Sewing, cycling, and a game

In the last blog I talked about screwing my courage to the sticking place and attempting to shorten the sleeves on two wool shirts. The first shirt is done. The workmanship won’t win any prizes and you don’t get a closeup of the stitching but the sleeves are now a good length. I have worn it for a day and it’s comfortable. I took a day off from sewing yesterday. I can only stand to do it in small doses. This morning I measured the other shirt and I’ve marked where to cut the sleeve and have taken off the cuff.

I’m adhering to finishing one sleeve before I cut off the other one. It would be just like me to try to put a cuff on the wrong sleeve if I had two to choose from. Once I have this shirt done I have a few pairs of pants to turn up. That should be easier than the shirt sleeves. One thing at a time and take it slowly.

Another thing besides sewing that I didn’t think I’d ever do is playing a game on my phone. I’ve never been much on games for the same reason I’m not much on sewing: I never had the patience and couldn’t see the point. Enter a silly little game called Words of Wonder. It’s initially free on phones if you can put up with the ads. After I had played it for a day and found myself enjoying it I shelled out the eight bucks to buy it and get rid of the ads. They still try to get you to watch ads by promising you a bunch of sapphires if you look at certain ads on YouTube. Since I haven’t bothered to find out what the sapphires are for it doesn’t bother me to ignore them. They also offer various collections of postcards for a limited time. Again, who cares? It’s something to do with playing the game competitively and, by now, you can guess my reaction to that.

The game is a bit like Scrabble or a crossword puzzle. The difference in this game is that they give you a series of letters and a blank crossword shape. You have to fill in all the words in the crossword from the letters supplied, no written hints, just the letters. The game does allow you to rearrange the order in which the letters appear in a circle below the crossword.

I’m finding the whole thing surprisingly engaging. I don’t remember when I got the game but I think it’s under a week. I’ve now solved 200 of the puzzles. It’s strange how sometimes I look at the jumble of letters and wonder how I could ever make a word out of those. Then I see one word which leads to another word and another. At some point I get stumped and rearrange the letters to see other words. Sometimes I have to resort to pencil and paper and plugging letters in at random until I recognize something. Of course, the makers of the game want you to pay for hints when you get stuck and I’m not doing that. Now if the sapphires gave you free hints I'd be more interested. Richard has helped me on occasion and sometimes, you are actually given the chance to get a hint letter for free. I've yet to figure out how that works.

I suppose it isn't a lot different from Wordle, and I don’t know why this game appeals and Wordle doesn’t. It’s an engaging way to spend a few moments during the day when I’m between tasks or in the evening when I don’t feel like doing much else. Puzzles and games tend to lose their appeal for me fairly quickly when I do find one I like so I’ll see how long this lasts. One disadvantage is that you can’t play it offline.

Just as I’ve finally gotten around to sewing, I’ve finally gotten around to riding my bike for the season. I’ve been undecided about whether or not I like the conversion to an e-bike. Haven’t quite sorted through the ins and outs of charging the battery, hooking it up, resetting the computer, and how to work with the gearing and the various levels of assist.

I’ve not been too pleased with the performance on hills. It seems the bike wants to help all it can on the flats where I don’t need it and it’s sluggish on the hills where I could use the help. Yesterday I decided to go out and ride around and around the neighbourhood for half an hour to see if I couldn’t figure it out. I found that the language the makers of e-bikes use is confusing. In everything I have looked at they say the harder you pedal the more the bike assists you. To me that means the more pressure you put on the pedals the more assistance you get. Nope! Turns out the faster you pedal the more assistance you get, and that is a totally different animal.

The riding strategy has to change. I’ve always known that it’s better to keep a higher cadence but sometimes I just get tired and bash my way through by pedalling more slowly and putting more weight on the pedals. The e-bike is not friendly when I do that. So, gear down and speed up the revolutions when you approach a hill and then keep the cadence high and increase the amount of assistance as you go up the hill. I suppose it’s not all that different from gearing down as you go up a hill but the final step, before getting off to walk, has always been the slow-revolution slog and that seems to be more difficult on the e-bike. With the motor and batteries the bike is heavier and, if you’re in slog mode the bike really doesn’t seem to help much regardless of the level of assistance. Of course, I could be totally out to lunch on this and as I ride I’ll probably find other ways to be more efficient. At least, yesterday, I had a totally enjoyable ride and came back thoroughly winded. It’s been a while since I’ve worked that hard. It’s humbling to think that I used to be able to ride like that for hours and hours at a time. The good news is that I can regain some of that fitness a little at a time. I don’t think I’ll ever go on long tours again but I’d like to work up taking and enjoying day rides in the mountains. The first step is to get out on the bike and now that I’m beginning to figure out how the e-conversion works, that will be easier. Stay tuned.