Administrivia and the Spacemaster Folding Bike

My son Ewan at Patrick's 21st.

Spacemaster Folding Bike atop a Meteorite.  No, its not really a Meteorite, just a rock posing as a piece of sculpture.  But Meteorite sounds better and fits in with Spacemaster better. 

Spacemaster Bike

Start of the "Northside Knowledge" ride

Peter Falconer and his solidly built touring bike

Christine (right) at rockwiz at the zoo.

First the Administrivia. When editing my website and attempting to change "Big at the Front" to "Monsterbike" to fit in with this blog page,  I stuffed things up monumentally and lost most of the pictures from my website.  Also made some of the text be highlighted in blue and other pretty colours, and lost my Paypal links.  Fortunately after some diligent editing, most things have been restored to normal, and my somewhat remedial website editing has improved slightly and things are almost restored to normal.

Meanwhile, the bike buying, building and events have continued.  On Tuesday I picked up a rare English "Viscount Spacemaster" folding bike which cost the princely sum of $51 on ebay.  On Saturday I went to the "Northside Knowledge" bicycle treasure  hunt riding the Spacemaster.  There I met an old friend from the Ceres bike shed, Peter Falconer.  Although I had another commitment later in the day, I managed to ride around, gather the answer to a few questions and phone them in to Pete later in the day.  "What is the name of the statue in Victoria Park on Trennery Crescent?, What are the symbols at the base of the rock shown in the above photo? , Who are always welcome at the boatshed near the Fairfield Ampitheatre?

Not sure if Pete's team won but I plan to be back next year, maybe reinforced by a group of eager recumbenteers!

Away from Cycling, my wife Christine and I visited "Rockwiz at the Zoo", we went out to dinner at Christine's brother's place and my son Ewan gave an exemplary speech at his mate Patrick's 21st birthday. Well done Ewan, Well done Patrick, Well done Christine. 

All for now, regards

Steve Nurse

Some Bike Fixing and Bits

Gaffer tape used to make a wheel Disk on a Monsterbike

Corflute Helmet visor.  Daggy but it does a great job of protecting the eyes from sunglare, wind and rain and the face from sunburn.

Panasonic folding bike with newly painted accessories

Handlebars folded on the Panasonic.

This blog post is just a bit of a catch-up. I have been doing a few jobs on bikes and related accessories in the last few weeks amongst other things including editing Huff for OzHpv and posting plans for my Monsterbike online.  As well I got out and about to the Melbourne bikefest opening event and "Better by Bike" Competition.  Will post more about those events later.

For this post, just to give a bit of background to the pictures,
"The Gaffer Tape Wheel Disc" is cheap and cheerful and replaces the previous model.  Seems to work ok, and I can get access to the valve just by peeling back the tape in a marked section.

Twice a week for the last few weeks I have been doing the 70k round trip commute to work by bicycle.  It has been good fun but the sun glare in my eyes in the morning was very bad.  At some points of the trip I was forced to ride along one hand steering and the other shielding my eyes!  Eventually I decided to do something about it.  The Melbourne Bike Share Helmet I bought has had a visor and "extra dagginess" added with a hand made corflue visor.  And its great.  It adds visibility to the helmet, protects my eyes from rain, wind and sunglare and my face from sunburn.  Sort of one of those why didn't I do it ages ago things.

Lastly the Panasonic folding bike which I last wrote about here has had a bit of attention.  No blogged about were a couple of upgrades to the bike like installing a wheel from a Moulton with a Sachs 2 speed duomatic hub and swapping the steerer and bars for a funky sliding / twisting arrangement which makes the bike look cool as well. I think.  Anyway this particular upgrade was just painting the seatpost and other bits with matt black paint from Bunnings.  But the bike has got to the stage where it is ready to be revealed to the world.  Unfortunately it is still a heavy beast, but its funky cheap and cheerful.  Anyway, Christine and Edith are still bitching about who gets to ride it.

So in conclusion, I think that if I went for a ride on the folding bike with my modified bike helmet the reaction would be cool bike, pity about the helmet.

PS OzHPV 2012 Challenge dates announced! Hooray!