A minor rant.

So I didn't post anything yesterday since I didn't really have bugger all to say.
We had our second evening of Dutch lessons. Nico came with actual workbooks, and I now have homework.

*sigh*


I know I said I didn't mind having homework, but there's still something about that word that sort of gives me the shivers.
Shouldn't be a big deal, and I'll most likely knock it off later today.

And no, that's not what's bugging me.

Here's the thing:

As is the case with most days, I rode in to town to pick up a few things, came back home, put everything away, threw a few things in the Wonder Machine and decided to tackle an issue with the old cruiser that had been left behind by the owners.

You may recall that we had to wait a little while (like two months) for our shipment from Canada to arrive, and that I had in the mean while been pedalling my arse around on the old single speed "gazelle" that was here in the garage.
It's a perfectly serviceable bike, except that the back tire needs to be pumped up just about every day.

Such fun.

(and...my compressor is safe and sound...back in Canada)

So I thought, "well, I can replace an inner tube, right?" and picked one up a few weeks back.

Well, no...this thing has more contraptions on it than a street walker in Times Square, and after taking a good long look at the situation I realised that, I might get the back wheel off, but I might never get it put back on!

Hey, I even started undoing stuff and chickened out.

I mean, there's a carrier, a chain guard...and some mystery contraption that looks like some sort of torsion bar.
I couldn't even begin to figure out how to get the chain guard off. It looks like it was wired on.

So I figured fine, I may as well bite the bullet and pedal it up to the bike shop on the other side of town, drop it off and walk home.
It's not like I need the bike any time soon, but the next time we have visitors, I'm sure it will come in handy.

So after an eye-watering ride uptown, I got to this bike shop at around 1:15 I guess it was, only to discover that all the doors were locked!

Huh?

I'm thinking, "what am I missing here?" It's Friday, not the Monday when they do in fact stay closed....did I miss an air raid?

While I do realise that in the case of a small outfit where the owner has to step out for a few minutes, or even for the whole lunch period, there might be a case for locking the joint up, but they have quite a number of people working there. There were two mechanics on the last time I went there. (Well, not sure if you can call someone who fixes a bicycle an actual "mechanic", but you know what I mean.)

There was no such thing as a sign on the door, only the one that said that, they were at that very moment, in fact...open.

Ever feel like you're in some other dimension?

I did see someone sitting in the office eating his sandwich, and I guess it must have been a really good one, 'cause he didn't look too interested in customers.
and no, I didn't knock on the door. I mean, how futile is that?
(this just came to mind....someone once said, "it's like wrestling with a pig, you're gonna both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it")

Fascinating really, since there doesn't seem to be any thing like an economic downturn when it comes to bicycle repair.

Maybe the "work council" has some sort of choke hold on lunch. Who knows?

The only conclusion that I can come to is, they have all the money they need and certainly don't need anything I might have to offer.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me, judging by the number of bikes sitting outside (at least a dozen) waiting to be picked up by customers.

I'm guessing these would be people who don't have a car, since it will be the car that I'll be using to take the bike to the shop in Hengelo.


Maybe not tomorrow.

Maybe not for a few weeks.

Doesn't matter.

Ain't goin' back there.


All I know is, as much of a nuisance as it will be to cart the bike in the trunk all the way to Hengelo, I won't mind, 'cause when I get there, I know they'll be open.
My impression of the bike shop in Hengelo is, they're actually working in this century and not the last one, when people used to close up shop for several hours in the day time and go home for lunch.

We'll see how it goes.

It's come to this

Not being one to present a problem without at least offering one or two solutions, I'd like to present my solutions to a minor irritation.

First of all my guess is, that the collective Dutch engineering consciousness has so single mindedly been tied up with the problems of water management over the last centuries, that some issues with house design have fallen by the wayside.
Let me emphasize that, they have indeed come to grips with the whole water management issue.
I mean, there are canals, dikes, tunnels.....roads on dikes, tunnels under canals.

Fabulous, really.

Not only that, but the upkeep is constant. I'm forever seeing machines busy clearing out waterways to make sure everything flows as it should.
Certainly not like when we were in Puerto Rico where, I'm pretty sure if you left your lawn sprinkler on too long, there would be have been a road closure due to a flood. Even if they had drainage, it would have been clogged with trash.

