Categories
Dumb Stuff

Toujours

Categories
Dumb Stuff

Soichiro’s Own

The last stop on my “Royalex solo canoe” saga: a signs dot com order to which my entire life was leading up.

Categories
DIY Junk

Floataron’t

Finally got to take the baby canoe on its first trip, whereupon I promptly fell through the old cane seat. Hm. Since this was a camping trip with a fair amount of stuff that one might want to attach to a canoe, I was also a little bothered by the lack of bow and stern thwarts. Fortunately, for that there is “drill”.

“Ow, my butt” – Me.

Like a lot of ’80s-’00s canoes, it technically has a handle, but this arrangement sucks for tying to the car and there’s no place to hang a throw bag and whatever quickly. I had made little loops of line in these holes, but that’s hokey.

I can appreciate a cane seat, but I feel like a teal 25 year-old canoe isn’t the place for it. Rather than re-caning the one it had, I just used a spare that I got for my Wenonah Spirit II and thankfully hadn’t yet chopped down to size. I don’t really have any interest in using the nice backrest part, so this’ll do fine.

And for the bow and stern, I put in these rather nice handles. They were about six bucks a pop from Ed’s Canoe. They had about 2.5″ of extra material on each side, so there was a lot of flexibility on placement. Of course, for my purposes, the closer to the bow/stern the better.

Much better. I’ll need to refinish the factory thwart so that the woodwork is at least bicolor rather than tricolor, but that sounds like a January project to me. I now dub this “acceptable”.

Categories
Dumb Stuff

Floataroo

Eyyyy, finally managed to find a Royalex solo canoe. I’m not in love with the color, but this thing was made in Florida in 1996; the color strikes me as very honest to 1990s Florida.

(Dirty backyard because California is on fire and I didn’t want to sweep!)

I’ve been hunting for an Old Town Pack for like two years, but they’re pretty hard to find in California. This is really more kayak country. Anyhow, the Solo 13 compares pretty well to the Pack, so I’m just gonna learn to love the ’90s Taco Bell color and add some purple to lean into it.

Categories
Dumb Stuff

Leaprosy

Categories
Travel

Zodiac Boat

Now that the Bureau of Reclamation has opened Berryessa, I’d kinda forgotten just how sticky some of the mud there is. Got Small Island all to ourselves, though!

Categories
Dumb Stuff

Berryesque

Lake

Categories
Dumb Stuff

Ennui

I thought everything was okay, but jeeze.

Categories
Travel

It’s a Gas

I’ll be the first to admit that T-Max and a Canonet aren’t A+ for this sort of thing, but the trails that I haven’t been to a kajillion times were inaccessible for various reasons, so I didn’t want to bring the Fuji again…

Categories
DIY Junk

Thinktacular

Linux Funtime ThinkPad Refresh Time! This is an X250 that was getting a little tired-out. It’s got an i5-5300U – i.e. it’s not too hopeless, but it just needed a little love. Particularly since the 1366×768 TN panel is truly and irredeemably horrible.

Get that old screen outta there, in favor of a 1080P IPS panel.
Industry-standard mustache comparison test of new screen.
New SATA and m.2 SSDs.
Clean off the old thermal crap, give it a fresh application.
Tasteful hologram cat sticker to match MacBook Pro.
Done.

Categories
Travel

Transitory Pants Co.

The early snow was a mild surprise, but in general it’s cooling down quickly now. I should invest in one-a them warm hats.

Categories
Travel

Blumbus 57

Yeah yeah, I know, fenders sitting there are just as bad as down. meh.