New Year's Eve

It's another wild night over here at 514. We were going to head down the mountain for an early dinner but it's in the negatives and it just felt better to stay inside as much as possible. We ended up with about 6" of snow from this storm. I was outside a bit to shovel the driveway and steps and I also worked on my car and cleaned the garage a bit but eventually I found my way back to the couch and under a warm blanky. Tonight we watched a horrible movie and now I'm watching videos from last year's 100 Acre Wood Rally back in Missouri. It's been a while since I've been to that race and it looks like I'm going this year with some fellow gearheads. Want to wish all our friends and family a happy and safe new year. We miss and love you all and hope to see you soon.

I'm not a fan

of anti-lock brakes. So here's what I came up with. The fuse that controls the ABS unit is a that 20 amp mini fuse in the middle. I've seen guys tackle this job different ways but my idea was to use spade connectors in place of the fuse. The connector on the left was my first attempt. If you look closely you can see that the connectors are actually 2 pieces of metal sandwiched together. The way I cut the first set eliminated one of those layers and made the connector fit really loosely in the fuse panel which was no good. So I ended up going with 2 of the connectors on the right. This way the height of the connector remained the same as the fuse.

This is the wiring kit I came up with. Radio Shack only had a 3 terminal rocker switch so I went with it anyway. The wire with the inline 20 amp mini fuse connects to the positive side of the rocker and the other one serves as the ground. Both wires head from the switch and back to the fuse panel where they get plugged in where the fuse used to live. With the rocker switch I can essentially turn on and off the ABS without having to manually pull the fuse.

This is how it ended up looking when all done. The fuse panel is directly behind that change drawer. A lot of guys complain about not being able to use that drawer again because the connectors stick out further from the fuse panel than the actual fuse. I opted to just cut out a section from the back of the drawer so that it could still be used. I'm a stickler for the details and would much rather have the drawer notched from behind than see the fuse panel and wires hanging out.

I did have a few headaches with this working properly. I won't go into what was happening because the only thing that's important is that I re-checked my wiring and found that I had the negative wire going to the wrong switch terminal. Things are fine now. The only minor issue is that the STI guys can actually switch between ABS and no ABS live with the rocker. When I start mine up, I have ABS working and no idiot light on the dash. When I flip the switch, I disable the system and get an idiot light on the dash. I can't just flip back and have ABS again unless I actually turn off the ignition again and then the system recognizes that it's been reset. I can live with this. If I actually turn off the ABS, I won't want it on again until I get where I'm going.

Now...the reason I did this is simple. Today when I was goofing around, there were times when I would left foot brake while still mashing the accelerator and the ABS would kick in. There are times when drivers want to lift off the fun pedal and tap the brakes hard for a second to initiate a transfer of weight to set up for a turn and ABS makes that quite difficult to do on both snow and gravel. Please understand that I am not out driving like an idiot on public roads. I always find a big and empty parking lot. This will also make the driving school that I plan on attending a bit easier as well.

Finally

Some weather was moving in when I got out of bed and the snow started at around noon I guess. I've been waiting for some snow so I could do some driving. The Winterforce tires are great. You gotta really try to slide around. I ended up at the high school parking lot so I could have some fun in a relatively safe spot where at least nobody else was around. Setting up some markers made a fun little rally cross kinda course where I could practice shifting the weight of the car around to induce slides while trying to avoid carnage. The ABS still bothers me but it's only when there's ice or I really stand on the pedal. I've got a fix for that though.

Hair is a funny thing

Those that know me know that I am a pretty clean guy. One of the things that I don't like is hair. I'm not sure where this came from but there's no fighting it. Cycling is probably a great sport for me b/c I can get by with the whole leg shaving thing with only minor heckling. I don't really care for arm hair but that's a lotta work. Thankfully I do not have a hairy back as that would drive me insane trying to reach back there. Anyway...I would love to have a thick head of hair but it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe that's where the bitterness towards hair originates from. Because I have pretty much accepted the fact that I will never have lustrous golden locks, I cut what is left up top every few days. I use a standard trimmer with no guard. About once each week I maintain the nose and ear hairs. As I've gotten older I've noticed that I have to hit these areas a bit more frequently. Tonight I found myself staring into the mirror wondering what I might look like if genetics had been different. I happened to notice something blond glimmering in the light towards my left ear. I leaned in to investigate. Below is a hair that I plucked from just inside the ear. I have laid it on the mouse pad so it shows up nicely and also placed my Nano nearby for scale. This is what it's come to. I can't grow hair up top without it looking like I'm clinging to what was once a great society of hair but I gotta cut the hair coming from the ears. Getting old sucks.

Whoa.....

