the trike is done

Mammoth!
here is moni, skiing (cross country) around lake mary (8900ft elevation). our day was exciting including walking to the rental place, the girl hiding our shoes in the back for us, hitchhiking up to the lodge (5 miles or so) with a nice couple we met at the rental place, and miraculously catching a ride with them back to town. we ate at a nice place called perrys, splitting a huge calzone the size of an opossum.

updates

the trike has been painted, the rear wheels have been built (to be trued tomorrow), all the parts are here and tomorrow it will become a real rideable bike :)

New wheels for the trike getting ready to paint black in the morning


Old wheels with hubs cut out...

Hubs being cleaned, bearings out, getting ready for paint

rear drive mechanism on trike, frame being prepped for paint (with my handy $8 palm sander)

new bikes last week

old schwinn from a friend at work, a wonderful bike to ride and old skool seat and original schwinn grips.  definitely gonna keep this bike for myself.

picked up this bike from a kid who was selling it to raise money for haiti so I felt good about buying it from him.  I got this one before the schwinn up above and wanted to keep it.  I think I will just clean it up and put new tires on it and sell it.  It is a wonderful cruiser for around town, and it has a rack :)
On the same day I got the schwinn, I picked up this trike from a friends brother.  It was a rusty pile.  In this pic, I had already removed a headlight and mirror that were so rusted on the only way to remove them was with a hammer (ha).  The chain was so rusted on it was removed with a hammer too.  I ordered around $85 in parts to completely rebuild everything.  The rear wheels are so rusted I'm afraid they'll crumble.  The rear hubs are good.  I'm going to go flat black on the frame, wheels and hubs black, black tires, no fenders, scrap the basket, and ad a banana seat and sissy bar :)  lowrider trike!

Mowing season over... time to buy a mower

In a fluke, I was off work sunday... (I had originally intended to go dancing but that fell through)  I found myself bargain hunting, and I found one in the form of this mower.  Its a 2 stroke lawn boy commercial series 4.5hp 21" cut mulching mower.  Price tag said "$** as is" (price withheld because I want to sell it)  It was cheap enough though that I bought it without any question :)  Took it home, opened it up, cleaned the carb out, filled it with the proper ratio mix gas and started it up.  It ran rich for about 30 seconds, got the choke adjusted properly and mowed my lawn :)  I almost don't want to sell it because its a perfectly fine mower but on the other hand, I don't need a mower so it will be for sale pretty soon.  know anyone that wants an awesome self propelled mower that will last forever (for cheap)?  email me. 

Changes

I finished this bike.  Decided not to pull the rear cassette - this bike stays single speed coastie with a full rear cassette...  added a rear brake and its for sale.

I got this Tomos Golden Bullet moped last week.  Got it off craigslist for a STEAL.  Thats my russian army helmet that I am using as my moped helmet... its a steel pot :-)  The moped goes 30-35 mph, gets 120 mpg and is an absolute BLAST to drive.

This fancy little instrument is a stick dulcimer that I picked up last week from a guy in PA who makes them.  It uses open GDG tuning - has banjo strings on it and sounds magnificent.   I'll try to post a video of me playing it later.

Check out this beautiful maple back :)

Scraped down, prepped and painted this parts bike today. I was going to do all white but on a whim, decided to paint the fork red. i love it. tomorrow I am going over to my friend Troy's and he's gonna help me convert the hub to a fixed hub - my first fixie :) I have decided on a ratio of 52-21 (which gives a gain of 5.0 - a decent all around road ratio) Since this bike is a huffy and i'm trying to do it for next to free... my options of front cog were 39 (too small) and 52 (manageable) so I chose 52.

Tomorrow I also have to repaint the rear triangle on the tandem... the tires on it are too big and they rubbed the paint off the inside of the triangle. So new tires are on the way and new fenders too.