frankenbike returns!!!!

It's been awhile since I've given an update on frankenbike, so here goes.

The quest for completeness:

Frankenbike feels saddened and crippled by the loss of her arms (and her head; as you can imagine communicating with her is rather difficult without her head, but this is a tale about arms). Finding Frankenbike's arms (her front fork and wheel) has been a difficult chore. In fact, the issue is not really her arms (the fork), but actually her shoulders and neck (the steerer tube, the part that connects the fork to the handlebars).

(This will all make a lot more sense if you pull up these handy directions on replacing a headset.)

A friend of mine donated a fork, steerer tube, and stem for Frankenbike's use. Sadly, however, it was the wrong neck size (the steerer tube was too short). Of course, it took me several weeks of playing around with a headset and the other parts that connect all this today to realize that this was a problem. Those several weeks saw several hours sitting on the floor of the living room, looking through Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance (a veritable Bible I tell you), and playing with the various parts, several trips to the bike shop and several consultations with friends of mine who are bike experts. Well, the final outcome of that was: the fork donated by my friend could not be used with my bike.

Back to the drawing board.

And on to craigslist
(For those who have not discovered craigslist or freecycle as sources of cheap/free used stuff, follow the links).

Someone was selling an old used mountain bike for $25. The picture linked decent enough (if a rather scary baby blue color). And off I treked down to Sandy (a sort of distant suburb of Salt Lake; non-mormons avoid the suburbs as much as possible. They're scary.)

Well, the bike looked out, even though it was the wrong size. But most, importantly, it looked like it had the right size steer tube.

So $20 poorer and an hour later, I'm back on my living room floor disassembling another bike. And success!! The steerer tube was long enough (too long actually, but that's easy to fix with a hacksaw). But there are issues yet to be solved. The first one is that the headset I'm using (the rings that screw onto the steer tube and allow the fork and handlebars to turn together and smoothly) is from the first fork, but I'm using the second fork (from the $20 bike). So now I need to switch out the fork crown race.

A screwdriver, hammer and 30 minutes later, the crown races are switched between the forks and it's back to the bike shop for them to do the actual installation of the fork and steer tube. (I don't have the correct tools to do it. And it's cheaper to pay the bike shop than to buy the tools. BTW, for those in SLC, I've been pretty please with Contender so far.)

So I drop off the bike, explain what I need and (the rather cute) guys at the shop say they'll have it ready in a couple of days. Well, later that afternoon I get a call from them. Yes, the steer tube is too long, which they can fix, but the problem is that the threads (think threads on a screw) don't go down far enough and they don't have the right tool to extend the threads to the right level.

OK, so back to the drawing board yet again. Here are my options at this point: a) buy a gorram fork of the right size (something I've been trying to avoid) or b) call all my bike friends and other bike shops looking for someone who has the correct tool. Being cheap, and also being rather stubborn, I opt for the latter.

Several conversations and phone calls later, I'm in luck. Another bike shop has the correct tool. Tomorrow we'll see if this approach actually works when I take the whole set up to them to fix.

Onward and...well, upward progress is slow...how about sideways?

ain't school fun

most of today was spent teaching handwashing and food safety to middle school students. i've taught probably 10 classes so far. it can be fun, but it's hard to strike the right balance between entertaining and educating. so far i'm doing okay. (and the teachers have invited me back twice, so i assume they think i'm doing okay as well.)

at one point i was looking at a list of the bell schedules (when the periods end, etc.) and thought...'thank goodness i'm not in school anymore and can control my own schedule.'

on biking...

as i sit at the computer and look out my front window, the following thoughts come to me...

If you're going to bike at night (or anytime for that matter), please...

1) WEAR A HELMET!!! Your noggin is probably your most precious resource. Don't be an idiot, protect it.

2) USE A LIGHT!!! Cars and pedestrians can't see you when you're biking at night. Do you want to be hit? Or do you want to hit a pedestrian that doesn't see you?

3) DON'T BIKE ON THE SIDEWALK!!! Sidewalks are for walking or jogging, not for bikes. In many cities, biking on the sidewalk is illegal. Cops will give tickets. Plus, pedestrians don't expect to see bikes on the sidewalk and don't always get out of the way. And if the pedestrians are mobility impaired in some way they won't be able to get out of the way.

That's all from the pet peeve desk of J.

trip to SFO

You know I travel too much when I start using airport codes to indicate where I'm going. SFO is San Francisco for those who aren't "in the know." :)

D and I went to SFO for Thanksgiving, thus the delay in posts. E and K's wedding was very nice; small, simple and very sweet (with the appropriate amounts of humor thrown in).

We got back into town yesterday after an overnight drive where we slept in a rest stop in Nevada for a few hours. (D and I are cheap and don't believe in spending money on hotel rooms if we can avoid it.) So we arrived at 10:30 am rather tired and sorta smelly.

I spent yesterday working on cleaning paint off of hinges. In our ongoing house-related projects, we stripped the paint off the windows and are leaving them as plain wood. (Much prettier than 20 layers of paint.) Of course, the previous owners had painted over all the hinges as well, and the hinges were original and they don't make ones in that size anymore. So the options were to either spend many hours stripping paint off of the hinges or spend many hours chipping out wood on the windows and frames to accommodate larger hinges. We went for the stripping. Oh, such fun.

Today is an errands day. Our fridge is rather bare at the moment, so off to the store to stock up on tofu and veggies. I think I'll make an Asian peanut sauce stir-fry thing tonight. That sounds good.