Something’s changed. It’s the same something that changes every year around this time. And that something is my motivation level. Sometime in late September, I stop thinking about how strong or fast or light or heavy I am, and start thinking about mashed potatoes.

Oh, how I love mashed potatoes.

I should be more specific: I love my mashed potatoes. Everybody loves my mashed potatoes. If there were a mashed potato contest, I’d enter it with confidence. And if I didn’t win, I’d feel robbed.

My kids love my mashed potatoes more than any other food in the world. They’d rather eat my mashed potatoes than dessert. And so would I, for that matter.

Friends and relations call early in the year to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner — even though they don’t care for me personally — because my mashed potatoes are so good.

Nobody puts gravy on my mashed potatoes. This is because people intuit that while other mashed potatoes need gravy, my mashed potatoes do not need such a crutch.

How to Make Great Mashed Potatoes
People always ask me, "Fatty, how do you make such incredible mashed potatoes?"

I do not tell them.

It’s not that there’s a secret. There’s not. And it’s not that these are difficult to make. They’re not.

It’s that if I tell people how bad these mashed potatoes are for them, they’ll never eat them again, and that would be a shame.

The thing is, though, most of you won’t ever be eating Thanksgiving with me anyway. So I don’t mind telling you about my mashed potatoes. And then you can make them, call them your own, and be famous within your own circle of friends for the best mashed potatoes in the world.

Start by peeling a 10lb bag of potatoes. Cut each potato into six or eight pieces. Put the potatoes into heavily salted water and boil until the potatoes reach "ready to mash" consistency.

No, I don’t know how long that is, and I can’t explain what that consistency is. If you can’t tell, perhaps you don’t have any business making my mashed potatoes.

Drain the water out. If someone else is making gravy, you can offer your water to them, because salty boiled potato water makes great gravy. Not, mind you, that you’ll need gravy.

It’s important you do this next part while the potatoes are very hot.

Toss in 2 sticks of butter. Do not use margarine, no matter what. Toss in a fistful of grated mozzarella cheese, and a much smaller fistful of grated Jack.

Now start mashing. Use a masher, not a mixmaster or other appliance. You don’t want these to be smooth and fluffy. (That’s what mashed potatoes from flakes are.) You want these to be recognizable as potatoes.

Continue until the potatoes are mashed and the butter and cheese are melted in.

Now, put in a big double wooden-spoonful of sour cream. And mash some more.

Taste.

If you don’t weep with joy, you did it wrong.

PS: I wonder why I always gain weight during the Autumn?

Yesterday, after posting about how I had finished the base of my teeter, I had a little IM conversation with Brad:

Brad: When do I get to come try it out?"

Fatty: Oh, I think we’ll finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Brad: Cool, I’ll send out an email to everyone to meet at your house tomorrow at 7am.

Fatty: No, I said I MIGHT finish it tonight.

Brad: Well, if everyone’s going to be at your house tomorrow at 7, you’ll be highly motivated to finish it before then.

Brad was right. Knowing that people would be coming over to put the teeter through its paces the next morning, I got to work as soon as I got home. Luckily, the challenging part of the teeter — the base — was done; building the ramp was just a matter of cutting 2" x 4" boards into equal-length slats, beveling the ends of the 2" x 6" x  12′ boards, and drilling a hole in the right place.

Finishing the Job
Here’s are a few notes about this part of the job. This is mostly just boasting and meandering observations, so you can skip on to the next section if you want. It has pictures and video and descriptive text and stuff.

