Bike Shoes

Bike Shoes, New Shoe is centre

Hi

After more than a year of riding to Uni most days, I've worked out what to do about bike shoes!

At the start, I thought I could ride to Uni in bike shoes like the white one shown above, then change into normal shoes for the day but it didn't work on a couple of counts.  The shoes have a plastic sole which slips on asphalt whenever its wet.  This is no good, and I slipped over a couple of times when wearing them, once right in front of a car in traffic.  So I don't wear these any more.   And changing into normal shoes for the day was no good, sometimes I would forget to change back into the bike shoes at the end of the day, and walk down 2 flights of stairs, then start riding the bike home before realising which shoes I had on, and by then I couldn't be bothered going back.

So bike shoes all day seemed like the answer, and I found some quite good ones from Anaconda .  These are advertised at $100 but on sale they are only $50.00.  I've been wearing the first ones I bought for a while now, but they were starting to look a bit tacky, tatty and even down at heal.  I like to look relatively respectable, so didn't want to keep wearing them all the time, and wandered out to Anaconda and managed to get new ones on sale.  So I started wearing the new ones and threw the old ones out.

But then I changed my mind and partly because I forgot to put the rubbish out one week, managed to retrieve the old shoes in an only slightly smelly state.  I use these shoes for doing gardening, working in the shed etc. now, and as a bonus they still clip in.  See you next year, Mr. Anaconda.

Regards

Steve Nurse

New Steerer Part 4

Steerer under Construction

All done!  ........

But it's a very wet night in Melbourne and I haven't tried it out yet.

Current trike outside my barber's in Richmond. This is the same one shown in this post but with the front wheel swapped to 26" from the previous 20".

Hi

The steerer on my aluminium trike is nearing completion and all the brakes and the gear changer have been connected up.  I've changed the handlebars around a bit as a trial - this arrangement might be easier for a beginner.  I'm not sure how it'll go as I am fairly rusted on to the arrangement I've had on the handlebars previously.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Update May 22

Not raining this morning so I did a quick blockie on the trike.  Had a bit of a false start, I had neglected to put the chain back on!  Anyway, that small obstacle overcome I was able to ride about a k or 2 using the new steerer system.  It works ok, and as usual, I have noticed things that can be improved.  The new handlebar position is surprisingly quite relaxing.  Regards.  SN

New Steerer Part 3

Parts I designed are top right, the other parts will complete the assembly

Part assembled

Lower Part Assembled

Wheel swap was part of the whole job.  The fork with the green top started off as a salvaged part from a 24" bike, the other fork is a new part from Abbotsford Cycles.

Hi

On Thursday a courier arrived with some parts from Hasco Foundry for me.  They were steerer base components, and I'd rung up Hasco a few days previously so was expecting them.   When the courier arrived, my wife and I were talking to a neighbour, then just at the same time a taxi pulled up to take us to a medical appointment.  I signed for the parts, then got in the taxi with them, but in a rush to open them left managed to leave my keys in the taxi.

Fortunately the keys issue was solved by the next day, a call to Silver Top put me on to our driver, who delivered the keys back to us the next day. 

Back to the parts now!  Today (Saturday) I had a chance to work with the parts.  They needed a small amount of smoothing before they could be used and I've jumped in to start installing it on a trike.  This involved a big front fork-swapping job first, and my wooden trike (shown here with 20") now has a 26" front wheel, and seems to be going like sh*& off a stick.  The 20" fork assembly from that trike is going onto the Aluminium trike, and the aluminium trike is getting the new steerer.  All this should be ready in a few days and I will report back then.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Barry Jones at Great Escape Books

The Wonderful Mr. Barry Jones with Nicole from Great Escape Books.

Hi

My wife Christine and I are on the mailing list for Great Escape Books in  Aireys Inlet and the bookshop generally punches above its weight when it comes to getting celebrity authors in for signing and talking about their books.  I've been to presentations by Graham (The Rosie Project) Simsion, Magda (Reckoning) Szubanski and now Barry (The Shock of Recognition) Jones.

Magda's presentation was particularly packed with hundreds of people at the pub for her talk and signing. 

Barry's presentation was about his new book "The Shock of Recognition".  Barry has a string of qualifications, honors and members of societies as long as your arm, any one of which would be enough for most people and his latest book is a comment on the books and music that influenced him.  This goes back to Aristotle and Barry recommends not only to read books such as the Iliad and War and Peace, but which translations are worth reading.  And so it goes on, with Shakespere, Dickens, Opera and so on and so forth.  Just about everything he said was over my head but it was great to see him talk.  Being parked conveniently close to the wine bar helped!  Anyway, I bought one of Barry's books, got his signature on it and a few days ago passed it on to my Dad.

Despite attending one of Melbourne's leading private schools (Melbourne Grammar), I managed to forget everything I'd ever had of a classical education by the time I'd left to do engineering. But my interests in punk rock and surfing continued!

Regards

Steve (An Illustrated Guide to the Cycle Zoo) Nurse