Winter warmer

We had a lovely weekend here in the Twin Cities metro area.  The highs were in the 40s on Saturday and in the 30s on Sunday.  I didn't take much advantage of the weather, but it put me in mind of warmer times ahead.  Saturday afternoon I managed to reassemble my chainsaw.  One of the bolts that secures the chain/bar had stripped, and I'd taken it apart to see if it could be replaced.  Turns out they just use a square headed bolt that fits into a molded recess in the plastic housing.  The plastic had stripped, not the bolt, so there would be no replacing.  I used some JB Weld and fixed the bolt in place.  This was back in December, and somehow during the JB Weld's approved curing time, other household projects took priority.  It's kind of interesting to reassemble something that you took apart, but don't really remember the details of how.  But after a few minor missteps I took it into the garage and it fired up.  I tried cutting something, but the blade is woefully dull so I gave up and split some wood by hand.

 

Sunday I spent most of the day cleaning out the office in our basement while scanning some old photos.  This batch was from a summer camping trip back in high school.  It's a hoot to see some of these pictures after all this time.  And I'm surprised by how much I don't remember.  These pictures were in an album and had captions, so that helped lots.  But most of the captions refer to people by first name only and I found that I didn't remember the last name of many.  Looks familiar, but...  I plugged a bunch onto Facebook in hopes that some of the other folks from the day can help with identification and also enjoy a trip through our intersection of memory lane.

 

Throughout the weekend I kept thinking that there was a task I should be doing in the warm weather, but I never came up with a good one.  This morning I realized what it should have been:  wash the bike.  As I headed to work this morning the chain was pretty stiff and I looked over the bike and was shocked by the amount of salt on it.  Looking back at last year's stat sheet, I didn't get off the winter bike until April 2, so I've still got a couple months to go.  I hear the new Freewheel station on the Greenway has bike washing facilities.  I may give them a shot, or I may wait for some warmer weather.  Rumor has it we'll be back in the 30s again later this week, even though Phil saw his shadow this morning.  We'll see.