Category: Photo

Too Much Coffee

I took a few snapshots of all my coffee toys.  The occasion was the selling (on Craigslist) of my beloved La Pavoni manual espresso machine.  I’d pulled a few thousand shots through it, and eventually gave it up because it took so much time.  It sat around, I felt like it was too fine a machine to not be used.  I cleaned it up, took the best pictures of it that I could, and within a few days someone answered my ad and took it.

(click to see more pictures)

Hoop House

This (ahem . . . lengthy) gallery shows the evolution of our hoop house

  • construction
  • plastic top
  • early plants
  • plant progress
  • top off

It was a cool spring.  The plants loved being warm and humid inside.  They really took off and were bigger, yielded product sooner, and had a longer life span than other unprotected gardens in the neighborhood.

At some point, the tomato plants get too big for the roof and the plastic has to come down.  Usually by this time it’s warm, it’s time.

Specialized Epic Allez

I bought this bike, slightly used, in Denver in the early 90’s.  It got a lot of use!  It was one of the very early Specialized attempts at carbon.  The frame tubing was glued into the Aluminum lugs, something not done now.

At some point, I got into the Bike Friday thing, and Eileen took over this bike. When we moved to Wisconsin and discovered how hilly it is here, I converted it, at no small expense, to a triple.  I used the triple crank set from my old yellow Marin mountain bike, which made the gearing setup a “compact triple”, more or less.  The shifters were the original 600 series downtub shifters. I bought conversion hardware that allowed me to mount them as bar end shifters.

Eileen rode this bike in some tri races, on the 2007 GRABAAWR, and the 2007 Wright Stuff Century.  The very low gearing was loved.  The bar end shifters were not loved, at least by Eileen.

At some point, she decided that riding a hand-me-down bike was no longer acceptable, and bought a new Specialized Roubaix.  I wanted to keep this, but really couldn’t justify it.  I’d sold my last bike Friday, I was riding a nice all carbon Specialized Roubaix.  We sold it to a “good home”.  Despite dire warnings about the short life span of glued lugs, this frame never softened up or got creaky.  I always thought it was a great looking bike, what with the black carbon weave showing, and the yellow trim. I wish I still had it.

(click here to see the photos used in the Craigslist ad to sell this bike)