Ride Lugged

The Steampunk Recumbent

Bicycle Film Festival, on now in NY.

Context at http://jalopnik.com/393601/giant-vulva-bicycle-taxi-is-freudian-wet-dream

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So I have finally gotten around to picking and cropping images from our bike trip/tour from Prague to Vienna.
With some stats, here we go…
(don’t miss the story in the mouseover captions)

Praha – Wien Greenway

(day – summary – start town + time – end town + time – distance, time and avg. speed)

Day 1 – singletrack and lots of hills
27-04-2008 Sunday Praha 12:00 Votice 18:15 88.23k TOTAL
(20 min lunch) 355 min ride time 14.91km/hr

Day 2 – mega hills and dirt paths and fields + wind (20-25km/hr)
28-04-2008 Monday Votice 10:00 Jindřichův Hradec 18:15 82.87 171.10
(40m lunch + 15m + 15m) 445 min ride time 11.70km/hr

Day 3 – 7+ hours in the rain
29-04-2008 Tuesday Jind. H. 9:30 Vranov nad Dyjí 16:45 94.69 265.79
(15m + 45m lunch) 375 min ride time 15.15km/hr
rain from Nová Bystřiice to Vranov

Day 4 – rough and dirt roads and a crazy strong headwind (25-40km/hr)
30-04-2008 Wednesday Vranov 9:30 Lednice 17:45 104.26 370.05
(15m + 45m lunch +15) 420 min ride time 14.89km/hr

Day 5 – walk around the park and forest to relax
01-05-2008 Thursday Lednice rest day

No pics. We rested, walked around a bit, and drank some beer and a lot of wine.

Day 6 – 50% hills and 50% headwind
02-05-2008 Friday Lednice 9:15 Wien ` 17:45 110.24 480.29
(10m + 50m lunch) 450 min ride time 14.70km/hr

(eds. note: my comment was too long for the mouse over so here is the rest: I really have no idea what is going on here. this is only a small part of it too. someone with an internet addiction track this down and comment as to what is going on here!)

Hotel Search with none to be found in all of Vienna, 20+ hotels visited 10 more clled
18:00 Sudbanhof to Praha 21:30 508.70

Day 7 – home and tired
arrive in Praha at 6:30 03-05-2008 and home by 6:45

OK, that’s it. Hope you enjoyed the show (a long time coming. Its hard to do this what with the wife and job and friends visiting all the time and cheap beer in bars.)

-c+v

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Mel has been riding some sugino xd 500s for a while now, but for some reason, no matter what, they get chain suck. not every ride, not every shift, but sometimes it happens. And its not her fault. I rode it and the same thing sporatically happens to me. What gives? Changed the rings, changed the chain… She knows how to shift… Anyway, I have been planning on getting rich and buying her either the white industries road double or a pair of TA cranks, set up as a wide range double. That would be minimum 200 bucks though, 200 bucks I dont have. Unless my couch is holding out on me.

Anyway, digging and shooting shit at freeze thaw the other day, and ran across some SR apex cranks. Never heard of them. Minor interweb research led me to believe they were introduced around 1980-1981, had a short market life, and the world moved onto the soon to be standard 11o BCD we all know and sort of love.

here they are, prior to some time with some polish and steel wool, and they still have all 3 rings

118 BCD, came stock with 48/46/28 rings, looked to have a low Q, used standard bolts, standard crank puller, SR made them so they were probally cold forged… nice finish and low wear despite the years in a dust pile. I traded a salsa stem for them, made them a wide range 46/28 double, and slapped them on Mel’s Atlantis.

they look sharp I think. more elegant than the sugino cranks. lighter, lower q.

Ahh lower Q factor. Mel doesnt really know or care about Q factor. But we went for a ride yesterday, and she said something like “why does my bike feel so fast?” also, perhaps more bizarre: “why do i feel more stretched out?” well, didnt know Q did that…. But check out the tread photo:

if this were the 1990s, and it was a basketball game and not a bike part set up thing, and you had made a basket from say, 3 yards beyond the 3 point line, you would say booyah.

OK what else?

Sorry, this post will just go on and on and on and on.

Mel hasnt been on a mtn bike for a while. Last summer. Like me. I suck, I bet she does too. Logs? Ahhhh! Ok so we took a cue from Rob’s Christine course. And set up some obstacles.

start with a rock garden. rock and brick garden that is. you cant not hit some rocks, its a good thing.

log. not big, not small, just right.

log pile with easy finish. for now.

really annoying square edged stutter bumps. ratchet pedal. ratchet!

tiny north shore thing. for balance and confidence building. ends in a drop off.

said drop off. note quality construction.

ends with a teeter totter. easy, but fun. to come: bigger logs, more rocks, a jump. Mel likes jumping.

What else?

Our power went out a while ago, and I decided to try to make an olive oil lamp. I used a tiny glass jar, a rag for a wick, olive oil, and a coat hanger. It worked pretty well, for a while. Then I dont think the kink in my hanger was tight enough. The flame just kept creeping closer to the olive oil.

would cino cinelli hate on me?

I’ve been working on yard salads: using mostly stuff from the yard to put in wraps, have for dinner, etc. I have added dandilion greens now, but this is what i generally use.

