Faucet replacement and another longish bike ride.
The bike ride wasn't that long, but I hadn't expected to ride the whole way, so it was a case of surprise ridesecks, I guess.



I bused down to my sister's house in King City to change out a kitchen faucet. A great number of things that could go wrong, did. I couldn't get a good angle on the giant, but slim, brass nut holding the old, cheap, came-with-the-house faucet in place. So okay, half an hour of trying down the drain. My brother-in-law and I had already gone out to Home Depot to get new 30" feed lines (design FTL!). Okay, so take out all the little clamps holding the sink down and lift the back up a few inches. The sink's on a peninsula, so I could get a good angle. Still no go. I disconnected the main drain, the dishwasher drain line, and the electrical to the disposal, and lifted the whole sink out, setting it upside down on some newspaper on the counter. Twenty more minutes of work and we were just bending the microthin metal base of the cheapass faucet. That nut was totally seized. Sister didn't have a hacksaw, and the only saw in the house was an old miter saw purchased at a garage sale for 25 cents. The teeth were pretty fine, sooo... The sink went out back on a deck bench and I sawed the nut off. That only took five minutes. Wish I'd just done that at the start.

At this point, I was pretty much constantly expressing the notion that if I'd known that all of this would happen, I would have stayed home. Not for my benefit, but for hers—replacing the faucet was my idea in the first place.

Another trip to Home Depot to pick up the mounting nuts and washers that I'd forgotten at home. Mount the faucet (piece of cake with the sink still out on the deck upside down), install sink, install mounting clamps, saw the end off of one mounting clamp so it would fit where I wanted it as opposed to where the cheapass builders put it, subvocally curse a lot while doing it (kids in the house). Hook up sprayer. Hook up feed lines. Both of these take longer than you'd think, because quarters in that area are way cramped. Probably should have hooked them up before I clamped the sink down. Hook up disposal electric. Hook up main drain and disposal drain. Turn on cold feed, no leaks! Turn on hot feed, leaks! Tighten fitting, still leaks! SHIT! It turns out it was the packing washer in the shutoff valve leaking. This is always scary and annoying, because a bad shutoff valve means turning off water to the entire house to fix it. Add in two young kids, and that's just desperately annoying for mom and dad. I went under the house to see if, on some longshot, there was a shutoff valve down there for the sink feeds. Of course not. But on coming back up and explaining to my sister what was wrong, it occurred to me to just put a wrench on the leaky part of the shutoff valve and crank down, maybe compress the packing washer? Sho' nuff, leakage stopped. If I'd had more experience at plumbing, I'd have done that in a second and never worried. This is how experience is earned, I guess. I tested everything out, and it was all good to go. Wipe out the area, sweep the floor, clean up all of her tools, clean up all of my tools, clean up the crap on the deck, and now it's six and a half hours after I arrived. Somewhere in there she ran out to Baja Fresh and came back with food for me and her fam. It's all a blur.

Sooo... I took off as fast as I could just to GET OUT OF THEIR HOUSE. I got to the bus stop, waited a bit, and saw that the bus coming up my way already had two bikes on the rack in front. As I saw this, I spread my arms and smirked the "AWWWWW sheeit" smirk. The bus driver totally got it, shut off his turn signal and kept driving. At that point, I could either sit there and maybe have the same thing happen again in half an hour, or I could close some distance and test those waters at a later point on the bus route, already some distance home. I chose the latter. But some schedule-checking showed that my half-hour lead was enough to keep me ahead of the bus the entire way home. I saw it as free exercise to combat my budding proto-gut. 13 miles over hilly terrain on a high-traffic road at night, and my mp3 player's battery gave out at mile six. But it was ultimately less annoying and dangerous than I thought it would be, and I barely even felt tired when I got home at 9:30. I don't even feel tired now.

Which sucks, because I have to get up at five for work. Man, I wish I were tired.