Playing with Bikes...

So, you might not realize it but you're looking at about two pretty solid days of work. Yesterday I spend the better part of the morning, all of the afternoon affixing the brake levers to my satisfaction on the home made bullhorn bars, then scraping all of the decals off of the bike with my thumbnails. The bullhorns and brake levers were ok, but the decal removal was awful. I tried using an exacto-knife at one point but it brought up about as much paint as decal, so I reverted back to the thumbnails. They hurt terribly.

In affixing the brake levers I realized a couple of things. When I cut the drops to make the bullhorns I should have left more of the vertical part. They're too short to be able to support the levers and allow for one course of bar wrap above. Originally I was assuming that I could get some mountain bike style brake levers, because I'd seen single speed bikes with them. Well, I don't know how they work them out, but I couldn't find them online anywhere, and the old levers were fine. In any case they work ok. The other thing I realized was that the cable housing for the brakes was so old and weathered that it had cracked at the point of insertion into the brake lever on both sides, and I'd need to replace them.

I'd bought some new cables previously, because the cables on it were scary rusty, but I hadn't put them on yet. The yellow housing was one of my favorite parts of the bike, and the housing on the new cables was the dull black you see on it. Oh well.

Before I started on the cables I decided to run to the library where I had some items on hold, and to stop at a bike shop on the way to buy some of the cushy jell inserts that you put under the bar wrap these days. But the bike shop didn't have them. I'd struck out with them before on Slime tubes to fit my 27" x 1.25" wheels. Maybe I should go back to the other shop up in the avenues. This one is just so convenient.

Anyway, after my trip, with bare bars and cracked cable housing, I came home and started working on the rest of it. The first cable I changed was for the front derailleur. Due to bad design, the cables had been totally exposed and they were really rusty. So I switched that our and bent the metal bits that routed the cable to try to fit the whole housing along the cable's route. It didn't work well, and when I was trying to fix it I got sidetracked adjusting the derailleur. I'm no good at it. I never have been.

But this time was worse than most. I was playing with the clamp position on the seat tube, and while trying to loosen the bolt that held the clamp closed I inadvertently tightened it until it sheared off at the midpoint, leaving the threaded in the clamp. So, I'm going to try and drill it out, but I might have just given myself an excuse to update the drivetrane. What a mess. I was very frustrated and angry, and watched Topgear for a couple of hours to calm myself down, then went to bed.

This morning I decided that the fact that I'd crippled it wasn't a reason to finish the cables, so I set to work on that. It took a surprisingly long time, mostly because the bolts for the brakes are located in places that are about ten millimeters too short to be able to get my little ratchet into. Then when I did get to them the fell apart unexpectedly, pieces flying over the dirty floor, and getting lost under all the mess. Eventually, however, I was able to finish it all.

Following that I was going to secure the cable housings with some zipties, but when I looked for them in the store I found only neon colored ones, and decided to pass for the time being.

The next thing upon which to work was the helmet. I purchased the retro-reflective tape some time ago, but hadn't put it on the helmet as an excuse not to ride my bike to school in the morning. I hate riding in the dark. If I'm not visible, then I don't have to. Anyway I decided it was time to begin remedying the situation, so I pulled the tape out. I was thinking of making a skull out of small square pieces at first, but moved on when I couldn't design a pleasing one on my computer. I couldn't figure out what to do instead of the skull and sat thinking for some time when it came to me all at once and I started making a pattern to cut from. It's not perfect. I made it from two strips of 1.5 inch tape, so it's 3 inches wide, and the sides turned out not to be perfectly symmetrical. But it was close enough for me.

Anywho, so much for the first two days of vacation.