big pink too

Billy, it's time. Big pink 2 is waiting for you, just need to add some tires.

For those that don't know Billy, he only rides pink bikes. He's weird that way. This one has been a long time in the making, mostly waiting for belt drive parts from Spot (which I still don't have). So we just built it up with a chain for now, till I can procure the belt parts.

Pretty darn cool little bike if you ask me, despite the paint! I did a lot of lug shaping to make the sloping top tube work with these long-shen lugs. Had to add about 10 degrees of to each upper lug in order to get the standover he needed.

anyways, I've got a lot more I'd like to get done this weekend, so write at you later.

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post down and out.

Deanwood, I got your seatpost out of your frame, but it's in a couple more pieces than when you brought it to me.
Good news is the frame is fine and ready for a new one.

Next time don't stick a long mtb post in a road frame and leave it there for years!

Good luck to all the kenwoodies and BKB folks up at Chequomegon this weekend. Wish I was up there with you.

If you're like me and stuck in town this weekend you ought to at least come check out the Derailleur show Friday night at the Bedlam Theater. We'll go on about 8:30, and it's a fundraiser, so you can spend guilt-free!

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another day in the right

Made it downtown again today after work, this time just to sight see a little and check out what might be going on the RNC land. Overall, it was pretty quiet. There was a small protest by the Code Pink ladies early on, it looked like a couple of them were arrested (or at least carried away by police) peacefully. I mainly was there to take people pictures, here's some of what I saw (note, there's even a tiny bit of bike content here! click on any picture for big):

Code-pink folks exercising their first amendment rights

This is a typical scene of the protests down there, not riots and tear gas

But the police were ready for riots and tear gas, quite a presence for a few odd protesters

Obvious anarchists here, I ran into Tom and Jen Fitch down there, these two look like trouble to me, check out how Tom's hiding something in his pockets. I'm pretty sure that guy on the bmx bike is part of the scheme too.

There seemed to be a much larger fanatical religious presence today too. They were hanging out by the MSNBC broadcast, I'm sure hoping to get this sign on national TV.

I love the all-encompassing theme of this banner, I wonder if the guy carrying it is included in the "all"?

Code Pink, they sure are everywhere, spreading their message. Props for perseverance.

Don't know what to say about this one, but how can you resist taking a picture

Bike content: saw this sweet recumbent pedicab parked out by Rice park. Didn't get to see it in action though.

Not sure who this is, or who the reporter is, but it was an interesting scene

I had to make sure to ride back home via the river path so that I could get some shots of the fleet that the coast guard brought in to patrol the river. I feel so safe now.

This one is my favorite. I saw these boats running the river Monday but didn't have a camera. I had to chase one down while on my bike to get a good shot of the front and rear guns. Watch out terrorists, we got guys with machine guns on the might Mississippi!

Just walking around downtown you feel a bit unsure of what you're "allowed" to do. There's three cops on every corner all the way across downtown. There's even parked state patrol cars at the freeway exit ramp by my place, which is about 2 miles outside of downtown. Not sure what they're all supposed to be doing though.
The gun boats on the river really do you feel a bit uneasy, especially when your on a bike and trying to photograph them. I could see the crew on one of the boats looking at me through the binoculars, trying to decide if they should wave or shoot me (fortunately they waved).

anyways, next post should have far more bike content. write at you later.

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pinstripe suit convention

So as you may or may not know the Republican National Convention is right here in St. Paul this week. Between Gustav and the RNC you'll be hard pressed to find any other news. Naturally in a very left-leaning twin cities metro area, there are quite a few large protest marches. The first major one being today from the state capitol down the Xcel center. While I'm not a big protester kind of guy, this sort of thing just doesn't happen very often in MN. So when my friend Kate asked if I wanted to go check out the march, I jumped at the chance. It's really sad that pretty much all the news converage focused on the couple of idiots who went out early to break things and make havoc. There were ten's of thousands of people making a great peaceful protest and the few idoits get all the press and make it look like everyone was trying to break windows and damage cars. Sad because that just wasn't the case.

