Squeak Like the Wind

pre event jitters

I rarely sleep well the night before an event.

My friend Luke and I are running in an adventure race tomorrow, and I'm way too wired to sleep. I've run the City to Surf (14k) on about 3 hours of broken sleep and I tend to be fine - the adrenalin and fun of it pulls you through on the day.

The race will consist of running, mountain biking and kayaking... and a lot of running round with a map looking for flags. It was an incredible amount of fun last year, so I can't imagine it'll be any different this year. Difference will be that it won't be my local area which I'm somewhat familiar with - it'll be out in an entirely new spot. Eeee!

So. Got just about all my stuff sorted for tomorrow. Only thing now is to wait til I fall asleep.

Had a great evening in tonight: Don't worry, it's light champers! After my shenanigans of the Canberra Times 10k, I've vowed never to run an event hung over again. Ugh.

The helmet, finished

These are a few shots of the finished product. The Canberra Tweed facebook page has heaps more photos of all the lovely people there - go over and have a look!

Aviator helmet part 2

Once I had the basic form done and the decorative buckle on the back, I glued it on top, trimmed to about 1cm, and poked the edges down in between the foam and the hard helmet form with pointy nosed pliers. Not the tidiest job, but it worked. I trimmed the side panels into ear flap shapes, got some woollen wadding and sewed it into the flap shapes, just with running stitch. In hindsight I really wish I'd done this before I'd glued it on, as it would have taken 1/4 of the time if I'd done it by machine and not hand *sigh*

You can see I cut slits at the top of the wadding so I could choose to tuck the bike helmet buckles into the ear flaps for when I wasn't actually riding.

Finally, I made another little buckle and tongue set with leftover leather, and sewed roughly to the ends of the ear flaps. Below are detailed photos of the buckles.

Finally, I threw the goggles (thanks ebay) on the top and I was ready to roll!

Easier than it looks, and made for a very fun outfit. ;)

Aviator helmet part 1

Here's how I made my fabbo leather-covered bicycle-aviator's helmet which I wore to the local Tweed Ride today.

First, I got a nice sharp pair of scissors and an old leather jacket. The leather was quite thin and supple, almost stretchy, and my sewing machine had no trouble with it.

First I cut a strip as wide as I could while keeping it flattish across the top of the helmet, from the front of the helmet right over to the back. I kept it a good 5cm longer at front and back to allow me flexibility and some breathing space when adding the side panels.

Note that this is not a plain rectangle, but tapers thinner at both front and back. I pretty much cut it where it sat flat.

The next bits involved a bit of guesswork. First I guessed at a triangle-type shape, with a slight curve to one side, and cut two mirrored pieces. This is the bit to right of the photo below, just near the handle of the scissors. I attached each triangle piece with a seam running along the middle panel, so at that point there was a long panel with two triangles attached on either side. Then I draped it over the helmet and laid a piece of leather over the top, and traced an approximation of the side panel pieces, and extended the shape down to a long ear flap piece. At this point I left the ear flaps large and mostly unformed so I could adjust them later. I attached these two side panels to the existing pieces, so only 2 more pieces left to add.

 

 

I made a bit of a guess at the final two pieces, which were little triangles almost the same as the front. I made the point of the seams where three pieces met (at 4 spots on the top of the helmet) to co-incide with the 4 points on the helmet which were most prominent, or where the curve changed the most.

Before I glued the basic form to the helmet, I made a couple of long thin rectangles of leather and made a loop and buckle which I attached to the back of the helmet. This was mostly for design and aesthetic purposes - on a real aviator helmet it would adjust the tightness across the back, but I added it both to look good, and to give the goggles' elastic something to tuck under when they were put over the finished piece. The buckles were also rescued from an old pair of trousers which I picked up at an opshop and only wore once, so they had a battered and authentic appearance :) Unfortunately they say "kathmandu" on them, if you look closely at the pics in the next post ;) but you have to be pretty close!

A few photos from the ride home today

Pannier Playfulness

I went in to Sydney yesterday for a pannier workshop with the Green Living Centre (was the Watershed) in Newtown.

Hugely useful and wonderful! I cannot believe they put this on for free.

Now, I just did a great big review of the whole damn thing, and accidentally hit "back" just as I was about to publish it, so if you're after lots more information, feel free to email me.

These are a tiny version of the green bag panniers - cheap and cheerful and very useful! You can also get some really sweet greenbags with cute pictures on them, so this would work out well if you want a splash of colour for very little cost. They're lined with corflute (unsure how to actually spell it) so that they stay nice and stiffened and don't get pulled into spokes or deraillers.

Despite their simplicity, the bucket panniers were my favourites! They used buckets from various places, they got them all for free, and apparently Boost throw away a huge number of square white buckets with lids that are perfect for this (and with the lids become rain proof!

You can see in this picture that the elastic stabiliser is a piece of recycled inner tube. Fantastic idea!

You wouldn't want to use these on a bike with an expensive or fancy rack, as you can see it's already scratched it up a bit. I don't mind - but I'm thinking it might be worth lining them with some rubber stuff to stop them rattling as well as scratching.

