Ten minutes...

Ten unbelievably exhilarating minutes from Sunday's ride, same route as on Saturday, just less windy! ;)

Mental note to my self, don't record any more ten minute sequences in 1080p resolution again, the out-put file becomes larger than 2GB, you tube has a maximum size of 2GB...

Ride like the wind?

Had to take the bike for a spin today, the wind was blowing like crazy but I couldn't help it...

Rode against Snöån, had the wind in my back so I was flying on the road, no time to worry about getting home. :)

Massive spring flood in Snöån.
New helmet, regular Bell Alchera, fits well on my head, suppose that's most important.
Snöå stream.


Bike felt good, so far... The new handle bars had the right amount of "flex" when keeping the hands in the drop.
Further ahead, water flowing from one part of the lake to another.
Spotted some swans.
After taking this shot I continued but now I was starting to feel the head wind, and it got worse as I got closer to Ludvika, by the time I turned toward Ludvika after Hagge it was dead on head wind! It was a good work out! ;)

Coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara.
Pennywort.
New cockpit view.
Felt some play in the pedals and almost at home the play started to feel really big, looked down at the bottom bracket and one could see the reason why french threads where abandoned.
The BB had started to come loose during my short ride. When I got home I removed the cranks and applied some blue loctite and re tightened, put as much force as I dared, hopefully it will stay put from now on...

Got the GPS-tracking to work again, had to uninstall Endomondo and reinstall it:

Custom in custom...

Bailed out my "custom" stuff from velo-orange.com today, kind of suspected the stuff had got stuck in customs since it has been a long wait, had to pay the Swedish postal services 100sek for the trouble and 101sek (why that last one krona!?) to the Swedish custom authorities.

OK that I have to pay the toll but why the heck do I have to pay the postal services 100sek for something that has already been paid for postage?! And that for something I paid as much for the postage as for the parts...

No time to be bitter about that, now I could finally end the bike build for this time!

First unpacking, Grand Cru bottom bracket, almost a pity to hide something this nice. Notice the word French, it's for french threaded bottom brackets. Read the fantastic story about bottom bracket thread "standards" at Velo orange: http://support.velo-orange.com/#bbarticle.html
The opposite cup(?) looks well sealed.
Side view.
Mounted:
Over to the threadless stem adaptor (another great invention!), now I can fit modern stems (and hadlebars) on the old Crescent!
close up details.

Ordered a rather long and cheap 25.8mm stem from Chainreaction Cycles to use with the handlebars, read the comments and someone wrote (damn you Jimmy from Australia!) that the bars were 25.8mm and not 31.8mm as it looks on the photos but it turned out that it was a "over sized" 31,8mm bar.

Had to cannibalize my commuter bike for a OS stem, it's not beautiful but adequate for the time being.
Only had time for a short test ride before I went to the cinema, but, WOW! What a difference, felt like I could ride for ever without getting numb hands and fingers!

Doesn't look entirely "kosher" on a older bike, but it's for a good cause! =)
I hope the wind calms tomorrow so I can take the bike for a longer spin, after that I can make a final judgment if it was worth the while. :)

Spring flood...

Some shots from a short bike ride past Hagge yesterday. How is it possible to have head wind 80% of the ride when the wind blows from the same direction all time? ;)

Spring cleaning...

The snow and ice is melting fast now so I thought I'd give my road bike, Crescent Competition 12, a well needed overhaul.

Haven't touched the bike since the (Ronde van) Retaard and there was still mud and sand from Göteborg stuck all over the bike and it was single speed state.
Removed the wheels, bottom bracket, brakes and fork, removed all the old hardened grease (probably from the 80:s!) and then re-greased and put everything back again.
The bearings in the headset was rather OK but the troublesome bottom bracket looked much worse, it seemed to have taken a lot of abuse during the Retaard and the drive side ball bearing ring was a bit askew. I hope to have that matter sorted out soon...

Noticed that my phone was missing and realized that I had forgotten it at work so what could be more appropriate than take the just ready made bike to go fetch it? :)

The feeling, swooshing forward on a road bike after mushing in the snow all winter with the Pugsley, is unbelievable, so effortless!!! :)

There was some moist in the air and I could feel the water getting thrown up by the rear wheel on to my back but I couldn't care less! Can't wait to get out on a proper outing with the bike!

During lunch today I was at home, thought I'd exchange the tires front/back and after that I started to inflate the rear wheel, had about 7bar pressure when the tube exploded, right to my left ear! Had a ringing tone a long time and on my way back to work I popped in to my LBS and bought a couple of spare tubes.

The flat pedals looked a bit funny but they were laying aroud at the moment and I couldn't find the smaller ones.
The, just a moment ago, clean brakes.
Now if the roads just could dry up fast enough...

Snow Stream Island...

There's hopefully not long time left to take advantage of the frozen lakes so I took a trip to anther lake nearby, lake Haggen.

As usually it took a bit longer to get going than planed, the clock was around 12 before I was on my way, hoped the surface wouldn't be too slushy from the warmth of the sun. Lovely weather tough, surprised it could be this nice on a weekend! =)
Almost got run over by the train!
Had a slight head wind, not as bad as previously this week, even managed to cross the lake I failed to cross last time. There was a slight snow fall earlier, all the tracks were covered with loose surface.
Used the bike lane since I had head wind, hopefully I would be able to ride back on the lake.
Found a sign, something for sale...
A steam boat! But where's Willy? ;)
Not here anyway.
By now it was time to enter the ice, found some usable snow mobile tracks to follow, fairly hard.
No snow mobiles had been close to the island Snöån so I had to push the bike the last stretch.
Surprised I managed to bike the some 10 meters in this deep snow with crust.
Found a bay that was protected from the win but which had sun shining on it. Made a fire from some dead trees and had a small picnic.
Another exciting video, making fire in the windy conditions.


After the fire burned out it was time to get back, this time I had a slight tail wind but most of the wind came in sideways.
Took a while before I found a hard track but after that I could keep good speed towards Ludvika, passed another small lake on my way home.
Back at Marnästjärn. The warmth had now made the tracks a bit soft, still usable though.
Not far now...
Recorded slightly over 16 km in about 3h:

From HK, with strings...

Had a small shopping spree on eBay some weeks ago, getting all sorts of small packets in the mail lately, ordered a replacement eyepiece to my Nikon D7000, pirate this time, cost me sek 26:- with postage from Hong Kong.

This time it was a different packing, seem envelopes like that before but just for internal post at companies, had both string for closing the "lid" and some more strings for securing it? Impressing! :)

Lost the rubber eye cup on my Nikon D90 too, seems to be something I have to get used too, that time I ordered a original from Cyberphoto for sek 80:-

Got one more incoming from DealExtreme, just in case...

Prize + bonus!

Took a while but today I received my prize from Cyberphoto, to compensate for the wait I got a 8gb SD card as bonus! :)

-Created on Desire