Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

(photo by Alistair Spence, from his flickr site)

A couple of weeks ago I posted a message on the framebuilders list inviting amateur and hobbyist builders to come over to my house for some beers, chips, and to talk about building bikes. Yesterday was the day and Alistair Spence, Dan Boxer, Joe Dube, Mark Bulgier, Eric Bailey, Colin Stevens (who helped friends move by bike earlier in the day) and myself met up at my house. A couple of others were interested, but couldn’t make it this month.

Mark brought a bucket full of lugs (sadly I didn’t take a photo) which we spread out on the table and which triggered a lot of conversation. He also had a couple of cut apart joints from some of his earlier bikes. Eric brought two forks and racks that he had been working on. Dan rode over on a bike that he had built, and Alistair had his highly modified Rivendell Porteur. I showed a bottom bracket post that I was building for my alignment table. Joe and Mark brought a lot of interesting stories about welding and we talked about Ti, brazing,lugs,dropouts and lots of other things.

Almost 5 hours, 15 or so beers, a bag of chips, much cheese and hummus later we parted ways. Everyone had a good time and we agreed to do it again in August. We’re going to rotate shops and will meet at Joe’s next time. Seattle isn’t Portland when it comes to the number of people building frames, but there is still a lot of interesting stuff going on here. By getting to know each other I think we’ll all be able to better share knowledge and develop our craft.

Today is Bike to Work Day in Seattle. However I didn’t bike to work. I did my normal commute: bike about 3 miles to a bus stop, bus about 10 miles to a transit center, then bike another 1/2 mile or so to my office. I will be biking home over I90, about 22 miles. Yesterday I did the same commute in the morning, but rode 10 miles in the evening, then hopped on my employers Bike Shuttle to get across the 520 bridge (that bridge is what makes my bike commute a minimum of 22 miles instead of the 12 mile route that cars can drive).

The emphasis on Bike to Work Day is to get individuals excited about bicycle commuting. Mixed bike/transit commutes are probably the best way to do that because they allow you to phase in bike use. Start with a short bike and a longer busride and slowly replace more of your bus ride with more bike. Many commuters will probably find some hybrid (as I have) that has the right balance of bike and bus. A friend at work has been using this successfully during the last two weeks and has gone from biking 3 miles a couple of weeks ago to riding 25 miles into work this morning. It’ll be his longest bike ride in many years.

The bus also allows me to keep my commute varied and interesting. There are about 10 different bike/bus routes that I use on a regular basis depending on my mood, the weather, and how quickly I need to get home. I rarely do the same route twice in one week.

The bus doesn’t have to be the only option. Biking to a friends house and then carpooling can be an effective way to carpool with a friend who doesn’t live next door. Using the train or ferry as part of your commute is a multi-modal option. If you live on top of a steep hill it might make sense to drive to the bottom with your bike and then ride in from there.

Yesterday we had some friends over for dinner and put on a CD.  A couple of minutes later the stereo let out a quiet pop and a large cloud of nasty dark blue smoke.  It was nasty stuff.

I turned everything off and figured out a backup plan for listening to music that evening.  Today I investigated using my workshop speaker.  The left, right, and center channels were fine.  When I plugged the speaker into the rear left channel (one that I’ve never used!) my speaker didn’t make any noise, but it did glow like a light bulb.  Not good!

Took the speaker apart and luckily it is just a slow blow fuse that died.  I can replace that.

I took the receiver apart.  I’m stuck with two options:

• Replace it.  This is sad because it was expensive and only about 5 years old.
• Remove the surround amp board and continue to use it as a 3-channel receiver.  Since we don’t do surround that is okay, but I’m not excited about having something that let out a poof of smoke running a few hours a day.

So I guess I’m taking the first option.

I hate that it’s 50lbs of metal, much of it semi-rare copper, and it’s going to end up in the trash.  It probably died because somewhere there is a 2 cent Chinese capacitor that failed.  This guy was built in 2002 when many products were made with these timebomb capacitors.  NAD (the manufacturer) doesn’t have parts anymore, so I can’t just replace the failed amplifier board.

I bought a 1949 South Bend 9″ lathe.  It came with a cool but large and heavy (400-500lbs) stand built by the previous owner.  We couldn’t figure out a way to get it into my basement until the seller thought of hiring a friend with this very useful knuckle crane.