• Somewhere, I measured something wrong. According to the design I made, the ramp was supposed to be 15.5" wide. I’m glad that before I started cutting boards, though, I measured the distance between the uprights: 17". I didn’t want 1.5" of play between the ramp and uprights, so made an executive decision: the ramp would be 16.5" wide. My guess is that extra inch is from the 2" x 4" boards not really being 2" x 4".
• My technique for placing the boards on the ramp worked perfectly. By the time I had cut all the 2" x 4" boards I had bought, I had 28 16.5" pieces, each 3.5" wide. The ramp is 144" long. So that means I had 46" of gap space (144 – (28*3.5)) I had to distribute. You have no idea how proud of myself I am for remembering there would be only 27 gaps to divide this space into, not 28. So individual gaps would be 1.7" (46 / 27) wide, meaning the total distance from the left edge of one board to the left edge of the next board would be 5.2". On my ruler, that’s close enough to 5 1/4" to call good. I marked increments of 5 1/4" on one 12′ board, clamped the two 12′ boards together, then used a t-square to draw a line across both boards together, so any little errors I made in measuring would be represented on both boards, keeping things even.
• Things seem much bigger inside than outside. As I built this teeter, I kept asking myself if those 12′ boards were too long. I’d look at the way I couldn’t stand them upright in my garage because they hit the (high) ceiling. When I finally finished the teeter and assembled it in the backyard, suddenly that 12′ ramp looked just right.
• Why the hole is offset 4" instead of 3". I had planned to offset the hole by three inches, but — of course — there was a big knot intersecting the point the hole would go. Knowing that I didn’t want to bore a big hole overlapping a knot, I moved the hole location an inch to the left. In practical terms, that means it takes an inch longer before the teeter flips over, and you have an inch less rollout at the end.
• My wife has a good eye. As I was about 2/3 of the way done building the ramp, my wife came out into the garage, looked at the hole in the ramp, looked at the base, and said, "Hm." I hate it when she says that. She then pointed out that the lateral bracing I had put at the top of the diagonal bracing would get in the way of the ramp — it would be impossible to put the ramp on the low setting the way I had it. It only took about ten minutes for me to shift that bracing down about three inches, but I’m glad she pointed this problem out while I still had everything in the garage, not once I had it out in the yard.

Take a Look
Just before dark, it was done. It takes two adults to lift and move each part, but my wife was game to help. Here’s how it looks when I sit on the ground and take a picture so it looks as steep, long, and imposing as possible.

And here’s what it looks like when you’re approaching it:

And, to give you an idea of how high the ramp goes, here’s me standing by it this morning, with the ramp at the high setting. I’m 5′8", and the top of the ramp is higher than my head. Not that this end of the ramp is still going to be pointed up by the time you get to it, but you can’t help but wonder as you’re riding….

First Ride
A little bit nervous, I opted to put it on the low setting for the first few tries. Click here for a video (in YouTube) of my very first ride on the Teeter.

And here’s a video from the front.

Nattering nabobs’ predictions notwithstanding, it worked beautifully. Solid as a tank, too. I daresay Al Maviva and Big Mike could ride a tandem over this thing (which, by the way, I would pay $50 to see)without the teeter breaking. I would not vouch for the status of the tandem, however.

More Fun This Morning
As promised, some friends — Brad, Gary, Botched — showed up this morning to try out the teeter.  Starting with the low setting, we rode it a few times, getting a feel for it. I was a little nervous because — not wanting to be shown up by my friends — I was riding my singlespeed today, which is fully rigid. Things went great, though.

And then I got cocky.

Here’s a bit of advice: no matter how many times you ride a teeter, don’t ride it casually, and especially don’t ride it casually at low speed. Here’s me, suddenly realizing I’m not going fast enough. You can see I’m veering left:

And here’s me, after rolling off the left edge before I hit the bottom of the ramp, causing me to stack up and endo from a pretty decent height:

Now Higher
So what’s the proper response to a painful fall (though not too painful, thanks to nice soft grass)? Raise the fulcrum! Here’s me rolling off the bottom of the ramp, now much steeper, demonstrating that I’m a "get back on the horse" kinda guy:

And here’s a much better picture of Brad riding this steeper and higher ramp:

You want to know what’s going through Brad’s head in this picture? It’s this: "I’m more than eight feet in the air and only three feet from the end of the ramp. Is this thing going to start going down sometime soon, or should I bail right now before this gets worse?"

And now video: Here’s Brad, riding the Teeter set at the high level. Scary!

Botched showed up for the ride, um, ill-equipped. That is, he had no helmet, no bike shoes, and no bike. Kindly, I loaned him my bike and told him to give it a whirl anyway. Here’s Botched, making a tentative roll up the ramp.

He then bailed out by riding the bike backward down the ramp.

Yes, really.

Here’s my question: If you have the skill to ride a bike up a ramp, stall, and then ride it back down the ramp backward, why don’t you just ride the whole stinkin’ ramp?

