I said that I thought cool tools were "tools that fit their purpose to perfection. Tools that take very little room, yet are reliably there when they are needed, but otherwise, are all but invisible. That is my definition of cool tools."
The tools that I covered in that post were my Leatherman Wave multitool, my Brompton tool, and a tool I didn't even have at that time, the MetMo Pocket Driver.
Here we are a year later, and, guess what?
You are 100% correct. I now actually have that MetMo Pocket Driver.
Sean Sykes, the founder of MetMo, and a U.K. serial entrepreneur, reached out to me to see if I would be willing to do a hands-on review of the MetMo Pocket Driver. He offered to send me one if I was inclined to participate and give him a hand.
As you can imagine, I quickly agreed.
About two weeks ago, the MetMo Pocket Driver landed on my doorstep.
No sooner than I had it in my hot little hands, I had to skip town for a series of important meetings in Montreal and Ottawa.
Predictably, when I got home, all the stuff that has to take priority in my professional life was somewhat backed-up and screaming for attention. One more week later, and I was finally focused on sharing my impressions of this little wonder of a pocket-sized ratchet driver.
I may have been focused, but wasn't even close to focused on how I might actually use the MetMo Pocket Driver in a way you would find entertaining, or useful.
Fortunately our cleaning lady came to the rescue.
When she cleans, she CLEANS!
Of course it's beyond unfair and inappropriate for me to blame our excellent cleaning lady for my admittedly complex home lighting setup going awry. Some of my wiring, done years back, clearly lent itself to being vacuumed out of commission.
Last weekend I vowed to rethink, and re-do the wiring.
I moved that large glass curio cabinet in the living room, got in behind that to access the wiring.
Then I crawled under that sideboard in the dining room to access the wiring there; in both those very tight places I re-thought, re-ordered, and re-routed the wiring supporting the lighting and the semi-wireless wireless speakers.
Ha! That's funny... my "wireless" speakers have... wires! Well, they have electrical supply wires. The data that drives them is, in fact, thankfully, completely wireless.
One of the challenges I faced was that the wire management device under the dining room sideboard relied on a self-sticky pad-thing. Not surprisingly, it had become unstuck. Easy fix: the device was designed to take a screw, it just needed to be screwed in.
It was quite an awkward thing to do.
It was one of those jobs that would have been a snap if I had been willing to empty the sideboard of all its fine china, glass, crystal, and silver entertaining stuff, turn the sideboard upside down and screw in the wire management device, after having drilled a perfect guide hole for the screw.
Right! You know that wasn't going to happen.
Just wedge yourself under the sideboard and drive in that screw you moron!
Drill a guide hole? Ya, no! Just barely space for me, but not for me and a drill.
Just take the Phillips screw, and drive it in there, why don't you?
After quite a few pathetic failed attempts with a screwdriver, and some salty cursing, I gave up on that.
Empty the sideboard? Hell no!
And that was when my new MetMo Pocket Driver wiggled itself into my consciousness. Might that little wonder do the trick, as its inventor claims?
The MetMo Pocket Driver turned out to be perfect for the job, from holding the small Phillips screw magnetically, reliably, and firmly, and then allowing me, in spite of my cramped and awkward position, to apply the significant leverage needed to drive the screw without drilling a hole. Since it has a nice, satisfying ratchet, there was no need to relax the leverage to shift my grip. Just like that, the screw was firmly installed on the first attempt with the MetMo Pocket Driver, and the wire management device now had an unshakable grip on the wiring and on the bottom of the sideboard.
I struggled out from under the sideboard, dealt with all the little tails I had clipped off the tie-wraps, and then stepped back to take a look. Ahhhhh... I was suitably impressed. Jazz playing pleasantly on the Bose speakers, soft lighting setting the stage, and no wires to be seen, or vacuumed out of their outlets. Perfect.
I was genuinely impressed with the MetMo Pocket Driver.
Its design is... I have to say, a touch peculiar.
I just love it.
It turns out, I assume from very clever and insightful British design (a little like my amazing and quirky Brompton bike), that it mates perfectly to your hand in a way that lets you drive the screw or nut, all while applying a lot of leverage.