Not a whole lot of bike content here, but I suspect most of my readers tend to lean left and will appreciate some pictures. Thanks to Kate for all the photos! They're roughly in chronological order from the pre-march ralley, then through the march. Click on images to make 'em big.

Nice shirt, there were a lot of good ones.

Homeland security levels finally explained

Iraq. vets for peace

Some dude riding a sweet elephant bike

Gotta love these ladies slogan

Lots of creative costumes

Elephant gittin' it.

Dancing Bush and McCain, hard to beat 'em

protestors of all ages

Bike Builder looking uncomfortable, but rockin' the look.

The march starts, it's truly a sea of people

We though we were in about the middle of the crowd, but later realized we were probably in the front 1/4, there were just a ton of people behind us.

More bike cops than I imagines MN coupld possibly have. All on pretty lame bikes, but all treated us well and with respect. Thanks guys and gals in blue.

The riot cops and "MN peace team" working together. The riot gear really does make these guys look imtimadating.

lots and lots of riot cops. I found it ironic that they were all lined up in front of the Children's Museum main entrance. Watch out kids! I feel sorry for all these people having to be out in all that gear all day in the 90 degree heat.

Click on this one to enlarge and look for all the guys up on the roof of the Xcel

Appearently CNN took over the Eagle St. Grill and literally made it there own. New signage, bus and lots o neon in the windows. odd.

Only tandem I saw, had to lock 'er up to the freedom fence. They put up all this steel fencing to keep people out of the area of the convention.

And finally one really great sign.

I hope to get out more this week just to do some people watching. Hanging out at the Liffey after the march we saw some "unique" people. Can't wait to see more. I'll bring the camera. I'd like to get some shots of the ridiculous coast-guard patrols out on the Mississippi, literally machine guns mounted front and back ready to kill the terrorists! seems like overkill to me, but what do I know.

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back

This one goes out to the Large Fella, since he won't get off my back about not bloging this summer...

I'm really not trying to abandon the blog, but quite honestly I haven't had the time, or more importantly the motivation due to the utter insanity of my life this summer. I won't bore you with details of that, but I think I'm getting back on track and hope to be back to the old bbbb soon.

Anyways, I am actually still making bikes and making progress. Hoping to wrap up another frame this weekend.

A few weeks ago was 8/8/08, which meant an annual party gathering (we've been doing this since 1/1/01 and only have a few more years left!). This year the plan was to camp out at Afton state park and enjoy the merriement found there. Since Afton really isn't that far from my place, I decided to do a mini-bike tour out there. Loaded up my grocery-getter bike with camping gear and headed out on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

It was a great ride out there and back the next day. The bike worked great despite the heave back-end load. I'm really loving this bike for all around transport of lots-o-stuff. At some point I'd like to build a new cruiser style frame for this application, but for now this bike works great.

In other news, I could really use raising some funds here this fall (due to the craziness of life) and I've still got a couple bikes for sale, so I thought I'd pimp 'em here again: (copied from a previous post)



Here's a fun one that's available!

BBC custom 29'er with matching S & S couplers and matching Marathon SL fork!

This bike isn't actually new, it just looks that way. I refurbed and repainted it to have as a demo bike. I suspect it'll end up at One-on-One very soon with a for-sale sign on it.

It's a 21" frame with a 23.75" effective top tube, so it's a big-person bike. I like that it's proportioned basically the same as an 18" 26" wheeled bike, in the pic it's tough to know it's a 29'er.

It's designed to do it all. Currently set up as a singlespeed, but it has a derailleur hanger and full provisions for running gears. Fits nice fat tires, the tires on there are 2.3" Panaracer Rampages!

