Sunday, September 9, 2018

The unicorn fridge, Ikea, and a Vespa

https://youtu.be/aAkL9Vohn-A

Well I'm at it again!

Shopping for seemingly impossible things to carry on my Vespa.

This time it's a 36"X15"X24" Sektion over-the-fridge wall cabinet from Ikea.

It all started when our Bosch fridge up and died in the dead of night.

Fortunately, we discovered the looming food disaster when we returned from the airport with Andrew, Anuschka, and Kaia who came to celebrate Lauren and Harris' wedding. Talk about a good news, bad news, great news story.

It turned out, of course, that our dead Bosch fridge was a unicorn! Basically, it turned out to be one-and-a-half critical inches shorter than any other fridge we could find in the market. That meant that our built-in custom kitchen cabinetry was built in a way that would not accommodate any of the new fridges.

The only solution was to replace the cabinet with one that was 15" from top to bottom, rather than the 30" cabinet installed in our kitchen.

Then it turned out that the very nice folks who updated our kitchen when we renovated a couple of years back were retiring. While they agreed to make the new custom cabinet doors we needed, the cabinet was turning out to be... well let's just say that we were on our own on that score.

That's when Ikea came to the rescue!

Susan was at work with the car, and I was itching to start work on the cabinet. What to do... what to do??

The answer, don't you know, was painfully obvious!

Fetch the cabinet from Ikea on my Vespa!

And there you have it. Another exciting episode of Life on two wheels!

The music for this episode is Morning Stroll  by Josh Kirsch/Media Right Productions made available courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library, as usual. Thanks YouTube!

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Catching Ms. Yue

https://youtu.be/AKT6SmGX8nc

Welcome to episode 35 of the vlog: Catching Ms. Yue.

The vast majority of our fellow humans are dedicated to a 9-5 work regimen (or to even more demanding jobs). We live relatively close to where we work and we commute from home to work week in, and week out, with precious few breaks in the routine.

That is why there is something very special about adventurers. These are people who decide to uproot their lives and head out to discover the planet.

In this episode I share an interview with Stephanie Yue at the 2018 Isle de Wolfe scooter rallye. By the time I managed to snag a few precious minutes of free time with Steph the sun was rapidly fading, along with the quality of the video. I have Steph's boyfriend Fred to thank because he agreed to act as the second camera man.

Steph has ridden Serenity, her Vespa GTS, through all 49 continental states of the USA, and her most recent adventure was a moto tour in Pakistan.

You can learn a lot about someone like Steph by following her blog. But nine times out of ten, there is no way to connect the voice to the blogger. This interview scratches that itch. If you visit her rider profile on the Rider Profiles page, you will find links to other interviews, but, as far as I know, until I stand corrected, this is the first YouTube interview of the intrepid Ms. Yue.

With a little luck this may not be the last time I have the privilege of catching up with her.

The music for this episode is Game Plan by Bad Snacks, made available thanks to the YouTube audio library.

Monday, September 3, 2018

Going out on another limb

I am edging myself cautiously into new territory: e-commerce


I have no illusions and, while I will earn a 10% commission on the sale of WrapTies through this journal (click here or go to the "Shop: WrapTies" link above), I am more motivated by the opportunity to promote an excellent new moto product and by the excitement of experimenting with an e-commerce affiliate setup.

Hopefully I have managed to set up the page properly.

I have also added a link in the Gear Guide.
The copyright in all text and photographs, except as noted, belongs to David Masse.