Plumbing at 9 pm is a bad idea . . .

Trust me on this. Don't do plumbing in the evening. It's a Bad Idea. One of those Bad Ideas like Running With Scissors and Taking Explosives on the Plane.

How do I know this? Funny you should ask. You see, I'm very excited about working on my little house. I've been thinking about doing this stuff for years. And now I'm finally making this little place right. I don't even care that I'm going to sell it. The act in and of itself is a good thing. Like finally getting in shape, eating right, jumping out of an airplane, or doing whatever it is you've been wanting to do for a long time and just didn't quite find the time.

So I've spent all day working on deadlines. I made a list this morning of what needed to be done to keep the Editors at bay. The list looked very doable, like I could finish it by 2 pm. All my lists look doable, now that I think of it.

Finishing the list took longer than expected, partially because I found this cool new software and started correcting photos that I shot with my 15mm lens and looked like I shot them through a funhouse mirror. Which was cool, even though in the back of my mind I was thinking about getting to work on my basement. I was particularly excited to move some plumbing and make the laundry area decent instead of so disgusting it made you want to throw up. I've been hating that laundry area for EIGHT years and tonight was the night to fix it. So I really wanted to get my work done.

Somehow surprisingly it was 7 pm by the time I finished my 2 pm list. And then Craig, my neighbor stopped by. I made him help me move the dryer and washer and then he mumbled something about having to go clean his house and bolted. He could tell I was going to work on that gross basement. I don't blame him.

So at 7:30 I started the clean-up. My plan was to clean, pour concrete, and plumb. And I DID clean. It was pretty gross down there. I'm covered in cobwebs. The floor was FILTHY. I swept it and had a coughing fit.

Then I put all the debris in a garbage bag but couldn't find my contractor bags so I used the Super Steel ones which are not strong. At all.

And when I went to carry that bag full of stuff from the floor like dust, dirt, pens, cat toys, splinters from 2x4s, and some little chunks of concrete, guess what happened? Yeah, and it did while I was halfway up the stairs.

So I cleaned that up and went and found my contractor bags and bagged all that stuff up again. Took it out to the curb for the garbage man to deal with tomorrow (and probably overcharge me for that).

After THAT, I was looking at my plumbing lines and thinking about how badly I wanted to move them so the washer sat nicely. I couldn't stand it--I really wanted that washer moved, even if I only used it three times before someone else bought the house.

I had the shut-off valves. I had a hacksaw. All I had to do was drain the water out of the system, cut the pipes, and install the valves.

You see, whoever plumbed the washer didn't put in any shut-off valves. The only way to shut off the water to the washer is to shut off the water to the whole house. You see where this is headed . . .

So I drained the water and took my hacksaw and cut off the cold water pipe. Next step--install the shut-off valves. They were compression valves, meaning you just slid the nut and the collar over the pipe and tighten them up. Easy as pie.

Well, the collar and the nut didn't fit. They were too loose. I had the wrong size valves.

Happily, Menard's is open until 10. So I went down there to get the right parts.

I went to the plumbing section looking for valves that fit over my pipe. I even cut off a piece of it so I would know if I had the right valve.

And it took 30 minutes and three sales people, but I did get the right valves. And bought a laundry tub, t-fittings, and some copper pipe as well. AND a pipe cutter.

So I came home and installed the shut-off valve, which took like 20 seconds. I turned the water on and it didn't even leak.

Amazing.

And it was only 9:30. I didn't want to quit. So I mixed some concrete. The funny thing is, when I turned the water on the faucet in the basement, water sprayed out of the cut-off tube. The tube was pointing directly at my head, as luck would have it.

And the concrete, which had been sitting in my basement since, oh, 2004, had turned into concrete. What I mean to say is it was no longer the powdered stuff. It was the real stuff.

Which didn't stop me from trying to mix it with water and pour it.

The concrete is now out in my back yard, and I'm upstairs drinking beer and contemplating what I've learned tonight. Which is that plumbing at 9 pm is a bad idea.

The Home Front

I have been working on things other than my usual gig of writing about and photographing garages, motorcycles, and other guy-stuff (which is what an editor I met with at the ASJA conference dubbed my niche, "Oh," she said as her eyes glazed over disappointedly, "You write about guy stuff").

Right now, the task in front of me is getting my little home in Oakdale up to snuff. So I'm painting, landscaping, and doing all the other things you tell yourself you are going to do when you buy a house and never do until you are thinking about selling the place.

So I'm chronicling that with what I'm calling my Home Improvement Photojournal. I'll be posting progress on the house regularly throughout the process, and you can even subscribe via RSS feed if you go here. And, yes, this also means that friends, family, and neighbors can take this as a good reason to avoid visits (as they are likely as not to end helping me move, paint, or build something) OR they can take into the account the fact that I have about three cases of beer chilling in my garage fridge that I'll happily part with in exchange for a few minutes of labor.

This process began when I bought this little 1953-built house in 2000, thinking I would remodel the house in order to take advantage of a beautiful lot. I did some work over eight years, painting a couple of rooms, adding some new flooring, and doing some remodeling that I thought was lovely but was in fact, well, NOT. And time slipped away, as I have a way of finding better things to do than remodel, like foreign travel assignments, riding motorcycles, building a garage BIGGER than my house, rambling blogs, racquetball matches, nights out on the town with friends, or (when things get really desperate) watching episode after episode of Firefly or old Sanford and Son reruns. So now I'm busting my butt on the place. Such is life!

Kelowna, British Columbia

I just returned from a trip out west that culminated in a shoot for my upcoming book, Motorcycle Dream Garages. I found the garage on my friend Sam Martin's Manspace book blog, and discovered an amazing garage as well as a gorgeous corner of the world.


The garage is the creation of Geby Wager, the developer behind Woodland Hills who also happens to be a gearhead and all-around regular guy. His homes feature incredible views, amazing outdoor spaces, and optional gearhead garages that are out of this world.

Geby and his homes are in Kelowna, British Columbia, which is Canada’s premier wine country. Think of it as Napa Valley combined with Lake Tahoe. The area has hundreds of wineries located on the 92-mile-long Lake Okanagon, about 3 hours north and east of Vancouver. The lake has terrific beaches, and the mountains above the lake have great skiing in the winter and incredible mountain biking, hiking and fishing in the summer.


One of Kelowna’s residents happens to be custom motorcycle builder Roger Goldhammer, and he brought out a couple of his stunning creations for the shoot. Goldhammer’s bikes are a rare combination of function and style, and his latest creation just returned from winning the world championships. The supercharged, fuel-injected bike also set a land speed record at Bonneville last fall. Roger couldn't have been more gracious and modest, by the way.

In addition to the Goldhammer bikes, a number of other local riders brought customs and sport bikes out as well. Everyone pitched in to help move bikes, set up the garage, and arrange lighting for the shoot. Honestly, I couldn't have made the images without a ton of help, and thanks are due to everyone who showed up. Extra kudos go to the guys who hauled in bikes, and to Stefanie Giddens and Patti Cook from Woodland Hills, as well as my lighting assistant, Kathrine Gountas.

Oh, and Geby also runs Creative Motorsports, a company that builds custom-built trucks that are $100,000 independently-suspended engineering marvels capable of hard-core rock climbing as well as getting the groceries. And (of course) the first one of these Geby built won Four-Wheeler magazine's Top Truck Challenge in 1997.

Visiting Kelowna was an entirely surreal experience, as I simply didn't know much about the area and found a stunningly beautiful place populated by modest people doing incredible things.

I'll be back!