Ingredients

• 2 cups double smoked bacon and/or lardons
• 1/4 lb butter
• 1 cup carrots, diced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1 cup onion, diced
• 2 cups potatos, diced (we just use the baby potatoes and half or quarter them)
• 2 cups frozen corn
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tblspn dried or fresh thyme (we use 1/2 tblspn of ground thyme)
• 1 tblspn black pepper (or more if you like it spicy)
• 1 tblspn salt (we don’t add any)
• 1 tblspn dried or fresh parsley
• 1 litre of chicken stock
• 500 ml milk
• 500 ml cream

Directions

• Cook bacon and lardons on high until crispy.
• Lower to medium-high and add butter.
• Add carrots, celery, onions, thyme, salt, pepper and parsley.
• Cook for 5 minutes.
• Mix in flow to make roux and cook for 5 mintues.
• Add chicken stock, let thicken.
• Add milk, let thicken.
• Add cream, let thicken.
• Add corn and potatoes, cook on low simmer for 15 minutes.
• Adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper if required.

This new feature displays submitted comments in a sidebar next to the actual page. This isn’t an entirely new idea — a similar concept that used PostIt-Note-like overlays was tried several years ago by another company, but met with outrage and ultimately failure.

Of course, this failed attempt was well before the viral adoption of social networking. Today, the concept of group collaboration and multiple minds generating content is accepted and embraced by millions, as is the ability to provide product or service feedback.

The ability to add this feedback directly on any website, however, will be interesting, as disgruntled consumers happily post their frustrations right next to the product or service that is being marketed to others.

To read more, see the official Google Blog post.

Then, something strange happened – the Kona started to become my daily ride. The cheapest, ugliest bike I’ve ever bought became my (almost) favourite bike.

It’s the perfect commuter bike — it’s inexpensive (I paid about $400 new), has front and rear disc brakes, 700mm road wheels and being painted a rather metallic minty green, it’s hardly a theft magnet.

Most of the components on this Kona are low end and will get replaced with better stuff as they wear out. However, there were a couple of additional changes I made to improve the daily ride.

Pedals

The first thing I changed were the pedals. I have Crank Brothers Eggbeaters on my other bikes, so it only made sense to add them to the Kona. It was a little strange that the backup bike now had the nicest pedals, but at least I could hop on without having to worry about changing shoes as well.

Rear rack

It’s been years since I rode with a rear rack, as I could never find a good one that would fit nicely on either of my other bikes. Because of the disc brakes, your choices for racks are limited, and even within those there are some good ones and some not so good ones.

Eventually, I settled on a Topeak Explorer Tubular rack with the disc mounts. It fits nicely, installs relatively easily and has good mounting points for my panniers.

Handlebars and riser stem

There was nothing really wrong with the stock flat bars that came with the bike, but they didn’t give me enough hand positions for comfort.

So, I added a set of Salsa Bell Lap cyclocross drop bars, which also required different shifters and brake levers because of the bar’s different tube size. I found a set of Shimano bar-end shifters and went to work swapping things around. After a few hours work and lots of derailleur and brake finessing, it was ready.

I didn’t like it.

The bike is fairly short (front to back) for me and I felt really scrunched when I was riding. Adding a longer stem didn’t help either, and I started getting some nasty back aches. Off came the drops and back on went the flat bars. And off came the bar end shifters and road levers… grr…

I started looking around at tri-bars, but didn’t like the prices and they’re not really (IMHO) a good commuting bar. I also discounted the Titec H-bar simply because of the price. Eventually I landed on a set of Norco trekking bars, also known as butterfly bars. They were cheap — about 1/5 the price of the drop bars I bought — and I could use the original shifters and brake levers.

I loved these bars, but my knees didn’t. Again, because the bike is fairly short and because the trekking bar setup brings the shifters closer to you, my knees would hit the shift levers ever time I got up in the pedals.

A bit of fine tuning on the angle of the bars and the addition of a longer stem and a stem riser helped solve the problem, and I’m now a huge fan of the trekking bars.

Brake upgrade

The Kona Dew Plus came with Hayes MX4 manual disc brakes. They are okay, but when the time came to replace the pads, I found out the pads weren’t overly cheap at any of the LBSs.

