BinBike

Not a good weekend for binbike really, Megan is working (work working) and so I haven't been able to go round and play.

During the week I picked up a headset extension to get the handlebars up another 100mm, the 400mm stem was just too short. I've also got slacker grips on it, the ones with big palm rests on them and mini-barends (bull bars). Did I mention that Dave at The Monkey found us seat posts fat enough to fit in without shims or anything. 34mm. Impressive!

Also got my MR16 3W LED light from the ATA. And some other stuff. The light is really good - because it fits inside a regular mount it's easy to use, and the integrated optics and electronics are reasonable. So until I get the optics fitted to my 5W LED that should do. I got the optics from the ATA too, but no mount or enclosure. More work to do.

Yesterday was more moving Phuong trips, towing megatrailer with binbike (Mikie Quick has photos... eventually I might get them). The over to my old flat (2 years ago) to rescue my shelving unit, then we ended up taking it to Phuong's place so she can use it (3.5m long, 2m high, comes apart into 3 pieces) but that meant a 5km trip on busy roads and me riding along with the back wheel lifting off the ground on every decent bump because a 3.5m long load on a 2m long trailer... you work it out.

Today I finally serviced the Rohloff, and discovered that I've lost the service kit bits that make it easy - there's a bit of tube with an adaptor that screws into the bung hole. So I got oil all over everything while draining out the old stuff. bah! But the hub is much quieter now it has (more?) oil it in, so that's probably a good thing. While doing that I also switched to the old, trashed 42T chainring and discovered that I can go faster now :)

This was while looking for Meccano so I can play with stand ideas. The monkey sells quite nice two legged stands, but the shortest one is still very long, and hangs very low when up and lifts the bike very high when down. So I'm trying to work out whether I can make a stand where the legs are linked but not rigidly, so they fold up into a nice compact thing under the BB when not in use but still spread out enough to hold the bike. I expect not, but I want to have a go. And an excuse to buy toys is always good. Too bad the local toy shops mostly specialise in cheap plastic crap (warning: just looking at this stuff makes your kid dumber), and the one decent place (Kidstuff in Parramatta Rd Camperdown (no website though!)) had Lego and Meccano but not metal Meccano. I'm grumpy. So I'm scouring eBay for affordable second hand stuff.

I reckon I've done about 150km on the bike now, and it's going well. Still no paint job, pannier rails or stand, but I'm close.