A traditional screwdriver can't really do that because the tool is completely linear, and that limits the hand's ability to apply torque, especially in cramped quarters.
Many ratchet drivers are brilliant for applying torque since you pull to apply rotary force at 90 degrees to the rotation, but, unless you can bear down, or in my case bear up, vertically on the driver's axis (the straight line about which the driver rotates) you just can't get to where you can force the screw to bite into the wood properly.
The MetMo Pocket Driver's secret to success, in my view, lies in the hinged handle.
The shape of the handle naturally settles into the palm of your hand giving you a flawless grip at the perfect angle from the axis of the driver that lets you access that torque you need.
That angle, depending on circumstances can vary from 20 degrees, to 90 degrees, to 140 degrees. I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, but I estimate the angle that worked best for me driving that stubborn screw was about 120 degrees. A normal screwdriver is linear, so the angle to the axis is zero degrees, offering minimal leverage. A ratchet driver is typically 90 degrees to the axis of the shaft and offers excellent leverage. The beauty of the Metmo Pocket Driver is that wide range of angles that it allows. It just naturally adjusts to your grip, and to the difficulty of the task, in a way that gives you the leverage you need to get the job done.
Now my lighting and wireless speakers, and cursed wires, are vacuum-cleaner-proof, and all but invisible to guests.
Now for the acid test... Our cleaning lady was here just the other day and... Yup! All is fine speaker and light-wise. Dust vacuumed away into oblivion, wiring all intact!
If you think that's all I have to say... well, I'm not quite done.
The MetMo Pocket Driver needs a bit of context. More than a bit, in truth.
In fact, what it really needs are many bits. It also needs a home... for storage and travel. A travel home. Some people call that a sheath. Yes, a sheath. And bits, lots of bits.
The reality is, that as soon as I got my hands on the Metmo Pocket Driver my mind shifted to bits. It does come with two Phillips bits: one Phillips bit and one Phillips Pozidriv bit, both size 2, the standard Phillips size. They are stored in the driver's body, under the bit storage cap.
The Pozidriv bit is the one that gripped the screw I was installing perfectly and allowed me to drive the screw home so brilliantly.
After poking around on the usual online sites, and looking at many different bit options, I eventually looked to my Leatherman Wave.
I happen to have 40 super-compact Leatherman Wave bits. They store in the Leatherman Wave's sheath, taking up next to no room. While the Leatherman Wave bits won't work directly with the Metmo Pocket Driver, the Leatherman Wave also has a driver bit-holder extension, and that works perfectly with the Metmo Pocket Driver, allowing the Metmo Pocket Driver to take advantage of all those 40 bits.
It also turns out, after a whole lot more online searching, just by peculiar coincidence, that the Leatherman Wave sheath fits the Metmo Pocket Driver perfectly. So I did the smart thing, and purchased a second Leatherman sheath. When that was delivered, it turned out to be even better for the Leatherman Wave than the one that actually came with the Leatherman Wave originally. So that original Leatherman Wave sheath is now the new home for the Metmo Pocket Driver. Perfect! The Metmo Pocket Driver now has its own perfect travel home.
And now I have the ideal every-day-carry ("EDC") tool family: The Leatherman Wave with its 40 driver bits; and the Metmo Pocket Driver that way, way outperforms the Leatherman Wave as a screwdriver. With those two tools with me, I feel that there are very few challenges that I couldn't solve.
Now am I done, you ask?
Not quite, but almost.
Not ready to rest on his laurels basking in the success of the Metmo Pocket Driver, Sean Sykes now has a new Kickstarter campaign promoting the brand new MetMo Multi Drive. MetMo calls it the ultimate desktop multi-tool.
It's a scalpel, a pencil, a scribe, a drill, a file, and a micro driver, each matched to a single precision-crafted shaft with an ingenious hex collet. This is the ultimate tool for the creator, the artist, the craftsman, the engineer, the bookbinder, the architect, or the fixer. If like me, you have a steel ruler, a pen, a pencil, and a scalpel close by your desktop, this MetMo Multi Drive is the first tool to reach for when the creative urge pokes you. If that describes you as well, I suggest you hop right over to MetMo's Kickstarter for the Metmo Multi Drive right now!
