I spent most of the day yesterday on my knees. I woke up feeling a kind of under the weather, didn’t feel like just laying around all day, so I decided to go over to the Walberg’s to help Keith and Catherine get their house ready to show to sell. Next thing I know, I’m tearing the layers of flooring out of the two bathrooms upstairs.

The realtor suggested they put tile in the bathrooms. That made sense, but when you think about it, why wouldn’t all realtors want you to fix up all the houses that they are planning on listing. They make more commission, or at the least, they sell the home, making their commissions, quicker. They aren’t the ones spending the money to upgrade the home. I have a friend, Joe Irwin, who says any house he sells is as is, where it is. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, there were a couple layers of vinyl down which was nearly impossible to tear up. Upon closer inspection, they put a 1/4″ layer of plywood down, so prying that off the floor exposed pretty pristine wood. I think construction is nearly the best cross training a cyclist can do. You do so many different motions that you would never do normally. I’ve been trying to get my shoulder working better, pretty much the whole year. I did do 30 push ups yesterday morning, which was mildly motivating, but working for 10 hours on this bathroom after was 1000X better/harder. I am so sore today I can hardly move.

I probably walked up and down their two flights of stairs 100 times yesterday. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but I live in a ranch house, so I’m not doing stairs much. Carrying cement board, mixing and moving thinset, etc. just adds to the workout. My hamstrings are usually worse than they seem to be today. Maybe that will be a slow process and they will get more sore as the day goes on. It is always humbling when I consider how well I can tune my body to do one specific thing athletically and then when I attempt to do other things that fall out of that range, I am so horrible at them.

I’m doing a cyclocross clinic down in Dallas this weekend. I’m not sure that sitting a car for 10 hours is the best way to loosen up, but that is what I’m doing. I needed to start doing some different motions, so it’s all good.

I saw this guy hanging at Lowes yesterday. He was looking for his people.

Start of the small bathroom.

It got way easier after finding the 1/4″ plywood.

Starting laying the cement board.

The bigger bathroom floor removal went way quicker.

There were a ton of weird angles, more cuts, so it was tedious.

I’m packing to head to Dallas and realize that I need another car. Not a different car, but another one. And I’m saying this as I have a choice of at least 3 or maybe more different cars to drive. Man, we American’s are never satisfied.

Right now, what Trudi and I drive are my diesel Ford van and a Honda Insight. Pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. I bought the van close to 4 years ago specially for cyclocross. If I just took two other riders with me, that is 6 bikes. All six fit inside no problem and it gets pretty descent mileage, close to 20 mpg, driving on the highway. I have nearly 340,000 miles on it now.

The Insight is super, super small. It is mainly for driving around town. It gets somewhere in the 50+ mpg range in town. But, trying to travel in it, with just one bike is a hassle. Especially a bike my size. There is no room for luggage, Bromont, anything.

I also own two old VW pickup trucks. Both 1964, one a single cab and one a double cab. Plus a couple Saab Sonnets. The Sonnets and double cab haven’t ran for a while and are in garages. The single cab was the first car I ever bought, back in 1977. I plan on restoring them all eventually, but eventually always seems to be further away than it was the day before.

I only buy used cars. Usually, pretty cheap used cars. I paid $4000 for the diesel van and have driven it nearly 200,000 miles now. I like that about diesels. It is extremely difficult to work on, but that was known when I bought it.

I need a medium size car that I can take two people, plus Bromont, two bikes, plus luggage. I rented a small minivan in England a few years back. It was a Kia something and driving at super fast highway speeds, 90+, it got nearly 40 mpg. I don’t understand why there isn’t something available like that here in the US. It is nearly impossible getting another that carry anything that gets in the high 30’s for mileage.

When Dodge came out with the Caravan, back in the 80’s, they had a 4 cyclinder, manual transmission model that got over 35 mpg and that was over 30 years ago. Since then, our worrying about fuel economy has went out the window. Sometimes I wish that gasoline prices would just go up to $5 a gallon and stay there. That way, automobile manufactures would be “forced” to make something that the public would demand, a bigger vehicle with great mileage. But, the way I buy cars, it would still be a few years down the road before I ended up with one.

By the time I pack a couple sets of wheels in, there isn’t much room left for anything else.