May 30, 2018
The perfect floofing machine
—orc Wed May 30 19:14:35 2018
May 29, 2018
I pulled the (ailing) S3X hub from the 3-speed project bike and replaced it with a regular freewheeling 3-speed hub. I lose the what-you-see-is-all-you-gettedness of a fixed gear, even one that’s actually 3 (or two+a freewheel) fixed gears, but not having so much of the element of surprise (of “when will the next gear fail and will it maim me when it does so?”) when riding is a good thing.
—orc Tue May 29 23:03:32 2018
May 27, 2018
(Aka “modernism & the moon”)
—orc Sun May 27 22:27:14 2018
May 25, 2018
It’s the end of a long week
—orc Fri May 25 23:11:24 2018
May 23, 2018
The feral rosebush in our front yard is flowering this week
—orc Wed May 23 20:41:31 2018
May 22, 2018
Ozymandias’s fur is nowhere near fully grown out, but there is now enough of it that he’s beginning to get into the giant perfect killing marshmallow category again (and as an indoor cat he won’t have nearly as many chances to get it filthy/matted/tangled/burred/etc.)
—orc Tue May 22 21:38:51 2018
May 21, 2018
The second of the three forks I’ll need for my next three frames. This one is for the gravel®©™℠ frame; large enough to fit a 56mm tire without looking overly clownlike when a 47mm tire is fitted, and with enough headroom to fit a fender without having to mash it up close to the tire.
—orc Mon May 21 21:59:32 2018
May 19, 2018
What other reason could there be to have a dishwashing machine?
—orc Sat May 19 22:30:00 2018
May 18, 2018
Dust Mite inspects the tubing (a combination of True Temper, Columbus, and Nova) and lugs I’ve picked out for the front triangles of the next three frames. Now to measure, miter, and braze them together.
—orc Fri May 18 22:09:54 2018
May 17, 2018
Thor is just the right size to fit into a bookshelf
—orc Thu May 17 22:28:48 2018
May 16, 2018
Top to bottom:
- 650b gravel®™© frame with clearance for 60mm tires (though the tires I’m using are a pair of WTB Horizons I picked up used.)
- 26" smaller-rando frame for the 25" wheelset (26×1.5" tires) I laced up last month.
- The long-anticipated xtracycle replacement frame
All of them are going to be paired 73° HTA & STA, with level/levelish(xtracycle) toptubes, and all built with the sort of insanely long TT that I prefer. At least one of them is going to have a seat mast, though I may end up just cutting a traditional seattube very short instead of also fabricating a mast cap for the saddle.
This will, if I get them finished, bring me up to 9 frames I’ve built (the kit bike is dead, and I botched the first attempt at the 3-speed project frame badly enough so I abandoned it after sloppily brazing the chainstays on, but I’ve still got 3 bikes I’m riding and one frame that ended up in North Carolina.)
—orc Wed May 16 21:13:44 2018
May 14, 2018
The IGH project bike was set aside last fall because the s3x hub had stopped fixieing in the 1:1 gear, but when I pulled it out from my bike mess just this afternoon to rebuild the rear wheel with a more-conventional Sturmey-Archer hub (a SRF3) the hub had learned its lesson and was being a fixed gear once again (but only until I shifted out of the 1:1 gear; if I did that it went back to freewheeling until I backpedaled a little bit and rattled the clutch/shifter rod back into place. So, yay, it’s a functional 3ixie again, but I don’t know for how long and if it’s worth risking taking it out on a brevet (because boy it would be annoying to spin 30 miles back into town if all I had was one of the climbing gears!)
It is really nice to be on a fixed-gear (a.k.a. WYSIAYG) again, even if it’s an adventurebike (where the adventure is wondering if I would make it back home in my 1:1 gear.)
—orc Mon May 14 18:01:31 2018
May 12, 2018
It’s springtime and the mallards are in bloom along the Trolley Trail.
—orc Sat May 12 18:57:33 2018
May 11, 2018
May 09, 2018
He’s a pretty big kitty.
—orc Wed May 9 19:54:21 2018
Last years tire goo from the emergency randonneuse’s rear tire. It was probably time to replace it, given that it’s all solidified :-)
—orc Wed May 9 11:09:48 2018
May 07, 2018
Modified because of dietary restrictions, dislike of spicy foods, and a last-minute discovery of missing ingredients; I substituted leeks for onion in the trinity (pepper/celery/leeks), I used mild italian sausage instead of andouille because the bears don’t like spicy food, even something as mild as that, and no garlic because we’d run out.
The ingredients: 1 pound tofurky mild italian sausage, 1 green pepper, ~1 cup of celery, ~1 cup of leek, 16 oz of chopped canned tomatoes, 30 oz of red beans, a half tsp of pepper & oregano, plus a couple of shakes of salt & a tablespoon of olive oil to make up for the fat that was missing from the vegan sausage. It took about 60 minutes to make; 20 minutes gathering & preparing ingredients, 40 minutes of cooking, sautéing & simmering (the rice, which was Trader Joe’s precooked rice, was prepared in parallel with this.)
Stupidly simple to make, thank goodness, and a link back to my woefully short tenure in New Orleans.
—orc Mon May 7 21:56:17 2018
From ebay today:
eBay supports tax policy that is fair to entrepreneurs, artisans and small businesses and opposes efforts to impose taxes that are harmful to sellers like you, who are vital to the American economy. For all the small business sellers that use eBay there has never been a more critical time to stand against new and unfair Internet taxes.
“Unfair”, says the organization that charges a 10% auctioneer fee on sales. OH NOES, WE (and by “we”, they mean “ebay” – if it was a cost that the sellers had to eat ebay would laugh and say “sucks to be you” as they collect the taxes at the point of sale and then hold them for interest until the last possible minute they might have to pay) MIGHT HAVE TO PAY FEES TO THE GOVERNMENT THAT GUARANTEES THE CURRENCY THAT WE ARE USING.
I mean it in the most helpful and compassionate way when I suggest that the (overpaid) ebay upper management should go and suck an egg. You fuckers already benefit from a massive tax subsidy given by the corrupt mob that overthrew the government of the USA, so I’m not going to sign any fucking petition that will benefit you and only you.
—orc Mon May 7 17:16:29 2018
Holgate Lane used to be a (unpaved) road going up to the top of Powell Butte, but it’s not been a road for quite some time now, and it shows signs of it. One recent bit of wear is that a couple of streams are cutting across and have cut fairly deep trenches into the road surface, so my climb up this morning was interrupted by having to stop and lift the bicycle over the perfectly-sized-to-trap-a-front-wheel cuts in the road.
—orc Mon May 7 15:35:47 2018
May 05, 2018
Step 1: the fork.
—orc Sat May 5 18:09:03 2018
Ozymandias helps me with the computer.
—orc Sat May 5 17:05:11 2018
May 04, 2018
Dust Mite helps me clean up my desk
—orc Fri May 4 23:09:52 2018
May 01, 2018
Paisley wasn’t fitting as a name, so now, after a few tries, the orange-and-white puffball is Ozymandias, king of kings, and Thor is still Thor, but also known as Millie (both names from Dana Simpson’s Ozy & Millie online comic strip.)
—orc Tue May 1 22:23:10 2018
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.
—orc Tue May 1 11:00:54 2018
—30—
![[rss feed]](/~orc/feedbutton.png "Atom + RSS feeds available here"){kind=small}