So having mostly sourced the parts the day before, this day was mostly about putting them on.  The best bet I could find for the front centering mount didn’t fit – they key was too big for my headset and everything was rather bent out of shape.   Spent a good chunk of time twisting it into something reasonably straight and making the adjustment fit.

Rear Brakes:

Rear Derailleur:

So I now have brakes and gears – sort of.   Can’t actually reach the high/low gears.  But I can ride it!

All in all, mostly an exercise in hunting for parts.  In retrospect, probably not worth my time.  The rear shifting is most likely off because of some bad cable housing and a pretty mangled shifter.  Next day will have to be spent on replacing the bad housing and replacing the shifter.

Of the physical things lost as part of my move to California was my access to single track vehicles.  My bicycle was lost in shipping and Mendy is still waiting on paperwork issues.   Both of which I plan on resolving this year.   But since Mendy requires a trip to the DMV, the more practical thing was to work on getting a new bicycle.  I had considered just buying new bike, but since everyone says that SF is a terrible place to own a nice bike – they all get stolen, I tried to source a cheap one.  Unfortunately, to be able to shop for a bicycle, you kind of need to know something about them.  Not exactly one of my strong points.

Enter the Bike Kitchen – I had heard of this place in at MakerFaire, It had seemed to be a bit of a hacker dojo for bicycles – common space to work on bicycles and learn from others.  But I had pretty much forgotten about it until a friend needed something fixed on his bike and went there to get it done rather than dealing with a traditional bicycle shop.  I went to check things out in Dec, but never really got around to doing anything since I was about to head back to Vancouver.

New year, new project!  It’s actually quite nice because it should scratch all sorts of itches:

1. Build/Work on Something – condo/apartment living is a mild nuisance for a casual grease monkey such as myself.  It wasn’t so bad in Vancouver since I could go back to my parents’ or friends’ places to work on vehicles or help out.  It’s not like I was going to seriously invest in a project anyway, but having the option to do something was nice.  No such network here, so a (small?) project with a clear benefit would be nice.
2. Obtain a cheap bike – this might be a false benefit since if I put in a lot of sweat, I might be even more upset about losing it than one I just paid for…
3. Learn something – I don’t know much about bicycles, but gotta start somewhere.  I’m not the best ‘book’ learner anyway, a project is the best way for me.

Pinnacle FS 10speed Frame

Day 2 – Actual work on the bicycle.

I got there bright and early on a Sat, 15mins or so before they opened to make sure I would get a spot.  After some waiting, I was first in line after the volunteers and managed to get myself a stand.  A good few hours to work on it… But no idea where to begin.  No front wheel, so I figured I should start there, right?

Lots of semi confused wandering, trying out various wheels and finding that none of them ‘fit’ the front forks.  Eventually just gave up and asked one of the volunteer mechanics for help – Elijah suggested that wheels were a good place to start, but considering it was an older frame that it might fit 27″ wheels instead of 700c.

Lesson 1:  27″ vs 700c

So it seems that older bikes in the USA and UK had 27″ wheels.  Generally, these were not very good quality bicycles and as racing became bigger, the good bikes from Europe became a bigger deal.  So the metric system started making inroads and is basically the new standard.  Choose 700c over 27″ wheels if possible.  Newer wheels and tires will be easier to get, but need to consider fit and brake distance/leverage.

I managed to find some matching 700c wheels, tried to fit them on the bike and realized that they still didn’t really fit – the back frame was most likely crooked.  Elijah dragged an older mechanic over and he pointed out that I should fix the frame, find a proper set of wheels and to widen out the frame enough to fit something appropriate – from 5 gears to 6 or 7, and that I should look for cassette for the ‘bigger’ sizes.

Lesson 2 – Freewheel vs Cassette

Good article here – http://sheldonbrown.com/free-k7.html.   Basically, freewheel was the old style and more work to swap out sprockets.  Since the ratchet mechanism tends to last longer, the Cassette system allows you to replace just the sprockets multiple times before needing to deal with the internals.

Cassettes tend to show up with newer bikes and more gears.  What I was looking for would have some overlap.  I ended up with a 6-gear freewheel.

I had to straighten the frame with the ‘candlesticks’ before being told to look for a ‘hanging derailleur’.  No idea what that was or how to compare which ones were better.   Apparently, the important thing was to make sure all the little parts were attached(half moon plate for mounting the derailleur being the key).

Got that attached and put on some pedals and some handlebars too:

All in all, a good few hours of work.  A very humbling experience overall – I had no idea where to begin and the volunteers were very nice.  I managed to get dirty a little bit and I’ve already injured myself – pinched my finger between the bike and the stand:

So no actual blood drawn and no tears, just a bit of sweat so far.  No idea how long this project will actually take, but rather satisfying so far.  Visible progress, some lessons learned.  About the only reservation may be that since I am working with such an old frame, when I finally do pick up a ‘real’ bicycle, I’ll have to learn about a different set of components.