Following up: It's now July 12, so almost two weeks later. I was replacing some chrome trim on the hood of my Mini Cooper Cabriolet. Not a too complex proposition. Four easily accessible screws, and a bunch of pressure clips. I had already gotten advice from a very helpful YouTube video. I was fairly certain that all I needed to get the job done was the combination of my Leatherman Wave and my Metmo Pocket Driver. I was correct.
But the more you use what I call a 'perfect tool' the more you learn about completely unexpected features that you couldn't really predict.
In this case, the car's hood was open, and I had to locate and remove the four small Phillips screws. Using the Metmo Pocket Driver it was supper easy loosening the screws. But the trick was not to drop any of the small screws in the engine compartment.
This is when the Metmo Pocket Driver surprised me.
As I hope you can make out in this photo, because the Metmo Pocket Driver is so compact, and because the swivel-handle fits your palm so compactly, you can extend your thumb and forefinger to grasp what I will call the nose of the driver, and thanks to the ratchet, as the screw becomes loose, you can continue loosening the screw using your thumb and forefinger. I was even able to extend my thumb and forefinger while twisting the ratchet, to the point where I was able to grab the screw, turning what has always been a two-hand task into a one-handed wonder.
Wow, that was really an eye-opener.
Thanks MetMo!
Thank you for bearing with me as I set the stage for what I am about to reveal.
Peter is an amazing friend. He is very special because he chooses to live his life very differently from most people I have met.
He makes his own living in a way that few people do. He spent years working as an employee, then years self-employed as a quality control consultant, constantly travelling. It was very physically demanding and his work took its toll.
Then something snapped. Peter went from earning his living taxing his body, to doing it by taxing his mind. He re-invented his consulting practice as a virtual being, powered by software, not physical effort. He entered a realm where his thoughts were the key to his sustainability.
Lately Peter has been exploring the world of artificial intelligence. He has discovered, that if you treat the software in the way that a merciless monarch might treat a devoted selfless courtier, by making incessant demands, never accepting the initial offering, requesting that it be redone, over and over, tweaked, improved, expanded, with new features, and redone again, dropping some aspects and adding others, relentlessly... something truly worthwhile will eventually emerge.
In this way he has been using the new tool to improve his business. The results are very impressive.
Peter also happens to use the software just for fun, often to write poetry in the same merciless way.
He wrote me a poem a few months back. I framed it and hung it on my office wall. That poem is the second poem that has been written about me and presented to me as a gift. The other poem, the first, came from a similarly unique and mystical source, but purely from the author's mind. Software was not at all involved. It was mystical in the sense that never in a million years could I have anticipated that the author would do such an unusual, kind, and thoughtful thing. That poem also hangs on my wall.
All of this narrative is to provide you with context, in the hope that you can understand, get a feeling for, the pure wonder I felt in a matter of a few hours, beginning yesterday evening, and concluding today at dawn, all thanks to Peter. It became clear that he not only enlisted help from his artificial intelligence, but also from my darling Susan.
I had mentioned to Peter that late last month I bought a 365 page journal and began writing daily love notes to Susan. I plan to do that for a whole year. Yesterday Peter sent me another poem. I read a bit of it yesterday, but couldn't finish it. It was a busy day. I did finish it this morning at the crack of dawn very soon after my alarm got me to wake up. The poem seems to allude to a mysterious gift coming my way, mentioning that it is nothing of great value, just a thought really. I was touched, as you might expect.
Mere moments later I went into my home office to set up my exercise stuff (yoga mat, elastic stretchy, things, foam blocks, etc.). With the lights off, the office was softly bathed in darkness and shadow. When I went to place an elastic and small weight ball on the bistro chair in my office, there was a small gift bag sitting on the chair.
Road to Recovery - Day 23
Only days when I exercise and ride count as the road to recovery.
This morning I did a complete 'normal' ride on the P2 level down in the garage: 34 minutes, 9.6 kms. That is what passes for 'normal'. On the exercise front, I am close to being able to do 20 full 90 degree squats. Today I managed ~80-90% of the 90 degree knee bends. There is still some minor discomfort going up and down stairs. The fact is, I am approaching a complete return to normal.
