Four bike projects in one big blog post. Lots of photos!
I’ve been very busy and haven’t updated the blog in a while. Click on photos for more, I’m limiting myself to one or two per project.
My IvyCycles Rohloff Custom is on the road. I’ve put about 100 miles on this bike in the last week and it’s fantastic. Everything that I hoped for. John Speare wrote a blog post about how cool it is, so I don’t need to.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a minibike for Rollo (minibike polo). I still suck at polo, but I’m having tons of fun showing up every Friday and playing a game or two. Bikes like this are about $5 at Goodwill. A carbon fiber golf club (used to make my mallet) cost $2. I spent more money on the steel for making my extra long seatpost than anything else. I carry my Rollo bike there on my Kogswell Porteur — bike on a bike. Aren’t porteur racks great?
Speaking of Porteur racks, I made a new rack this weekend for the IvyCycles bike shown above. I call it the MiniMax. The platform is about the same size as the bottom of a Ostrich Handlebar bag. It’s small enough to work nicely as a handlebar bag rack without having tons of extra metal and large enough to carry my messenger bag. I originally built the rack with the decaleur at 73 degrees back (to match the angle of my headtube) but the bike’s stem and handlebars got in the way. So it is vertical (for now). The rack needs some stays to the rear corners and a headlight mount, but it’s done enough to ride.
Rory and I built a rack for his new bag. He is going to have a small run of similarily large bags made. This one uses Cordura, but he is thinking about canvas for the production run (and the colors will be more muted). He used a unique and wonderful mounting system for the bag — Ortlieb hooks mounted to a bar on the front of the rack. I’m going to buy one of these bags from him for the MiniMax rack and setup Ortlieb hooks too, except that they’ll be on the bottom of the bag instead of the front. Click the photo for more photos that show the mounting system.
Last week I settled my insurance case from getting hit by a car while riding on Seattle’s streets. I’m glad that the whole ordeal is over with and I’m happy with how everything was resolved.
Next weekend I’m taking the IvyCycles bike camping and I’m sure I’ll report back with more at that point. It’s been a busy and great June and I expect the rest of the summer to keep pace. I hope everyone out there is having fun too.
I love seeing how the racks are progressing – the MiniMax looks fantastic. I”m having a very similar rack custom built for my wife’’s P/R commuter.
where should we look for updates on a production run of this fine-lookin” bag?
Tom — I”ll post about the bag here when I have more information. I expect that Rory will also post details to the internet-bob list.
Adam — I can”t wait to see the rack. Who is building it?
What a wonderful bag! Where oh where can I buy one (albeit smaler if possible)? I could be happy with cordura if it’’s cheaper and easier than canvas. I especially love the color scheme.