perhaps childhood dreams shouldn't come true

Let's face it, as a straight guy, there is always that lingering hope that when you move, you'll find some hidden trove of porn from a bygone era that the people before you left behind. As we grow up, two things come about.

1. Our hopes to find porn change to treasure. (Though to a teen, porn is a type of treasure.)
2. We realize that porn from bygone eras is either A. pg-13 by today's standards or B. weird, and not in a good way.

We moved into our house about 6 months ago, and aside from the tunnel, and the attic, we have looked about, and found no treasures. (Though I am curious about the attic, we don't really have good access to it.)

I went to the basement today to get the baby seat for the bike out, and I saw a book on the ground. Now, really, we treat our books better than to leave them on a basement floor, but I hadn't noticed it there before. I picked it up, and the back cover was rather filthy. Not to mention the effects of sitting on the floor of the basement for uncounted ages. I got the title and author from the front, it was missing the cover, and was able to find it on Amazon. Now, to be fair, the book was published in 1971. It wasn't reprinted, as far as I can tell. Now, this is rather an odd thing. If it was newer, I would be less surprised. The book is 39 years old, and though it was on a floor, looks readable. It is virtually porn. Hell, by todays standards I think it probably is porn. Meine Gotten, that's porn from almost a decade before I was born! I guess you could buy the only copy available on Amazon, it looks like porn. Of course, so do most of the sci-fi / fantasy books from the 80's and 90's. (Thank you Boris Vallejo)

Of course, I am now torn between a morbid curiosity to read the thing, and another to throw it away. Now, as someone that has a 500+ library of books, the latter seems quite out as an option. The former seems wrong. There is also a part of me that wants to throw it up onto Ebay. (Or maybe read it and then put it on Ebay)

(Seriously, this place was a rental from about 1984~2009, 25 years that the book hid from people. Longer if it was dropped there even as about 5 years old. And aside from the front cover missing, is in rather decent shape. Kinda creepy.)

I wonder what I should do...

Got the tent up, and down again

I stopped at my mom's house today and picked up my old tent. I haven't used it since '98, just before I left for college. It is a replica British Rev. War infantry tent, and I used it at the Piqua Heritage Festival back in '97. College was scheduled in such a way that camping for the festival was impossible, and Mark is finally old enough to hopefully go with me this year. Not that the tent is large enough to hold much more than the two of us.

I set it up in the yard while making dinner, making sure I still have all the parts and so on, and after dinner I took it back down and put it away.

 For the record, I didn't set it up 100% correctly, I wanted to check out what shape it was in and make sure I had all the stakes. I have extra stakes.

Mark really likes the tent, but he thinks it is too big. I wish it were twice its size. I still plan on camping at the Piqua Heritage Festival this year, but I would love an upgrade to my tent before then. The website as of now hasn't even been updated with the date, but I saw Father Son and Friends are scheduled to be there. (I hope to try to set up near them, they were real pleasant when I was past their camp last year.


I am glad I took that third pic, I didn't know who had made my tent, and I don't think I noticed the maker mark on the door before. I had been looking at Panther Primitives to order from, but R K Lodges
 is a bit less expensive. I have camped in my tent in a few storms, and I love it. I think I'll stay loyal to RK, but I have to order direct, the place in Tipp City I ordered the first one from closed up shop a few years back.

The pedals are so different

I decided to ride my bike and try out the new pedals, and they were a bit more work than I expected. My upper legs still feel it a bit, not used to having my legs feeling both directions of the pedaling, but it might just also be that the pedals keep my feet on the pedals closer to the way they should be on there. I haven't checked my logs yet, but I think it boosted my ave speed by about 20%.

I wanted to head out to the mall today anyways, since I wanted to get the better version of the newest Dropkick Murphy cd, the one with the DVD. It was on sale at F.Y.E., and I got $6.50 in credit for trading in the CD version, so it was only an extra $8. Sure, I guess I could have gotten the DVD version in the first place, and saved a bit, but I didn't know there was a DVD version, I just saw the CD on sale on their bestseller rack one day, and grabbed it.

When I hit preview, it said the version with the DVD was just an extra dollar, and it's worth it.

I hadn't planned on getting the DVD version, but as of late, Mark has been obsessed with "I'm Shipping up to Boston" (or as he often calls it, "peg leg song") I'm Shipping Up To Boston I just found a version done by the Boston Pops, the blokes that brought us the Star Wars theme. Sure, John Williams conducted and did most of the important stuff for Star Wars music, and countless other stuff, but hey, the orchestra has to count for something! I kinda like it, I think, I might download it later. I like the live version, I'm Shipping Up To Boston and it is a bit different, having the Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing and singing along. Mark prefers the regular version of course.

