Scavenger Hunt Over

Finished my part of the www.reddit.com/r/bicycling scavenger hunt... waiting to see if we get some last minute submissions. From others. Below are my most picturesque finds.

Mariokart in the bike lane:

A tallbike I made in 2006 subsequently gave away. I found it in the wild.

And an unusual animal... half of a dead groundhog.

See the rest here.

Charlottesville Bike Polo Video Clips

Found some youtube videos of bike polo in Charlottesville at McIntire Skate Park back in October. This first one is the best:



In the following ones, I'm in the UVA orange & blue jersey giving up the ball a lot.

Stolen Bike, Walnut Creek OFSMBC, First Taste

Yesterday, I received a pretty crappy phone message from Will Canup. He had his bike stolen over at UVA. Most people that see this blog are in Charlottesville, so I figured I'd pass it along. His craigslist post:

I had my black Trek fixed gear stolen from on grounds at UVA sometime in the last 48 hours. It was a black frame with black rims and camo handlebars. The right side of the carbon fork had a huge crack down the middle so it may have been ditched somewhere.

Let me add that he didn't have horizontal dropouts, instead had a magic gear with kinda loose chain tension. Here's a picture, but it no longer has a steering wheel:

Good luck Will. I'll keep my eyes open.

Onto good news, riding over at Walnut Creek with the Old, Fat & Slow Mountain Bike Club tomorrow morning. Really it'll be just 3 of us. Can't wait to get back on the mtb. It's too fun with the current setup.

Cracking open my first homebrew ever... NOW...

In the name of the law

Our OFSMBC (Old, Fat & Slow Mountain Bike Club) ride was cut short at Biscuit Run today because of friendly encounter with the Virginia DCR Police:

Shhh... they are cracking down on illegal hunting and ATVs on the new state property.

They were nice, but they asked us to stay out until the park is open to the public.

On it's first run, Dave's Crud Device,  "Mr.Crud" worked spectacularly.

Ride the Divide @ The Paramount

Community Bikes has organized a screening of the new film, Ride the Divide, at the Charlottesville Paramount. The screening is November 11 @ 7pm. Tickets are $11, and benefit the shop! So bring your grandma and her tea drinkin' cronies.

Rockfishin'

Charlottesville Community Bikes moved to a new location on Preston Ave in late 2009. Since then, it's been quite the task to clean out the old space. There were crappy bikes up to our ears in there. Back in August we had help from a group of UVA Project SERVE volunteers to bring one last load of metal recycling to Cycle Systems (formerly Coiner's). As we were tossing crappy Huffy bikes into a giant pile of steel, a diamond in the rough caught my eye:




This Rockfish frame happens to be a special local bike creation from two Charlottesville,VA locals, Nick & Boris. I got the scoop on them from Scott Paisley over at Blue Wheel Bicycles:

The Rockfish bikes were a project that my original frame building partner, Nick, and Boris created. There was a push to create a new racing format to encourage BMX riders to transition into bicycles as adults. The idea was parking lot criteriums with adults on super quick handling small wheel bikes. I built one prototype on 24" wheels that Boris has been riding around town for years. I may have built one of the 20" wheels as well, but I don't remember, and don't think I did any more than advise on the steering geometry. Those frames were built by Cycle Craft in Tennessee. Nick still has a bunch of the frames unpainted somewhere.

In other words, these were BMX bikes built for Formula-1 racing. I scoured the internet a bit to find Nick's site. There are some good pictures and info on there, despite the Rockfish project being defunct.

I snagged this frame right as it was about to be tossed into a heap of scrap steel to be lost forever. I brought it home and have plans to rebuild it. Unfortunately, after closer inspection, I realized that there's a 1" crack on the back of the seat tube just above the bottom bracket:


So I need to get this tig-welded. I gave Charles a call to see if he would braze the crack for me. He convinced me that tig is the way to go for this crack. He claimed that he is getting a tig setup within the next couple of months, and I hope to pay him to do the work . He told me that if I prepped it by stripping the paint and drilling out the ends that it should be a fast repair. I ended up breaking 4 skinny drill bits trying to drill the ends of the crack out to prevent it from spreading. I also started stripping the frame with a wire brush attachment. In the past I've used chemical strippers, but they are such a noxious pain. As for the color... I've looked for metallic pink automotive paint, but to no avail.


Over the past few years, several of my local friends have also gotten their hands on these frames... but I have yet to see one of theirs working. The frames we find are usually significantly damaged or missing the fork. Mine is both. I have some leads on 20" wheel forks with long steerers and cantilever studs on ebay.

At first I was thinking about restoring this bike to it's original specs. However, I think this frame with 20" wheels would make an amazing polo bike. Charlottesville Bike Polo has really gotten organized in the past few years, thanks to Barry. They meet up at McIntire Skate Park on Tuesdays & Thursday evenings. I showed up thrice recently (after not having been since things got rolling) and damn, pretty good turn out and everyone is gettin tough.

I've also started recreating some decals for the bike. Back in the day (~2006) I found a Rockfish sticker at the old commbikes shop, and I recently got my coworker Andrew Stronge to walk me through scanning, retracing, and vectorizing it in Adobe Illustrator. If you need the vector file, drop me a line

Now just to find someone to reproduce the decals. Velographic looks promising.