Good Knight Times: February 2014

Monday, February 24, 2014

Cycling to work

I rode my bicycle to work today. It is so nice to live that close, but wow, I am out of shape. I was exhausted after the 1.5 mile ride of ups and downs -- some pretty steep. Then I had to ride home to get lunch. I wimped out and rode the motorcycle into work after lunch.

Archery Time

I really enjoy archery and with the nice large backyard and no immediate neighbors behind our home, we've had some opportunity to practice. Carson earned rights to half of a Mathew's Mini-Genesis bow when he passed one of his karate tests, so we pull it out and use it on occasion. We took it to an archery shop and had them deck it out with all the stuff to make it 'cool'. So it is a pretty impressive little bow. Savannah and Tucker have both used it, but its a little too big for them at this point.

Carson Grilling Salmon for Dinner

For his Cub Scout badge, Carson needed to plan, prepare, and cleanup dinner for the family. So we had rice, grilled salmon, and rolls. It was a delicious meal. We used a You Tube technique of removing the skin from the salmon while flipping it with the spatula. It turned out well and tasted so good.

Lego Movie Fans

Our boys saved up their money so that they could see the Lego Movie They loved it. Afterwards, we went to the store and bought some mystery packs of Lego Movie mini-figures. Lego sure knows how to market to our kids, between Lego magazine, Lego X-Box games, Lego toys, the Lego website and now the Lego Movie -- our kids are hooked.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Working on the car

While Angela was driving home from Savannah's pre-school, she heard a weird humming noise from the front drivers side wheel. Then as she went faster it began to vibrate. So she slowed down and finished that last few blocks to our house and gave me a call. I took it for a drive and everything seemed just fine -- typical, things always seem to work when you try to demonstrate them to someone. So she drives it again and it has the same problem. So finally, I drive it and had the issue.

After some research on the internet, I decided it was probably the front wheel bearing. I found that Amazon had among the best prices and could overnight the parts to me, so I ordered it and ordered some extra tools that I was going to need.

I ended up replacing both of the front hubs, which basically connect the wheel to the car. It was a reasonably easy repair, even though the car is all-wheel drive and I had to disconnect the axle.

This is the first real repair we've had on the car, despite buying it with fairly high miles and having put lots of miles on it ourselves.