Year: 2020

78,000 Dead Little Bugs

While reading over on the Miata.net Forums to keep my Miata knowledge up to date I found a post that peaked my interest on LED headlights. Turns out they have now crept down to plug and play at affordable levels. Some one posted a link to a set on Amazon that was a mere $40. I took the bait and ordered a set. They arrived yesterday, so I spent 20 minutes in the garage putting them in.

This called for a drive in the dark, so a few minutes before the sun would set (which put it behind the Cascades, so no late evening glare) we backed out of the driveway and made a nice little 20 mile loop, around the south end of town through farm lands and along a bit of the west side the Upper Klamath Lake. The new headlights were not a holy sh*t, these are a fantastic upgrade, but the whiter color light was pleasing and they did seem marginally brighter. Maybe I’ll go ahead and get the high beams as well.

I would swear I’ve mentioned it here before (I looked and couldn’t find it), but I wish we could have the Masters Miata Club’s Bug Splat Rally here. Every time we take any kind of evening drive here, the front of the car returns literally plastered with bug carcasses and this would solve the usual lack of insects we experienced back in the south. Of course the bad thing would be picking out the car for the most bugs prize. I bet when we got home last night there were 78,000 splatted bugs on the nose of the Miata.

Coincidentally, the CTBNL’s odometer turned over 78000 somewhere on our drive.

Track 15 – Common People

William Shatner covers Pulp’s 1995 BritPop hit Common People. There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Bill and LordRicco666 have erased this line on so many levels.

Morning Bike Ride

That turned into a walk. The goal was getting some fresh bagels from downtown. I am almost positive this is only like the second time we have ridden the tandem since we have been in Oregon. We took it on our usual early morning route that we use on the mountain bikes, up the hill, down the hill, transit the Link River Trail, ride along Lake Ewuana and pass through downtown on the way back up the hill to home. The nearly 3 mile long Link River Trail is all gravel, but this should not be an issue for the tandem because we rode that Lock to Lock Ride in Augusta last may and the gravel portion of that was a lot nastier than this stuff.

After picking up the bagels and less than a 1/4 mile later the road suddenly turned rough. Turns out it wasn’t the road, but the lack of air in the rear tire. I hoisted the back of the bike, spun the back tire and Donna found a sand spur embedded in the middle of the tread. I don’t where we picked it up along the route, but I was pretty sure it was the culprit. Even though we carry everything needed to fix a flat, including a nice spare tube, seeing as it was the back tire and we were less than a mile from home we just walked it.

Later in the morning I went to fix the flat, I used the tools and supplies we were already carrying on the bike, but as it turned out we would have still had to walk home. The back wheel came off easy enough, the tire levers popped the tire free easy-peasy and the replacement tube went in fine, but because the rim has a slight aero profile the presta stem didn’t stick through far enough to get the CO2 cartridge inflator on well enough to fill the tire. There was a little Zefal Mini Pump in the trunk bag, but unfortunately that wouldn’t have helped either, somewhere along the line during the cross-country move it got swapped out for the schrader valve model.

I inventoried all our tire repair kits, spare tubes and inflators and created a list of needed items so that there would be enough for each style of bike to have whatever was needed, flat tire-wise, to prevent walking home in the future. Then off to Amazon to buy two CO2 inflators, a couple of patch kits and 4 inner tubes.

As an interesting side note, between us we have 5 bicycles, 2 mountain, 2 road and a tandem, and each and every one rides on a different size tire! My MTB has 29 x 2.0, hers has 27.5 X 2.0, while the tandem rides on 26 x 1.75. Her road bike has 27 X 1-1/8 tires and mine sports 700c X 25.

What’s Up?

A few weeks ago, I went looking around on YouTube for some music to listen to in the background while sitting at the PC. Radio Paradise’s Mellow Mix is in constant rotation around here, but I wanted something a little different. Remembering my favorite satellite radio channel “The Coffee House” that played acoustic covers of songs, I searched for that sort of thing. Found a couple of interesting songs by interesting acts (Chase Eagleson, Gat Brothers, The Petersens, Music Travel Love), but when I found the song below, I was hooked these guys, The Running Mates, Spencer and Julie Broschard.

So I went to their music page and bought their Acoustic Covers EP (it is pay what you want, so $1 a songs about right.) So then I searched out a YouTube music downloader and started ripping some of their songs. So then I went to their YouTube page and found out they have been doing 1 to 1-1/2 hour long live living room #Quaranstream concerts since April. Today was their last one (maybe for a while) and once again I missed it live because I am on the west coast and they are on the east coast and I’m a dummy about this time zone thing still.