It is the last day of the year in which the world didn't end after all, and in order to maintain the fiction that I'm a diligent blogger here are some assembled scraps.

1. My recumbent, the famous Duplo Bike, has been going rather slower of late, and one evening when the sun was low I perceived that my shadow was bouncing up and down a good deal. On returning home I removed the suspension unit, which is three strips of inner tube lightly bound, and found a great many short lengths doing nothing. Hence the bouncing. The bouncing is wasted energy, hence the low speed. It was the work of a moment to rebind it with new rubber - no it wasn't, it was the work of three quarters of a tedious hour - but then I had firm suspension again and was once more able to accomplish my daily ride in under, rather than over, the hour.

Shards of innertube prior to complete replacement

2. After some good-natured nagging from my son, I have finished his High Racer. Mr. Knight is miffed that I did so before he finished his Geared Facile, but there was not the slightest chance he would ever finish first because he does the job properly whereas I Just Get On With It. Except I don't. Mostly I that p-word. Plagiarise. Polygamy. Proceleusmatic. Procrastinate - that's it - mostly I procrastinate. (What does proceleusmatic mean anyway?) But when I stop procrastinating things happen very quickly because I don't mess about with precision - I weld stuff together and then chop it apart and weld it back together properly because it hardly ever works the first time.

First I had to rebuild a wheel, which through zealous spoke tightening had burst a rim.

When only replacing the rim I have a Cunning Trick which is to tie the spokes together in twos. This saves a remarkable amount of swearwords, which otherwise power all my attempts to lace a wheel correctly. I have managed to lace a wheel in less than eleven attempts, but I haven't managed it partic'ly often.

The boy wanted overhead handlebars, which were provided by welding a stalk to a handlebar stem, and to thicken the stalk and prevent burn-through, I cut a slice out of another bit of tube and squeezing it down so it'd fit, pushed it into the stalk and with one or two plug-welds, stiffened the base. A warning not to pull on the handlebars was issued because it won't do 'im no good.

A stem (above) and its 'reinforcement' (below)

He has of course been riding it, declining SPDs in favour of Not Falling Off, and some foolish men overtook him on common carbon-fibre bicycles, whereupon he tucked into their slipstream and irritated them a good deal before they finally asked him if he wanted a race to the next junction, which he did and won comprehensively, they gasping and panting and dropping off into the background somewhere. John's daily ride is the same as mine. He is younger and fitter than me and whereas the fastest I can do it on a common bicycle is over an hour, he can do it in under 52 minutes.

3. Which reminds me, someone passed me yesterday while I was stopped at the side of the road, and didn't say Hello let alone ask if I needed help, so I hopped back on and (I hope) to his dismay, closed the gap between us, and I knew he was pedalling hard to get away because he kept glancing over his shoulder. If it was You, I will now give you a small tip. Do not pass recumbents without saying Hello. - Not into a headwind. - And not anywhere near the brow of a hill.

4. Reverting to his High Racer, he has collected five hares on his daily rides. It seems to be the Hare Suicide Season. - Roadkill. - A good many folk turn their noses up at roadkill, but a slow cooker does wonders, and you can eat it among all your vegetarian friends with a clear conscience. He is now finishing a Cardboard Box to go on the back of the seat, because hares go inside boxes easier than they attach to recumbent bicycle frames with a strip of inner-tube.

5. And the only thing to add is that I bogged up, as usual, welding cable stops half a millimetre too close to the brake stubs, which I cunningly got round by putting an extra bit of cable housing in.

A rubbish picture taken into the sun this afternoon

Suspension losses

I have formed the habit of cycling to Rocky River on one side of the Motueka river, crossing at the Bluffs bridge, & returning past the aerodrome on t'other side. It is a pretty route, punctuated at various points and on various occasions by wild pigs rooting at the side of the road, by Bill the farmer using profane language and a hammer to maintain the power take-off on his David Brown, and by Watsons omitting to sweep the thorns up after mowing the hedge on High Street. Here's last year's offerings. I pick them up to hand in to the police station where I happen to know half of the officers are keen roadies.

