Ever since we unloaded the U-Haul into the storage units, we have been living out of suitcases – much like being on vacation. Similar to being on vacation, we've got a few changes of clothes, maybe a few of our most needed or useful items and every night we’re sleeping in a bed that does the job, but it’s not ours. Our minds know it; our bodies know it.
Unlike being on vacation, there’s no date when we have to be back home. The primary reason is that we have no home. Trust us – we WANT to be “back home”. Not in Idaho, but in the one we’ve been watching slowly take form ever since we arrived on the Florida scene. Fortunately, we are getting very close to having a home once again. There are a few telltale signs.
The power company came out and ran a line from the edge of our property to the meter box, and the home now has full power, not the temporary juice running in from the contractor's power pole planted in the yard. The carpet is in. The painters were back yesterday doing touch-up and finish work; they should be back today to complete the job. But what is the biggest clue that we’re almost ready to take possession of our new home? Yesterday I watched as a truck backed onto the lot and loaded the construction worker’s portable toilet onto the back and then drive away with it. Now THAT’S a sign that big changes are just around the corner!
Speaking of big changes, we have been getting out on the bike almost every day and riding for 35 to 40 miles each time. We’re not smart enough to wake up and get out in the cool of the morning, so we usually start around 10:00 to 10:30. Depending on where we go (or the number of stops we have to make), we get done in the afternoon when the temperatures are flirting with the 100-degree mark.
But last Sunday, in the course of about a half mile, our bike riding came to a wobbly end. Our rear wheel cracked in two spots where two pairs of spokes attach to the rim. We have been trying to figure out what to do next – replace the wheel we’re using, or move on to some other product. We’ve cracked four rear wheels now: two of the Shimano “Sweet Sixteens” and two of the Rolf Prima tandem wheels.
An online survey shows that some people have used these wheels, logging on over 20,000 miles with no issues while others didn’t have them last a year. One interesting item is that what we have is one of the older, 20-spoked rear wheels. Rolf has upped the spoke count to 24 on the rear wheel, which gives them a stronger product. I was almost ready to buy the new rear wheel (having to replace not only the rim, but the 20-spoked hub with a 24-spoked hub). However, with credit card in hand and cell phone against my ear, the folks at Rolf told me that they wouldn’t have any wheel builds available until after July 20th. This gave me a little more time to think and shop around.
What we’re doing is buying a completely new wheel set from Phil Wood (cyclists will recognize this as a premier name in cycling components). We’ll go with a 36-spoked front wheel and a 40-spoked rear. Beefy, but not overly weighty like the 48-spoked wheels that many tandem riders swear by. (Our old Cannondale had wheels like this; it was a heavy pig!)
The wheels will be like a “normal” bicycle wheel, unlike the lightweight, bladed-spoked wheels we’ve been using. Something that, if for some reason a rim should fail or a spoke should break, any good bike shop in the country should be able to repair on the spot. Goodbye to the exotic; hello to the traditional!
Did I mention we were still homeless? But yesterday we started the move-in process by receiving a new mattress that will (hopefully) live as long as we do. This humongous, heavy, back-breaking monster needed to be placed on our bed frame, which is a wooden unit that (when assembled) has a footboard, pedestal styled support with four dresser drawers on each side and a large, shelved headboard up front. We really wanted to get the bed parts out of storage, have it assembled and ready for the delivery guys to throw the mattress on and call it “done”. This, of course, is where the whole plan went awry.
First of all, we needed to get the bed over to the house on Monday evening and put together so the delivery guys could throw the mattress on it sometime Tuesday morning. You know the drill… “Your mattress will be delivered sometime between 9:00 AM and noon.” If we left it until Tuesday morning, the guys would show up first thing and we wouldn’t be ready. But not to worry! Other things would go wrong instead!
First of all, the painters were supposed to show up Monday and have the master bedroom touched up and ready to go at the end of the day. By noon on Monday, nobody had been to the house. By the end of the day, the painters had been there but left the master bedroom half done. We moved the tarp they had laid alongside one wall, along with their ladder and vacuumed the rug in preparation for the bed. Then Valerie’s sister showed up to help us lug bed parts out to our trucks and transport them for the two-mile drive to the house.
We put the bed parts in the garage, hoping that maybe the painters would get finished first thing in the morning and we could still get the bed assembled before the delivery crew arrived. Tuesday morning arrived and I got to the house at about 8:30 in the morning. The painters were on the job.
It was in the blink of an eye that they finished up the master bedroom and I was clear to start assembling the bed. Of course I’d have to wait for Valerie to show up and then we’d try to lug the various pieces in and then put them together. It was at this point that I started looking through the drawers and plastic containers that had been placed in them wondering the all-important questions: where are the shoulder bolts that will attach the headboard and footboard to the drawer-pedestal section? They were nowhere to be found. And without them, there would be no assembling the bed.
This was unfathomable! I know that I had the bolts, and that I put them somewhere that would be easy to find and made a lot of sense. But now all that planning had fallen apart.
It was time for Valerie to fly into action. One of us had to remain at the house to take delivery of the mattress. She’s smaller, and able to climb around tightly packed areas… so she went to the storage unit to look for the bolts. Perhaps they got packed in a box marked “master bedroom”, or maybe they were in a baggie that had fallen out of the bed while we were moving it and just lying on the floor in the storage unit. Maybe they were in one of the matching nightstands that would sit on either side of the headboard once the bed was back in one piece.
One thing was certain; they were somewhere and HAD to be found. Valerie spent about three hours climbing over and around boxes, furniture and other assorted treasures looking in vain for the shoulder bolts. I went through the bed pieces once again, looking to see if maybe we had taped the bag of bolts inside (or under) one of the drawers, or inside on the recesses of the headboard. It was then that I caught a “break” – I found a small bag of four bolts with an assembly instruction sheet stapled to the inside of one of the drawer units. Also in this bag was an Allen wrench, something that I’d need to get the bolts in place.
This bag was something from the manufacturer; it was not the bolts we removed. But it was a wonderful turning point! Imagine someone tacking in an extra bag of bolts and a wrench – thank you in reverse to that person! All I had to do was find four more similar bolts and we could get the bed assembled.
So the mattress arrived, and I had the guys put it in the bedroom to where we could stand it on end, eventually assemble the bed and then tip the mattress into place… and finally call it a “day”. The delivery guy said that he had just seen bolts like the ones I had at Home Depot, and that is exactly where I found a package of four more shoulder bolts. We returned to the house, assembled the bed, tipped the mattress into place and then… drum roll, please!
I picked up my toolbox and a baggie that I had placed a couple of screwdrivers, mini-flashlights and pliers in (which we had kept in the truck in case we needed tools) and noticed that in the baggie was a smaller baggie with all eight shoulder bolts and an Allen wrench just the right size to put the bolts back in with. Good golly… I DID put those bolts somewhere that made sense. But I didn’t see them when I brought the tools into the house as they were behind all the other stuff in the bag. You can imagine my popularity when I told Valerie that the mystery had been solved!
Maybe I should take her out on a bike ride today to get her mind off of my latest faux pas. What’s that, you say? We don’t have a working bike? Au contraire, mon ami! But we do! Our mountain tandem is ready to roll. All we have to do is spend a little time down at the storage unit digging it out. Oh, Vaaaallerriiiee! I have a little job for you!
I apologize for not keeping this blog a little more up-to-date. Hopefully once we have our own place and are back into some kind of living-rhythm I might actually start writing with a little more consistency once again!
