Catch-up:
I put the new valve gasket on the Soob. I'm not convinced it's the problem, but the car's working, which is nice. It even had the 'check engine' light off for a little bit.
I went by Altitude Steel and got some more 1/2" square tubing. I'd like to like them, since they're so convenient, but they're expensive. It annoys me that I'm buying crap they're going to melt down, digging it out of the scrap bundles, and they're charging me $1/pound for it. I'll just have to keep going to K&K. Grumble. Anyway, I converted all the newly-acquired tubing into curves for the base of the bathroom sink, the support for the glass shelf on which the towels will some day sit. Lots of mandrel-bending around a bit of cedar from a fence slat that I cut into a disc. I'm not yet good at compensating for welding curvature: I set the whole thing up flat, tack-welded along one side, flattened it back out because the tack-welds twisted it all, then turned it over and ran nice beads along that side to hold it together permanently -- and it twisted up again, like a dry leaf. Sigh. I'll try jumping on it for a while: I SHALL BE VICTORIOUS. It'll look good anyway.
Rode out to Golden along Ralston Creek, back via the Clear Creek, along the Giant Spider Trail -- out at Blunn Lake, I've found two enormous spiders and I'm always looking for more. The wind was consistent and fairly strong: headwind all the way out, grinding up hills, then blazing back along the CC. I saw two people dredging the CC beside where the offagain-onagain Cabela's is supposed to be: one with a jet-dredge, the other with a high-sider. The bike path is rerouted through where Cabela's is supposed to be, on a lovely bit of concrete, but it's kind of weird because in one direction, the old route is closed and the concrete dug up, but in the other direction the new route is all fenced off. Either way, it's offroad. (Speaking of which, a couple days ago I rode up to Brighton and they've finally rebuilt the road under, uh, hm, basically 54th and Franklin, where the Sherman Tank lives and the old Globeville waste treatment plant has been turned into a park, so you can climb around in the sediment ponds -- thrill a second!)
I made tuna fish sammiches and we bought a kite but as soon as we got home the wind died. Forsooth. So instead we're making duck-and-stuff soup and reading comic books and I'm researching how to set up the vapor barriers underneath/behind the tile in the bathroom. Thrill-a-second indeeeeeed.