80 Miles if the Great SouthEast

It all Business

It's all business. It's the only bike I know of that you are more comfortable in the drops, then on the tops. But then I designed it that way. The seat tube is 52cm c-c, the top tube is 58cm. The seat angle is 77, and the head angle is 73. It's a TT bike with drop bars.

The top tube is 6cm longer than the seat tube. I tool some ideas from Moser's bicycle. Deep Drop and stretched out. I also figured in the dimensions from the TT frame I build as well. I think I could have gone longer. we will see. It's uncharted territory. Why build a bike with geometry for all around performance, If your building it for yourself, build it for a specific purpose.

The idea is to get a position a lot like this. Moser was KING of optimising the postion. If you look at my bike the drops are right above my tire.

Ahhh . . . the Surly dropouts . . . they are what makes the whole fixed gear to geared transition possible. Great Idea.

Brakes, Schmakes . . . I've had these brakes over 20 years, and guess what, they will put you over the bars. and believe it or not they are pretty light . . . BELIEVE IT!

No.4 is almost done

It's almost done. I've set it up fixed gear until I get some cables. I also need a seat post. I have 11 seatposts . . . none are 26.8. I thought I had at least 2. I painted it "Sage Green". It's an appliance color. I guess there are a lot of appliances colored "Sage Green" . . . and now at least one bike.

I had the bars set up for my fixed gear bike still with the orange tape, then I found some old Blackburn purple cages . . . Hey, what do you know? . . . secondary colors.

I'll post some better pictures later. For some reason my camera doesn't work well inside. Here it is setup with 28c tires. I still need to drill the brake post hole.

I'll get the first ride in this morning and see how it goes. I'm experimenting with geometry here.

The Clean Up Begins

I still have a lot of clean up to do, but here is how those stays attached. Not my best work. I'm going to get a GasFluxer soon so howfully that will help . . . that and not brazing at 2am might help.

Sneak Peak

The SeatStays are roughly done. I still have some work to do on these, but I thought I'd post some pictures anyway. I've learned some thing about bending metal tubing. Next time I'll do things a little different, one example is I won't bend them so sharply, next time I'll use a more sweeping curve, but it's a research and development project right?

Front Tri no.4

Front triangle is done. Just got to cut down the headtube. I can't find my guides (Gates hose clamps). I can cut a tube off pretty straight, just not within a 2mm tolerance. I like leaving a little work to do as possible before I face and chase it.

Then I'll have to file and sand the fillets to make'm purdy. I started on the one by the seat cluster and it's going a lot better than the previous three.

FD Ride Review

A nice fine sunny beginning. Seven people turn up for this Tour de Force at Benetti's Coffee Shop.


What do they say. A soldier can't march on an empty stomach?


First obstacle of the the ride . . . Who knew they were rebuilding Raytown Road? What's a little creek crossing?


Solution, Grab a board and make a "Bridge of Death" . . .



. . . and board you can get your hands on will do . . . or at least it was the first one. G-Money and another guy decide to go around a back route and meet us on the other side.


Ahhhh the second crossing. A handy I-Beam. . . . ahh yes . . .see they guy in the Pink & Green . . . that's Crusty and he tripped and fell. I didn't see it because I was doing crap like this

Up Scope!

Like I said I didn't see it, but lucky for me someone had a camera and recorded it

About a mile more down the road and I think the temperature changed 20 degrees cooler. It began raining on us about 15 minutes later, and we made it to Arthur Byants canopy Where we waited for G-Money.

There was a line outside Arthur Bryants so we rode to Grinder Pizza just down the road to wait out the rain, or see what happened. It was supposed to rain all day once it started, but it started a little early.

So in the mean time we do stupid things like this.

Mmmmmm Like the Card Board man said. Warm up the inner'ds on a cold rainy day . . . not too much now.

Things cleared off and we decided to venture out again. Here's the "FishBowl" . . . aka the Sprint Center. It's a new thing here in KCMO.

Here's a look at the Big MO . . . Missouri River

. . . and the railroad yard.

Here's the Strawberry Hill Museum. They were closed, or they didn't like the idea of a bunch of wet cyclist messing up their place.
http://www.strawberryhillmuseum.org/html/tearoom.html

It called Strawberry HILL for a reason.

Oh good . . . They are talking about driver, and not riders. Not us taking up the whole bridge . . . actually once again it was a closed road . . . a bridge no doubt . . . but hey we made the last crossing. How bad can it be? Not bad at all, we're not even sure why it's closed.

A look back after the bridge

We made it to another one of our usual destinations. Broadway Cafe. Here we see a double decker bicycle . . . Looks like a project for me. I'll see if I can go without using a drive shaft for a steer tube . . . and don't ask me about the missing downtube.

Some of the typical cloud formations for the day. Strange days.

We made it back to Benetti's at about 4:15. Not bad consider'n the rain.

 

The Father's day Ride Route

We are not going to make too many stops. The route is around 35 miles. However I'd like to make a stop about 1/2 way on Strawberry hill for slavic deserts and tea.

Strawberry Hill is a Kansas City, Kansas neighborhood. It is a mainly South Slavic community that was established in the late 1800s on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Immigrants from Croatia and Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, found a home along the river's hillside and built a community where people could worship, celebrate and prosper while maintaining their distinct Slavic heritage.

http://www.heritageleaguekc.org/strawberryhill/tea.html

I don't know much about immigrants from Croatia and Slovenia . . . more important their food . . . I love food . . . anyway I hope it's a 3 hour tour at the most.

Oh Yea that looks like Wornall on the way back. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and it will be the trolly trail. The trolly trail ends in Swope Park, and from there back to the coffee shop

How bout a nice 50 mile'r

Yep . . . another course. I have a 50 mile course I like to do to time myself on. I thought I broke 20Mph, but I don't seem to have it recorded. It's 47 miles of rolling hills, and then a gut check at the end going up Gregory hill to Blue Ridge. It's a challenge to me because I'll set out to ride the course in a certain time, say 20 Mph. If your right around 20 Mph with 5 miles to go, well I'm not going to say it's impossible, but you really have your work cutout for you. Your going to have to limit your loses. You really need to average 21 for the first 47, then you might make it

Yea it's 50.4, not exactly 50 . . . suck it up, it's close enough.

Here sre some of my times from last year and this mornings ride. I've ridden way more than 3 times, Well it's some reference anyway. I'm surprised I got it done as fast as I did. I think last year at this time I struggle to complete 50. After about 90 minutes, then I just kinda rolled with it. It was a kinda "Peek/See" at what's under the hood. If you look at the heartrates I was way above, but that will come with conditioning. Right now all I've been doing is riding 7 miles back and forth to more mostly.

Picture Day

A friend of mine had this frame and the seat stays rusted off of it. My solution was to join them at the seat tube. The frame is trash, but if I can save it fine, and I don't have to put a lot of work into it. as long as it's functional.

You can see here what I had to work with.

I filed of what was left of the seatstays.

Then I cut off the rusted part of the seatstays

The tubes mitered and they are covered in flux ready to be brazed.

The after brazing and filing, now I have to sand them up a bit.

A little primer and later a little paint and we are ready to go.