Who are we? We are our stories. We are our pictures

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Klunking

I don't much care for mountain biking, but I know a whole bunch of you guys live for it. Got this from the Mimbres Man who got it from someone else, who got it from anther guy, who got it from  his grandfather.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Chris Kvale Cycles #1103 Specs

Fork and frame:
  • Columbus Zona .08/.05/.08 tubeset
  • Seat tube: 61.5cm cl of BB to top of top tube
  • Top tube: 57.0cm
  • Chainstay: 46.0 cm
  • Head angle: 72 1/2 degrees
  • Seat angle: 72 1/2 degrees
  • Frame drop: 8.2 cm
  • Fork rake: 4.5 cm
  • Dupont Imron two-part epoxy: 43938 Cream with white pearl clearcoat & 51078 Red panels (no pearl). The clearcoat yellowed the cream color slightly compared to the color sample, which I quite like as it plays well with the yellow graphics and cable housing)
Frame fitments:
  • Henry James bottom bracket shell
  • Richard Sachs Rene Singer lugset (seatlug extremely modified)
  • Kirk Pacenti double-plate crown
  • Keith Anderson stainless insert dropouts
  • Chris Kvale cable guides
Components:
  • Phil Wood titanium bottom bracket
  • Campagnolo track crankset with Campy chainring guard (both to be stripped and polished)
  • Campagnolo C-Record rear derailleur (polished)
  • MKS Sylvan Prime touring pedals with Bruce Gordon ti toe clips
  • Velo Orange Grand Cru headset
  • Paul Racer rear brake (polished)
  • Paul Neo-Retro front brake (polished)
  • Velo Orange Grand Cru straddle hangers
  • Dia-Comp front cable stop
  • Velo Orange Porteur bars (drilled w/internal cable stops added)
  • Vintage CLB porteur brake levers (filed, sanded, polished)
  • Nitto Jaguar post (stripped and polished)
  • Selle San Marco Regal saddle
  • Phil Wood hubs (1st generation)
  • Super Champion Model 58 rims
  • IRD freewheel
  • Honjo 45mm "Le Paon" fenders
  • (Nitto Pearl stem, to be replaced with the custom Dominguez stem with side mounted Simplex shifter)
  • Silca pump with Campagnolo head
  • Jagwire cables with Sunlite lined housings - a dead match to the graphics
  • Nitto bottle cages (eventually to hold Hiawatha Cyclery bottles, which are just so cool)
  • A shitload of Campagnolo hex nuts ;-)

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Chris Kvale: Ol' Blood On Ivory

As she stands right now - I don't have the bars wrapped because I am saving some really nice leather wraps I got from Tom Sanders, and getting good nickle plating on the stem has proven to be a real hassle. It is presently visiting a plater recommended by Joe Bell, who really ought to know. The front rack is pretty heavy handed and also it doesn't sit horizontally because the Paul brake mounting hardware protrudes quite a bit and kicks it up. This winter I'll have a more delicate rack made, probably by Vincent Dominguez - maybe a rear rack too. Other than that it's pretty much wrapped up except for stripping and buffing the crank, polishing the fenders and brake handles and general dinking around with it.

As they are set right now the brake levers will hit the top bar.  Has anyone got a source for a 2" or 3" lace-on black leather protector for the tube?



Thursday, July 21, 2011

Let Them Eat Cake


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – A group of GOP congressmen calling themselves The Mob of Nine have added a new wrinkle to the ongoing budget negotiations as they put forth a proposal today that would replace Social Security with letting people eat cake.
Their proposal, contained in a bill called the National Cake-Eating Act of 2011, would substitute seniors’ monthly Social Security check with what they called “an easy-to-follow cake recipe.”
“Right now, it’s hard to find a consensus about how to cut the national debt,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis).  “But one thing’s clear: everybody enjoys a good piece of cake.”
But even as the group put forth their proposal, their was dissension among The Mob of Nine about how large the pieces of cake that people were to eat should be, with Rep. Ryan leading the faction who favors a sliver rather than a slice.
“When we say piece of cake, we mean a very, very small piece of cake,” Mr. Ryan said.  “We’re not talking about a Newt Gingrich piece of cake.”
Rep. Ryan also warned fellow GOP House members against supporting the so-called Gang of Six bipartisan budget proposal: “If you support that, I must warn you, you are flirting with reasonableness.”
He said that to pass muster with Tea Party members in the House, any budget proposal would have to pass the Tea Party litmus test: “That means it must be 100% free of logic or math.”
In other political news, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) said her migraine headaches would not hinder her ability to lead: “I can go for months without using my brain.”

