Month: June 2020

Landing lights lead the way

Yuko’s mother lives with us. She can still get around the house herself but suffers from dementia, sometimes a lot worse than other times.

She is no longer able to work the TV and AC remotes, etc. (See some of my other posts for the workaround we did for this.)

A couple of months ago, she got up in the night to use the bathroom, and couldn’t find her way back to her bedroom, so was wandering in the hall till Yuko realized something was wrong, and went downstairs and helped her back to her room.

This happened two nights in a row. I tried to think of some way to help, and remembered the “emergency lighting on the floor” that they always talk about on airplanes before takeoff.

You can buy similar products online, so I bought a string and drew a path from her bedroom door to the bathroom. We leave them on night and day. She has not lost her way since.

Independence in taking medicine

Another simple one for care givers out there. Yuko’s mom has to take medicine but can’t see very well.

The more she can do on her own though, the better she feels and the better off we all are. We used to place a couple of tablets in her hand so she could take them, but by the time they got to her mouth usually one had rolled off her hand and fallen to the floor.

We finally solved this by putting a small dish on the table. She can see the dish and feel around to pick up the tablets, which she will always do one at a time with her thumb and forefinger, which means they make it to her mouth.

Problem solved.

New brakes

Working from home means even less exercise than I was getting when I was in Tokyo. At least there I had the walk with the commute.

So, I decided I needed to do at least some sort of exercise. For me, riding a bicycle is about the only exercise that I actually enjoy. Of course, my really nice bike that I bought is stuck in my apartment in Tokyo, so I pulled out my Miyata out of the plastic shed around the back of the house.

I hadn’t ridden it in a while, but I have the urge every once in a while so it wasn’t in totally bad shape. The years have in fact taken a bit of a toll though. I could tell the brake shoes had hardened up, so I figured I would just order some new brake shoes. Sorry, Shimano doesn’t make these any more. They have a period of 7 years that they keep parts for stuff they don’t make anymore, but I must have bought this bike in 1991 or 92 or so. (It even says “made in Japan”!)

So, after several failed attempts to make other brake pads work, and after a LOT of research, I found a set of Shimano cantilever brakes (the entire assembly, both front and rear) that I hoped I could make work.

Never having done this before, it took some doing, but I in fact got them installed and they seem to be working. In case anyone is interested, the “new” brakes I got are Shimano model BR-CT91.

Also, note that while Shimano sells a FRONT and REAR part for these, I checked around and everyone was saying that the hardware is exactly the same–only the brake shoes are swapped. Since the REAR part was out of stock, I got two FRONT assemblies and swapped out the shoes left for right, and can’t see any issues. (Honestly on this model, even the shoes appear to be interchangeable.)