Lacing Wheels on the Clock

I work from home. Yesterday, I had an hour-and-a-half conference call from 10:30-noon. Normally, I'd eat lunch during the call, but yesterday I decided to lace up a couple wheels.

I sort of had to walk through the ethical implications of building a bike wheel while on a conference call.

Here's what I came up with: I'm paid to think and talk when I'm on a conference call. Eating lunch, trimming my nails, picking my nose... I do these things all the time and none of them get in the way of thinking and talking.


The most mentally taxing part of lacing up a wheel is making sure the key spoke is right. (And to try and line up the label on the hub so it's readable through the spoke hole. But that's a nice-to-have, aesthetic feature that I only do because of my respect for Sheldon.) Once the key spoke is in the right place, the brain is on auto-pilot for the rest of the lacing.

So I finished lacing two wheels. Hopefully I can get them trued/tensioned tonight. The first one has the label on the hub lining up, since I started it before the call. I couldn't line up the other one on auto-pilot.

The wheels are for a new bike. More on that later.

The Rack Pics

As promised, I have more pictures of the Plum Tree rack.

Here's one:

Click the picture to go to a Picasa directory with more pictures in it.


In that directory, you'll also see pics of our hanging out up at my dad's place last weekend. He lives on the Kettle River. Which is my all time favorite river. And a perfect century from our house to his, door-to-door.


I see a weekender event in the future where a big pile of friends ride up to his place and camp on the lawn overlooking the river for the weekend. Kids and SO's to follow by car.


He's right in between Sherman and Boulder passes too. So there's great logging roads to explore and great climbs to enjoy.


Next summer. Hold me to it.