Found on the cycle path on State Highway 60, this time last year

In the last week or so I found myself in perfect health, thank you very much for asking, and yet with no headwind, no brakes rubbing, and tyres pumped hard, the trip had started taking a mysteriously lethargic 70 minutes. Yesterday the bike was bouncing up and down in a soft, comfortable, gentle manner and, after a few miles' thought, it occurred to me to stop and check the suspension, which is composed of inner-tube strips wrapped in tension. And on so doing I found half of them broken, and groping in the saddlebag for spares and re-wrapping the rubber, the machine stopped bouncing and my speed improved and the trip time returned to its rather sweaty 56 minutes. A salutary lesson on the costs of comfortable suspension.

A rubbish picture of the rubber lashing which is my bike's suspension unit

Today it was belting rain upon the Earth, and peeping out of the kitchen window it was pretty hard to differentiate between the waters which were above the firmament and the waters which were below the firmament, at least in Motueka. Peeping out of the kitchen window I couldn't see Mount Campbell at all. Peeping out of the kitchen window all I could see was dense grey rain. Peeping out of the kitchen window it looked like time to start making an ark of gopher wood three hundred cubits long and rounding up fowls of their kind and cattle of their kind and every creeping thing of the earth. (Two of each sort, obv..)

Accordingly Mr Schroder and Mr McLeod who had been idly toying with a ride over here chickened out, the pathetic wimps, which was just as well because I wasn't bloody well going out for a ride in this weather. But Mr Schroder piled his machine into the back of his ute and poled up for a wag of the jaw and a mug of the tea, no doubt with half an eye on the gopher wood situation in the Moutere Hills.

Mr Schroder's new machine - Schroder 3 - is very tightly built. There is not much clearance anywhere. Mr Schroder suffers from short stumpy legs which only just reach the ground and on some occasions, such as when he flies gaily through the air before head-butting the local geology, don't reach the ground at all. These short stumpy legs are huge things, the hugeness entirely composed of muscle. I have ridden with him before: his cadence is about thirty while mine is about ninety and he's a good deal faster than me. He opts for short cranks, a massive chainring, and the use of vast force to go Stinking Fast. But short legs raise the problem of tight clearances, and on front wheel drive low racers, those clearances become Very Tight Indeed. There is exactly 5.5 millimetres between the front tyre and the frame.
Schroder's cat. There's another one exactly like it inside the back of the car. The rest of the machine is located at

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af156/nigelmelanie/FWD%20Low%20racer/photos226.jpg.

There is no room at all for the rear mech cable: it has to be threaded through the fork leg. (He threaded the inner cable first, and then the cable housing afterwards, a sneaky trick which I shall steal and cunningly claim as original sometime.) Handlebars have been ditched altogether and he relies on a tiller, with gear changers to fiddle with and go dackadackadacka at the traffic like in the Battle of Britain film. - Did you know Susannah York just died? - Well she did, and she was 72. Hard to believe anyone as pretty as Susannah York could ever be 72. - His frontal area - we are referring to Mr Schroder again - we have put the alluring discussion of Susannah York to one side - is 21 inches square, plus head, plus helmet, and here is a picture.

He'd made a very useful pair of T-stands that clamped to the main tube & allowed for stationary pedalling. He offered me a go but I declined partly cos of the wet road (spray in hair & up legs & on unpainted steel frame) and partly because he is a chain-oiler and I am a wax-snob. Besides, Mr McLeod has had a mishap with his chain on his FWD low racer and I am in no hurry to emulate it:

Tested the new lowracer sans idler chain guide/shield. For all the FWD advantages it is also highly efficient at pulling hair and skin thru the drivetrain without much effort -
James

He even sent me a photo of it, little thinking it would end up on the Internet. - You can just never be too careful. -

So all of the above are my feeble excuses for failing to Get On With John's high racer. But I will, I will, because Mr Knight presses on with his rubbishy old Geared Facile and I have just read that fully 48% of New Zealanders were wholly indifferent to the opening of the rugby world cup, so there must be an eager 2,080,000 people out there prepared to get all excited about how we're both doing instead.