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Rev. Dick, esteemed pastor of the Church of the Sweet Ride (Might as well suffer), posted this a couple of weeks ago. I have revisited it a couple of times.  It's just too good not to share. I've mixed me a few metaphors in my day too.

It's All Going to Hell!

Just when I think the world has completely gone to a Justin Bieber/Lady Gaga hell (*harrumph, harrumph*) a young man like Riley Baugus comes walkin' out of the hills and plays us a real song. And all is right with the world once more.

Life Goes On

Emily and Foster.    :-)

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Garden: 07-14-11

With the season moving forward into deep Summer the lilies and daylilies have shown their faces and the color pallet has begun it's shift, with the summer yellows slowly replacing the softer Spring colors. It's lush, although one man's "lush" is another man's "overgrown".  I'm beginning to walk a fine line here, living on the edge. Next year I'll have to start transplanting on the lake side of the bamboo lattice. 


 





Monday, July 11, 2011

Collecting ...

... old bicycles, vintage Campagnolo derailleurs and vinyl records - an explanation:

"What I’ve learned, the hard way, is that the one thing you must never ask a collector is “why?” It’ll get you nowhere. They’ll just stare at you in baffled amazement before returning to contemplation of their most recent acquisition, or dreaming of the next one. These are people who thrive on making classifications, pondering the arrangements of their trophies and annotating them with informative labels. Often their obsession seems to derive from a need to impose order on a chaotic world, from the fear of death and oblivion. The collection will ward off mortality, carrying the illusion of eternity. Collections represent nostalgia for previous worlds, a desire to reclaim the past, to rescue and give meaning to objects otherwise lost in the flux. At the same time, though, collecting also encourages some of our most dangerous and base qualities: possessiveness, acquisitiveness, the lust for power."

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Here's the Kvale ...

...sort of. I was going to hold off on pictures until it was built up, but the delay on the stem is pushing that out a little. Here's a few detail shots of my interpretation of a town bike/light day tourer. There are fenders, rack, etc, but they'll have to wait for a little down time. The red is a little darker than the photograph indicates. The ivory has a pearl clearcoat, the red does not.

(The little scratches around the rack hole are mine, not CKC's.)





Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Irrational Optimism

"Professor Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, said: "People who carried one form of the serotonin transporter gene tended to look on the bright side of life, and selectively avoided negative material." more from The Telegraph.

"Remember the good times
They're smaller in number and easier to recall
Don't spend too much time on the bad times
Their staggering number will be heavy as lead on your mind

Don't waste a moment unhappy
Invaluable moments gone with the leakage of time
As we leave on our own separate journeys
Moving west with the sun to a place buried deep within our minds
And remember the good times..."


The above is from an old Willie Nelson song, a song from back when he was a struggling songwriter. Later the world gained the Willie Nelson band, but for the most part we lost the songwriter. He used to put out a couple of albums a year, with all brand new, wonderfully depressing sad songs. Unfortunately country music wasn't quite ready for Willie and a lot of them have vanished over the years, except in the memory of old farts like me. The above is not on YouTube. I have it on vinyl, but am not interested in mastering the hassle of digitizing and uploading, so here is one from about the same era. Willie before beards and braids - before the years beat the hell out of his voice:



Sunday, July 3, 2011

Woodrup and John Hurt

Mississippi John Hurt would have been 118 years old today. So what does this have to do with a Woodrup bicycle? Answer, Dave Sears lives in Thame, England. The '81 Woodrup belongs to him and the singer is his son, Wilber.  A really nice rendition. Both the song          and the bike. Thank you, Wilber and Dave.

Dave says,
"About the Woodrup - it's my latest and I bought the frame in good sound condition from Hilary Stone earlier this year. Hilary is a good source of all things connected with classic bicycles. The frame has excellent chrome, the paint was little chipped- nothing that justified a respray, but that was easily colo(u)r matched and mended. The only real task was cutting back and polishing the very "orange peel" effect on the lacquer coat. All of the parts migrated from other bikes. The frame was built by Kevin Sayles at Woodrup. I believe that quite a few Woodrups by Kevin were exported to the US."

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Forwarded Message

Hi, Gunnar--

Your frame is finished.  Tuesday or Wednesday pickup (I'll be here both days)?

Have a good holiday.

CKC