Thursday, November 29, 2007

My own cannon

Sunrise 11-27-2007
This is a story I heard when I was a kid, I don't know where it came from.

Once upon a time there was a small town that had one man who didn't have a job. He wasn't about to take charity so the town leaders met together to see how they could help him. They decided that they would give him a job polishing the cannon at the town park. The man accepted the job and for years every day he would go and polish the cannon. He faithfully performed the job of polishing the cannon for many years. Then one day he walks into the city office and gives notice that he is quitting. The town leaders were shocked. "How can you quit?" they asked. "Well," he says, "I have been doing this job and saving my money for 23 years now. I bought my own cannon and I'm going into business for myself."

Well after 23 years of working for Novell I finally found myself on the layoff list. The job market for software developers in the area seems to be strong, but I have decided to go into business for myself. So I am working on opening a bike store. Now I am waiting for my store to be built. It looks like it will be June or July before I will be able to have my grand opening. I have however started working on the web site for my store Epeak Biking.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Friday Pie-day

A couple of years ago my wife started a tradition of Friday Pie-day. We always have left over pie from Thanksgiving so we invite friends and family over to goof off all day and eat pie. Of course this was the plan for this past Friday Pie-day.

Then my Bishop calls and asks if I want to go for a two hour bike ride at 11. Sounds great! I can burn off some of the pies I have been eating and get back before things really get going. Of course we don't get started on time, oh well half an hour won't kill me. Then as we get started I am informed that this is a 2 1/2 hour ride, now I am pushing it for getting into trouble. It is cold and there is a nice wind out of the North. I guess this just means the trip back will be faster, right?

By the time we get to the turn around point it is obvious this is going to be a bit longer than the 2 1/2 hours the ride was suppose to take. Then as I am turning around I go off the paved trail by about 1 inch for about 1/4 of a turn of the wheels. Scared that there might be goat heads in the dirt I jump off as quick as possible and check my tires. Arrrrrggghhh, about 5 goat heads per inch! I pull them out and sure enough both tires are leaking. I brought one spare tube and one CO2 cartridge. My bishop also has a flat at this point from some glass he ran over earlier. luckily he brought two spare tubes. We replace the tubes and are about to continue on and BANG! his rear tire explodes. I guess he put too much air in it. Now he has to get out a patch and patch the tube with the least number of holes in it.

The trip back is faster while I am going down wind, but I don't think bladed spokes work well with cross winds. It just seems that the cross wind slows me down a lot more than it should. By the time I finally get home everyone has been there for hours and I am in trouble for taking 4 hours to do a 2 hour bike ride.

I guess it is like software development. Take the amount of time you think it should take to finish the ride and double it.

My Bicycle Store