Little Trailer Guy, originally uploaded by Donald WG.
I’m a huge fan of this. I love the shot with the dog, of course, but I’m most impressed with the perfect fit of the dog carrier in the trailer frame. It makes the whole rig look custom.
The Baggins bar sack on the trailer is a beautiful touch.
I wish my dog could fit in that rig. We’d ride out to the logging roads, I’d lock up the trailer and then she could run. Life would be perfect and the birds would sing.
utopia, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
The Gary Fisher rigged up for Max. With a longer stem and the seatpost extended, it fits me pretty well, but it’s supposed to be for my 10 year old. I’m going to de-un-singlespeed-ify it before I try to convince Max to ride it, though.
The Redline Junior has been his bike since he was 5, but now he’s 10. The Redline is highly recommended – I wish I had a 15 lb bike! Standover is very different, but I hope it won’t be an issue. The contact points are pretty close to the same between the two bikes; seat’s a bit higher on the Utopia, which is fine. Cranks are longer.
20 pounds with the new (used) Kona PII fork. Here’s how it looked when Jim owned it (cooler).
What are these shocked twin amphibians staring at, as if to say “Good Lord!” I wonder.
Could it be… the Rivendell Simpleone is approaching? The Simpleone is the rebirth of the Quickbeam – new name, new paint, same geometry.
Why a new name? My theory that Grant and Co. have a big bag of awesome names they’d like to use up, was, apparently, wrong. The story goes that, at the request of the Tolkein rights holders (not the film company), Rivendell agreed (in a non-legally-non-binding way) to stop using certain Lord of the Rings names, including Quickbeam, Baggins and Legolas.
Also, these bikes are made in Taiwan, not in Japan by Panasonic, and they have fancy headtubes and plainer graphics.
I would like a 62cm, please.
Renovated JR Jackson, originally uploaded by capnahabnick.
Man, that’s cool. Look at that machine. Click the picture and look at the whole set. Clearance to spare, hubs, rims, flared drops. Kickback(?) Fichtel & Sachs hub. White hoods, beautiful old saddle.
And you probably missed it, but if you look closely you can see the barber pole seat tube. Too good. How many other bikes could carry that off? (The answer is “none.”)
Gazelle – Ladies Sport Luxe, originally uploaded by montclairbobbyb.
My friend Bobby B, of the Renaissanced Bicycle group just showed his in-progress Gazelle.
He’s changing the wheels to a modern 3-speed with drum-brake and a drum-brake dynamo. I don’t think the fork-crown is even drilled for a brake, since it used to be a coaster-brake one-speed.
He modified the chaincase to allow for the rear shifter mechanism, and also removed the chainwheel cover to show the leaping gazelles.
Beautiful, spare lines, and I think the rear rack is lovely.
Joe Kochanowski builds crazy-looking homebuilt recumbents that have “good ramming capacity in traffic.” My son Max calls this guy “bicycle Einstein.” “Who’s smarter than that guy? The answer is ‘no one.’ There’s no one smarter than him. In bicycles.” Linked from Wallingford (wallbike.com)’s blog.
From the same site as the Joe recumbents, (Jim Gallant’s Human Powered Vehicle page) is this kid-first triplet tandem, called a “trandem,” which gets the Max Nod of Approval as well. “That’s such a great word. ‘Trandem.’”
Swapped out the cranks on Angelina’s new Belleville, and added her Wald fold-out baskets to the sweet rear rack. The stock cranks and pedals are horrible. When I mentioned that we could lower her seat 5mm, because the stock cranks are 170s and her old Ritcheys are 175s, she was like, “Oh! So that’s why it feels like my legs are spinning tiny circles!”
Seriously – I’ve had arguments with people who say you can’t feel 5mm of crank length. If my wife, who likes her bike (Angelina “do you like kids?” my dad: “I like my kids…”), but appreciates most bikes at a remove (because I like them, analogous to the way I know what a peplum is), can tell the “microscopic” difference in cranks, then those people can just STFU appreciate their lack of hyper-sensitive OCD detail-noticin’.
Next up – the saddle. I need to re-mount her B66 leather on a new sprung frame. By new, I mean used and free, from the RBW list charity drive. And I’m totally stealing Jim’s white rubber block pedals… how’s he going to know?
I visited the show with some friends – really nice to circulate, show each other stuff and talk about bag designs. I got some really nice feedback on my bike, which was gratifying, and met a fellow named Tony who had a really nice green-themed fixed gear in the Pimp’d area.
Jim bought a $10 “bucket pannier” kit – everything but the buckets. I think that’s a dynamite idea, especially if you’re buying by mail. Buckets are almost free, but not to ship. The guy said CityBikes carries them, too. Jim’s going to make some luggage that works on both his CETMA rack and his dual-sport motorcycle. I want to get some of that hardware to turn all kinds of weird things into panniers and rack-mounted luggage.
The show was much more about stuff than bikes, but there was a bike fashion show, guys on bikes jumping massive gaps, trials and roller racing. Also, there were some bikes. The standouts for me were the mixtes – English, Vulture and Linus. Vulture admittedly outside his normal range, “It’s not a one-speed 29er!” and English as well, being a time-trialist and HPV record-holder. Linus – I just saw two of their bikes randomly parked inside.