Adding to the theme of today's entry, I am also reading more than I have in the past.
I have quite the collection of books. It's not over-the-top by any means. Yet it's quite a lot of books.
Maybe it's because as a lawyer, the occupational hazard is one heck of a lot of reading. So I have read. I have read a lot... of law. Literature and the other genres mentioned above, not so much. Either I begin to read my books, or admit that they're just décor.
It's a collection of Voltaire's works, including correspondence, treatises and speeches. It's the work that made Voltaire famous, and infamous simultaneously, work that forced him to flee to England to escape the wrath of the French crown and the Catholic Church. Sounds terribly boring, I know. But it's like time travel. I'm learning a lot about 18th century Europe and the Age of Enlightenment.
If Paris can emerge as my favourite place to visit and explore in the 21st century, emerging from a truly dismal 18th century past, then there is hope for us, in these dismal times.
Oh... wait. Hope was the last journal entry. I am supposed to be focusing on progress.
Yes I am definitely making progress.
If there is something that leads to a deep sense of happiness for me, it is the feeling of being inspired.
I felt inspired often during our recent trip to Malaga and Seville in Spain, and to Lisbon in Portugal. This was our third trip to Spain and our first trip to Portugal.
I tend to find inspiration when I am out of my comfort zone. On this trip I was quite literally seldom in a comfort zone because I had managed to mess up the soft tissues in my right leg in a variety of ways. Three trips to our physiotherapist in the week leading up to our departure was clearly too little, and too late.
Mountain ranges lie just off the Costa del Sol, Spain's aptly named Mediterranean shore. The mountains near Malaga where we were staying are known as the Montes de Málaga. It turned out that the challenge to climb fairly steep slopes pretty much started at the door step of our AirBnB. For the first few days we were there it mostly didn't matter. The parts of Malaga where we spent our time exploring were pretty flat and made it easy to stroll around. Even though we often walked more than fifteen thousand steps in a day, flat is flat.
That's not to say that my leg wasn't complaining. If I didn't give it a break, it would steal one simply by leaping over my pitifully low pain threshold.
Things got more challenging once we rented a car to take our explorations into Malaga's mountains, to places like Frigiliana, Ronda, and the Caminito del Rey. We also managed a day trip to Gibraltar. The only parking available for our car was in the streets way up that hill at the end of the street. Mornings started and ended negotiating that hill, and in between we hiked on more slopes, hills, and stairs.
I actually watched the film two-and-a-half times during the flight home. Once without headphones (I just didn't have them), once with headphones, and once with headphones on and with the closed captioning switched on (my Portuguese remains virtually non-existent). Then I watched again this morning on my phone, while lying in bed, awakened courtesy of jet-lag at 4:50 a.m.
It may appeal to you as well. You can find it on Vimeo.
This movie just resonates with where I feel I want to be. I feel genuinely inspired
In the very last scene in the film, the leading person, Artur Lourenço, leaves us with these inspiring thoughts.
“Now I see life from a new perspective.
I’ve realized that life goes by too fast, and, in the end,
we are not immortal.
We only have one life.
While we’re around, we must somehow enjoy it
- without harming anyone, obviously -
and make it sweeter and smoother."
Peter Sanderson and Steve Williams, who are dear friends and fellow bloggers, are rethinking their blogs. Peter has already discontinued his blog, and Steve revealed in a post I recently read that he is considering whether to do the same.
I mentioned in a comment I posted on Steve's long-standing Scooter in the Sticks blog that my blog is now really more my journal than anything else. Not only do I like to document things I do that give my life meaning, I also have come to appreciate the ability to revisit my past by going back to older posts. This blog keeps an important part of my past present for me.
Recording my daily life as a journal is not really why or how this blog started.
In the many months preceding the purchase of my first Vespa, I was doing research, and gathering information.
Steve's blog Scooter in the Sticks was an important source of the information I needed. Once the Vespa was a done deal, I decided to start this blog to return the favour by posting the lessons I learned on Vespa commuting, so that others who might contemplate doing the same would have yet another source of information and support. It was returning a favour, helping others in this same way I received help others who shared their insights that helped me
Now the blog is more about me, about my life. A place where I can share my thoughts and experiences.
