Clear solution

I am one coat of clear away from finishing my own personal road bike, and then only a mere crankset, bottom bracket, shifters and brakes away from building the thing up. I'm waiting on a couple of external things, notably cranks. Since I've gone with BB30, and I'm kind of addicted to my 180mm cranks, there are a couple of options I could go with. The best, or at least lightest/most efficient would be using Lightning Cranks. Their website is pretty terrible, but they seem to have done an excellent job of designing a light weight, BB30 compatible product. Expense is the only thing holding me back here though, as they're roughly twice as expensive as my other best option, the SRAM Red cranks which are pretty light and available in 177.5 mm length. Would I notice a difference of 2.5mm or an extra 100 grams of weight? Who knows, but the Red's aren't available until May 10th at the earliest, and I don't know if I can wait that long!!
My other option is to get an adapter for the BB and swap over my 180mm Rival cranks that I've been riding for the past year, with the eventual hope of getting myself some wicked cranks as time goes by.

The frame itself is looking good, and I'm hoping that all of the minor details that I'm sweating in the finish work right now will pay off in the end and melt away in the final finished bike. My goal is to have it ready by my first race, but I'm doubtful that that will happen, as I've got a lot of stuff on my plate with other projects and job stuff these days. I think that the best case scenario will have me putting things together by the end of April. With luck I'll be able to race my bike at Turkey Hill, and maybe even finish the bastard this year.

I'm totally into vinyls

I just got back some vinyl cutting that I had done by Signs of Art here in Philly. Louise, who owns and runs the shop, is married to a co-worker of Jennifer's at her old job at PPV. I had been hunting around in town, trying to find a sign shop that actually answered their telephone, when Jennifer reminded me that we kind of knew someone who did that stuff.

A series of emails ensued, and 4 days later I had graphics in hand for $20!!! I couldn't believe my good fortune. I picked up the stencils yesterday, and couldn't contain myself. I went promptly home and finished up the rest of the color coat on my bike! That went pretty well, but I still need to figure out the timing of applying the various stages of paint. I think that I've been rushing the whole masking process too much, but that's kinda what I thought I was supposed to do: pull off the masks before the paint cures too much and risks cracking. I applied the stencils about 25 minutes after the first color coat, which seemed to go OK, then I painted the rest of the color for the background. This too seemed just fine, though when I removed the stencils at the end of the process, they had somehow glued themselves to the pink base coat. Bad news. I tried to get things to come off evenly by picking at the edges with my exacto knife, but in the end I had to stop because there was simply no stopping the paint from peeling off. Annoying. The other problem is that there was some adhesive left from the stencils, and though it is clear, it's a little bit sticky and sanding dust jumps right onto it. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to deal with the issue, probably just clearcoat over it soon to prevent it from getting gunked up and hope for the best.

Bird shit

About a month ago I went to my local bamboo grove in search of some nice new culms before the growing season got underway and the bamboo became waterlogged. I didn't have the trailer with me, so I just cut them and left them to dry. Several weeks went by, and then it snowed, then thawed, then snowed again, then I never had a chance to get them, so I did that this past Sunday. It had been raining, and I didn't want the cut bamboo to get moldy, so I decided to drive up there in the car and load them up en masse. This went pretty well, and I honestly shouldn't need any more bamboo for a couple of years, so prolific was my harvest! One of the side effects of the snow was that it caused a massive blow-down in the bamboo grove; many of the taller shoots were busted off half way down, and an even greater number were simply bent in half. I didn't cut any new bamboo shoots this time, only newly broken ones.

The major issue was that this particular bamboo grove is some sort of bird super-condominium, it must be the favorite hang out for an enormous flock of birds. How would I know this? Because where birds hang out, birds shit. I'm truly glad I won't have to go back for a while as I'm pretty much done hanging out in a dense grove of bird-doo enslimed bamboo. The rain made the bamboo slick with the droppings, and I was able to wash off some of the culms, but not all, and not my jacket. I was thoroughly gross by the end of the trip.

Strange side benefit however: handling all of the bird-poo-bamboo (say it five times fast) for a couple of hours did something marvelous to my hands. They are the softest that they've ever been. Maybe I should look into that more.

Awesome Fenders

Banjo Bicycles out of Madison had what was probably the coolest set of fenders that I've ever seen on this bike. The rack wasn't too shabby either.

Some elegant but slightly non-functional brakes.

Bob's bike

This bike belongs to Bob Pavlica, my former co-worker at Grand Performance in Saint Paul. This is the shop where I got to be called Jethro because I was the second Aaron to work there, and they just couldn't deal with double names. Somebody picked Jethro, and it stuck. I'll always remember Bob, when relating his experience being in prison for armed robbery, "You wouldn't last 15 minutes in prison Jethro." Cool bike, though. It's "gaudy Irish"in theme.

NAHBS

NAHBS was awesome.  I only wish that I would have split my 8 hours there into 2 days, rather than the 1 day marathon that I did.  We saw exquisite work from builders from across the country.  Inspirational and informative.