Guess I'm lucky that permits are usually quick and easy but have heard about places like California where they make it a huge pain to go through the process. Guess I don't understand why any city wouldn't want to make the permit process easy to go through. If it's easy then people are more likely to get a permit and not do work without one. And really there is no reason to make it so difficult. If you are doing the work up to code the city can just look at plans and then inspect the work and they get to collect their money. Obviously if the work isn't up to standards they can flag it and make you fix it. But for those of us that just want to do things right there is no reason or advantage to the city to make it a pain.
Curious what they say is holding yours up? Are they understaffed? Did you have to submit plans for your work? Do they just not have time to look at the plans before approving the permit? Guess I just don't see why they would be holding anyone up who is trying to do things the right way. I've always just gone in and gave plans I draw up if they are needed. They look at them and as long as they don't see anything that isn't correct they take my money and issue a permit and come inspect the work when I call them. Even when I do bigger commercial jobs and have to go through the state building inspectors they have always been easy to work with, especially when they see you are trying to do things the right way. They only get mad at the ones that aren't trying to do things up to code.
I don’t want to dive into politics, but bellingham has gone off the deep end on the ultra liberal side of things the last decade. One of the big holdups is they wanted the hvac system replaced as it was natural gas, installed in 2017 when they did a seismic retrofit of the building, but they then banned natural gas since then. It’s idiotic when a few blocks away downtown there is a natural gas power generating plant.
Same with them aggressively enforcing parking tickets, yet if you park a Methlab or setup a homeless camp anywhere they turn a blind eye. Zero common sense or brains.
There is a group of about 100 people that seem to protest like it’s their only hobby (doesn’t matter the issue, it’s a sport for them) that are extremely liberal and somehow have managed to influence local politics. It’s sad as I feel that the majority of town is more centered (my self included).
In other news I finally convinced Jamie to try an ebike this weekend. She was the most anti ebike person on the planet, mostly from a fitness aspect, she was single speed World champion, raced and won nationals 4 times on mountain and road bikes, and one year won XC nationals by 23 minutes over the next closest rider. Only reason she didn’t race in the Olympics is she broke her ankle and was finishing med school that year. So from a fitness perspective she doesn’t need the assistance of an ebike. However with all of the logging on Galbraith in recent years most of her favorite types of trails are gone and the only way to access better quality trails still in old growth forests is to do massive rides. Something we are both capable of on analog bikes, but at this stage of life time is the limiting factor. She demoed a Bosch sx bike this weekend and we did the above ride. It really opened her eyes to what you can access on an ebike and I even heard her say she got some exercise on it too. It’s just different. More cardio less the anaerobic she prefers but we will play with some motor settings to fine tune it for her.
So I bought her a new Crestline on Monday. I wasn’t planning on buying two $12k bikes in a week, but not getting my *** dragged around trying to keep up with her on all of our rides on the Amish bikes will be worth it! Plus way easier for us to tow both kids on family rides now. Got it built up and we did a mid day ride before we picked up Evelina from camp yesterday.
Given we only had a 2 hour window there is no way we would have gotten in that much trail on the Amish bikes. She seemed to really enjoy it and toward the end of the ride I could tell she was feeling so comfortable on the new bike she was taking entirely new lines.
She got the last of the team issue bikes they had left. It’s a mixed wheel bike and at first she was opposed to not having a full 29 setup, but I think she really liked the combination. Since the drop outs are interchangeable and they make 6+ different ones you can fully tune the bike to what you like so we can swap dropouts / rear wheels to see what combinations we both like best.
Only issue is they are 100% matching but when they only make 150 bikes you don’t get much for color choices. Only major differences between our bikes is I’m running a Vorsprung Tellum coil and a wireless dropper post. Plus my bike has a 700wh battery and hers has a 600. I consume about 15% more battery than her so when the 800 battery I ordered arrives I think we will have identical range. The 90 minutes charge time is incredible compared to the 6 hours other bikes take!
These bikes are incredibly fast. I have it detuned by a lot as stock it’s more power than you can realistically use. Yet every ride is a new KOM.
Got a few more PBSwiss tools in, still waiting on more that are on back order, but picked up their Digitorque driver for doing Brose belt tensions. That thing is really nice.
I also picked up a set of their knurled hex keys I got for the riding pack. Those are my new favorites! They are super light for their size and long so good access / leverage.
The knurling is phenomenal. Only gripe is I wish they would anodize them like the rainbow sets I have but I greatly prefer these over their rainbow sets due to both weight, feel and length.