In the beginning I knew no one was reading.
When, over time, an audience formed, it was a little unexpected. I am blessed, because my blog led me to make some very dear friends, Peter and Steve among them.
My favourite photo of my Vespa and I was taken by Steve in the Pennsylvania sticks that gave his blog its name.
All of which to say, this blog is here to stay. At least for the foreseeable future.
Is it because I bought a leather saddle that needs to be broken in?
Is it because we will be taking a break vacationing in Spain this fall?
Is it because I was a little stressed-out in the days leading up to a half-day course I had to teach solo to a class of thirty or so colleagues on records management?
It's hard to say.
Why would I stress out on giving a lecture when I literally wrote the book?
What's certain is that my body got itself into a funk that has required that I take a break. A break from my morning exercises, trading time in the saddle for time with Melina, our brilliant physiotherapist. The clock is ticking, as it always does, and I need to take this break, fix what needs fixing, and get back in the saddle.
I am closer to that this morning that at any time since the early days of this month, when my right leg went AWOL.
That's deeply ironic, because it's my left leg that has had issues, never my right. No massive skiing sprains, no dumb idiotic blows to my kneecap... my right leg has always been fine. Until it wasn't.
Melina showed me all the leg muscles on a cool application on her phone. They are the largest most formidable muscles on our bodies. They are all focused on our knee. Go figure. It seems that in the week or so before my right leg called riding quits, I was being, shall we say, a tad competitive. Resisting quiet relaxing contemplative rides, in favour of challenging myself on the uphill stretches. Can I do this hill at the same speed and pace as the level ground that precedes it? And there I was, all hill long, focused on my cadence, feeling myself pull on the handlebars, breathing getting obvious... and YES!! I did it, WOW!
What did I do exactly?
It seems I antagonized the right leg muscle union, and the union called an unceremonious halt to the festivities. No more riding for you buddy.
And that's how my left leg muscles and I now find ourselves in mandatory mediation. Melina is the mediator. She gets the muscles' gripes. She gets mine. For a person who is much smaller than I am, she can sure work my leg muscles into submission in short order while we chat about stuff, interspersed by the occasional gasp, yelp or moan... on my part of course. Melina takes it all in stride with a smile, a dig, a pull, push, and stretch. Slowly, methodically, coaxing my right leg muscles into submission.
Thank heavens, it seems to be working.
Lesson learned (I hope).
I have been a good boy.
My Brompton has been a good bike.
My Brompton and I have accomplished more than I expected when we were first introduced, hombre a bicicleta. If that sounds weird, please take into consideration that in three weeks' time Susan and I will be on the Costa del Sol... practice is warranted.
I felt like it was time to mark our - bicicleta's and my - considerable accomplishments, so I splurged on our new Brooks B-17 Special saddle. What makes it special are the hand-hammered copper rivets.I hope my Brompton likes it. It matches her Ergon grips.
They say it takes roughly 250 kilometres or maybe six months to break in a Brooks. It's hard to say anything about time, because it's the actual riding that counts. I'm doing, conservatively, 8 kilometres each day I ride, so 250 kilometres is just over 30 days. I generally ride on weekdays, so in time, that's 6 weeks from this coming Tuesday. 9 weeks taking into account our - Susan's and my - Spanish adventure.
I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. And whether I'll ultimately be happy with our - bicicleta's and my - treat.
Corrie Vaus, a professional videographer and producer reached out to me yesterday in an email to request permission to use an interview of Ken Wilson I posted on my YouTube channel, informing me that Ken had passed away.
He passed away earlier this summer in June.
The news left me deeply saddened. I had no idea.
In February 2017 I was very fortunate to participate in an Oyster Tour, a Vespa tour ranging from Tampa Florida to the town of Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle, so named by Ken Wilson and Bill Leuthold in honour of an iconic little oyster bar on the Gulf coast.
I now know that Ken succumbed to a very aggressive cancer that manifested as significant back pain in January of this year, claiming his life in June.
Bill dedicated his participation in this year's cross-continental Cannonball scooter rally in Ken's honour. Corrie Vaus' husband was also participating, and Corrie went along to record the event including its dedication to Ken.
