{"id":573897995,"date":"2025-05-23T21:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T01:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573897995"},"modified":"2025-05-26T12:32:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:32:19","slug":"i-put-screws-into-something-and-called-it-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2025\/05\/23\/i-put-screws-into-something-and-called-it-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"I put screws into something and called it a day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some days are productive in the smallest ways. Maybe those are the best days. My alarm went off promptly, I ignored it for a moment, and then read my way through the morning, had a bite to eat, typed up a few things. Normal stuff. And then I worked on a shelving solution. <\/p>\n

We need a place to put bike stuff, and so I picked up a second-hand shelf that will fit in a corner. It’s a two-piece deal, a cheap little MDF fixture that probably belongs in a bathroom. It’s going to hang in a corner in the garage. The first step was today, joining the two shelves together. I think they were designed to just sit on the floor, but one little wooden dowel isn’t going to hold it all together. So I added a second dowel. And then I joined them the old fashioned way, by screwing it all together. <\/p>\n

The shelves are rounded, so this took ingenuity; I was immediately out of my league. But, eventually I did it. Two cheap little shelves have been joined into one piece. They’ll hold the weight of shows and elements and things. <\/p>\n

And right about here you’re wondering if I’ll go self-deprecating or literary next. The truth is, I’m wondering, too. <\/p>\n

To hang the shelf on the wall, I’ll make a french cleat. But I didn’t do that today, because I have the whole weekend ahead of me. <\/p>\n

This is where I realized this wonderful little problem. How can I accurately that on two walls simultaneously. And then another, how to do it for the top and bottom shelves, as a little added security. I think I have it all figured out. It doesn’t require ingenuity, not really, but it does require some simple carpentry problem solving where I’m really deficient. <\/p>\n

Let’s assume my solutions work. It shouldn’t take too long to make it happen. Then it’ll be on to all of my other little projects. And there are a lot of them. I’m eager to get to them. Well, most of them. <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Late in the afternoon, or early this evening, or both, I set out for a little bike ride. I was thinking about how I could find new roads, and this is what I settled on. I did the reverse of one of our regular routes, the first regular route we established here, in fact. It’s a simple rectangle to the southwest. But, instead of turning right to head back home, I decided to find out what would happen if I just kept going. <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

What happens is you ride in the wind the whole day. Also, I pedaled my way through three-plus miles of empty roads and fields. I slid through an old neighborhood, and then crossed the interstate, which was when I realized where this road wound up. There are two truck stops and a hotel on the outskirts of a little town, and I didn’t want to be around of that today, so I doubled back. There was another promising road to check out.<\/p>\n

So instead of turning left on the road that I knew, I turned left on a different road. It took me through four-and-a-half miles of views like this one. <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Finally, it dumped me onto a road I knew, and so I took an indirect way home. It was a good ride, except for the wind. It was slow, because of the wind and also my legs. But it was pleasant. The weather was right, the traffic was non-existent, and there was a lot to see. <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

It was a nice, casual 34-mile ride that I finished with a smile. As I got home there was a car in the drive. Who had come to visit? We weren’t expecting company. As I got closer I realized, it was my lovely bride’s ride. She’d left it out of the garage as I worked on those shelves. So we had company, and it was us. This was a thing I said as a kid, when there was a car in the drive at my grandparents’ home, when the car belonged to us. “We’ve got company.”<\/p>\n

Rides take you places. They bring you places. Sometimes the kid-in-you-ride takes back. <\/p>\n

I wonder where tomorrow’s ride, and the 29 mph wind forecast, will take me.<\/p>\n

So it was a literary allusion, in the smallest way, after all. Who could have seen that coming?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some days are productive in the smallest ways. Maybe those are the best days. My alarm went off promptly, I ignored it for a moment, and then read my way through the morning, had a bite to eat, typed up a few things. Normal stuff. And then I worked on a shelving solution. We need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,14,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573897995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-friday","category-photo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573897995"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573897997,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573897995\/revisions\/573897997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573897995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573897995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573897995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}