Tile saws will cut through wine bottles, with enough effort. Partly, anyway, and then you can do a controlled hammering in order to break the rest of it.

A dremel with a polishing stone will smooth out the sharp edges, and what you're left with is a vase that can hold flowers for your sweetheart - as well as something that will remind you both of that excellent vacation up to New York State's wine country.

Highly recommended: using a face mask to avoid breathing in glass dust. And sweeping up afterward.

Breaking my body is a delightful and hilarious pastime of mine. Boy howdy, do I have stories.

Oddly enough, a few years ago, Laura pointed out that as I started riding bikes everywhere, my injury rate started going down dramatically.

Except, you know, sometimes strange things happen. A couple of beers, a late-night ride home through quiet streets, and a largely unobserved tumble while taking a tight turn at about 26 mph. It'll leave you with a bruise on your hip if you play your cards right.

But the strange part is what happened two weeks later, while racing at the Trexlertown Velodrome. I pushed myself up to the leaders in a points race, hauled ass around the steeply banked track, and threw all the strength of my legs and arms into a sprint to win points that placed me 3rd in the race.

Legs shaking, I cooled down, dismounted, and walked toward my water bottle; when my hand touched my hip, I felt a distinct bulge sticking out from my hip. It was like somebody embedded a tender lime underneath my skin. It was a visible bump sticking straight out from my left hip. Apparently the sprint just made this older bruise congeal and pop up and swell and do whatever.

I've never had that happen before.

Don't break your body!

Still breaking

Hey everyone. So I post a lot around here about how I'm going to start posting around here. But for real.

Just to touch base on the street cred:
since we last spoke, the following have been broke:

+ My windshield
+ My heart
+ My wrist (almost... dislocated)
+ A bike wheel
+ The economy

Now, I know that there've been a lot of promises here about starting up again. Those too have been broken. But with all of the above to fix, there will be much to write about.

Planned articles for the near and distant future:

- How to Build a Bike Wheel
- How to read spraypainted marks on abandoned buildings
- How to Re-fret a guitar (I'm interested in learning this one too)
- How to make your bike fast without being a rich kid.

At the moment, my project is number three. In response to the broken heart up above, I made an impulsive purchase when I found a cheap 1975 Takamine guitar, an exact copy of a martin dreadnaught. She sounds beautiful, but her frets are worn down to the fretboard. I figure, a re-fret costs upwards of $200. But fretwire costs $15.

So why not, right?

Love and wingnuts,
-Evan