The Art of the Avalanche: Starting a PHD

 

Hi

I have been reading a few books lately and these are Dr No by Ian Fleming and My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin. 

You might be wondering what these books have to do is starting a PhD and and the first answer is that there's a quote in My Career Goes Bung. Miles Franklin says "I rebel with all my living force against sitting down under life as it is".

So basically I could be retired, and  I could be doing more things that I want to do immediately, but I would like to grab life by the neck and and shake it and do as much as much that's interesting and worthwhile as I can. For now, for me that is a maths education Phd.

So getting in to even start a Phd is no easy task.  Basically you need to convince an entire University department that it's worth while taking you on and I've had a few attempts at this. There was a fairly serious one at the beginning of the year.  It's September now and in February I was engaged with a supervisor who was willing to take me on but then that fell through at the department level.

 It was explained there weren't enough resources to take me on. So I had to get over that but I gained experience negotiating with departments, and writing about my work to the supervisor. As well I read a few education papers.

During the year, I engaged with a few other academics from different places and didn't get anywhere except for learning a bit more (topology!) But just in the last 3 months my friend Simon Batterbury sent an email on my behalf to Federation University. And he actually managed to start something!

 I think the first email sent to a University department or academic is a bit like throwing a rock at a cliff face and attempting to start an avalanche. Now if you throw a rock at a cliff face you may not start an avalanche, but you may see  a few small rocks falling off the cliff face in response.

But what you actually want to do is have those falling rocks fall on other spots and have more rocks falling in response, and eventually you will get a collapse, and you will get something happening, a movement of department,  and the end result is a phd candidature.

 This candidature can be seen just as much as a problem as a solution. You are actually under that avalanche and you'll have to dig your way out!

 Anyway Dr No has a bit of a avalanche scene near the end, or as the climax, where James Bond basically tips birdshit over the evil doctor know and causes his death.  So I was thinking of the PhD in in avalanche terms already and Dr. No sort of cemented the idea in my head.

 So anyway we'll see how I go in the next 3 years. Wish me luck!

Moulton from Broadford part 1

 

New and old Sturmey Archer AW Hub controllers

Just a bit.....

agricultural in ....

some  ........

places.

Hi

Last week I saw an ad on Facebook marketplace for an interesting bike, and thought I might buy it, although I don't really need another bike! I waited till I had got rid of some commitments, and after that the bike was still for sale so I contacted the seller, and a day later I have the bike back in Melbourne with me. Its been good fun to work on sofar, with a stuck cotterpin the only real problem.

To justify buying it I am planning to offload all my Peugeot NS7 folding bike stock - that is 1 bike and about 3 frames, 4 wheels and numerous parts.

Washing the drive side crank ......

while trying to extricate the other one.

Here are a few repair photos. The cranks are different on each side, one crank was wobbly, and on the other crank the cotter pin is stuck. I have oiled it and waggled it with vicegrips and hit it with a hammer to try to get the $%^& of a thing out. Excuse my french.

Update August 18

After realising I didn't have a good gearcable, or tyres or tubes for the Moulton, I ordered some online, and paused work on it for a while. By then I had removed, cleaned and regreased the bottom bracket. So by today the tyres and tubes had arrived, I did some final frame cleaning and fitted the pedals and chain and front brake. After that I wanted to head out on a HUGE trip to the op shop to buy my dad some tracksuit pants, but only made it round the corner and the chain started clunking, so I finished the shopping on my recumbent. The bike as is shown below. I've stolen my very best old-style-seat-with-saddle-bag from another bike and put it on the Moulton. Will keep working on it!

Cruzbike 26 / 20 quick review

 

Drivetrain

Folded. It takes about 20 seconds to go from full size to this, which fits easily in the back of my Kia Rio hatchback. Best to carry it with the wheels closest to the body as that's the side with the weight.

A few views of the......

bike and me on the....

Great Ocean Road near Aireys Inlet.

Hi

After my last post on the Cruzbike, I bought a 406 disc brake front wheel, with the intention of trying it on the back of the bike. A few nights ago, I solved a small valve problem on the wheel, fitted it, and hey presto, a 26 / 20" Cruzbike. The main idea with the small back wheel was to make room for a tailbox, but it has the effect of raising the bottom bracket making it marginally faster. Also, the front wheel trail is increased and the centre of gravity lowered slightly - all steps in the right direction.

The bike is comfortable and fun to ride, and I managed to get up a reasonably steep hill on it. But I'm wobbly up hills (the bike is moving bottom bracket so pedalling affects steering) and wouldn't want to try riding hills on busy roads or narrow bike paths - it could be a bit dangerous.