Yesterday morning I typed something while having coffee. It's something that's been in my head for a while now but sometimes things look differently when they're in print ya know? More official? I don't know. It had to do with personal goals that I want to see happen this year. I'm not going to go into WHAT I typed but I will say that when I read it, I realized the magnitude of it. I am not one that looks at things lightly. If I'm gonna do a major repair on a vehicle or whatever, I research it with an open mind, then step back and evaluate what I've come up with. Sometimes I say, "Oh that's not gonna be bad." Other times I say, "This is going to be really hard and probably harder than I think." Then I make a decision.

One of the things that special education teachers do is write an annual education plan for each student on their caseload. Part of that plan entails goals that the student will strive to meet (with my help) over the course of the next 12 months so that, maybe, they can get out of special education. This particular student needs to close his gap in reading and reading comprehension. It's the same damn thing. I step back, look at him, what's on his plate, his attitude, his teachers, supports at home...tons of variables and then I come up with something. So and so will improve his/her independent reading to that of 7th grade material. The jump that I settled on for this particular student was right at 2 years growth. I was told (by whom it's not important) that this was an unrealistic goal. That pisses me off. Don't you dare tell me what's realistic and what's not when it's my student that I work with. I've seen hungry students improve by 3 levels in a year. It's rare but...I've seen it. Same thing goes when we talk about post high school careers. I am not a dream crusher and I'll be damned if I'm gonna tell a 9th grader that he/she can't be an architect. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say, "You know...it's gonna be tough to be a successful architect if you don't like to draw and constantly lose your materials." That's ok. For me, I might as well just laugh and point instead of saying "You can't".

Back on point. Heather read what I had typed and I believe her first response was, "Wow." We talked about it. It's not gonna be easy at all. I've seen stranger things happen. It's gonna take a ton of dedication, discipline, and probably more importantly, an unbelievable amount of mental toughness/desire. I think I can do it. I stared at the sentence I typed for several hours before closing the laptop and heading to the gym. It really wasn't a joke.

Technology

Years ago when the iPod first came out and Heather said she wanted one, I poked fun at her. I don't know what I said but I think I thought it was a joke or unnecessary. Whatever. We used hers in the car and, while it was pretty nifty, I didn't think I needed one. That all changed one day when I asked her if I could borrow hers for a long day on the river chasing trout. It was amazing. I had my entire music collection with me. I could delicately present dry flies with something soothing playing in my ear. When the sun went down, I changed over to a big ugly streamer and, with those, it's perfectly ok to be violent when casting and then I could listen to something harder while muscling that ugly, water logged fly through the air and then stripping it back to me. I even took a long nap in the grass with it on.

I ended up buying my own that night. It's gotta be going on 6 years old now. It's taken a beating and it's starting to have problems. Heather got me a Nano for gift this year. This thing is amazing. It's tiny. It holds 16 gigs of music but that's plenty. I never brought my iPod on the CTR. I use it a ton during training but was always trying to trim weight where I could. Music is going to be a big reward for me this year though and this will be perfect. I can even store pics off Heather and the pups on it. I used it yesterday when I was in the gym. I'm amazed at some of the technology that we have.

Puppies

Bodhi and Dharma did pretty well in the gift department. This was taken just after they went through their stockings. They were both crammed with treats and Bodhi even got a glow in the dark ball. He loves him some fetch.

Bodhi kinda took control of opening up this present which was actually for both of them.

It was a big rope toy for them to play tug o war with. Bodhi was pretty excited about it and promptly took off with it and Dharma decided to not give chase and buy into his tricks.

Instead, she decided to commence with the fashion show.

Eventually she gave up on the bow and settled for a new scarf. She looks incredible.

Santa brought me several packages of Skittles and some Paydays, my favorite orange Tic Tacs, new boxers (what's Christmas without some new underwear...more on this in a minute), a book, an iPod Nano, and some mud flaps. Santa brought Heather some Sheepskin slippers, a watch, some PJ's (not those kinda PJ's....nothing racey and no I'm not posting pics you sick bass turds), and a nice blanket b/c she's always cold.

Back to the undies. I guess when I was about 19 or 20 (it was the first Christmas that I finally said to hell with going to either of my parents house) is the first time I met a very special lady. I was working at the Touring Cyclist at the time and that's when I started hanging out with the Corbitt boys. Their mother insisted that I come over for Christmas and, with not much notice at all, she made sure that I had something to open. Socks and underwear. She was actually going through chemotherapy at the time and when I met her she was bald but wore a multi-colored clown wig. I thought of that woman as my mother and, even though I'm closest with Adam and Dave, I think of all the siblings as my brothers and sisters and often refer to them that way. That family fed me when I was hungry. Put clothes on my back (and ass) and even gave me a bed to sleep in for quite a while. Her and Mr. Corbitt (a chaplain) put up with a TON of shit from us as we were pretty wild. For no reason at all. Mommy 12 would lose her battle with cancer a few years later after a tough fight. Rest in peace Mommy. I still think of you and the lessons you taught me.