Mar 31, 2015
The weather forecast called for showers today. Here’s a particularly enthusiastic specimen.
—orc Tue Mar 31 17:46:56 2015
Mar 29, 2015
I really need to cobble together some sort of superzoom lens for my point-and-shoot CBC so I can get pictures of the local stratovolcanoes w/o having to crop the bejesus out of them.
—orc Sun Mar 29 15:44:20 2015
Rural idyll with partsbin bike.
—orc Sun Mar 29 15:37:15 2015
Mar 27, 2015
OBJECTS IN MICROSCOPE ARE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR
—orc Fri Mar 27 21:05:15 2015
Mar 26, 2015
Taking advantage of a warm and sunny March afternoon.
—orc Thu Mar 26 20:37:35 2015
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 16, 2015
One permanent down, mangled rear triangle and all. I can’t say whether or not this is a fast machine or not (I got 5 hours of sleep the night before this ride, so I was running up hills considerable slower than I want to), but I can push a higher gear up ramps than I do with the midlifecrisismobile or born-again Trek, plus it’s got the same sort of absurdly comfortable ride that the midlifecrisismobile has.
—orc Mon Mar 16 20:21:46 2015
Multnomah Falls a day and a half after a band of torrential rain came through NW Oregon.
—orc Mon Mar 16 16:53:10 2015
Mar 14, 2015
Vintage pie photo from ancient times (2014)
—orc Sat Mar 14 17:41:30 2015
Mar 13, 2015
Ready for brevetting (and getting the twisted rear triangle cut off and replaced with a new one that I just happen to have the steel lying around for.) Total cost out of pocket? $0, rounding up to the nearest penny.
—orc Fri Mar 13 16:17:46 2015
Mar 09, 2015
I built a custom toolroll for the 9×9 rando rack I put on the Trek Mountainhack so I could put something on the unused real estate at the front of the rack. I had to modify the rack deck by putting a couple of additional slats in between the center rails and the perimeter (I angled them for visual appeal, which would have worked out better if one of them hadn’t have slipped. Oh well, it’s practice!) so I could loop a pair of toestraps under them to fasten the toolroll into place.
This arrangement has the advantage that I don’t have to root around in my rando bag to dig out tools and patchkits, I don’t have to thread a toestrap around the saddle rails (something that gets moderately difficult after 15 hours out on the line), and, of course, it uses the unused real estate that came from my reusing a small porteur rack deck (from the GT’s first rack) for this rando rack.
—orc Mon Mar 9 20:49:51 2015
Mar 07, 2015
I was looping down to Oregon City this afternoon and I reached Washington St (the part of Washington St that connects to the pedestrian+bike bridge at the foot of 82nd) at about the same time this UP freight did.
So I had to take a picture, even though there was a freeway in the way.
—orc Sat Mar 7 17:57:49 2015
Mar 06, 2015
Stuffed grape leaves, stuffed Dust Mite
—orc Fri Mar 6 23:03:18 2015
Mar 05, 2015
The Working Eng! switches a reefer into a produce warehouse (the one in the industrial park at the foot of the remaining line; the produce warehouse is the one that’s opposite the Mill End Store.)
—orc Thu Mar 5 16:25:19 2015
Mar 04, 2015
I had a pair of brifters in my partsbin, so I spent the hour(ish) needed to finish building this thing up as a functional bicycle. The fun thing about mtb geometry is that the frames are longer than an equivalently sized road bike, so this 18" (~46cm) machine has the effective top tube of a much larger machine.
And the 700c fork I’m using is about an inch shorter than the fork the thing was shipped with, so the slack 70.5° HTA stiffens up to a much more roadish 72.{something}°. Time to fit fenders and a rack to this thing and consider whether I should risk taking it out on a brevet.
—orc Wed Mar 4 17:41:33 2015
Mar 02, 2015
This Trek 820, if I can graft a new rear triangle onto it, is convertible to 650b (with Confreriés, of course) and I probably won’t need to do anything fancy to it except for repositioning the canti studs I brazed onto the fork.
It’s too small for me, but it’s probably a good size for someone 5-5½ feet tall, if I can find someone willing to be a test subject. I could graft an xtracycle rear triangle onto it and build it up as an mtb 650b xtracycleb! (or a bobtail triangle and use it for cyclocrossbing)
—orc Mon Mar 2 16:35:41 2015
Mar 01, 2015
A lot of mass, a lot of volume. Not as much mass as the two bags of kitty litter I hauled home from across the river last year, but way more volume than anything else I’ve carried on it.
—orc Sun Mar 1 18:09:13 2015
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