And… I always love the bikes locked up outside. I think the Pimp’d bike part could be made much much bigger – basically indoor valet parking, with the valets ‘curating’ the churning show.
And, some bad pictures – I’m seriously shopping for a new camera (a NEX-3 or 5 for my beautiful antique lenses), but I don’t expect it to make my shots any better. I just like tools.
Singular Gryphon, originally uploaded by sshelby73.
This is a beautiful bike, and succinctly done.
The Singular Gryphon is one of three “highly desirable” bikes on my radar right now. There’s a bargain XL ‘blem’ frameset available from Singular right now: http://www.flickr.com/photos/singularcycles/5567725587/in/photostream/
You can paypal me donations toward it at “philip.williamson@gmail.com”. :^)
I got a new Trek Belleville women’s bike from Tommy’s Bike Shop in McMinnville at a nice discount, with part of the price traded for improvements to their website (not implemented yet, in case you were wondering).
Angelina hasn’t had a new bike since she was 11. She’s been riding the same Goodwill-sourced Steyr mixte for 14 years or so, and had nixed the idea of buying new as philosophically repugnant, except that “This bike is so pretty!” It’s also recyclable, and made OF recycled material, supposedly. And it’s pretty. And she doesn’t drive.
I like it because it comes equipped with front and rear generator lights, fenders and racks. All the wiring runs inside the tubes – the fork, the rack the main tubes, under the fenders. My bikes don’t have internal wiring! I also really like the welded mounting tab for the front rack, which I’ve never seen before. It’s clever and strong, and it takes the brakes right out of the rack-mount equation.
I’m a huge fan of custom bikes and bike-makers, and it looks like the Belleville designer(s) are too. I only ever see painted and integrated stem and bars on show bikes. Since most people never change either the stem or the bars, it makes just as much sense to make them all one piece. The bars need to be raised ~2″ to match her old bike’s setup. I only hope there are pretty spacers I can use! I’d like one tall blue one, or three 1/2″ ones in light blue, red and brown like the decorative bands that accent the bike here and there.
I raised the stem with normal ugly spacers and a longer bolt. Eric of Winter Bicycles pointed out that the stem is a lever on the steerer, and shouldn’t come above the top of the steerer tube, but I did it anyway. If Angelina crashes and dies, he can say “I told you so.”
I also ran the wire through the guide tube – you have to fold the spades away from each other to get them through the tube.
There were only a couple of things I would have designed differently, and a couple of assembly details I’ll redo (light wiring doesn’t go through a wiring tube, and I prefer as wide a rack mount as possible).
The front rack struts are tubes that are open at the top, but closed at the bottom! I think they’ll fill up with Oregon rainwater in short order. I plan to plug the tops before that happens. The outer tube is actually for the headlight wiring. Oops.
Rear fender woggles a bit. A support tab from the rear rack to the top of the rear fender would be ideal. I plan to make a U-bracket from the rack bolts to the fender.
And the pedal bearings are really crunchy. White rubber block pedals would be the bomb for this bike.
Other than those tiny nits, this is a beautiful bike.
Friction shifter for 3 speed hub, originally uploaded by antbike.
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but assumed I’d have to fabricate a special mount for the bar-end shifter. I was thinking I’d mount an inch of handlebar side-on to the tube (big hole on one side for the allen key, small hole across for the bolt).
This is an Ant bike, presumably with a downtube shifter brazed onto the seatstay, but according to Pants Pants’ flickr stream, apparently you just need a longer M5 bolt!
The whole story is here on Pants Pants’ photo (he doesn’t didn’t used to allow bloggeration of his pictures). A closeup picture of the seatstay mounted shifter.
His bike is the impetus for me to finally buy the S3X hub I’ve been talking about for years!
Naked Bikes, originally uploaded by dirtragmag.
I couldn’t make it to Austin for The North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS 2011), but I’ve been following all the new pictures from the show on Flickr.
This is a DirtRag shot. I’m happy they’ve got the pro photo setup there. (“Streetwear enthusiast, etc.”) John Prolly, BikePortland and N.Gawa have been putting good stuff up as well.
thumpin’
Retrotec step-through , originally uploaded by retrotec&ingliscycles.
Swoopy!
photo.JPG, originally uploaded by RoselandCycles.
Another lazy blog post where I filch inspiring pictures from my Flickr friends. This is my ideal style of bike, though. The stem is key.
DSC_4699_1183_resize, originally uploaded by krashkatze.
I like this bike. It’s like a steel production version of a Matt Chester.
And Chester’s bikes and the Gryphon are both spawnlings of Charlie Cunningham. I shouldn’t have to mention that, but I’ve talked to people who love Flogging Molly and never heard of the Pogues…
If you disagree with that assessment, bring it.
Speaking of Matt Chester, it looks like he failed to renew his 700see.com domain.
Oops. I hates me the linkfarmer registrars.
I feel like I’ve sent Matt a couple of envelopes over the last 10 years with $5 inside for the kickoff issue of his 700see blog. Maybe it’s time to send another one… Or the first one. Jeremy has the link to Matt’s new blog: http://5metresofdevelopment.blogspot.com/
