Marcus Hellner. Winning the Gold in the Olympic 30k Pursuit? Easy. Choosing between red and yellow BootBuddies? Hard.

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Ivan Babikov... 5th in the Olympic 30k for Canada. Ivan took care of the skiing. BootBuddy took care of his ski boots.

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Labels: skitraxx

I'm hereby declaring anytime you lay hardiebacker to be talk-like-a-pirate time. Y'all know that the official talk like a pirate day is one of my favorite days of the year. That day doesn't happen until September, but tomorrow will be a mini pirate celebration for me. CA doesn't know about this scheme because I literally only came up with this brilliant plan mere seconds ago when I typed "Hardiebacker" in the blog title. And I couldn't resist the "argh."

Less brilliant was yesterday when I was putting in a doorknob. First went in the "dead latch" (that thing that actually holds the door in place). I had already screwed in the strike plate and swung the door closed to make sure everything lined up. Except the door actually really closed. Which would have been fine except that I was in the empty room and all my tools were sitting outside the door, along with the doorknobs which would have greatly increased the ease with which I could have turned the door mechanisms to withdraw the latch. This happened directly after I hit my thumb with the mallet while pounding in the same dead latch. (CA was working in the garage so I was on my own.) Luckily for me there were pieces of... you guessed it, bamboo! lying around this room. So I escaped thanks to the beautiful concept of leverage.

side note:
One of my friends introduced me to Boo Bicycles. Bamboo! Bicycles! Carbon Fiber! I want!

boring stuff:
Hardiebacker is a backerboard that you put down (with thin-set liquid nails and a bajilion screws (a bajilion is a lot. I am a math major. trust me.)) before you lay the tile. So far we have not touched any tile. Only backerboard. And liquid nails. And screws. And my rollerskiing calloused hands are developing a hotspot from u s i n g a s c r e w d r i v e r.

Twelve days to finish the flooring. Sounds easy, it's not that big of a house, and it's not like we're creating a sand mandala (although now that I used that comparison making a mandala out of one of the room floors sounds like a brilliant idea). There are, however, so many places that slow us down. First of all, the original house builders put in the trim already. It's beautiful white trim, perfectly spaced 1/2" above the floor. Problem is, the bamboo is 3/4" thick. So all the trim boards along the floor have to be, well, trimmed. And I'm not sure of what the trim is made, but it's not something you want to be breathing. So while my comrade in arms saws, I hold the vacuum to save his lungs. (I try to position myself so that I can stick my head out of a window. No sense in us BOTH dying of lung complications.) Then, the pattern is going to be continuous throughout the entire upstairs, so through the 3' wide hallway we can't simply lay down a row of 3' long boards, we have to measure and cut, measure and measure and cut. And then there's corners and door frames and funny angles.

But, a bamboo day is a good day and the floors are looking bea-u-tiful! I don't even want to ever put anything in the rooms, just have spinning-in-your-socks space. Which is what happens in twelve days... the furniture arrives. Which is why the floor must be finished.

The bamboo has progressed out the door. It oozes its way through the house always running South to North, North to South. Running on a jagged diagonal like an introduction to calculus. By the end, the entire upstairs will be one continuous mass of laterally growing bamboo shoots. No breaks, no seams, no changes in direction or flow. The bamboo appears to run under the wall and into the next room, and then under that wall to cascade down the side of the house.



Except that the bamboo doesn't actually go down the outside of the house. But maybe it should. Or maybe I should plant a grove of bamboo around the house and then once they're tall enough, take the slender, whippy stalks and weave the adult bamboos into a house wall. Brilliant. My next house will be a bamboo tree house.

The agony of rain! I went from bed this morning to the couch, hoping that it would stop so we could return to laying bamboo. Not so. And I have the feeling that you shouldn't lay hardwood in different humidity situations. CA holds the exact same sentiments. So it was on to another project... grouting!



