Epic Tales of Laundry Goings On

I needed just one more quarter for the laundromat tonight, so I went up to the Fremont street market to get some change.

I bought a 32 Oz Pyramid Breweries something or other that I didn't really want but might sometime soon. The guy at the register had exactly one quarter which was fine I guess, as that's all I needed. He had to give me nickels for the rest of my change.

Sometime soon I'm going to have to go get a roll of quarters. I apparently can't really rely on the corner bodega for my laundry coinage, it seems.

That was about it for the excitement tonight.

Monday night, on the other hand, was awesome. Morrissey at the Roseland, and I went with a good friend.



Morrissey was fabulous, of course. God bless him.

Some nights are more epic than others, I guess.

Find

I found a vinyl copy of Joan Baez' "Come from the Shadows" at Goodwill.




It's in almost perfect condition (there's just one spot that jumps but doesn't skip.)

Anyway, it's really good stuff.

...just sayin'

My cup runneth over

My spare parts bin is getting to where I can build a bike pretty much anytime out of just salvage.

This one here is the latest:

awesome

Andrew and I went up Powell Butte yesterday. Him on his Mt. Bike and me on my touring bike/commuter/whatever bike with 35c tires. The trails were still just a little too wet for me to get enough traction on, so some places I had to walk.

At the top we saw some hill a mile or two away that looked inviting. We found a directional sign thing that named the hill as Grant Butte.

So of course we had to go check it out. We couldn't find a way up at first, but after tooling around the neighborhood a bit we found what at first glance seemed to be a trail.

The next half-hour or so ascent felt like a Mountain Dew commercial. There were logs across the "trail" every 30 yards or so, low hanging branches (at one point Andrew's helmet was knocked off,) and a fairly steep incline. I asked Andrew to rate the trail in terms of difficulty and he placed it somewhere between "Super hard" and "Olympic death match."

Once we got to the top we found there was an easier trail down, which we took. We then went back to Powell Butte and down the other side. At the bottom, right before it turns back toward the Springwater trail I ate it.

All in all it was an awesome day.

The Clamorers are at it again.

I have several exciting bike builds on my plate just now. I don't have pictures yet but in order to stem the huge clamoring tides




of people wanting to know all about them, here is a brief synopsis....

I "upgraded" the bottom bracket and crankset on an old crappy Schwinn Varsity that Cody found (in a dumpster I think?) from Ashtabula to cottered cranks and English Standard bottom bracket threads.

The huge clamoring tides may not quite fathom fully the absurdity of that. So in order to give you some idea of how hilarious it really is I've come up with a few analogies for all the different types of dorks out there.

For the computer dorks:

Imagine you found an old 286 machine in the garbage and upgraded the operating system from DOS to Windows 3.1 --Something similar is what I've done with this frame.

For all the other dorks:

Imagine you found some crappily-made thirty year old piece of junk and then took off an important part and replaced it with a twenty five year old piece of junk part.

Hmmm. Actually I had thought it would be a little easier to think up analogies than that.

Anyway, you get the idea. Upgrading from Ashtabula to cottered cranks may not be the most ridiculous thing ever, but it's definitely in the running. It would have been far more sensible to have built a giant slingshot and shot it off the top of Rocky Butte.



Come to think of it, that also would have been more illegal.

The other couple of builds I have going right now are:

1, That Gitane frame I am in the process of painting. I'm waiting for the first coat of primer to dry and so far so good on that score.

and

2, I traded this motobecane frame



to some guy off craigslist for a bike that is more my size. His was an old french bike too, so we thought that we would each be able to keep our parts and that they'd be compatible but it seems we underestimated the ability of the Erratic French to produce nuances and idiosyncrasies amongst frame models even of the same brand.

The long and short of it is that I now have only the fixed cup side of a bottom bracket for my frame and he needs my seat post. We were supposed to make the swap this afternoon but somehow it didn't happen. Hopefully early this week or else I've been foiled again by the Erratic French.


Anywhoo, there's your updates on my present bike builds.

Carry on.