Tallbike painted

So, cousin Kate is going to marry Angela Merkel, is he? Well if you can't be king of England you might as well be chancellor of Europe.

Where were we. Yup, the tallbike is even finisheder. It got racks welded on and it got painted. It can now stand innocently until the tyres go flat or I think of a use for it.

Still no triangulation of that whacking great big unstable parallelogram. We shall see if we ever need it. Unlikely if it never gets ridden and becomes a mere shed encumbrance.

Moving on, a big fat German plumber came to stay with his slender wife and tiny child and demanding activity after he'd eaten two dinners and helped himself to several evening beers and smoked a cigarette in bed, all of which made me wonder who won the war, and lacking a baby seat we had recourse to phoning Suzanne, who volunteered either of her machines, one a huge Dutch bicycle and the other a perfectly good gentleman's mountain bicycle, if I'd fix the seat of the one and the tyre of the other. Nothing loathe, since the option was watching the perfumed plumber (he'd occupied the bathroom and emerged leaving behind such fumes of eau de cologne as would eliminate borer insects deep in the beams) eat his way through bacon eggs tomatoes sausages ("The German are better, English no good, like their cars. My Mercedes van has 130 horsepower, nothing it can't conquer." - Oh,thank you for that enlightening discourse. Anything else you'd care to tell at me?) several times, I walked down to the wharf where Suzanne lives and located the bikes and effected the one repair with nothing more than a track pump, and the other by riding it home on a wobbly seat and welding reinforcements to the whateverit'scalled gizmo atop the seatpost. Here's a before and after:

 Before. The cradle thingy for the seat rails bent, as you may imagine, where those thin bits either side of the hole lie.

After. 3mm steel welded in place and left untouched as much as possible to give vertical strength. Not much to show for three hours of a Saturday morning. Still, one hopes it works.

When the plumber went off in his camper van to Picton normal service was resumed, which is to say Carl the electrician telephoned and suggested I repair his tandem. This will have to wait till another post gets itself blogged.