Garden Time

Erika and I spent most of our day digging in the dirt. We built a raised bed for her vegetable garden and couldn't have had a nicer day for it. Here is the completed product:



It's untreated wood, with some stakes sunk in for stability. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

We also got a peach tree and planted it in the center of the pump track. Hopefully, this time next year we'll be eating some tasty peaches between pump track sessions.

Pump Track update

Here are some non-spy photos of the track. I spent about 4 more hours on it today. A view of the track from the fire pit:


A views of the 180 degree berm. I rode this a couple times and it's pretty awesome.


In the front of the picture is a really tight, 60 or 70 degree turn. I'm going to bet when you hit this right, you'll have to make a real effort to keep your head up. The 180 degree berm appears in the background


Erika also got started on her garden. She's going to have tomatoes, lettuce, fennel, garlic, zucchini...and loads of other stuff, too. I'm going to be eating good once I build the box for it. I snagged some 2x12s and 1x2s to build a box. She spent a good portion of time ripping up old grass and turning the soil.

Yard work...kind of

I have, hands down, one of the coolest ladies on the planet living with me. "Why?" you ask. Two words: PUMP. TRACK. If you don't know what that is go here. Yes, Erika has consented to me ripping up a large portion of the lawn.

I started building it this afternoon and kept going well past dusk...I spent almost 5 hours on it. It's a 40' x 60' area that's going to be a figure 8-ish layout. It will have a few cool features. First will be a 180 degree berm. Second will be a diagonal line option. To be honest, I'm crossing my fingers on how this all turns out. The goal is for it to be loads of fun for both Erika (less experienced) and I (more experienced) to ride for a few hours.

Here are some spy pictures Erika took from the back porch.

Something not related to the house

For anyone out there with a Subaru they want to make a little faster and learn a lot about, go here.

Romraider is an open source tuning solution for Subaru engine management. You can change nearly anything in the stock ECU. You can totally blow up your motor if you want! Your investment is a $70 cable from a company called Tactrix. Additionally, you can log data from your ECU to understand what it is doing. In the case of my 02 WRX, I can see when the turbo is making what pressure, what ignition timing looks like and what duty cycle the fuel injectors are running at. See pics of maps below:


Then, when you really want to have fun and risk spending serious coin, try some little changes...baby steps. So over the last year or so, I've gone from a motor pulling in 137g/sec of air at 5k rpm to a motor that pulls about 160g/sec...about a 17% increase in horsepower. Having my oil analysed has shown no adverse wear on the car...just tons of fun.