Looking online for pads, I stumbled across some Avid BB7s on sale at Performance Bike. They were half the cost they were locally, and only $10 more per brake than simply getting new pads for the MX4s. I have the BB7s on my Cannondale and love them. The ones on sale also had larger rotors than the stock Hayes ones, which means better cooling and better stopping power.

One of the things I’ve always liked about the Avid BB7s is how easy it is to install them. Within about half an hour both front and rear ones were installed and tuned. Sweet!

What’s next?

I’m trying to keep in mind that this There are always things to upgrade on a bike. (Or at least I can always find an excuse to upgrade things.)

Next on the list is:

• An upgrade to the rear derailleur
• A better chain
• Winter tires (Schwalbe Winter Marathon) – this will be my first try with studded 700mm tires

So, after plenty of head scratching, cussing, unbolting and rebolting, more cussing and then unbolting and rebolting again, I’ve come up with a set of instructions that made the second assembly go much faster. Your particular mobile tool base assembly may vary slightly, but hopefully this info will help make it somewhat easier.

Sort parts

As with any assembly project, it’s a good idea to sort all your parts, make sure you’ve got all the pieces and know where they’re going to go.

With my base, I had a number of different length bolts.

The small 5/8 and 6/8 ones are used to attach the frame pieces, and the six longer ones (2 each of three different lengths) are used for the wheel lifting assembly.

Corner brackets

Attach the corner brackets to your tool’s base. Most tool bases come with rubberized feet attached to a bolt. If yours doesn’t, choose a bolt that’s the appropriate size for your particular base, as the mobile tool base probably won’t come with these. For tools like a table saw where stability is pretty critical, it’s probably a good idea to mount your tool so the wheels are facing side to side, rather than back to front. You don’t want the table saw wheeling across the room while you’re cutting a sheet of plywood.

Side / frame assembly

Roughly place the side pieces so that you have as much length attached to the corner brackets as possible. Depending on the size of your particular tool base, you may get away with just using one long piece for each side. If not, make sure you’ve got good overlap for a strong connection. For the side where you’ll attach the wheel lifts, make sure you’ve got a good even mounting surface for the wheel brackets. You might get away with a single long side piece if you have a small tool base, but make sure you have a nice even mounting surface for attaching the wheel bracket bolts. I used a long and a short side piece for this side.

Finger tighten the side pieces so everything’s connected. This is probably also a good time to fit the rubber leveling brackets on to the sides of the tool base – in some cases you may need to use the longer bolts for these sections because you’ll be connecting the leveling bracket, the side piece and the corner bracket.

When you’re attaching the side pieces, the first two or three sides will probably be pretty easy. When you get to the last side, if you’re incredibly lucky, all the holes will align perfectly. (Go buy a lottery ticket – quickly!) However, in most cases the holes won’t align, and your lottery ticket won’t even get you a free play. This is where a long clamp comes in handy. (For assembling the frame, not for using on the person that sold you a non-winning lottery ticket…) Use the clamp to squeeze the sides together and pop in the bolts. If you don’t have a long clamp, a piece of rope with a wooden twist stake will probably do the job, although you might need an extra set of hands.

Wheel lifts

The next step is assembling the wheel lifts. This is certainly the trickiest part, but hopefully these instructions will make them easier to assemble and you won’t have to go through the “how the &*@$*# do these stupid pieces fit together” process. Once you figure it out, it’s pretty obvious. However, it took me a while to get there…

There are four parts to the wheel lift assembly. I have no idea what the pieces are actually called so I made up names for them:

• The wheel bracket that bolts to the side pieces/corner brackets
• The wheel tray
• The lifter arm
• The wheel

First, attach the wheel bracket to the side piece / corner bracket.

If this is also the last section of the sides that you’re joining, you may need to double up on the clamps.  Use a long clamp to squeeze everything together to help align the holes, and a short clamp to squeeze the wheel bracket if necessary.

Next, use the long black bolt to attach the wheel tray to the wheel bracket. (You might want to attach the wheel and lift lever to the wheel tray before you mount it to the bracket. The photos after this one show the bracket unattached from the frame, but only because it’s easier to see the detail.)