The crane carried threaded the lathe and stand through my back yard, rolled it down a ramp into my basement, and delivered the package into my basement doorway.

This is a photo of the old lathe sitting on top of the new lathe just to give a size comparsion.  The old lathe could turn material up to 14″ long, the new one has a 36″ bed.  The new one is much more rigid and can take much deeper cuts in material.

The stand that I bought with the lathe is very nice.  It has a large stock rack on the back for holding metal, 9 drawers for holding tooling, and an open area below for larger items.

We’ve had a weekend of exploring the zoos and gardens.  On Friday we went to the Wild Animal Park which is about 30 miles outside of San Diego.  It is run by the San Diego Zoo and I think it is what many people think of when they are thinking about the zoo.  We took the Photo Safari through Africa which was expensive but well worth it, you really get up close with the animals.  It brought back memories of visiting Zimbabwe as a child since most of the same animals were on display.  Of course in Zimbabwe they weren’t so easy to find.

On Saturday we went to Quail Botanical Gardens, also north of San Diego.  The gardens are pretty large (35 acres) and have a number of areas specializing in things like native California plants, South African plants, Bamboo, a nice herb garden, and cacti.  It was a nice garden with a lot to see and explore.

We spent this morning and early afternoon in Balboa Park, right in the middle of San Diego.  In the morning we went through the zoo, starting with a gondola ride to the far end of the park and then walking back through the exhibits.  The animal collection didn’t have much overlap with the Wild Animal Park which made it nice to visit both of them.  There were a lot of great birds on display in the zoo and we enjoyed the hippos and polar bears.  Most of the animals were hiding in the shade because of the record heat, over 90F.

After the zoo we wandered around some other parts of Balboa Park, checking out the Museum of Photography (small but nice exhibits), the Botanical House (unlike Seattle they have to make shade here so that they don’t cook the plants — there is no glass to keep the heat in).

Christine dropped me off a little outside of Seaworld.  My goal — Ride to our hotel in La Jolla.  I had no map, but it seemed like it would be easy since the bike routes were well marked and La Jolla was only about 8 miles north.  As long as I kept the ocean on my left I’d be okay.

The ride started out pretty well.  I followed a couple of other cyclists out to Pacific Beach, did some people watching on the very crowded beach (first hot day this spring/summer apparently).  Just as I was getting sick of the thick crowds near the beach I found a bike route sign pointing to UCSD (near our hotel) and followed it.

I either missed a bike route sign or the sign took me up a road called La Jolla Mesa.  I realized that I was lost when I had passed the same intersection at the top of La Jolla Mesa two or three times.  It’s really easy to lose sense of direction when surrounded by similar looking very expensive houses on roads with no right angles and fences tall enough to block the views of the ocean.

When I got to this view and could see my hotel hundreds of feet below I decided to check the maps available through my cell phone:

My hotel is down there, near the two white steeples in the upper right of the photo.  The roads around me looked like this:

I was outside of Mount Soledad Park, about 800 feet above sea level.  Not exactly what I had planned, but it was a fun descent down back into the La Jolla valley before the final climb up to my hotel.  When I plotted my route out it looks like I went about 20 miles and climbed 1500′.  Lots of great views, some good beach riding, and a fun climb.  I was sad to check the maps, but I’d do it all again.

San Diego has an interesting layout.  The airport is right in the center of the city (literally a 10 minute bike ride from downtown).  Balboa Park is also downtown.  Standing at the corner of 6th and Laurel it feels like you can reach up and touch the landing gear on planes as they come in for a landing.

Balboa Park is huge.  Not as large as Central Park in New York or Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, but larger than Discovery Park in Seattle.  There are tons of museums, some nice gardens, a huge zoo, the velodrome, and lots of other stuff.

What brought me to Balboa Park this morning were trails.  Flying into San Diego I was looking out of the airplane window and there were trails everywhere in the hills outside of the city.  I don’t have time on this trip to ride out to those trails, but I read that there were trails in Balboa Park too.  I found them.