I’ve been reworking some images into quadtone images. Here is a sample image, in quadtone and a link to the flickr gallery where more live.

for all you lazy sods who didnt make it, (everyone) here are some pics from my recent thesis show. you know, you could make up for it by buying something.

visualization of the dirt road database: different colors of lichen (for different road surfaces) is flocked to screen captures of google maps data. you are looking into a plexi box.

impossible to shoot the entire show in one wack.  here, left to right, we see the edge of the models, the log, the photos, the huge mylar drawing (75 feet by 2 feet), the dirt data, more photos, the top of the E, and a piece i hatched on the spot that was a full scale realization of one of the models.  there is anouther wall of models with a lichen drawing, and a huge wall of drawings too.  

this was originally a video, but the messy artifact is sexier

the wodr table, cory’s design.  soon to be a dinning room table

a series of models and macro photos dealing with actions within the landscape.  the wall drawing is flocked lichen again.

who’s buyin’?

So you may have seen a post last year about some training obstacles I set up in my backyard to help Christine improve her bike handling skills. This year I added another rock/log pile for her to crawl over and she tried it out today. Here’s the shots…

The course overall…over one pile, around the tree, and over another pile…(while dodging the bushes and clothesline)

Upclose of the older pile…

Christine on the approach…

Up and over…

This little training course in our backyard is an excellent lunch break escape…it’s really improving her bike handling skills and more importantly, her confidence.
Thanks to Casey for the bike on loan.
Please don’t let the fork comments outweigh the cheers of encouragement for Christine’s riding.
Rob

So Hutch ventured around on the wooden velociped today. This was the first time he actually spent more than thirty seconds on it. He pittered around the yard and driveway for like a half an hour! He even tackled the obstacle course I set up for Christine’s mountain bike training in the backyard (I’ll reveal those pics in another post). He went all over the place and I was almost more amazed by watching how the thing teaches balance than I was by what he was doing on it.
Here’s some shots….trying to be artsy…

The velociped power…

Finding his stationary balance point…

Posing on his bike…

Motoring around the yard…

Flashing the look…

Tackling the obstacle course…

I’ve got some video footage of him rolling around too. I’ll post the link to it in the comments section once I get it up on my YouTube channel. He definitely makes us proud.
MOTIVATOR!
Rob

so the 24 hours of big bear is coming up. 2 months in which to lose 50 lbs, learn how to grind for 2 hour internals, and to make incredibly complicated lists and prepatory plans. last year i took a series of steps to make life more comfortable at the camp, including but not limited to: bringing a giant blue tarp that took the better part of a day to set up, and then took the rest of the day and night to maintain due to high winds, a hollow core door table with sawhorse legs, and huge wood clamps to clamp down the stove, paper towels, ect. it was the most planned trip yet. and it payed off, although it took over 2 days to fully set up. practical? schmactical. not tactical. wackticle? yes. wackticle. wackticle.

as you can see from my handy diagram, there is always a big mess, big waste of door/counter space, etc. this lead me to remember that thing called boy scouts, you know, where you light small trees on fire and stuff them into latrines, or maybe you remember it as your first introduction to smut. or perhaps you remember it as the time that you told the newbie to put his tent on the ant hill, or the low ground in a rain storm, or put logs under the scout master’s tent to improve his sleeping ergonomics. whatever your memories might be, one that almost all cool scouts share is the memory of the chuck box, which lesser troops called the patrol box. we were more democratic than that. now even though my troop, 443, thought that winning the klondike derby was simply a matter of stealing the other troops flags and burying them in the woods, we did know how to wield a power tool. or at least someone’s dad did. we had the nicest, heaviest, most tiger tank-esque chuck boxes this side of a d-day pill box. i think the guy who put them together adhered to the following rules: the box must contain as much plywood as possible. normal patrol boxes might take 1-1.25 sheets of plywood. our had at least 4 sheets, as well as all brass hardware taken from a clipper ship, and sized appropriately. our hinges alone weighed more than a coleman stove and 2 weeks of fuel.

the carpenter also thought that if 4 scouts were needed to carry a normal patrol box, and more is better, why not make it so that at least 8 scouts were needed, plus a sixteen scout relief crew. inevitably, our camp grounds were muddy or snowy, or perferably both, so footing was dubious at best, and scouts constantly fell and were tramped by the remaining 7. you couldnt stop, or the whip would fall! when camp was finally set up, there was the inevitable roll call, and the ‘where’s robbie?’ questions. well. we never found him. presumably the mud got him.

if it wasnt raining, sleeting, and or well below freezing, we werent camping. what were we doing? practicing knots. not! ohhhhhhhhhhh that was bad. mainly we watched robbie chew (true story) on the asbestos columns that supported the ceiling the squalid basement that was our troop headquarters. that was before the mud got him. then later, brandy johnson got him. but thats a different story, involving bad haircuts, knife fights, and assault rifle wake up calls.

right so, chuck boxes are fantastic.  instead of schelping  (spell check starmer?) 4 boxes of supplies, a table, saw horses, clamps, and so on, you can make a really heavy wooden box that has compartments to organize everything, and becomes a ’strong like bear’ table.  also, chuck boxes have room for the kitchen sink.  er the camp kitchen sink.  we always brought two tupperware bins for the dishes.  tight.  so i have been pining for a chuck box for a while now, not unlike how i sometimes pine for cheap gold colored bolos and scratchy polyester knee high socks.

i sat down, did some net research, poured a dram for my fallen scouts, and drew up some plans.  i happen to have a grade A- piece of maple plywood in the shed.  its appropriately heavy, although i’m sure i’ll have to add some ballast.

FYI, starmer has one that sounds appropriately huge and hard to use, but claims we dont have the man power to move it.  i suggested he crank out a few dozen kids in time for the race, or at least steal them from mexico.  his response is pending.

then eats yellow snow.

iron-E seems to have johnson pinned to the cold hard facts of reality wet soggy ground.

our hero can hardly breath under the weight of such literary deviciveness

but victory is never far, and johnson stands triumpant, yellowing iron-e

savagely

what what? victory

mmm yellow