor by catching the assistant’s boat and paddle, hanging onto it until Kurtz got down-stream to let me know where he wanted it.

As I had been in the water for about an hour and a half, I decided it was time to pack it up and go home. I got the boat out, emptied it as much as I could, and started hoofing it back to the shop. Kurtz yelled to me from the creek asking if I had his e-mail address and telling me to send him my phone number so we could chat. Looks like I might be able to wrangle some lessons from him (for a fee, of course).

Overall, it was quite an eventful evening. Two successful wet exits (I didn’t drown), a few scrapes from creek rocks, and a desire to go back and see how it goes with a different boat. I could definitely use some lessons, though. Whitewater just seems too difficult a thing to learn on my own.

To what is this quote referring:

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is an emotionally charged issue,” he said. “But passion, when left unchecked, can have negative consequences. That’s exactly the situation we find ourselves in today. The consequences of this legislation are far-reaching and stand to jeopardize the welfare of America’s [fill in the blank].”

A. Soldiers
B. Citizens
C. Children
D. Freedoms
E. Horses

If you chose E, you chose correctly! Yes, in a nation that’ll kill just about anything for use in a Happy Meal, we’re making sure to push through legislation to ban the slaughter of horses. Now, if you’re a vegetarian, an equestrian, or a Republican, I’m sure that killing horses for chow is a morally reprehensible act. Making them chew constantly on TV (Mr. Ed), stuffing them for display (Trigger), or running them until they break a leg (Kentucky Derby) - that’s all cool. But eat them? No way! They’re too cute, have big sad eyes, and share a mystical bond with young women. And Republicans.

Just think… If the guys on Bonanza rode cows, if Gene Autry crooned to his pig, if young girls spent hours grooming their toy pet chickens, we might all be vegetarians by way of legislation!

Of course, there’s always fish. Nobody loves fish that don’t look like Nemo or Dory. Heck, even casual vegetarians will eat fish because fish can’t give the illusion of a soul. Oh… ha… fish pun.

Note: This legislation does have Republican backing. I just like using them as punchlines for everything.

Boy, I sure have been blogging a lot about kayaking lately. No reason to stop the trend now!

So I bought a GPS last week thinking it’d come in handy for this project I’ve got going to map out the access points for local bodies of water. What I didn’t know was that GPS’s are frickin’ cool.

I took it with me to Black Moshannon today to get coordinates for the various boat launches (that information is being put to use on Flickr), but I left it on while I had it in the kayak. Now I have a complete record of the path I took through the lake, my average speed (3 mph), and the distance covered (5.48 miles). It even shows me the 8 minutes I spent in one spot while I watched a glider circle over Julian.

It isn’t without error, though. At one point, it has me moving 361mph in a Dodge Grand Caravan down a 15MPH road.

Yeah, I chickened out of paddling Spring Creek. I drove into TMO today to pick up a boat and got a chance to scout the creek - it was running horrifically fast. Too fast for a whitewater n00b like myself.

I think I’ll just stick to the lakes this weekend and maybe give Spring Creek a go after work when the water levels have dropped a bit.