We watched much of the DVD this afternoon, Mark of course loving his song, but Enzo really became entranced by Pipers in the bonus part of the DVD. I think Mark might have been kinda watching Irish Dancers.

I mowed the lawn today, then out of boredom, I mowed most of the island across the street. I spent a long hard hour on it, since all I have is a push mower, which doesn't bother me as much as gas mowers. (I get sinus headaches from being near lawn mowers, though it doesn't seem to bother me with push mowers.) I didn't finish the island, but it's a miracle I did as much as I did, being that the grass over there was probably 6 inches of more deep, and my mower actually clogged with grass many times. It did a thorough job of making the rest of my body feel like I actually did something today. It looks a lot better out the window now.

It may seem odd that I would go mow some grass that really should be mowed by the city, but our house is in a rather odd position, the closest house is on a different street, as such, the island and it's tree really only border us, and the way our house is rather visible from a fair number of places and at a distance, it really seemed to make our house look a bit worse to see it so overgrown. I might even finish it tomorrow.

$91 to fix the Tank

I just got back from the repair shop where I picked up my Tank. the Tank is what I refer to my Royce Union bike as, because it is just so dang heavy. I am tempted to actually weigh it, but I wouldn't be completely surprised if it weighed in at twice the weight of my Schwinn.

$91 it cost me today.

Last Tuesday, I put the trailer on it and rode out to the mall, and then around the bike loop, netting 10 miles. It was only the second time Enzo has ridden in the trailer, and by far the longest ride Mark has been on. I found out a few things on that ride.

The Good:

The trailer fits over the spillway bridge! (Yes, I was quite worried about that, as well as how the hell to turn around the trailer on the narrow bike path without dumping someone into the spillway canal. {Trivia: the hydrolic canal the path follows there it all that remains of the canal that used to run a mere 20 or so feet from our house, though filled in, the bridge is still able to be seen out our windows.}

Mark thinks stopping at Rally's to get fries is a great way to end a ride. It helps that it is near French Park, and a few blocks from home.

The Bad:

Mark gets bored riding in the trailer after about 3 miles.

The water fountains are not on yet, no free drink of water at Roadside park yet.

The Ugly:

I saw that the back tire was worn out. It was so bald, it had hair again. Being that the hair was the fiber stuff that is the core of the tire, and should not be able to be seen from the outside, it was a really bad thing.

I see this new problem at the worst part of the trail, at Roadside Park, a few miles either way I could go from being home.


I knew that a new tire would be about $20, and I figured, better do both at the same time. Then I decided to get new pedals. Another $20. I had been thinking of getting new pedals for a while, seemed as good a time as any. Of course, the labor of having the gears readjusted was the killer, the labor took it to 85, then another 5 for tax, and rounding hides the rest of the way to $91.

Now, a lot of that should have been able to be done myself. I am sure my dad would spin in his grave over how I never got down how to change a damn bike tube. He showed me a half dozen times, and I have tried many times, and failed each one. Being able to change my own tires and tubes would have saved about $15, and I probably could have figured out the pedals myself, but that was meager enough in labor. The real labor was in getting the gears checked out. The didn't seem quite right, and I would rather have had them checked professionally than to have kept worrying about them. Granted, I would probably have tried to ignore the gears longer, but I had to take the bike in anyways.

Ruthie wasn't too happy about the cost. Fair enough, since I was shocked at the total, and a bit annoyed. Oddly, I only think about the worst it will cost when dealing with car repairs, bike repairs however....

She made two points, I have to begrudgingly admit are valid.

1. That was almost as much as her last car repair. (About 70% of it actually!)
2. I could have bought her a cheap bike for that much. (Well, a Huffy or a WM edition Schwinn.)

Now, to be fair, the bike is a good bike. The frame is in excellent shape, the front gear-set has been replaced, and I swear it is built like a tank. I can't figure out when it was originally made, but I found out that Huffy got control of the company in '97. My first good bike was a Huffy, my 3 worst bikes were also Huffy. A shame some bike companies have two lines of bikes, the crap ones, and the good ones. It's like the difference between a Ford and a Lincoln, if they just called them both Fords, and the only way to know if it was the great line or the crap line was to know what dealership sold it. Huffy from bike shop good, Huffy from Wal-mart bad. Huffy had some bad years, and looking at their current website, seem to have left the good bike business far behind. Then again, maybe I just found the crap page. Schwinn had a crap and excellent page though it looks like they merged them together. The ones they have at Target and Walmart are not the same as what they have in Bike Shops. )

I did find a listing online that has the same model bike for sale, at $185. But at least I know I will probably be able to keep riding that bike until I get to old to be able to lift it out the door and take it down the 4 steps or so to the sidewalk. Damn that thing is heavy.