Folding bikes with 16″ wheels aren’t known for their offroad handling.  These trails wouldn’t be technical on any sort of mountain bike, or much of anything on a touring or cyclocross bike, but they were pretty challenging with 16″ wheels.  Trails here are much different than in Seattle — you can look around and see where everything is instead of being buried in thick forest.  The surface was sand instead of mud.  The plants are flowering in early april, and falling might involve landing on a cactus.  All good stuff.

If you are coming to San Diego and have a travel bike then I recommend bringing it.  Having a few days of summer riding in the middle of Seattle’s spring has been very refreshing.  Tomorrow my wife arrives and we move farther up the coast — I look forward to seeing what riding I find up there too.

I’m in San Diego this week for a conference and brought my folding bike.  Yesterday morning I exploring town and the friendly folks at Mission Hill Bikes told me that the San Diego Velodrome has racing on Tuesday nights.  I finished up work a bit early and headed over there.

The ride over turned into a bit of an adventure when my headlight decided that it no longer wanted to be attached to my handlebars and found it’s way into a gutter.  I pressed on in the twilight just pretending that I was extra invisible the cars.  The velodrome itself was pretty hard to find too, but eventually I got there. 

I got the see the last three races of the evening.  The track here is a lot like at home — much longer than normal and concrete.  Lots of fixie folks hanging out at the track and having a couple of beers.  On my way out asked the closest small group for directions (hoping to find a more direct way home).  They suggested that I go out to the bar with them instead, so I piled into their van and five of us went to a place called the Whistle Stop.  A few beers, a taco, fun conversation, and a little dancing later and it was already last call.  Thankfully Joel and Amelia gave me a ride back into town and I got back into my hotel room right at 2am.

Mark, Javier, Amelia, Joel, Adam, Me

Cyclists and other folk in San Diego are very friendly.  I’m really glad that I brought the bike (I almost didn’t) and got to spend some time around town last night.

Alistair just finished up this large porteur rack for his tandem and posted an extensive series of photos documenting the process. He also annotated many of them, giving a lot of hints along the way. It’s recommended viewing if you are interested in rack building.

Some folks have been asking me in comments about tricks for making miters that aren’t 90 degrees. Alistair covers this well starting at this photo.

Another flickr gallery that I’ve been enjoying comes from Mike Flanigan of ANT Bike. He has a lot of shots showing his homemade fixtures.I’ve been interested in making fixtures of my own and there is a lot to learn from these photos.

Perhaps my favorite series of organized bicycle rides in Seattle are the holiday-oriented Cargo Bike Rides. These were started a few years ago by Val Kleitz and have grown to be well attended with a wide variety of bikes (cargo and not).

The Cargo Bike series has always skipped the spring because there wasn’t a handy holiday between New Years and Memorial Day. FieryIrie (aka Aden) realized this gap wasn’t really a good idea and started up the Easter Cargo Bike ride. I was sad to wake up to pouring rain on Sunday morning and almost talked myself out of going, but finally decided that a little rain shouldn’t keep me away and loaded up my bike and rode down to Myrtle Edwards Park.

I arrived and found 15 or so very wet souls hanging out under a roof waiting for the ride to start. I was amazed to see so many people — Seattle cyclists ride in the rain, but most give up when the rain is hard. Not the cargo bike guys, they were outside when most other cyclists were comfortably at home.

Aden wasn’t there yet, but quickly showed up with a borrowed XtraCycle full of spring flowers:

The plan was to ride north to Ballard to Honk Fest West and then onto Gasworks for some picnicing and a fire. The rain squashed the idea of watching marching bands, so we swung by Fred Meyer to pick up a rickshaw’s worth of fire wood then headed to the Gaswork fire places.

As we pulled into Gasworks another large cargo rickshaw joined us. This electric bike (it has two front hub motors) was pretty incredible and made from what seemed like half a dozen donor bikes. The owner/builder (I think her name is Segwey) has been working on it for a couple of years and is building another couple of them. She also makes a mean splitpea soup.

Full of soup, hot cross buns, warming beverages, and other food everyone congregated around the fires.

A couple of hours the sun dared to come out, leading to a dry and much warmer ride home.

This cargo bike ride probably had the least riding of any that I’ve been on, but was also one of the more fun. I hope to see more folks out for the Memorial Day ride — last year’s was the biggest Cargo ride yet.

More photos.