Author: lkvy

I'm a Deaf vagabond currently living on Vancouver Island. Bicycles dominate my life, but I also make time for climbing, hiking, camping, and cats. And if I have time left over after all that, I write about it.

It’s still easier to make hats than new friends.

~ lkvy ~ 3 Comments

Three and a half years go, I knitted my first scarf. Since then, I have knitted four toques. I nearly finished a fifth in the time it took to drive from Montréal to Vancouver, but when I got to the stitch decreases for the crown, I decided my handiwork was a waste of fancy yarn and unravelled the whole thing.

I’ve started something new, but it is not going well. Reading a knitting pattern is a skill I have yet to master. It goes something like this:

1: K1, P2, K2, K1togbl2, *K2, P2; rep from * across, end K2.

2: K1below, P3

3: Alternate between rows 1 and 2, until you realize that you’ve spent hours doing the wrong thing, and clench your jaw so hard in anger that your teeth shatter.

Ah, what a relaxing hobby.

Continue reading “It’s still easier to make hats than new friends.” →

PSA.

~ lkvy

I know, you didn’t think you’d get any useful information out of reading my blog but, here goes: bicycles are for riding, not locking up outside.

On occasion, customers will come into the bike shop to have a stuck u-lock removed. Every time, we’ve been successful in getting it off, either with bolt cutters or with the angle grinder.

Today, a customer came in with a Kryptonite Evolution u-lock stuck to his bike frame. The u-lock wasn’t skewered through the rear wheel, which made the request to have it cut off not suspicious.

Yann agreed to do it: he had never cut through a Kryptonite brand u-lock and wanted to try. It’s supposedly one of the more secure u-locks on the market.

“If this takes more than fifteen minutes, we’ll have to charge you.”

Continue reading “PSA.” →

Three dozen.

~ lkvy ~ Leave a comment

In 2009, after having spent my teens exclusively on desktop PCs, I bought my first laptop.

I am typing on this very laptop right now: its successor is on the way to the ASUS HQ for repairs. The screen was flickering at random. I learned to live with the flickering somewhat but figured I needed to send it back before its one-year warranty expired.

I made this photo my desktop wallpaper before packing it up:

Continue reading “Three dozen.” →

So you think you’re open-minded?

~ lkvy ~ 1 Comment

In 2002, a deaf friend came for a visit and stayed with me in Vancouver. During that time, the roll of film that I had dropped off at the drugstore a few days earlier had been printed and was ready for pick-up. (The excitement of seeing your photo prints has been taken from us since the popularization of digital cameras.) I wasted no time and dragged my guest to the drugstore. We sat on the curb out front to look through the photos, but before I opened the envelope, I warned her that the images were not for the faint of heart.

She’s one my best friends. Surely she’d approach this with an open mind, I thought.

“What the fuck?!” was her response.

Continue reading “So you think you’re open-minded?” →