October Vichpv Ride

John Kuljis sports a handlebar moustache
courtesy of his Fraser rowbike.....

which he rode to the Vichpv / Ozhpv
  come'n'try ride October 2011.

The label on the rowbike opens up a
whole new line of insults,
"Hey, Mr Trampoline man etc."

After mucking around with bike on Saturday, I went for a ride on Sunday.  It's easy to ride along bayside beach road and end up at the start of the vichpv / ozhpv come'n'try ride in St Kilda. Bike is going well.  Here is a short video I made.   I can overtake quite a few standard road racing bikes on this stretch of road, especially on the downhills. All for now except to say Happy 21st Birthday, Cameron Shallard!

Making a new bike part 14

The back wheel disc - finally

Hi
We are close to the moment of truth now when I will be riding this bike on a long ride, the Melbourne "Round the Bay in a Day", and I am fiddling around with bits and pieces on the bike.  Firstly and most importantly, I bought a complete new front wheel from Bikes de Ver just down the road in Fairfield.  The original wheel was a bit buckled which meant the V-brakes had to be set quite wide and the brake levers were bottoming out.  Not a good situation.  Anyway, I spent an hour or so at the bike shop and in between other customers coming in, my front wheel cluster was removed and swapped onto a new wheel, a new Schwalbe Marathon tyre was fitted and the new wheel was put on the bike.  The gentlemen in the bike shop are very experienced bike riders and mechanics and were checking out my bike, telling me how they would have done things different, what brazing flux I should have used, and which bits of metal should have been cro-moly instead of mild steel but generally admiring the beast.  I left the old wheel with them for straightening and we had a bit of a chat.  They have a guy who paints bikes so when there is a break of a few weeks when I'm not using the bike, I'll take it up there for painting.

Rotating the handlebar extension to adjust the grip.

     

Still life of nasturshiums with recumbent bicycle.

On getting the bike home I muck around with the handlebars a bit, swapping the side that the extensions are on.  All for now.  Blogging as the mighty Cats (Geelong football club) demolish the Magpies in the grand final football.  Not really a football believer but half the conversations people have in Melbourne this week are about football, you are left out in the cold if you know nothing about it. Really all for now. Bye
Steve Nurse

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

Building a new bike part 12

Shoe Polish used to Waterproof Seat

 Hi

On the weekend, I spent a bit more time finishing the bike off.  To date it's only been used for dinky little rides under 20k or so and not for commuting. The seat was raw plywood without padding and there wasn't a lid on the tailbox and the cables from the handlebars got in the way of the view. 

So I started off the work by taking apart the seat.  The seat base is the only timber part exposed to rain as the rest is under the corflute plastic sheeting.  There wasn't anything conventional to coat the seat base with so I settled on a waterproofing shoe polish which proved to go on quite well.  Unpainted and exposed to water, the plywood seat would  swell and crack.  On my other bike I used fibreglass and epoxy resin to waterproof and strengthen the seatbase, but this bike has slightly thicker (1cm) timber on the base.

Lower Part of the seat Waterproofed

Not much more to add except that the seat padding is Ventisit or ACS10 and comes from EMP Industries.  I've tried to be tidy with all the work on the bike while simultaneously creating as big a mess in the back yard as possible.  Painting is next.

Mess

But fairly tidy bike

Building a new bike part 11

Bike after Change

Hi
Yesterday I spent some time on some bike surgery.  The rear triangle of the bike wasn't as I wanted it as it included a bulky fork crown which ended up inside the tailbox.  This wasn't very good because sealing the tailbox from sprayed up water and removing the tailbox become difficult when the crown is so high.  So the surgery involved chopping off the seatstays, attaching a new crown and rejoining the new bracing part to the old top point of the rear triangle.



















Today I went on the monthly B-Spon ride from St Kilda to Williamstown, a chance to test the new bike surgery and meet a few friends.  During Saturday I had bought an inexpensive tripod and was keen to use it.  I read the camera manual and found out how to do "with me in it" delay photos.

4 front wheel drives in a row, John's Xevon, mine, Warwick's Cruzbike, Robert's

L-plates using the Auto Timer.  I am at the left.

Graham S's Rotovelo: John K holds forth.

Ken Smith on the Trike and Graham S in front of the iconic "cow in a tree"

Steve's Seed Starter Part 2

Seedlings grown without (left) & with the seed starter

Hi

This is a brief report on the seed starter I made a couple of weeks ago.  You will need to got here to see the start of the story.  As I trial, I planted Salad Rocket and Pak Choi seeds in 4 pots of 2 different types.
  One of each of the styles of pots had a "Steve's seed starter" placed on top.  The trial took place during Melbourne's winter with some rain and temperatures from about 13 to 20 degrees C.  So the results can be seen in the photos.  "Seed starter" seeds which have had a protective, warming, humidifying cover over them seem to be doing a bit better than their "kept naked" counterparts.

My wife Christine was not aware of my experiment and planted a Purple Sage bush in one of the pots.  So the second photo is giving mixed messages!  All for now, I will report on further developements.

Not quite co clear cut!