Pretty sweet build kit on there too, if I do say so myself. Paul's brake and levers, XT spiderless singlespeed cranksetup (with spot ring), super-trick nuke-proof singelspeed wheelset with Velocity Dyad rims, Truvative Team bar and stem, Cane Creek S-6 headset, Raceface post. All the good stuff... If you're one of those folks that like those gear-changing thingy's, I can set it up with gears for you, no problem.

And the paint... It just jumps out at you in the sun light. It's a house of color green pearl over black, looks like a British racing green, but with tons of metalflake to make it pop! Chrome painted in logos and of course a stainless steel headbadge to finish it off.


This stainless lugged bike is available:
It's a 60cm seat-tube x 58 top tube. Sport-touring geometry, email for details.

Artsy seatlug shot.

I'm also wiling to sell my personal 953 road bike:



This one is a 58cm top-tube, 6 degree sloping top-tube, actual seat-tube length is 55cm due to the sloping top tube. Chainstays are 40.5cm, 73 degree parallel angles. It's pretty much a full-on road racer geometry -wise. It's built up with a full campy record 10 carbon kit, reynolds fork, post, stem and wheels. All top-notch, anyone local is welcome to take it for a spin. Email for more pictures and details. $2500 for the frame, or $5000 complete bike. It's like new.

anyways, that's all for now,

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Bucked.

Buck hill got me last week. got me good. Last lap, last half mile or so. Rocked it through a fast, rough downhil singletrack, but just before clearing the last corner my front tire just stopped. Not totally sure why, but it sure happened. I remember flying through the air and the only thought in my head was "don't put your arms out, you'll break them again". So I didn't, I tucked and tried to roll, but landed on my head instead, fortunately in a pile of sand.


I got up pretty quick and noticed I was about 12' away from my bike and on the opposite side of the trail. Brushed the sand off me and was surprized how good I felt. No sharp pains, no broken anything, so I got back on and rolled it out to the end of the race.
After the race I was still feeling ok, face felt a little swollen and I figured I'd be sore the next day. Got some pretty mild road rash on my face, and the bridge of my glasses smashed my nose pretty good. All in all I felt like I got off easy, until the next morning....

Woke up at 4am the next day with the second worst headache of my life. Took some Advil, started to feel better, but that only lasted about an hour. Vision was a little blurry in one eye, so I decided it was time to call the doc. My usual doc sent me to the ER. Sat there for 2 hours only to find out what I pretty much knew, I had a concussion. Not much you can do. Slept a while Friday, but headaches kept me up most of the weekend. On the plus side the worst seems to be past and the vision is totally cleared up.

I finally got the paint done on Billy's bike. Took just short of forever, but I think it came out good. Billy's been the most patient man around and I appreciate it. Hope he likes the bike. Now if Spot would just get the damn belt drive cogs in stock I could finish it up.




I've been on a comutting bike kick lately and spent a couple of hours getting a few old bikes put together in new ways. For todays post I'll show one of them, what I like to call the Browntrager.

I was insprired by Marko and dusted off my old Bontrager Race. I've got a pretty prime off-road commuting route to 3M so I've been jones for a bike suited to this purpose. I wanted a singlespeed but I've got some big dirt climbs and some fast pavement on the commute, so a couple of gears seemed appealing.

I stripped off the stock Bontrager-crowned Judy fork and whipped up a rigid BBC fork more prudent for a 29'er front wheel. Then built up a new rear wheel around a Sram three speed hub. Why not. Sure it's heavy, but it seems pretty robust so far and it's still lighter than a hub, cassette and deraileur. Not to mention I really only needed 2 gears, the third is just a bonus.

The gear ratios on this hub are surprizingly far apart, so my pavement gear is nice and tall compared to my off-road gear. The third gear is almost silly low, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it sometime.

Threw in some snazzy control tech brakes, sugino cranks and the original bontrager stem and post. All in all, a pretty neat bike. Fun to ride too. Not too bad for a bike built from nearly all parts-bin findings.

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