MM on Bikes, Bread and Tech... and the Railway Sleepers House

Birmingham - 24 hour lesson on Design

2010-10-08T05:00:00.019-04:00

At Birmingham I experienced great and awful design in 24 hours, the greatdesign came in the form of the historic motorcycles in the worlds largest Motorcycle Museum, and in the Jaguar Factory Tour, seeing how modern Jags are assembled today. The bad design was present everywhere in my hotel room, that even though was conveniently located, is the worst built thing I've ever seen. From Bath I took

Bath and Eat

2010-10-03T10:49:00.003-04:00

After visiting Christian Malford (just a small small village outsideof Chippenham) by taxi, no buses on Sunday, too small I'm afraid. Icame back into town, bought a British looking long parka, that iscalled a warm "raincoate" here, and walked to the railroad station andmade my way into Bath.The Roman baths are impressive, I thought I liked jacuzzis but thisguys ruled! The contruction was top

Calling Chippenham, Wiltshire

2010-10-03T05:20:00.005-04:00

Its sunday morning, i’m at the White Hart Inn, in Calne, (Wiltshire, UK) an 8 bedroom hotel with a pub and restaurant included. Last night there was a party here, and they didn’t serve food, so i walked two blocks in a light rain - that has continued all night - to the Landsown Inn. The night was fresh and the streets were shiny... beautiful. Turns out the Landsown Inn bar was full too, but It

Opera alla Scala di Milano

2010-10-03T05:09:00.005-04:00

Visting la Scala, no tours on my schedule... ok an opera will do the trick.After a week of business travel touring european retailers and consultants looking for innovation in retail at London, Germany, and Milan , i’m at Milan’s airport waiting for my flight to London to depart and take me in a 4 day train & backpack journey around UK, visiting the origins of my family, a motorcycle museum, a

Details, Details, Details

2010-07-24T18:12:00.017-04:00

It is often said that the Devil is in the Details, which is probably true if you are building something or managing a project behind schedule, or against a deadline and a trying to meet a budget. These are things many of us do for a living (or so i'd like to think, since it is what i do)...But if you are adding finishing touches to your house, with all the time in the world (let's say I have a 30

Bowls of Bread

2010-07-21T20:33:00.006-04:00

Last weekend at the lakehouse was cold. Freezing actually, as on Monday morning we didn't have running water because the pipes were frozen...So it's the perfect setting for having soup by the fireplace, on bread bowls that you can eat. We actually had them with salad on the sunny sunday. But you can have them with whatever you want. I like them with onion or oxtail soup and after the soup you can

Snapshots of Fortaleza, BR

2010-07-13T22:36:00.021-04:00

Fortaleza turned out to be really something. It's not just industrial city & port in the north east end of South America. It's not a rich city clearly, it is more on the modest side of a developing country, and has yet to overcome many obstacles. But it's a pleasant and beautiful surprise.The BeachSince i live in a country where the sea temperature hurts your bones and your forehead just for

Money Exchange in Sao Paulo

2010-07-11T08:21:00.007-04:00

In one Brazilian airport money exchange booth, up to 8 people are employed every 24 hours, and close to 500 white pages are printed, 300 of them signed. Anybody uses this? All this is done to give service to only about 100 customers. Based on a single booth observation. Your mileage may vary. The lesson: Don't open a currency exchange in Brazil, open a Bar.I’m in the Sao Paulo airport - Guarulhos

Assembling a Sportbike... from the center out

2010-06-24T14:37:00.023-04:00

October 2009 (8 months ago)... we went to ride on a sportbike track-day to the coastal race track of San Antonio, About 90 minutes from Santiago at legal speeds.When we arrived at the gas pump before entering the track my Buell S2 Thunderbolt had developed a rattling noise in the engine. My first impression was that the engine could have overheated (we got there in 70 minutes), or maybe an engine

Why Peruvian Food?

2010-06-17T21:46:00.014-04:00

Why on Earth is Peruvian Food so Good?(just based on opinions and table talk, no research)On a recent trip to Peru for the day this week, i had two excellent meals, and though I have often wondered how is it that Peru has a more elaborate cuisine than all the other latin american countries, I had never stopped to analyze why. This trip's food was so great that during digestion my brain had the

The Ring of Fire

2010-05-19T21:16:00.009-04:00

I fell into a burnin' ring of fire -- I went down, down, down and the flames went higher, and it burns, burn, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire. - Johnny CashOk, picture this. It's mid summer, four days till your yearly vacation. Your body is in a Monday 5 PM meeting at somebody's air conditioned glass office, your brain was left locked in the car, six levels underground.People in the

At Last...

2010-05-17T19:08:00.013-04:00

The house of Railway Sleepers, one year later...It's been a while since i don't write a post, let's say I was busy, and let's just say I have now found time and reasons (we always have time don't we?) to write in this space again.I've been posting some pictures and captions in facebook, but I really miss the space to explain a bit more why we are doing this or that. So i'll be expanding on the

Building a House of Railway Sleepers - Part 7

2009-03-08T22:40:00.018-03:00

The House is Ready - first stage completedAfter almost a year since the last post on the construction of the Railwail Sleepers Lakehouse, it's time for an update on the construction status.This space intentionally left blank:-)The heat is onAfter we finished the bedroom and the kitchen in order to spend summer vacations there, we continued building steadily, in April we put an ecological wood

Now it's always riding season...

