• Moved

    Well, we moved. We left Missouri on the morning of the first of January. Here is some of what we saw along the way…

    Windy Illinois

    Illinois in windy. As you can see, the Accord was fairly heavily loaded, plus there were three bikes on the carrier. It averaged 23-24 mpg, which isn’t all that bad when the payload and bikes are taken into consideration. The normal fuel economy (per tank) is usually between 19 and 28 mpg.

    3 leg dog in IL

    Dogs in Illinois have three legs.

    Since there were no other photos on my phone of any other states, it is safe to assume that there was nothing else of interest during our trip. The first night in Maryland we stayed here, a hotel room with three (of five) bikes and a dog:

    Hotel in Gaithersburg

    The house is still full of boxes (about 150), but at least the dog is mostly happy.

    Sheltese

    Happy dog. She is probably just happy to be out of her car kennel.

    The back yard

    The dog’s new yard; she doesn’t seem to mind the lack of grass.

    A view from the back yard

    The view from the backyard. The trail is easily accessible and has a few short loops.

    Boxes

    More work to do…

  • Random Photos

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    Split Window Bus and Bike

    My old ’61 bus and a bike Eric and I built from spare parts and a frame found in the trash. If I remember correctly, it had a mix of Deore LX and XT with a Manitou Mach 5 fork, the wheels that originally came with my StumpJumper M2, and Tioga Psycho K tires. The color is Rust-Oleum Stainless Steel. (2003)

    GTI 16v Snow

    The ’88 GTI 16v in the snow. Narrow 13″ snow tires are great… (2004)

    IS300

    An IS in KS. (2006)

    GTI 16v Autocross

    The same GTI 16v autocrossing. 14 Street Modified; this time with Kumho Ecsta V700s on Corrado Speedlines, after the big brake/five-lug conversion. (2004)

    Jetta Barn

    The Jetta VR6 in Iowa on the way to get the Subaru Vanagon. (2005)

  • Wheel Building

    Building a Wheel

    I built my first wheel, and it rolls. The rear wheel on the single speed was getting a little bent, and I wanted to give the fixed gear a try. I wanted a cheap durable wheel, so here is what I built: A Suzue flip-flop 36 hole hub, Shimano Dura-Ace 16t track sprocket and lock ring, ACS 16t freewheel, Sun CR18 rim, DT swiss spokes and Spline Drive red alloy nipples. The spoke pattern on this wheel is 180° of black spokes with the other 180° silver. I used The Bicycle Wheel by Jobst Brandt and the help of Karl at Klunk.

    The process was easier than I anticipated. The only tough part was the final truing. Starting with a cheap rim probably made this step a little more difficult than it should have been. Whatever the case, I think I may need my own truing stand so I can fix/build my own wheels in the future.

    I’ll post updates on the fixed gear learning curve. Prior to building the wheel I had ridden a fixed gear, but only briefly. I’ve took the singlespeed around the block with no problems, though my skip stops need a lot of work…