It was easy to fold the bike to put it in the back of my car. Remove the bolt at the top of the shocker and the rear swingarm folds down. Then the front wheel swings round and you have a package that's fairly tall and narrow that fits fine in the back of my car. When folded, the drivetrain is in the centre of the bike which is great, the oily bits are kept safely tucked away.

Overall the bike is nice to ride but lack of luggage storage is an issue for now. I have been promised a Radical pannier (thanks Pete!) and may still fit a new seat and tailbox. Looking forward to a few more rides.

Switcheroo and upgrades.

 

Ouch! Uri Geller I told you not to think about my trike! (Actually the result of an accident 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Damaged trike

Bike with racing tailbox before....

tailbox swap

allowed me to collect a considerable amount of groceries. Everything on the list plus a big tub of olives.

Hi

A few weeks ago, I was involved in accident on my leaning trike, and that left me with cuts and grazes all down my left side, a damaged trike, and inability to ride for a few weeks. Now (thankfully) I'm just about recovered. 

So my trike with the load carrying tailbox won't go for now, so I have installed a load carrying tailbox on my bike, and will do a few more mods and swaps and upgrades over the next few days. For now it has been great to get out on the bike and do a decent amount of shopping, not in pain, and not sweating over luggage space. will report more later.

Tailbox Upgrade May 7. Today I started upgrading one of my all-timber tailboxes. This is the one that was on the leaning trike shown 2nd picture down. Here is the list of mods I will do.

1. Block off hole in base of tailbox. Things tend to get lost in the hole (keys, bike parts).

2. Keep side-panels on with screws. As described in this post, when I first designed the timber tailbox I wanted to have the timber side panels to be swappable for lighter corflute versions. But now I have specialist aero and load carrying tailboxes, and the timber box can just be made as strong and as good for load carrying as possible.

3. Put a bit of padding under the box lid so it doesn't rattle.

4. Seat padding. The 'box is ok without it but it makes things more comfortable and secure.

5. Leather belts as tailbox lids. This allows the lid to be raised a bit to hold more stuff.

6. Hole in tailbox lid for carrying milk crates. That's all I can think of for now!

1. This is blocking off the.....

bottom of the tailbox with a piece of timber so luggage doesn't get lost down there.

2. Found a few cockroaches who were passengers when

converting the sidepanel fastening from foldback clips to screws.

This should be stronger and more secure than...

the old version of fasteners shown here.

Update May 8: Here is today's progress.

Attached the lid with extendable straps. This helps when carrying loads like a few bike wheels. Also stick on velcro stops the lid from rattling. The lid at the bottom is a template I copied.

Box closed up. There are a few unvarnished patches on the outside, and that's where I sanded back the new screws which poke out a bit from the inside.

The sort of job the tailbox does. This is an early version of the tailbox I'm working on now. The lid is loosed a belt-notch to better accommodate the wheel.

Speedwell Rescue

 

As traded, this was the bike on april 9 with steel wheels and cranks.

New temporary home at Wecycle until....

it is sold or.......

given to someone who needs it.

Left over parts from the donor vehicle include this nice shifter.....

and brakes, brake levers, stem and derailleur.

Hi  

Pics from my latest bike resto project. From Stu a few doors down, I had a large frame vintage racing bike with 27" wheels but frame damage around the headstem. And I put that aside and waited for a bike to come along that I could steal the bits for. 

That happened on April 9 when a dumped Speedwell Classique 10 bike came up on the local Good Karma network for free. This bike may be Australian made, its certainly from an Australian company.

I was able to swap over cranks and wheels from the damaged bike to make the bike viable. Brake levers and a seatpost came from the shed. Cranks are a particular improvement, they went from steel cotter pin to aluminium square taper in one go.

Today I rode the bike up to the Wecycle charity where it will be passed or sold on. Often I'd ride 2 bikes up to Wecycle and ride one back, but I'm still recovering from a bike accident and taking things easy, I caught the tram home. Still have a few nice bits and pieces from the vintage bike.

Regards  Steve Nurse

Regards

Steve Nurse

A Cruzbike

 

ex-seat support (not that great)

New custom seat nuts

Drilling seat nuts before final tapping

This Quest has Y-frame mountain bike DNA, this is the right back dropout which still has a part derailleur hanger thingy.

Seat is on the floor

Seat nuts before final drilling.

Fossicking in the shed found a 27mm seatpost and a bent bit of steel which will serve as back seat supports later.

Seatpost

Brought the Cruzbike home using one of my load bikes and with the help of our train network. It had an electric motor and controls so was too heavy to break up and carry on the load bike.

Hi

Las week, I posted about bringing a free Cruzbike home, and have since started work on restoring it to action.  It was in fairly ordinary condition and had an electric motor fitted, and I have set about restoring the bike. I texted my friend ebike Ben, and he came and picked up all the electric bike stuff (front wheel with motor, controller, throttle, display).