Wonderful stuff, and I think they'll work very well for tall awkward things when I have to carry them. Would be rather nice if I was the fresh food market type and had to carry celery and fresh flowers home. As it is, I think it'll suit a baguette or two just fine. :)

The Apocalypse Tube

Today I broke out the tyre irons and gave Rosie her second Apocalypse Tube.

The Apocolypse Tube is the name I give for the awesomeness of these things combined:

The tyre sealant is this magical goo that you squirt into your tube, and when your tube gets a little puncture (as in 1/4 inch or less) it dries on air contact, and seals up the puncture. Amazing. Add this to a thorn resistant tube, and suddenly you have a tyre that's going to resist just about anything short of an apocalyptic event. Oh yeah.

Also, I got to buy and try a groovy new tool - this is a valve core remover (with the valve core still stuck into it). I love cool bike repair tools! It makes me feel all hard core 'n' shit.

So, with dirty hands and fresh tubes in Rosie's tyres, we wheeled out the back for a thorough wash down and lubing of the chain.

The other thing today was that I finally admitted defeat. After spending over $150 on two sets of dress guards, not being able to install them, countless emails between the seller and I over how to install them, and supply of different clips, sending back the old ones that didn't work, blah, blah, blah, I tried to install the new clips today and failed miserably.

The product itself is fine. The guards are beautifully designed and made, and the whole product is perfect. But Rosie's fenders sit too close to her tyres to get the clips in without scraping the tyre, and the derailler grabs the guard on that side when ever I go over a bump in the road, and has repeated ripped the guard off and gotten it hopelessly tangled in the derailler area, which is distressing and frustrating. (I did however have a terribly attractive man stop to help me sort it out once , which was quite fun, so it hasn't been all bad. LOL.)

So I've stashed the clips and guards away, for another day. I'm thinking of switching from Rosie to a Dutch bike for transport purposes, and I think the skirt guards will be perfect for that: wider fenders, no derailler. One day. :)

Bikes are allowed to be here too!

I've come out on Rosie this morning for brekky with one friend and coffee with another, and finally had both the time and the inclination to stop and take a picture of this wonderful thing: I'm not sure what it's called. But I know what it is! It's a message, loud and clear, that bikes are allowed to be on the road.

Over the christmas period and in to January, I participated in a study funded by the ACT government aiming at making cycling safer in Canberra. I had a camera attached to my helmet, and I recorded about 20 hours of me riding to and from work on the roads. At the end I participated in an interview as well.

Something that happens with car drivers and bikes on the road, and was certainly highlighted with the not so recent shenanigans with Shane Warne and his chance encounter with a cyclist, is that there is an attitude that since cyclists don't pay vehicle rego fees for their bikes, they have no right to be on the road.

I'm not going to put in my 2cents worth into this debate today. But I will say this: it's wonderful to see that little patch of green paint and white stencilling, and its message: watch for the bicycles, they're allowed to be here too.

beautiful things

Rather than blogging myself, I've been lurking about on other blogs. And there are so many beautiful things out there!

I love Rosie, she's a total sweety, and I'm finding that she's a great transport bike. But I've been thinking of other bikes, namely ones with things like dynamo lighting, internal hub gears, full chain guards. Sometimes it really is about functionality as well. And I'm realising that I can have a gorgeously lovely bike which is also functional.

Anyways, I've gotten these incredible pictures from other blogs:

http://rideblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/november-19-2011-ride-the-relative-thrill-of-discovery/

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.ecovelo.info/2011/11/28/gallery-steves-town-bike-project/

 

 

This one from the local Tour de Femme, was taken as one of the official pics. I have no idea who it is, despite asking all over facebook where I could.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, some new lovely shoes, looking gorgeously matching on the lovely Rosie. Maybe I won't rush out and buy a new red bike after all...

A bike ride, and a near death experience

Another day of sleeping in. I vaguely remember sleeping in as a teenager. I didn't actually sleep, mostly. I tended to get myself a good novel, curl up in bed, and stay there until some time in the early afternoon when hunger would drive me out into the real world, seeking breakfast and perhaps even some sunshine.

My niece stayed in bed until about 2pm. I was pretty impressed. We slept until about 9ish, and blamed that on daylight saving. Heh.

We didn't have many plans for the day, and I see no reason to chuck a happily hibernating teenager out of bed if we have nowhere to be, so when she finally emerged we fed her, and threw her on a bike.

Unfortunately for her, Canberra can be a bit... thingy... in the spring. Apparently it's not a nice place to be if you have hayfever. Or asthma. She had an asthma attack about half way round the lake, despite our very easy pace on the bikes. We'd been riding for about 25 minutes at that stage. So, pollen + slightly asthmatic lungs = near death experience. Not cool! Thank goodness for my happy purchase of a bike rack, I rode home in 11 minutes flat (I told you we'd been riding slowly! LOL) and grabbed the car, and did my best Squeaking Knight in Shining Armour impression. Hooray!

Another day with no purchases, though it was pretty easy considering we spent half the day just chilling at home. Nice.

Day 3: Success! :)