Attach the silver lift lever to the the wheel bracket with the medium black bolt.

The wheel tray slides into the wheel bracket. The orange arrow shows where the holes will align.

When the wheel assembly is all put together, this is what it will look like.

Finishing touches

By this point, you’re almost done. The last few things to do are:

• Attach the rubber leveling feet.
• Attach the rear wheels with the short black bolts.
• Tighten all the bolts, including the ones that attach the tool base to the mobile base.
• Adjust the height of the rubber leveling feet so that you’ve got a good solid base that doesn’t slide when the lifting wheels are up.
• Add any remaining 5/8 or 6/8 small bolts for extra strength.
• Last but not least, do a quick cleanup / tuneup / safety check of the tool you’ve just mounted to the base. (Because you probably won’t do it later.)

Here’s what the finished product looks like.

I’m a long time family pass holder of Heritage Park, and I think it’s one of the best values for family outings in the city.

However, over the past year or two of the major construction at Heritage Park, I’ve been really disappointed with their lack of concern with the safety of pathway users next to the park.

Prior to the construction, the pathway system, which is heavily used by both recreational users and commuters, was a pleasant stretch along a quiet, nicely treed area. There was one intersection where the pathway crossed over the park trolley tracks, and you’d often see passengers on the trolley and pathway users waving to each other.

The park ripped up this section of pathway, and instead of replacing it around the huge new parking lots or along the adjacent new wetlands park, they’ve snaked it between the most heavily used and congested area of the new park entrance. It now lies directly between the park and the new expanded parking lots. It has numerous twists and turns, some of which around bordered on either side by steep ditches. Numerous metal bollards have been placed in the middle of the pathway, and there are a number of stop signs where vehicle traffic now intersects the pathway. Safety concerns with this new pathway section were raised with the park and ignored.

Construction traffic that uses one of the pathway intersections leaves that section of the road covered in thick, slippery mud and gravel. I don’t think that section has been cleaned once, while several other construction sites I pass on my daily commute make visible efforts to keep their construction mess cleaned off the pathways.

The latest safety hazard that the park has implemented is the addition of new black metal bike racks. This would be a great addition if they had been placed off the pathway rather than having them bolted directly on to the path… There is no signage, no warning tape and no warning barricade.

Heritage Park does a fantastic job of preserving and displaying our history, but a cyclist, rollerblader or runner out at night suddenly colliding with these racks could “become history” themselves.

You’d think a large toy company like Hasbro would have kids’ safety in mind, but one of their online interactive games is the kind of thing that makes parents cringe with its sheer foolishness.

Hasbro’s GI Joe – The Grip game allows kids to choose various items for a big GI Joe hand to squash. While most of the things being squished are funny and harmless, one of the choices is a light bulb. It’s not a cartoon hand that’s doing this either – it’s a video of a bare hand crushing these items. Among the other things are glass jars and full coffee cups.

Their response to this when I emailed them was a bland pre-canned reply saying how important children’s safety is, but several months later, GI Joe is still encouraging kids to crush lightbulbs with their bare hands.

It’s too bad there isn’t an option for parents to get GI Joe to reach out and give the approvers of this game a good head squeeze…

Cadbury is running an ad campaign that’s got an interesting cycling theme to it.

www.thebicyclefactory.ca will see Cadbury build and deliver up to 5,000 bikes to Africa based on UPC entries being entered by consumers.

According to the contest rules, eligible products include “Canadian labeled Dentyne*, Stride*, Cadbury*, Maynards*, Trident*, Bubblicious*, Certs* Chiclets*, Clorets*, Jersey Milk* and Halls*, but excluding some seasonal products.”

There are some pretty nice prizes, including a grand prize trip to Africa.

All in all a pretty sweet deal for just eating some candy…

When you think about all the pointless info on Facebook or time-wasting Tweets like “I’m standing in line for a coffee” it’s easy to agree. However, every once in a while social media sites provide a service that is so immeasurably valuable that they put the formal processes and tools to shame.

Here’s an example of a recent story about a missing girl. She didn’t fit the formal profile for triggering an Amber Alert so the family fell back on their informal online networking contacts.

Read more: Social Networking Aids Family of Missing Child