2008-09-17T22:04:00.018-04:00

For the last 20 years or so I've been riding street motorcycles, with an occasional ride on a dirt bike, but not really dirt riding. Until last April...A couple of years ago I bought my older son Pablo (14) a Honda XR 100 enduro bike, so he could learn how to drive. Given that there are many motorcycles at home, I felt that I couldn't forbid motorcycles to him, on the contrary I'm inclined to

The problem with mass decisions

2008-09-17T22:04:00.005-04:00

I ran across this idea the other day while browsing news about The Pirate Bay censoring traditional media - mass media. So the idea is not mine, but I liked it a lot so I'm reproducing it here for my faithful readers (yes, the two of you).I won't go into detail about the TPB censorship (you can google that if you like), but into the MASS problem:The problem is that large groups of people can't

Honda XR 600 Sticky Throttle: Problem Solved

2008-07-27T15:36:00.017-04:00

If you have a used Honda XR 600 it's likely that you have experienced this problem: At high revs the engine suction is so large that the throttle sticks open, specially when the engine is warm, keeping the bike at high revs (something very scary if you are trying to slow down approaching a corner for example).It doesn't happen to a brand new bike probably because the wear in the carburetor slide

So... what is going on with the house of railway sleepers?

2008-07-02T10:45:00.005-04:00

No, the house hasn't collapsed, caught fire or gone into the lake... (at least not until last sunday). It's just that I've been pretty busy lately.My "new" (a year now) job has sent me back to school, to a postgraduate programme in Retail Industry Management wich involves a lot of reading and some group work, I have two other areas at work to take care of (I'm sort of a tri manager, or a manager

Building a House of Railway Sleepers - Part 6

2008-03-19T23:17:00.011-03:00

It's been a looong time (about 4 to 5 months!) since the last house building post. So I believe a little recap is in order. It hasn't been out of laziness (well... not entirely) but because of buildiness...The rooms are (room is) Ready!Finishing the sleepers on the rooms turned out to be a very dirty job, and I had to get a serious mask so I didn't breathe all the cloud of dust that comes out of

Domingo in Red

2008-01-23T10:51:00.000-03:00

A couple of weeks ago we went hunting for several antique bronze light switch covers for the lakehouse into the Bio Bio (aka Frankiln) flea market. We didn't find them but we did find a whole other bunch of things we ignored we needed (like 100 mts of rope).On the way back we stopped at a favorite Peruvian restaurant at the barrio Bellavista called La Casona Limeña. Our son Domingo was wearing a

Building a House of Railway Sleepers – Part 5

2007-11-27T00:42:00.000-03:00

On the last article we were adding walls and windows, and the house started to look like a house. Now it’s the time to add a final row of sleepers above the windows to make a final wooden belt all around the house, and have a tall and firm support for the roof beams.To be very honest I thought originally of making more solid walls than what we have right now, but some things have changed my point

A house of Railway Sleepers - Part 4

2007-11-10T16:57:00.001-03:00

This is the fourth article in a series about the lakehouse I'm building with railway sleepers.More than a month has gone by since the last article - there's been a lot of work at my new job lately - and weekends have been a lot about building the house but not so much about writing about it... which I have decided a good sign. The project is picking up momentum as we managed to start getting away

A house of Railway Sleepers - Part 3

2007-09-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

This is the third article in a series that documents the building of a railway sleeper lakehouse in Rapel lake, in central Chile. To see the previous articles click on the keywords Railway or Sleepers on the keyword list at the lower right.The Great WallIn the last article we saw how we planted the sleepers and logs in concrete bases for the pillars of the house, we also saw how a couple of the

Racing at 135 Mph on a parking Lot

2007-09-03T21:11:00.000-04:00

It was going to be a regular-to-lazy Sunday, but on Saturday my university and motorcycling friend Roberto (a.k.a Billo, a.k.a El Flaco) stopped by to return a borrowed motorcycle driving book called "A twist of the wrist..." which I needed to lend to another motorcycling buddy."My hand is greasy" he greeted me, returning the book with the left hand. After shaking the greasy hand I asked what had

A house of Railway Sleepers - Part 2

2007-08-12T17:33:00.000-04:00

The construction begins...This is the 2nd article in a series that documents the building the construction of a lakeshore house made of railway sleepers. In Part 1 I explained the how's and why's of sleepers and the logistics of getting the sleepers to the construction site.As I said in the previous article I had the plans drawn after the terrain was leveled. So now was the time to dig the holes

A ridiculously simple and big improvement in laptops

2007-07-27T17:33:00.000-04:00

Two days ago I got a new laptop at work... And besides being fast and small, and having the stuff you look for in a modern laptop, it has a wonderful and extremely simple feature that I already love...TWO POWER SUPPLIESAin't that easy? I can leave one plugged in at work to the docking station (and don't have to get under the desk to unplug it every day), and leave the other one (smaller) at home,