Time to switch away from my previous hosting provider – 1&1.  Service has been great and the package we picked up years ago is actually pretty good for some things, but definitely had some issues that made it less than ideal.  Two issues in particular made life annoying:

– Custom DNS:  They verify that the DNS is properly configured and then take down your site mapping if it’s not.  This saves them resources, but my DNS provider(Enom) uses round robin DNS configuration.  This meant that the few entries I provided to 1&1 would never match up and the site would get taken down eventually(30 days?).   Usually not a big deal to put back up and resume the cycle, but a nuisance.

– Memory/Performance Limitations:  Whatever grandfathered package we had from years ago comes with more domains, but less performance.  Essentially not enough memory to resize photos on the server and general site performance was less than ideal.  I ended up having to create a custom build of the WordPress App for the 2012 trip.  It was also generally slow to respond and frustrating to use.

Hopefully Dreamhost solves these problems for a minimal extra cost.

Mendy has made it back to Vancouver.  Not quite home, but at least back to her hometown.     Time to sum up the trip:

Leg 1:  The West

• Day 1 – Vancouver to North Cascades
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5 – Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Highway
• Day 6 – Yellowstone
• Day 7 – Grand Teton and Flaming Gorge
• Day 8 – Dinosaur National Monument
• Day 9 – Colorado National Monument, Arches and Canyonlands National Parks
• Day 10 – Canyonlands, Capitol Reef National Park, Escalante and Bryce Canyon
• Day 11 – Bryce and Zion
• Day 12 – Lees Ferry, Grand Canyon North Rim, Pipe Springs
• Day 13- Cedar Break and Great Basin/Lehman Caves
• Day 14 – Area 51 and Death Valley
• Day 15 – Death Valley and the search for a National Monument.
• Day 16 – Wheeler Gorge and Santa Barbara
• Day 17-20 – Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Diego and Newport Beach
• Day 21 – Food Trucks and Bike Pickup

Leg 2:  The South-West

• Day 22 – Joshua Tree to Phoenix
• Day 23 – Tucson, Tombstone and Jesus
• Day 24 – White Sands National Park
• Day 25 – Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns Bat Flight
• Day 26 – Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains
• Day 27 – On to San Antonio
• Day 28 – San Antonio Ducati, The Alamo and River Walk
• Day 29 – Lockhart and Austin
• Day 29 – Uchi Austin 
• Day 30 – Donuts, Salt Lick and Rain
• Day 31 – Galveston to Fenton

• Day 32 – Bayou Roads
• Day 33 – New Orleans
• Day 34 – Independence Day in New Orleans
• Day 35 – Natchez Trace South
• Day 36 – Memphis
• Day 37 – Natchez Trace North
• Day 38 – The Dragon
• Day 39 – To Atlanta
• Day 40 – Fire, the Aquarium, Coke and the Highway
• Day 41 – I75 to Naples
• Day 42 – Everglades and Key West
• Day 43 – Key West to Boynton Beach
• Day 44 – Beaches to Brunswick
• Day 45 – Jekyll Island, Savannah and Charleston

• Day 46 – Not quite to Great Smoky Mountain National Park
• Day 47 – Great Smoky to Mount Mitchell
• Day 48 – Mount Mitchell to Roanoke
• Day 49 – Blue Ridge Parkway North and Shenandoah
• Day 50 – Duc Pond and into D.C.
• Day 51 – Washington D.C.
• Day 52 – Covered Bridge Byway
• Day 53 – Flight 93 Memorial, Gettysburg to Hershey
• Day 54 – Hershey and Lancaster
• Day 55 – To Cape Cod
• Day 56 – Cape Cod into Maine
• Day 57 – Acadia National Park
• Day 58 – Big Sur and Madawaska

Leg 4:  Maritimes

• Day 59 – Sabbath
• Day 60 – Kouchi National Park
• Day 61 – Fundy National Park
• Day 62 – Sprocket and Shore House
• Day 63 – Shore House Break
• Day 64 – PEI – Just the Tip
• Day 65 – North Cape and Charlottetown
• Day 66 – To Clare
• Day 67 – Clare, Rappe Pie and off to Keji
• Day 68 – Snake Lake, Peggy’s Cove and Halifax
• Day 69 – New Tire and Halifax
• Day 70 – Halifax to Cape Breton
• Day 71 – Cape Breton
• Day 72 – Louisburg and the Ferry
• Day 73 – Gros Mourne
• Day 74 – Western Brook and Viking Return Trail Stymied
• Day 75 – Blown Gasket with the Vikings

The train built Canada.  If you haven’t taken it before, I highly recommend it.  But there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Canada is a big place
2. The train does not move very fast

Breakfast in Winnepeg at Alexis Grill – should have ordered the potatoes well done:

Best part of Winnipeg was the Leg:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba_Legislative_Building

Built back when the city was booming and had a lot of money, the managed to build something that would last.

…  Not entirely sure what happened to the pictures …

Prairies – the not so flat bit:

Sunrise in Edmonton:

Lunch in Jasper:

It’s much nicer than travelling by bus.  But if you can afford to, travel with friends and spring for the cabin.  Or if you can’t afford that, take the best part from Edmonton back to Vancouver – maybe on the Rocky Mountaineer.