Spotted in Dandenong

Unidentified Flying Object in Dandenong Part 1

Unidentified Flying Object In Dandenong Part 2

My work takes me between 2 workplaces in the outer Melbourne Suburbs of Rowville and Dandenong, and sometimes I borrow a company car for the drive between the sites.  On Wednesday I happened to have my camera with me and managed to take 1 bad and 1 reasonable photo of this Aero - Dude on a bike.  Must admit I didn't know whether to blog about this one, the first photo is so terrible with the cyclist obscured  by a slightly boring company car.

Now I have worked out that people take photos for a couple of reasons: 1. Pictures record events or objects or people at a particular point in time for posterity and 2. Pictures are taken to look beautiful and to demonstrate the skill of the photographer, or sell a product,  and they're manipulated to a greater or lesser extent to look even more beautiful.  When photographers take photos that both record events and look beautiful they are blessed.  But in my case, I don't have a reputation as a photographer and nothing to protect so I will just publish a crap photo of an interesting subject if I want to. 

If you are looking for much better cycling photos, have a look at the photos on this page of ecovelo and all the photos you get to from all the links, like this one. I will try to take good photos.  But if I don't I will just publish and be dammed.  Because I can.

So back to my photos after all this diversion.  The gentleman in the photo could have chosen the duck-down-and-decrease-frontal-area or ride-a-recumbent methods of reducing wind resistance but has gone his own way with an aerodynamic body extension.  And good on him - we need more varieties of bikes and riders! 

Building a new bike part 13

Previous Set of Handlebars

Hi

As discussed in the previous blog entry, work on the bike is not quite done.  Although everything now works fine, I am tweeking and modifying and improving some things.  Handlebars are on the list and I'm motivated to do them this weekend.

So why change the handlebars?   Well there are 4 things I thought of:
* Make the bars lighter
* Make the bars more aerodymamic by running brake and control cables down the tubes.
* Have the bars split to simplify carrying the bike inside a car or on a car roof.
* Remove the need for cable ties on the handlebars.  See here for the way the bike was before.  

The next few photos show the result.  The materials I needed were 1" x 1.2mm wall cro moly tube, 7/8" thin wall steel tent pole, 7/8" steel tube and lock mechanism from kid's scooter handlebars. The way these handlebars are set up, the split in the bars is essential if the bars are to be removed from the bike at all as the zinc plated tentpoles would normally make the bars captive.  The build process could be automated by having the cro-moly tube laser cut.  Here are the photos, any questions please ask!

Regards

Steve Nurse

Videotastic!

A recent, inexpensive but slightly dodgy vhs purchase from the Savers op shop.

Before I launch into the Videotastic! blog post I just want to say that the bike I've written about in the last few posts is on the road and doing well. We are down to the fine adjustment and I plan to build a new set of handlebars and paint the bike, so blog posts are not quite over yet.

Now, just because a technology is old and unfashionable doesn't mean it won't work.  Most VHS videos you buy from op shops and garage sales cost from 50c to $2.00 and there is often a wide choice of videos available.  Normally you've paid so little for them that its fine to just give them back to the op shop when you're done with them.  Most videos of Australian movies I will keep.

So now we come to my latest purchase.  The diabetes foundation's Op Shop chain is called "Savers" and they sell videos very cheaply.  A recent find was videos of the 2003 ABC TV series "Love in the Air" which chronicles the history of Australian pop music featuring the likes of Kylie Minogue, John Paul Young, Molly Meldrum and Crowded House with an occasional glimpses of Hunters & Collectors, Deborah Conway and other slightly more hard-assed rock'n'rollers.  Sherbert does Howzat! Norman Gunston does Howzat! Much to like.  Noticable by their absence were AC/DC, Paul Kelly and INXS.

So anyway I get the videos home and open the cases.  Two of the three videos were still in their plastic wrapper but one was the wrong video altogether as per the photos.  Shock and horror! Caveat Emptor!  This reminds me of the old Meatloaf song "Paid $1.47 for three videos but one of them was the wrong bloody video and I was pissed off.  A lot".  Wait, maybe that wasn't the Meatloaf song I was thinking about.  Maybe that wasn't even a song.  Wait, I've got it now.  "Two out of three ain't bad"

Next post will probably be about bikes and not did-not-quite-live-up-to-expectations-but-was-nevertheless-quite-pleased purchases of videos.  Thank God I hear you say.

Best wishes

Steve Nurse