300th post + the *Monday* jam + etc.

Hey folks - I hope people in the Canada + US had nice holidays last week.

This is my 300th post since changing the site over in 2007, so it's time to switch things up a little bit:

I'm making the Monday of my work week the time for more non-shop work. That means: non-emergency errands, making food for the week, ordering, shipping, sit down computer time + blog posting, and so on. Structure for Captain Wambly = More time in the shop + more time on the bike + more condensed/quality content on the blog = Good for all.

The Friday jam is dead, long live the Friday jam! So without further ado, here's your Monday jam:



Catch you next week...

American holiday weekend Friday jam.

Proper:



The great 'version' I put up in March gotten taken down when a Youtube account got yanked.

Have a nice holiday + relax!

Camera test + seatstays + 'El Flaco Explosivo.'

Luckily, the camera seems to be working as normal....




Matching up seatstay bends. Seatstays can be challenging and the only way to make them easier is practice. I try to do as little bending as possible, but smaller 700c/29" wheeled sleds generally need a second bend on the stays for 'best case' tire clearance and proper brake boss spacing (e.g. fitting a 2.3 29" tire with mud clearance + 80mm brake boss spacing). I do the top bend first and get the fit up pretty close and then I'll add a second bend once I see what needs to be done to make things perfect. Purely functional. Aesthetics do matter, but there are pragmatic reasons for bending, ovalization, etc. I cut the cope for the seat tube junction first and then bend. It's pretty easy to bend repeatably with titanium as there is plenty of springback/resistance, I'm sure it's a little different with steel. After putting the initial bends, I stack the V-blocks on top of each other (as shown above) + slightly offset to match the bends:


Pretty good for a first try.

###

I know everyone is going on about the passing of Michael Jackson as well as the deaths of other well known celebrities during the past week...but one of my favourite boxers died yesterday.

Alexis Arguello, 'The Explosive Thin Man,' inspiration to scrawny kids everywhere:



Thanks to GAME for the highlight compilation. Songs = Pete Rock & CL Smooth - "Check It Out" // Caspian, Grafhic, & Edge1 - "On The Daily."

Bonus jam for Matt Lee.

Matthew Lee = Tour Divide champ yet again despite weather, competition, lack of bike time, etc. Right on.



Pete Basinger is out riding a individual under-the-radar time trial of the GDMBR route right now and it'll be interesting to see if he gets better weather than the biblical moisture thrown at the TD riders the year + if he can challenge Matt's full route record from '07.

EDIT: As I'm sure most people following this already know - Pete was involved in an accident with a vehicle in CO, resulting in a broken clavicle and a trip to the hospital in Pueblo. He's OK, thankfully.

I'm thanking my lucky stars regarding my camera. No LCD screen but my option of switching to the EVF (eyepiece) monitor saves my ass...everything seems to be working fine after a bit of a scare.

National holiday here tomorrow - I'll get some visuals up on Thursday.

Forthcoming: Week of the wet butt.

No complaining allowed!

Friday jam at the gun down.

Back at the controls this afternoon. Off to go weld...

Visual-less.

It looks like the blog is going to revert back to the way the old 'mc blog.' was - stream-of-consciousness ramble and no pictures, at least for the next week or two. No camera at the moment and my wife lent her little one out, so the shots of welded joints, drawings, and tools will be absent for the time being. Sorry about that.

Hot (for me) and humid in the Golden Horseshoe, I think I took in about 3L of water while welding this afternoon. Slooooowly but surely working on the pile. I'll be away from the shop on Thursday and for part of the day on Friday - but I'm working most weekends anyway, so no worries.

Apologies again for being lax on e-mail and getting dates more solidified. Everything is moving along well though and I'll try to get the holes in the site rectified ASAP.

Pedal.

A regal Friday jam.

100% T-U-N-E.

Proper organ:



Late morning edit: Despite all the care taken in regards to my camera, it is currently wounded. I must have dropped it because the screen is out of commission, nothing but white with a black spot and scatter lines where it fell on an edge. It still seems to be operable, so maybe I can figure out how to use it a bit, a least for general shots, until I can look into a repair. Doh.

Quick Thursday.

Howdy folks - just a quick pop in today. I didn't carry the camera to the shop in the rain - so more visuals to come soon. My father-in-law and granny are flying back into Pearson from Estonia today.

Arthur Lydiard is someone that I've admired for a long time, regardless of being "right" or "wrong" in terms of "training." Everything is subjective anyway.

Anyway, enjoy this two-part film featuring Lydiard's star pupil Peter Snell, a three-time Olympic gold medalist:

Peter Snell - Athlete

Talk to you more soon. The Friday jam is programmed and I'll be working over the weekend too.

Tuesday :: 16 June.

I feel a lot better today after some gnarly stomach action had me at home yesterday. I've been ill a good bit over the last year. A tip: If you get really raging fit + healthy, do what you need to at least maintain it. Why? Because if you let the pendulum swing the other way too far in short order, it's definitely much harder on your body and you'll suffer unduly getting back to being a fit, comfortable cyclist - especially with one gear. I had already started that downward slide in 2005, but watching the Tour Divide online this year has been a great motivator for me to put the valley farther behind me.

Some work:


Chainstay-ectomy on Casey's rig in progress.


A Salsa Cromoto Grande fork for Casey. Super nice off-the-shelf quality for a plug-and-play 29" suspension corrected fork (468mm axle-crown + 43mm rake). I'm actually going to use a 26" wheel Cromoto fork in a non-suspension corrected 29er build for WilliamM as well (445mm axle-crown + 41mm rake).

Good fit on a revamp project you'll see wrapped up this week:





It's late. Over-n-out.