She's Nude!!!

OK so this is what Audrey looked like for the last few weeks. I decided to take her apart completely, but soon found that stubborn rust and crazy attachments meant that I didn't have the tools necessary to take everything off. Especially the handlebars and fork gave me huge problems. Never fear though, the solution came to me yesterday - the wrench-master 4000. Well I don't know what it's real name is, but it's fantastic. It's a ginormous wrench with good teeth so it can get purchase on about anything. It also doubles as a hammer. Nice.

These are the parts of the handlebars and fork after myself and Hugh eventually managed to beat it into it's individual parts.


And this is me with the indecently naked frame, wielding the wrench-master itself. I've started sanding the main frame now in preparation for priming. Note the tiny silver patch towards the front of the bike? Great eh? Only around 500 more hours of sanding to go...

Exhibition

Last weekend myself and Hugh went to his school, Ampleforth, to see his brother Peter playing cricket. It was a weekend called Exhibition, where the parents are invited to come see various sporting events and shows around the school, and annual awards are given to the students.

This first picture is the pavillion on the 1st cricket pitch with the school in the background. It's a monastery school. The big building in the middle is the church, to the left is the monk's area, and to the right is the school itself. The living areas for the students is off the right of the picture. It's an amazing place.

On the first day of the cricket, the opposition batted first and got 228. Peter and one of the lads on his team opened the batting and between them got 229 not out. Pretty impressive! The other lad was "given his colours" for such an outstanding show. This means that he is given a red school jacket and hat, an award given to only the best cricketers. It's pretty sought after! The guy was delighted with it and his father was there to see him being awarded it and everything. It was really cool. Below is Peter batting.

Baby Duckies

I'm too lazy at the moment to get any new pictures off the camera, so here's another from Canter Parcs a few weekends back. There were ducks and ducklings everywhere. They weren't that shy of people either, so walking through the main village there'd be kids legging it after ducklings with the Mom in hysterics, of both species.

Vegetables 2008

It's raining here at the moment so I'm not able to do anything with the bike, so here's a few pictures of this years vegetables. I started them from seed around 6 weeks ago, in seedling trays out the back garden. I planted tomatoes, broccoli, onions, carrots, leek and lettuce.


Since then they have started getting pretty big! First here is a pot of broccoli and next is a tomato plant. The tomatoes are definitely my favorites and I like to water them and talk to them before going to work in the morning. Hugh is looking into loony bins for me.

Cool New Wheel!

Over the weekend I took Audrey's wheel apart. This is what the hub looked like at the start - pretty gross. The spokes snapped very easily so I was able to pull them all out of the wheel pretty easily.


As soon as they were all gone it was very easy to take the hub apart. These are all the parts. The balls sit in a rim just inside the hub and they are held in place by the bar and the shaped nuts. They are covered in grease which makes the bar able to turn around against the balls easily instead of rubbing off flat metal. I cleaned and rusted and treated the metal and it turn out like the next photo - pretty good improvement!



I took one of the old spokes to my local bike shop and was able to buy replacement ones. They come in 2 parts - they have a nipple (he he he) at the end that goes through the hub and they look like a screw at the top. Then there is a bit that looks like a long nut that goes in through the rim and connects onto the spoke. You can tighten it with a normal screwdriver and the idea is to keep the spoke from coming up though the screw cause it will puncture the tube.

I followed Sheldon Brown's instructions on how to respoke the wheel. It's a great article and really easy to follow. It's a lot easier than I thought. It's not completely true, as I obviously don't have a truing stand, but I got is as close as possible by looking at it spinning on the bike upsidedown. The spokes alternate at being on the right and left sides of the rim. If the rim is bending to the right, tighten a spoke on the left to pull it back. And hey presto - a shiny new wheel! When the rear wheel is ready I'll bring them both to the bike shop to be trued properly.

Center Parcs

Myself and Hugh went to Center Parcs a few weekends back. It's a holiday village in a forest called Elveden near Cambridge, just a bit North of London. It's really brilliant fun. They have all sorts of sports and stuff to do. We did quad biking, archery and learned to scuba dive. We spent loads of time in the massive swimming pool with its many slides and rapids and lazy river etc. Hugh is a bit of a speed demon and would dive head first down all of them. I however am a chicken and would slide down as slowly as possible causing massive queues and generally being a bit embarrassing. One time there was a little girl in the queue for the biggest slide in front of Hugh. She changed her mind when she got to the front so Hugh went down in her place. At the end he was caught by the girl's very surprised Mom. Quality.


This is the view from our hotel room balcony. It's a bit different from the traffic and carnage visible from our flat in London. Below is a cute Elveden squirel, which are by far my favourite animal. At the bottom is Hugh lording over the snooker table.

Operation "Wheel"

The next thing I have done with audrey is to take off her front wheel. In modern bikes, when you are taking a wheel off, you can loosen the brakes so the tyre can fit through. Not so with Audrey alas. The wheel came off the fork very easily, a nut on either side of the hub, but then it got stuck in the brakes.



The way rod brakes work is that they are pulled up to rub off the rim. So they are always narrower than the rim so that it can work. The only way to take the wheel off bikes like this is to take the brake blocks off completely. So I did, and now poor Audrey looks very unhappy altogether missing her mud guard, brake blocks and wheel.


This is what the outside of the tyre looks like. Most of the exterior has fallen off, and it has left a cool looking weaved twine pattern. Is this what modern tyres look like too?


It was impossible to pull off so what I did in the end was wedge a screwdriver underneath it and cut through it with a junior hacksaw. It smelled awful too. Gross. The tube inside was very brittle and i was able to tear it with just my hands. The tape between the rim and the tube was still in great condition. It says "Halford's for cycles and accessories". Apparently Halfords was set up in the late 1800s so this must have been among it's first products. I wonder did they make any other parts of the bike?



This is what the connection looks like from the top of the spoke into the rim. I hope these haven't changed much so I can get a tool to remove them.