I believe I posed this very question to Botched, though I may also inadvertently have called him a coward somewhere in there. Here’s his reply:

So What’s Next?
I don’t really want to leave this in my backyard. It was fun to build and it’s fun to ride, but I want to share it. What I’d really like to do is make this part of Lambert Park, a great little mountain bike park near where I live. If anyone in the Utah area knows the right people to make this happen, let me know. Or if you know of another good place this could go without getting destroyed or getting people into trouble, let me know.

As for me, I had a blast building this thing. I’m already thinking about what my next mountain bike stunt project will be.

Stuff gets in my head. And once stuff gets in my head, it tends to displace pretty much everything else. Which is my way of saying that once I decided I really would make a mountain bike teeter, that’s been the focal point of my existence.

And I’m having a lot of fun building it.

Change In Plans
You know, nobody says they’re a big fan of designing by committee, so how come so many things get designed by committee? In the case of my teeter, the committee started designing because I asked them to. So, uh, my mistake. I’m pretty much going with my design, in spite of the dire predictions handed down by Very Experienced and Knowledgeable People.

That said, I have made some changes to the design. Specifically:

• I made the base wider: At 48" wide, the base is now nearly square.
• I made the pillar shorter: I really liked the idea of having three levels for the teeter, but realized as I was looking down at my feet while riding: the lateral distance between the outsides of my feet may well be more than 15.5". So when set at the lowest level for beginners, beginners wouldn’t ride it anyway, because the pillars in the center would be in the way. So I went with 36" pillars and two levels. This is still a plenty steep ramp, and when set at the lower level, the pillar will only be an inch or two above the level of the ramp — lower than the pedals ever get.
• I beveled the ends of the ramp: Actually, I always planned to do this, but the plan reflects that now.

If you’re interested in downloading and viewing this design in its 3D glory using Google’s free "Sketchup" 3D design program, you can see it from any angle, zoom in, and so forth. Click on the picture below to go to the page where you can download this diagram.

Getting to Work
I generally have a strange reaction to building stuff: I get stressed out, nervous, and very, very snippy. This hasn’t happened while building the teeter. I think it’s because I had already designed and built it on paper, so wasn’t as worried that when I started working on it, I’d discover there was a fundamental problem with my idea.

So planning before building has its benefits. Who’d have imagined?

Also, I’m not building this for anyone, and I don’t have a deadline. It’s just for me. So if it turns out to be a total disaster, I make kindling, and nobody’s the wiser. (Except all of you Fat Cyclist readers, who are going to have fun at my expense whether this thing turns out perfectly or horribly, horribly wrong, so what’s the difference?)

So yesterday I got Gary (everyone should have at least one friend with a truck) to give me a ride to Home Depot to pick up materials, and then my son and I got to work.

You know what happens if you use a table saw to cut out four different notches in the 4" x 4" posts you’re using as the base a saw-blade-width at a time? Two things:

• Your forearms get tired from pushing the board over the blade hundreds of times.
• You finally get over that terror of the table saw you’ve had your whole life.

Cutting a 45-degree angle with a table saw isn’t easy, either. My next tool purchase is definitely a miter saw.

You know what’s mysterious? It’s mysterious that a 3/4" pipe won’t fit through a whole drilled by a 1" bit. Which means I made a trip to the hardware store for a 1 1/4" bit, through which the pipe fits kind of loosely. So I drilled a hole with the 1 1/4" bit through an extra piece of wood, which I’m going to take to Home Depot and see if a 1" pipe fits through. I figure a snugger fit is better.

Here are all the pieces, laid out and ready to assemble.

And now here’s the completed base, 2/3 of a 5lb box of wood screws later:

And a view from a little higher above:

You can see that wherever it made sense, I used metal brackets to reinforce where the wood’s joined. Also, I’m very pleased with my idea of using an elbow and short section of pipe at each end of the pivot. The short section of pipe is used as a handle, making it easy to twist the elbow section on and off for when you want to move the ramp up or down.

This sucker’s heavy. I can move it myself, but not easily. And feels sturdy, too. Though I’m sure it’ll collapse into splinters as soon as I take it outside.

What’s Next?
Now my son and I need to build the ramp. That’s going to be a lot of work: Measure, cut, and drill ~30 slats, then glue and screw them onto the top of the 2"x6"x12′ boards. We might finish tonight, but will more likely finish tomorrow.

And then it’s teeter riding time. Anyone want to come try it out?

