

It’s been winter for about a solid month now (no temps above 60F)… not my favorite season. Snow on the mountain at least (taken with a cell phone), but very little in town. Colder than last year and less snowy… based on the stats it looks like a “normal” year would be somewhere in between. Can’t complain too much though… I still get out to ride often enough, and I’m comfortable down to ~40F so long as it isn’t windy… and it is sunny enough, so not gloomy. It’s been super windy the past couple of days though… but warmer… pick your poison…
Shiva’s friend Lauren just departed early this morning after her week long visit. It was nice having her around… nice change of pace. In the photo above we had a fire and Optimators out on the property one night… so I guess we can use it even in winter!
Time to get back into the routine again. We’ve both been getting lazier as the work has slowed down a bunch since Thanksgiving. I always appreciate this though, since I hate working too much anyway. We were even just lazy through Christmas, and did little but have a nice dinner and watch The Grinch with Jim Carrey. Neither of us had seen it before, and I was amazed at how much I liked it! Very funny with lots of subtle cool things included… highly recommended. It follows that cartoon pretty closely, but adds a lot of new material.
I’d planned to do a lot of updating on my website (yes, this one), but I’m lacking the ambition for that as well. Instead I’ve been researching all sorts of things, including “home building” stuff. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to afford to build until the land is paid off in 10 years, but it is fun to try and figure things out anyway. I know I want to heat it primarily with passive solar… basically south windows and thermal mass… with a woodstove for backup. The house will be ~50ft x 30ft with the long walls facing south and north. The walls will be some kind of masonry like concrete blocks or adobe, with external foam insulation (inside the walls if adobe) and probably a stucco exterior if block is used. I thought of having barrels of water in front of the south windows, but I’m not settled on that yet. The south half will have a concrete floor, and the north half will be a few feet higher and raised. I’m trying to make it simple, and outside of Shiva’s massage room it will be very non-fancy. I’m still not sure what it would cost though. People seem to think $150 a sqft is mimimal around here to have someone else build, but I’m still hoping to come in at around half that if I do a lot of it myself.
I like the idea of using adobe (actually cob… free form adobe), for the walls… but it takes a lot of hand labor, meaning that I’d have to do it myself and take a lot of time… or pay a fortune to have it done. I was thinking of doing something like a post and beam with vigas (logs), put the roof on, then build the cob walls up outside the posts to meet the roof. I don’t know how much maintenance it would require. I certainly want it all to be low maintenance… as I know that I am not someone who enjoys having chores to fill up my time. Cutting firewood and stoking the stove in winter will be plenty!
I’ve been liking the new frame… seems stiffer than the old one, which is most noticeable when standing or making sudden motions. The Zep would flex in the middle, while the ZX3 is just steady. Weird thing though is how *slow* I am now. In early Nov (on the Zep) I set a record of 8:32 climbing Angus hill. This was only 3 seconds faster than my previous best, but it was on a very calm day, so I knew it wasn’t wind aided. Since I’ve recovered from the back injury I’ve tried it 3 times and they were all between 9:40 and 10:00. That’s a big difference in power output… over 15%. I don’t think I was that slow when I moved here… and that was after taking over a month off! Frankly, I don’t know what to blame. The frame certainly should be a little faster, and I don’t feel weird like I’m sick or anything. I’m not riding a lot, but I didn’t last year at this time either. I keep wondering if the whole back and tooth deal is a symptom of something else that isn’t working so well… guess I’ll find out eventually.