The top photo shows some of what was in place as a seat support, obviously complete crap!

Anyway, mounting the seat is about 80% of the work of getting the bike on the road and I'm about halfway through fixing that.  Will report more later.

PS Years ago I made several moving bottom bracket bikes a bit like this one, mostly from a Cruzbike kit I had. When I get around to it, I will add some more links, but here is one for starters.

Regards Steve Nurse

Update May 27, 2023

Sorted through my chainrings on the way to finding a 40 tooth biopace model.

Seat support: brazed but not painted

Some good progress over the last few days. I brazed the seat support together, and cleaned up the bike removing existing front derailleur, shifters, and 9 speed cassette. I have now replaced the cassette with an 7 speed, and have a 8 speed Sunrace CSM 680 11 - 42t cassette on order. 

 Soon I plan to install a single chainring, and my quick calc for the tooth count is

N = 52* (243 / 320) which is the number of teeth on my 20" single chainring recumbent times the ratio of wheel radii between my 20" and new 26" cruzbike. So about 40. And my shed fossicking revealed a 40t Biopace chainring, so I will use that for starters. 

Getting down all the chainrings has been good, I have been able to sort them and recycle old ones I don't need including steel cotter pin models.

Regards Steve

Later on: Later I was able to fit a chain and non-indexing shifter to the bike along with the biopace (its only slightly oval and not very exciting really) chainring. I went for a ride and "conquered" an entire block without putting my foot down.

This was quite an achievement as I came off my bike less than 2 weeks ago, still have all the scars to prove it and have just got down to 1 bandage after having about 5 at the start.  So no great ambitions for riding just yet, but I will slowly tweak things so it rides better. I have ordered a disc brake back wheel for example so it has 2 functioning brakes!

Will report more later.

Update May 10

2 new parts have come in for the bike, that is a back wheel from Whites Bikes, and a 11 - 42t Sunrace 8 speed CSM680 cluster. As well I picked up a brake disk and an asymmetric chainring from a bike shed where I volunteer. For the moment the chainring and cluster are parked on the kitchen table as I deal with the (slightly!) more important issue of having adequate brakes on the bike. At the moment the disk rubs on the brake calliper so some sort of back wheel rejig is needed.   

Bike shed mission for extra parts. See also this post .

Need to sort this out, meanwhile

Some other parts are.....

parked and being

incorporated into temporary sculpture on the kitchen table. (Mary did this one and started the whole silly sculpture thing)

Update May 13

Yesterday I managed to sort out the back wheel using a nut of the right thread found in the shed, and a washer. I thinned out the right hand side lock nut and added a washer to the left hand side and then hey presto, no more disc rubbing and I was able to keep the axle protrusion the same on each side.  Then a bit of tuning, repositioning brakes etc, and the bike looked good to go.

So today I actually tested it, riding mostly on paths but occasionally on road. I almost made it up one challenging uphill gravelly section (I can't manage the "Deep Rock Hill" on my Fred Bikes because there's not much weight on the front wheel) but couldn't get into the lowest gear so failed. A mission for another day. Overall the bike is very comfortable and nice to ride, but my only luggage storage is in zipped up pockets, and that limits ride potential.

Meanwhile, the sculpture embellishments are continuing on the kitchen table. Eventually I will use the new sunrace cluster (on a bike, who'da thunk it!) and have to bong it all down but will probably replace it with something equally ridiculous.

Bits from the shed yielded a narrow wheel nut, seen on its axle in the foreground. The container at the back is a sample electric motor cowl from my time at CMG / Regal .

New parts ready to add to wheel axle.

New parts on wheel axle.

In the wild, part of a

3 or 4k off road circuit used to

test the bike. Autotimer not smart enough to focus properly.

Meanwhile the sculpture embellishment continues.

Update May 14

Today I tuned the gearing so I was able to get into the lowest gear and went for a test ride on the same circuit as yesterday. It was hard work, but I was able to conquer the Deep Rock hill this time. The cruzbike has a bit more weight on the front wheel than my Fred bikes.  Still a nice bike to ride and it was nice to get out in some late Autumn, late afternoon sunshine.

Update May 19

As I posted on facebook today, "Went out for a ride yesterday, it was about a 10k flat ride on bike paths, and a fun ride. I could overtake most regular bike riders but some of them then felt the need to overtake me back again, which they did. But on my homemade bike with aero tailbox on the same stretch its mostly no contest, I overtake and never see them again. Weight distribution is different too, I can "endo" the Cruzbike but not my homemade bikes. regards steve"

So really the restoration process of the bike is over and now I want to do some modifications and improvements but will save that for a new post.