Oh, and you had to always back your car into a parking spot on Eaton property in case of a flash flood.
Really.

But I digress.

Here's the thing. (yes, the problem)

The kitchen in this place is the warmest room in the house.
That's clever now isn't it?

I realise that the kitchen we had in Puerto Rico (sorry to bring it up again) would get up into the high 80s by late afternoon but hey, I could cook outdoors on the BBQ just fine, and drying one's clothes anywhere your little heart desired was not a problem.




See, it would be oh so nice to have a little of that heat upstairs. Apparently heating the upstairs was a bit of an afterthought, since there's really only the one forced air vent in the bathroom, in the shower of all places, along with one puny little floor vent in the otherwise unheated room over the garage.

Since the dryer is in stiff competition with the washing machine for the "piece of crap of the year" award, the preference is to remove the clothes from the washing machine at the end of the day (since that's how long it takes to do a load most days) and hang it where ever I can in the house.


Starting way back when, I initially used whatever means I could to dry clothes throughout the house, including a set of four wicker chairs, two of which we use in the kitchen, along with the railing upstairs or the built in clothes line in the room over the garage.

That was when it was a bit warmer.

With the change in the seasons, and the dropping of the outside temperature (read: the temperature upstairs) it can take the better part of a week for stuff to dry anywhere except the kitchen.



So this is where we're at.....

By the time I got home from shopping this morning at 11:30, that fitted sheet was completely dry and had only been there for a couple hours.

Pretty close to a miracle.

I've heard tell of contraptions they have in the UK that one can lower from the ceiling. Kinda makes sense to me, but this ain't my house....Not sure I want to start drilling holes in the guy's ceiling.
So we'll just muddle along with this system, putting the "long term drying" up in the cold room...


This stuff has been there since Monday. It might be dry. Not sure.
I prefer not to check too often to avoid disappointment.

So....if the laundry does better in the kitchen, does that mean I can keep the bread fresh upstairs in the walk-in closet?

Or, as Gabe calls it, "the torture chamber"?


Hey, maybe we could go into the "fur storage" business!!
*snort*!

Fun with technology.

This is more like an apology to readers, since I was unhappy with the dates on the entries that I was adding on Sunday, and managed to completely bollocks up the order. Until I fix this, you have to go to the previous week to get to Friday's side trip.
So try not to miss it, because it was a pretty good one.
The fear is that (as quite often is the case) the more I go in and mess around, the worse I make it.

Please be patient.

I'm sorry.



Here, I'll make it simple....

just click here

As it was I had to change the title of one of the entries to "Back to Cologne", since the html that I had used didn't seem to work in the links on the side of the page, so it ended up looking like "k&#246ln" instead of Köln. And since our brains aren't really equipped to instantly translate code into actual words, I had to revert to English.
See? I didn't just switch the name to English on a whim.

Got one step closer to figuring out my new cell phone, so there's a chance that I might actually be able to call Gabe's mobile at some point when I really need to. Could not for the life of me figure out how to switch it to English, and managed to lock myself out of the thing.
What's with the pin code cr*p?
Geez!!
Managed to evaporate some time on the phone trying to get through to an actual person and gave up on that, so I pedalled my arse up to the Bas Baake where I bought the thing and the guy at the counter had no problems.

I mean, of course.

Turns out the pin code was not the problem....

It's kind of like when you've been rooting around in the snow for a couple hours looking for an important little nut or bolt and your significant other comes out and within a couple seconds sez, "is this it?"

A relief, but slightly annoying just the same. And there's nobody to get annoyed at except yerself.

So I guess there was one menu that I didn't find or something, since the word I should have been looking for was "taal"...which they used instead of "spraak", both of which mean "speach".
I have a notion as to what the subtle difference is, but chances are I would have dialed in to "spraak" a whole lot quicker than "taal".

I asked him to switch everything over to English, which has helped considerably. I've at least now put in a couple important phone numbers.
Please understand, it's not like I have some aversion to using the phone in Dutch, but being so technologically challenged means I need all the help I can get.

That's all.

Since I was up at that end of town anyway, stopped into C1000 for the daily shop. Normally wouldn't venture that far in 2° weather, since the wind chill on the bike takes it down into the eye watering range.

It's refreshing, I'll give you that.

So there you have it. That in a nutshell is how I manage to fritter away my time.

Pitiful.