Weekend update

I spent my three day weekend not biking. I had every intention of layering up and riding to Kaplan Brothers to see what their selection of warm clothing was like on Friday, but I got a call from the school that my daugher had thrown up. So I scrapped my ride plan and went to pick her up. Boy, when you puke in an elementary school you're a celebrity. As we walked down the hall from the nurse's office every kid we saw wanted to know what was going on. And Morgan was more than willing to tell them. A typical conversation:
Random Kid: Morgan, where did you go?
Morgan: I threw up!
RK: Where?
M: In the bathroom. I'm going home now.

This conversation was repeated over and over, at least 15 times and always over 100 decibels. I could tell that the news was spreading like wildfire. The excitement was palpable. Fortunately it was a short-lived illness. She was feeling better later that afternoon.

Saturday we visited Santa, and afterward I spent some time in the garage looking at the bag of loot I bought a couple of weeks ago. I decided to install the fenders on my Raleigh, since my project bike is proceeding at my predicted snail's pace. As a side note, here's a picture of the project bike from this afternoon.


I reassembled the fork and added the new stem and wicked cool cruiser bars that I picked up at The Hub last Friday. $11 for the two items. I don't know that I'll keep the cruiser bars on there for the winter, but for $6 I couldn't pass them up.

Anyway. Most of my Saturday in the garage was spent looking for an appropriate bolt to secure the fenders. The Raleigh has cantilever brakes, so there's no center bolt for the front fender. The rear fender is a clip-on Mt Zefal, but the rear rack was causing problems with that one. You can see the cross member under the rack in this picture. It goes right where the thumbscrew on the Zefal fender is, so there wasn't much hope of drilling a hole for it.


I finally gave up and set the whole project aside until this afternoon. I went to Home Depot and spent $10 on some zip ties and a few nuts and bolts, and the fenders went on in about 15 minutes. The rear fender is clipped to the frame in front and then held to the rack with two zip ties (wonderful little inventions!). In this shot you can see one of the zip ties before I trimmed the ends. I also had to mount the reflector on top of the rack instead of underneath.



If you look at the very top of the picture toward the left, you can see the velcro band that's supposed to keep my pannier in place. I was riding to work a few weeks ago and the pannier just fell off, leaving the velcro strap on the rack. So one pannier got run over by my wife and now this one is trying to commit suicide. I think I need some new bags.



The finished front fender. Nothing remarkable here. I did use wing nuts to attach the stays to the fork, so if I ever need to take the fender off it's nearly a quick release. I couldn't find a wing nut that fit the center bolt, so I would need one tool. This fender's a whole lot shinier than the rear one. I don't think it's ever been used. After being off the bike for over a week, I'm feeling kind of itchy to get out and dirty it up.