First, a joke:

How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

I don’t know, how many.

Hey, let’s go ride bikes!

I don’t think that’s exactly how it went when I first heard the joke but it’s pretty darn similar. Anyway…over the weekend we went bike shopping for David. I already have a bike (Specialized Hardrock - similar to this picture), and have had one for about 10 years now. For the better part of those 10 years it’s either been sitting in a closet or hanging in the garage waiting for someone to do something with it.

I think I rode it exactly two times after I first bought it, and then never rode it again. Not because I can’t, or because I don’t like to, I just lost the motivation.

A month or so ago, David pulled it down from the garage hook, filled the tires with air, and took it for a test spin around the block. But then again it got hung back up and wasn’t talked about - until last Friday.

We’ve been trying to come up with some active things we can do together, to lose weight, that doesn’t require the gym. I can’t stand going to the gym and David has been paying for a membership for the last year without ever going. We needed to find something we could do right from the house. So I said, “why don’t we go out on Saturday morning and head over to the bike shop and buy you a bike?”

And thus the idea was born. We went to East Sac Bikes first, because we’d never been there and they seemed to have a wide selection of bikes. A wide selection of $600 bikes is more like it. We were in the store for less than 5 minutes before I was pestering David to leave. Then off we went to Target. Target had a pretty good selection of men’s mountain bikes, and after test driving 3 of them along the aisle, we found a very nice one.

David is now the proud owner of a Schwinn Clearcreek, and it’s a pretty sassy looking bike as you can see here.

So we’ve gone on three rides already, and we’re going to try to keep the momentum up and see how much weight we can lose. So far it’s been a lot of fun riding around town, but we’re working up to longer rides and tougher rides. I’ll let you all know how it goes, and how much my waist line shrinks!

Cheers!

This weekend we were treated to the births of hundreds of Praying Mantis’. We have egg sacks all over the back yard, but this was the first time we had actually seen the birthing process in progress.

Starting at about mid-morning, the mantis’ burst forth from their birthing chamber and took over the cabana. Here you can see the ones that stuck around near their home for the past several months.

While it may look like there are a lot of little critters coming out of that small egg container - this isn’t even the half of it. All across the beam of the cabana we counted approximately 120 new baby mantis’. Within about 4 hours, they had all but scattered and only a few remained close to home.

This morning, there isn’t a single mantis inside the cabana. They made their way to the various plants around the yard, climbing up on the grape vines, sneaking their way underneath the basil and rosemary, and generally hanging upside down under any leaf they can find.

We’re very excited to see what happens with them this year - last year we had quite a number of large and beautiful creatures in the yard. As you can see here, the male and female are in the midst of creating a new batch of kids…

Isn’t nature magnificent

Let’s all bow our heads in prayer.

This is part of Heath’s Did You Know? series of posts.

Gardeners - did you know that you can cause problems in your home if you cut Iris blooms and use them in floral arrangements?

Why is this? Because when an Iris bloom is cut from the plant, within 48 hours it will begin to liquefy. That’s right. Liquefy.

Here I present reference image 1.

As you can see, the Iris bloom has begun to melt, and is dripping down the green needles from another plant in the vase. Think of this liquid as all-natural purple food colouring. Everything in its path will turn purple, and even bleach has a difficult time removing the stain as evidenced in reference image 2.

Here you will note the purple staining on the fireplace mantle. Even after a treatment of bleaching product, the dark purple stain remains in the wood.

Please be cautious if you have Irises growing in your garden, and I recommend you leave them where they are and choose something else for your home floral arrangements.

Cheers!

So last weekend we had a bit of a problem at the house - the sewer system backed up.

On Monday, MLKJDAY, I opened up my handy browser and searched for Sacramento Plumber, and found Mr. Rooter. I called and within 30 minutes they were at my house diagnosing the problem. Using a fancy infrared camera they were able to snake through the pipe and look at the damage, which was extensive. The pipe was basically collapsed in several areas and had to be replaced.

So on Tuesday morning, they showed up bright and early around 9am to begin the replacement process, which involved putting together a long polyethyline pipe, and sending it down into the ground near the house, then pulling it through the earth to the other side of the yard using their trenchless process.

After fusing the pipes together, they attached the bursting head, which serves the purpose of breaking apart the old pipe as the new pipe is pulled through - basically the new pipe takes the exact same path/place as the old pipe.

This allows them to replace what you have without digging up the old stuff (and destroying the yard in the process.

As far as impact to the yard, it was minimal. They dug two main holes, one at the house where the exit pipe begins, and another on the other side of the yard where the pipe connects to the city sewer line. Here are the two holes they dug…one at the house, one at the fence.

Next, they dropped a large metal plate into the ground in the fence hole, and that’s what they used to hydraulically pull the pipe through the yard.

It took less than 2 hours from start to finish on the pipe, and by 11:30am, they were refilling the holes with dirt, having tested the new pipe.

I was absolutely amazed that it took them only about 4 total hours for the work, and even more amazed that in less than a month, there will be no visible evidence that anything happened to the yard…..if you’ve got a heavily landscaped yard (like we do), trenchless is the only way to go.

Anyway - there you have it.

Well, the inevitable happened.

The sewer line from my house to the city line has collapsed. Not surprising really, since it’s over 50 years old and a very old “technology“. (Photograph of Orangeberg pipe from sewerhistory.org)

The company, Mr. Rooter, came out this morning after I called and reported that the sewer was backing up. They tried to cable the pipe but hit a block at 20ft. We were able to see that on a camera that they snaked up into the line.

Once the block was cleared, the camera was able to see that the pipe has collapsed in multiple places. In one spot, it’s so separated that it looks like two pipes. So…they will now be digging another hole on the other side of the back yard and will begin the pipe replacement (assuming all goes well).

The procedure involves pulling a new pipe through the old one to perform a trenchless pipe replacement. This minimizes disruption to the yard (hopefully), and replaces the bad pipe - basically it shatters the old pipe and the new one takes its place underground.

Anyway - so we’re without use of our water facilities for the next day or so…

This is the joy of being a home owner.