See that grouting thing I'm holding? That's on my first tile. About six tiles into it I gave up on that and switched to using my fingers. Way more versatile. Unfortunate side effect that I now have grout embedded in the back of my hands. Did you know this stuff hardens into a concrete-like substance if you let it dry? If you ever hire me to grout tile: Do not pay me by the hour. I don't think it should take an hour to do six tiles. Although I did get faster.

The kitchen counter before hours of hard work by LV:



The kitchen counter after hours of hard work by LV:



Okay, so I used the actual same photo. But you get the point: ZERO satisfaction.

And then I got to seal the grout on one of the bathrooms. Again, the before and after pictures were identical.



Let's hope for drier days tomorrow.

Some things you may need to know: I'm working on a house. Just the finishing touches. It makes a good first job as a contractor... my future career. (um, just kidding. about the career, not the house.)


What a beautiful bamboo floor!

and there's the other half of the room...



There happens to be another person in this situation. We'll call him my comrade in arms, or C.A. for short. So I've never laid flooring before, of any type. But I'm eager to attempt. LV thinks of bamboo laying as a geometry problem. Each bamboo piece is 3' long and 3 3/4" wide. The room is 209" long. The boards should be laid down as follows, start at one end, and the last board in the row cut to fit. The remnant should then start row two, run to end cut the last board to fit. This pattern should be drawn out to ensure that what results is a pleasing pseudo-random array of boards. (And please don't whine that truly random is better. Truly random has only a slight chance of being aesthetically pleasing.) Chances are this plan will, in a square room, result in a repeating pattern along with minimizing measurements taken, cuts made, and boards wasted. Right? Paper, please. Pen, please.

CV says... that's not how you lay bamboo. (Granny-- if chickens lay eggs, can I lay bamboo?) Chalk lines and hydraulic staple guns are how you lay bamboo.

But, how do you know what's going to happen at the end of the row? What about the lengths of boards you can't use? And why not do a nice hexagonal pattern in the first place?

It turns out that once I managed to squash all my theoretical floor laying schemes I actually make a pretty good floor layer. Er, I was measuring and cutting, but still, the first day went well. And they only got squashed because we're on a timeline. It's LV & CA, 1700 sq ft and 15 days. Okay, THAT sounds unimpressive. So I'm going to add that there's a ton of other, very, very impressive tasks that we'll be accomplishing in those 15 days.

My new workshop.

Boulder Nordic Sports will be at the Birkie Thur & Fri to do race wax.

They have a location in my favorite Wisconsin city... Cable!

The location is the intersection of Highway 63 and County Road M. The address is 13270 Cable Sunset Road.

They're testing waxes leading up to the Birkie so if you want to be spoiled and feel like a professional athlete, have them wax your skis for me. Trust me, good wax = happy race. Bad wax = you think you're working harder than everyone else and going slower = sad time.

AND they'll have BootBuddies for sale! Which is even more exciting than race wax!

Hours of Operation in Cable:
Thurs 25th- 11:00AM-8:00 PM
Fri 26th- 10:00AM-9:00 PM

Local Phone Number (Available Wednesday-Saturday Birkie week):
715.798.3200

Labels: skitraxx

I mentioned that I'm excited about going out and embarking on new adventures. Some of the things on The List:

Trek into Tikal (Guatemala)
And to Annapurna (Nepal)
Fly across a continent in a helicopter (or several)
Along with getting my instrument rating
And Commercial and learning to sling load.
Kayak around Antarctica (around = in the area, not circumnavigating)
Get married, own a house, have a baby (puke, but it's true)
write a book (also puking about how cliche that one is)
Improve my Spanish.
Visit Laos.
Learn to Scuba Dive.
Fly Gliders (blame Tony W for this obsession)
Race a rowing shell
(And a railroad handcart)
Knit a felted purse
Skydive
Jump a horse (is that the right terminology?)
Salsa dance with the locals in Rio
Paint something I'm willing to hang up on my wall
Become an FSA
(I'd love a phd too, but something tells me I'll be busy with other things...)
Donate Blood (because I've always wanted all my blood until now)
Make my own chocolate, and cheese. yum.
And on it goes...