Breathing Again

I spent the weekend and Monday lounging at home, concentrating mostly on breathing. Head colds always turn into chest congestion for me, and they usually knock me out of the saddle for about a week. I'm keeping the local pharmacy in business with my myriad medications. Inhale this, squirt that, swallow the other... I'm feeling much more human today, and should be back on the bike in some form tomorrow, although a big project at work might keep me too late for that.

I took the opportunity while inside the entire weekend to apply some silicone caulk to the upstairs shower stall. Either the former owners never used the stall or else they finished it right before we moved in. They had sealed the plastic basin to the wall tile with a caulk that was almost as hard as the tile grout. The flex of the plastic basin from daily use popped the caulk away from the wall within a few weeks and mold set into the spaces where the water collected. I sprayed some nasty cleaning chemicals in there until the mold was gone, cleaned the surfaces well, then applied a big bead of silicone.

Let me tell you, this silicone is great stuff. It's flexible and waterproof, and adheres really well. Let me also tell you, be prepared when you go to apply it.

I read the instructions and ignored the part where they say to apply masking tape on either side of the joint. Bah. I would be applying just a little bead and I wouldn't need any masking tape. Sissies.

I donned rubber gloves and assembled the tube in the caulking gun. As I started pumping this stuff out, I realized I'd need a rather large amount to cover the joint between the wall and the edge of the basin. As I squeezed it in, it began to look like a rather poor welding job, a long bead with a series of large bumps. I looked around for something to smooth out the bead. I didn't want to use my fingers and make a mess. My hairbrush was nearby, and the end of the handle was curved perfectly to squeegee the bead into the joint and make a nice smooth concave surface. It went a little like this:

Pump, pump, pump. Hmmm, lumps in the bead. Grab hairbrush. Draw handle across bead. Oops. Not enough in one spot, too much in the other. A bit of spillage over the edge of the basin and up the wall. I'll just wipe the excess with my one finger tip, then not touch anything. Quite a bit stuck to the brush handle. Wipe that off. Oops, got some on the caulking gun from my fingers. Pump some more. Squeegee. Squeegee. Now there's some farther up on the brush and on my other hand...

Well, this went on for some time, and at some point I'd pretty much given up on being neat about it and was smearing this stuff all over everything. I felt a bit like I was back in kindergarten and was fingerpainting with pudding. My hairbrush, the caulking gun, my hands, the wall, basin, and well, at least the joint was covered adequately. By the time I finished, I was getting pretty good at laying down a nice, neat, smooth bead, but it was too late. My inexperience at the beginning had taken its toll.

It was then that I learned how tenacious silicone really is. It's waterproof, and it's not petroleum based, so soap, water, and any cleaners or solvents I could think of wouldn't touch it. I resorted to grabbing a box of tissues and mechanically wiping everything off as best I could. Once the silicone cured for a few hours, it was very easy to scrape off the extra from any places where it shouldn't have been.

One more house project down, and it's back to thinking about cycling. My two big races of the year, the Owasco Stage Race and the Empire State Games both come at the end of July, so I have approximately 38 days to try to get in the best shape of my life.

Here we go.