One thing about bikes with disc brakes: tire clearance at the seat stay is usually pretty good. That’s a Conti 37mm commuter tire in there. One of the things I did this weekend was some clearance research on the project bike (apologies to Seven, too, for temporarily borrowing “Mudhoney”–no idea that was already in play until just recently–need a new project name now).

It was a productive weekend overall.

I’d like to think I’ve always fiercely avoided letting this blog devolve into one of those “here’s what I did today” sort of things. That’s partially because who the hell cares, really, unless it’s something worth sharing? And precious little of what most people think’s worth sharing actually is. Once I start posting photos of what I’m having for dinner, I’d sort of hope my readers would just shake their heads and move on.

But this past Sunday was unique in that I actually managed to get a lot done, including some early marketing work, and then making a new web page. This web page thing normally wouldn’t take long, except it required some social media integration and–far more time-consuming–working around a canned solution web platform. I really like just being able to write a file in a simple text editor, whereas creating files in a cheesy “page creator” (itself, web-based and buggy as shit) is right up there with chewing tinfoil. Anyway, got that done despite some funkiness before noon.

An hour and a half or so on the rollers watching bad TV and then family time, which these days often involves Skype. Skype means my head’s officially out of my weekend rabbit hole and so I started getting some messages. This was OK, really, because a partner in Taiwan has to go over some stuff with me, and that’s both important and fun. I’d already sneaked some time in on bike development stuff really early in the day.

Then back to marketing work, and checking some Google alerts I have, which revealed a conversation about one of my companies that was really interesting and got me thinking about a whole bunch of other stuff.

Pathetic, by most standards, but a pretty good day, I thought. Not as nice as a few hours on the mountain bike or road bike, but mileage was picked up today. It doesn’t always feel that way, and I’ll take it.

So it’s 2013. Among other things I’d not realized that moving to the West Coast meant getting to celebrate New Year’s at a much more sensible 9:00pm. The advantages are clear: a full three hours early I can reassure myself that watching large gatherings of drunk people bobbing semi-rhythmically to the weak and perfunctory musical stylings of an already weak and perfunctory pop star are still not my thing, then get back to more entertaining stuff.

Like work. I ushered in 2013 much like I have most other years: working on something. In this case a site promo code that wasn’t functioning properly but was set to go off at midnight, regardless. Fortunately, texting my particularly capable boss about a site problem at 8:30pm New Year’s Eve means getting a response at approximately 8:33pm, and a fix shortly after that. Whatever’s wrong with me, this sort of thing seems to be my idea of a good time on New Year’s Eve. I’m a happy little wallflower.

So maybe there’s something wrong with me. Or definitely. There’s definitely something wrong with me. It’s not even about making money so much as making things work. As long as I’m working on something I like–anything from a piece of code to a bike design–I seem to actually prefer creating to recreating. It might just be a nerd thing. A decent beer or two during the process is nice, but getting shit-faced purely for the joy of getting shit-faced has never really seemed like fun to me, compared to making stuff. I don’t know why.

There are, of course, less pleasant things to make–like a backup and relocation of a WordPress site on a sketchy server, which I’m dealing with currently and which ranks right up there with home dental work and chugging spoiled milk. But even WordPress work seems preferable to vomiting into roadside shrubbery, which I witnessed yesterday. As a general rule, if you’ve had to pull your car over to get out and vomit, maybe you shouldn’t be driving. Even if that’s the flu.

So I hope to make more in 2013. I probably won’t weigh less, be nicer, look better or set any new personal records. But I hope to make some things. Overall, January could end up being a decent month when it comes to projects. Some basic carbon fiber samples might be showing up, and I’m hoping to get a timeline on the Danzig prototype soon. A whole bunch of hours finally leading toward making something–that’s my kind of party. I blame Legos.