I very much look forward to seeing the film.
Ken Wilson was a remarkable individual. He was outgoing, inquisitive, adventurous, genuinely kind and welcoming. He had recently bought a Vespa 300 GTS that he lent me so I could ride with him, Bill and Jim Mandle on the Oyster Tour. I learned from Corrie that Ken left that Vespa to Bill, and that Bill rode it on the CannonBall Run.
As I rode my Brompton on yesterday's weekday ride, I found the flag at half-mast.
It was as if the familiar landscape of my morning ride sensed and was manifesting the grief I felt.
At 71, I don't think so.
Marc is my very dear friend. Susan and I went to Montreal last week to surprise Marc on his birthday. He is now 82 and he has been exploring his neighbourhood on the West Island on his bicycle for as long as I can remember.
Marc still rides his bike.
Yesterday I was on YouTube nosing around and I watched a delightful video on Susanna Thornton's channel that I am sharing with you here. Susanna's dad took up cycling at 60 and cycles roughly twenty minutes each day. Now he is 87. Have a look to see how well he toured with his daughter along the Welsh borders, in Herefordshire.
I truly feel that Susan and I are riding our bikes on the right path to longevity and happiness. Buying our Bromptoms was definitely the right decision.It was my second flat.
Having already repaired one puncture, this morning I had the benefit of experience, and some excellent patches. I didn't want to give up or postpone my weekday morning ride though.
A simple alternative was obvious. I rode Susan's Brompton.
It's fascinating.
The bikes are absolutely identical other than my bike has:
Here are the reasons I love to ride. As it happens, they appear below pretty much in the increasing order of their importance to me.
1. Exercise - That has to be a very popular reason, if you were to conduct a survey. In fact, it was that article in the New York Times that got me riding again "For Successful Aging, Pick Up the Pace or Mix It Up".
Exercise all on its own, is definitely not the reason I love to ride. It was just the prompt that got me back on the saddle, pushing pedals.
2. Physics - This is the thing I love most about the act of riding. Not necessarily, or even primarily speed, but kind of that, but not really. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't ride, and completely unnecessary to explain to anyone who does ride, or has ridden.
The joy is rooted in the circularity of the wheels and pedals, and the friction of the ground and the brakes. It's the same thing on a motorbike... except for he pedals, but the motor performs the same magic as the pedals on a bicycle by allowing the rider to modulate the force rotating the wheels. That inexplicable feeling emerges as the two-wheeler turns, and it changes with speed. Weird things like counter-steering (press the handlebars left to go right - yes, not a mistake or a fantasy, but an actual fact) that happens at speeds mostly attained only by motorbikes, and other mystical things that happen at very low speeds, always as the bike turns. With a bicycle that has direct drive pedals, it's amazing that the rider can actually stay in the saddle with the bike upright and only moving in small tiny ways, basically at a full stop.
At normal cruising speeds, bikes handle turns by an intricate interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces. The rider feels those forces in their body, because the rider is one with the bike.
To witness what that very complicated formula looks like, you need look no further than right here, literally mind-blowing feats. If it's speed you like, watch how motorcycle grand-prix riders handle the corners on the race track.
3. Exploration - Bikes take you places, and allow you to see things, to experience things, that walking and driving just never seem to. In fairness, walking certainly offers pleasures driving doesn't. The fragrance of freshly mowed lawns, of flowering lilac or gardenia, and the sounds of birds, insects, dogs, seagulls, and geese, to name a few.
Bikes offer that as well. So how are bikes different?
They let you cover more ground and they are nimble.
On a Vespa you don't hesitate to explore lanes and alleyways that you would just never do in a car.
On a bicycle the range of experiences is much greater, including walkways and trails where all motorized vehicles are forbidden. When you have a Brompton, taxis, buses, subways, trains and planes also become options, opening opportunities for exploration to pretty much anywhere in the world.
4. Sights and experiences - Riding allows me to see and experience things that I am pretty sure I would not otherwise have. I can't possibly attempt an inventory here, because it would be endless, and I feel it would ultimately be pointless.
Perhaps the best I can do is share my most recent experiences in no particular order. These things stand out from my weekday rides in the last few days and weeks.