PS: One more question for the committee: I want the ramp to always come down on one side, so it’s resting firmly in place as you approach, then goes back down to its original position once you get off the ramp. I figure an easy way to do that is to have the pivot point of the ramp off-center. Right now, I’m figuring 4" off sounds about right, but that’s arbitrary. Any thoughts on how far from the middle of the ramp the hole ought to go?

Here’s what I saw during my mountain bike ride at Tibble Fork (10 minute drive from my house) this morning before work:

So, how was your morning?

You know what I miss about Seattle? I miss riding with Bob. Trying — and often, succeeding — those constructed stunts on Tapeworm, Mr. DNA, and Cropcircles with Bob was good stuff.

The stunt I liked best of all was the Teeter. Back before I moved out to Utah, I said that I was going to build one. And I’ve kind of kept building one the back of my mind for months. The thing is, I haven’t been able to find any plans or diagrams that I really liked, because I have something really specific in mind for my Teeter:

• It’s got to be long: I’m thinking 12′.
• It’s got to be adjustable: I want it to be a simple matter for two guys to be able to move the pivot point up or down, so beginners won’t get too intimidated by the incline, and experts won’t be bored by it.
• It’s got to be portable: I’m hoping to find a place to donate this once I’m finished, so I want to be able to move it. Also, I like the idea of people being able to move stunts around, chaining them together in different ways.
• It’s got to be fun to build with my son: My 10-yr-old loves building stuff, and we have a great time working on projects like this together. I need this to be something he can be co-owner of.

So last night, frustrated with what’s evidently a total absence of well-conceived Teeter plans on the Web, I started looking for some free software I could use to plan my own (my pencil-and-paper drawings were totally useless).

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this, but Google’s got a nice little 3D drawing program called "Sketchup." And like everything else Google does, it’s free. (Side Topic: I know that a lot of Google’s business model is based on advertising, but has anyone ever actually clicked on one of those ads or made a purchase decision based on one? I mean, I love my free stuff, but free CAD software? Sheesh.)

So I downloaded it and started to play.

Four Hours Later…
OK, I won’t say that this was the easiest thing to use. But hey, free’s hard to argue with. And once I start on something, I tend to get a little obsessive. So, around 2:00am this morning, I finished my Teeter design:

I admit, I am not a professional draftsman, and this was in fact the first thing I’ve ever made with a CAD program. But I’m pretty pleased. Here are the essentials:

• Length: 12′
• Plank Width: 15.5"
• Maximum pivot height: 40"
• Minimum pivot height: 36"

If you’ve downloaded and installed Sketchup, you can download and open the 3D model I created here.

I’m excited to start building this thing. So excited, in fact, I’ve got my shopping list all ready to go.

Fatty’s Teeter Shopping List

• 4 2" x 6" x 12′ boards (2 for plank rails, 1 for diagonal column supports, 1, for columns)
• 4 2" x 4" x 12′ boards (3 for riding planks, 1 for base and ad-hoc strengthening)
• 1 4" x 4" x 8′ board (for base)
• Coarse sandpaper
• Wood screws
• 16 sets 4" x 3/8" Bolts, nuts, and washers
• 8 sets 6" x 3/8" Bolts, nuts, and washers
• Loc-tite
• Wood glue
• 1 1" x 2′ pipe
• 2 elbow connectors for 1" pipe
• 2 short bars for 1" pipe
• 1 1" drill bit
• 1 3/8" drill bit
• 4 clamps

What’s Left?
My son and I are going to get started on this thing tonight. I’d like to finish it by next Monday. I admit, I’m nervous. I don’t even know how many times I’ve set out to build something and have it fail in a major way. And while I am not a anxious guy in most circumstances, when I’m woodworking, I can get pretty high-strung — mistakes are hard to reverse, you know?

There are a couple things I plan to do that don’t show up on my design here. I’m going to use my bandsaw to round out the corners at the ends of the totter, so it’s not a hard corner digging into the ground (which will be my lawn, at least initially). I also plan to put a couple of braces laterally, joining opposing diagonal braces. I don’t know if that’s necessary — probably overkill — but I expect it can’t hurt.

If you’re a woodworking kind of guy and see serious problems with what I’ve designed here, let me know. But be quick (and nice) about it, K? I want to get going on this.

Oh, and if you happen to know of some really great teeter plans that are on the net or in your top-left drawer at the bikeshop you work at, please keep that information to yourself. Too late now. Thanks!