J's Going to HS

Only a couple short weeks ago, I graduated from 8th Grade. This was a big event in my life, as next year I will be attening a school of which almost none of my childhood friends will be attending. As sad as it is, I am actually kind of happy about highschool. New friends, lots more people, bigger campus, I think high school will be great. I also think that taking the same classes as people from other grades will be fun. To be honest, I cant wait for high school. Being at last one of the shortest kids will be a nice change for once. Although I will miss all of my friends at my middle school, I am sure that I will make many new ones. New teachers will also be an upside. Having the same teachers all three years of middle school got boring after a while, and I am sure that having new teachers EVERY year will be great. Also, it is stereotyped that the four years of high school will be the best four years of my life. I cant wait.

-J

THE FAIR

My brother J and I are entered in the Marin County Fair's piano competition. We will be competing in different groups which are separated by age, so we will not be against each other. I am playing a song called "Nocturne Mystique" by the composer Jennifer Linn. For entering, I get a free family pass for 2 days, and the prizes for winning are:

         First: $30 and a ribbon

         Second: $20 and a ribbon

         Third: $10 and a ribbon

Wish us good luck!!!!!!!

Thanks!

               -G

TOO MUCH TV FOR ME !!!

Too much tv! wow, that was a lot of tv at out home! watching TheWonder Years, Malcom in the Middle and The Twilight Zone. and we have ebeen playing to much computers. well, we went on some bike rides and rollerskating, but we were watching to much tv. I have been playing battlefield 2 and need for speed carbon.

TO MUCH T.V

I dont blame us, we are on summer vacation! summer vacaition has been fun, we are only on our first week, so we have alot of more time left. wright now im typing, I am trying to think about what I should wright. OH!

yes,  I am going to build a go kart and I am going to ride on some parking lots.

yep, but not that kind. mine will be much different. not as neat. more messy.

well, I thought of somthing to type. this blog is kind of short but its not over.

i want to watch some malcom, but bloging is pretty fun. well i want to say one more thing again.

TO  MUCH T.V!

WELL, i cant just stop blogging now, past things  in the last few months: we moved, got bikes, got rollerskates, made topas, fixed oven, fixed stove, got to school on time, got a tandem, got a rat rod, got a schwin, got another schwin, got a road bike, I accendently broke a pot, I can do the cross over on rollerskates, i can do a weelie, i can pop a weelie. that is a list of things. not alll of the things but most of them.

H.A.G.S!

^

have^a^great^summer!

bye!

C

REDUX - OUR NEW HOUSE

Recently we got a new house!  we call it casa grande or "casa" for short. we love the new house. It is amazing, I love this house. Casa is much bigger than the "old house". It is still 2-story but MUCH more rooms. We all have our personal bedrooms, we have a music room and a tech room, and a play room. Now Dad does not have to work in the garage. AND Casa has MUCH faster internet. we have about 4x faster than our old  house.

When we fist moved into Casa, the stove took FOREVER to warm up. It was a drag, dad soon got it fixed and now it warms up MUCH faster. ALSO the oven was broken, dad got it fixed VERY soon, we never had problems with the oven ever again. My room is AWESOME, i have it set as a half indian half cowboy room. I love my new bed, it is very comfy because dad put new blankets on it. I think that this house might actualy be better than the old one.

Our 'Casa' 

We had our christmas is the old house. That was the last christmas ever there. It is very sad that Tatiana died, we brought here inside then she did not like the unnatural air and water. it was over, she was wilting. Well, lets think of the good side, christmas was wonderful, I received "spicy" chocolate, it is spicy! and need for speed Carbon and need for speed pro street, well, dad had to return them, Prostreet was for mac OS, and carbon had an invalid code, dad returned carbon and the code worked, we installed it and played forever, it is now my all time favorite game.

Oh, I forgot, we all got new bikes! AND I got nw schwinn roller skates, they are inline:) I ride to the deli and get an ice cream :D. After my birthday I got a schwinn bike, I LOVE it. Then shortly after G received a pair of roller skates, G wanted a  pair too. we eventully got her skates. THEN G got a bike, it was a schwinn too. And then dad got a Rat Rod, it has flames on the sides. Before I got my schwinn, I had a BMX, i still have it, but the petals wont turn. SOOOOO....

Today I raced J, he was riding G's bike, We raced around the block, AND... So CLOSE!! I had lost the race by 2 SECONDS, but J cheated :P.

Let our family way be new,  special, and ours, Our Family Way.
THE END. - C

OUR COLUMBIA TANDEM

About a week ago, I decided that we needed a project for the summer. The kids will be spending a significant amount of time at our new house 'Casa' this summer and I wanted them to have something interesting to do. This whole month I had been visiting garage sales and watching Craigslist for used bikes for the kids to ride this summer AND a friendly person in the town north of us said they had an old Tandem bike that they would like to get rid of and asked if we would be interested. I talked to the kids and told them this could be our summer project if they were interested. They all thought the idea was great so I picked it up on Tuesday and spent that evening doing some research online and found out that it is probably a Columbia Twosome Bike built between 1960-1975. Because the color behind the Columbia script is faded we cannot tell if it was originally orange or red. Orange was used from 1961 until 1975 and the badge does say Columbia Mfg. so we think the date range is on target. IF we could find a serial number we may be able to get a more detailed date of manufacture but even after cleaning gunk from rear drops we still can not find a serial number on the bike ... hmmmmm did these '73-'75 bikes not have stamped serial numbers?

The bike had been white and was now painted lime green but all the pieces seemed to be there :) I called the kids that night and told them of our acquisition and judging by the response I received - THIS IS OUR SUMMER PROJECT!

At first review we identified the following issues that we needed to resolve. The rear axle was bent, the chains master link was missing the clip, the front handle bars may be stripped, the rear seat post was missing and of course, this was besides no tires or tubes. So, the first thing we did was 'divvy' up parts of the bike. I got the wheels (Thanks Kids!), J got the drive train, C gets the seats and handle bars and G will figure out colors and painting requirements.

I spent a couple of hours on google getting a basic understanding of what was required to rebuild the rear hub. Seems shimano is fairly popular setup and the axel from an old kids size rear wheel was the perfect match for our bent one. I watched the various YouTube videos on tearing down the hub and started the greasy, messy job of taking ours apart. The best advice I received during the "training" was to lay out the parts EXACTLY as they are removed on the ground or a table to facilitate putting them back together. This all worked great except for the two little metal bits (Brake Shoes?) which promptly fell out of the hub as soon as the dust cap was removed - I would have a 50/50 chance to replace them correctly.

The next day I stopped by the local used bike charity house and talked to the mechanics and people hanging around about what the various pieces of what I found inside the hub did (quite an engineering marvel!); while there I picked up a couple of 26 x 1.75 tires and tubes very cheap. These may not be the final set for our Columbia but will get us rolling ...  

While researching the web for information on our bike, we found an encouraging article on tandems at the NY TIMES which reminded me of the old song “Daisy Bell,” written by Harry Dacre in 1892:

     Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,
     I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
     It won’t be a stylish marriage -
     I can’t afford a carriage,
     But you’d look sweet upon the seat
     Of a bicycle built for two.

     We will go tandem as man and wife,
     Daisy, Daisy,
     Wheeling away down the road of life,
     I and my Daisy Bell.

In 1961, the IBM 7094 became the first computer to sing, singing the song Daisy Bell. Vocals were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum and the accompaniment was programmed by Max Mathews. This performance was the inspiration for a similar scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From The Milwaukee Journal Oct 21, 1971