I had a pretty significant day on the bike today. I had a lot of errands to run, and I took the long route, so to speak, because I really needed to blow out the cobwebs.
I think I got in the riding mode on Sunday night; Team Frank Stallone‘s Westport Roadie Douche Crit was too fucking much fun (especially the parking garage section). Oh looks…I’m famousish, making a stupid face and and an obscene gesture. Whoops. Anyway, these guys throw a damn fine event, and you couldn’t hardly have picked a better evening to be hammering it out on your bike. I rode my sadly-neglected Burley for the first time in about a year, and re-remembered that yeah, I really dig that bike; I should ride it more often. It’s so light! I was having a lot of fun seeing how well I could keep up with the crowd despite stopping for all of the traffic lights. This means that with a lot of effort, I placed mid-fieldish, and passed the same six people about a dozen times. If I’d blown some lights and been a dick, I probably would have placed pretty well-ish. If I cared about winning and didn’t care about breakin’ the law.
Photo Credit Vanessa Beer
Joel won. He apparently apologized theatrically effusively each time he blew a light. At the start of the race, he claimed he was going to “take it easy,” which is basically code for “kick some alleycat butt.”
Anywhichhow, I pedaled out some demons on Sunday, but I had a few more to exorcise, so I took the opportunity of today’s reasonably decent weather and ran some errands and got some much-needed fresh air. First stop was in Brookside to get some dogfood, then I had a doctor’s appointment in midtown, then I headed out to Shawnee to get one more bottle of glitter and some clearcoat so I can finish up Greenie II. Speaking of, I should show you the progress pics that I’ve taken so far. This is going to be one devastatingly pretty bike, so consider yourself warned.
There’s the beast when I got it at Christmas time.
After sanding
After the first coat of green (I neglected to take any pictures of the less-than-exciting primer stage)
Greenie #2 framing Greenie #1
Metalflake, suckas! This bike is precisely as sparkly as I had hoped it would be.
Custom filigree headbadge (it’s a medallion for beadwork/crafty stuff that I bent to fit the headtube)
Lugs & stay ends taped off for detail work (the fork ends got taped about 10 minutes after this picture)
Here it is with the contrast paint & disco-balls.
Close-up on the disco-balls.
I tape-shaped the seatstay contrasts to have the same points as the lugs do.
I really like how that fork turned out. I totally guessed at the proportions when I taped off the contrast, but I think it’s right about where it ought to be.
I have a couple of little drips and smudges from the silver that I will need to touch up, but it’s darn near ready to go together. Whoot!
It looks really cool Michelle. I’m impressed with your talent!
Thank you!
I’m awfully particular about my home-made paint jobs. Someday, I’ll have the setup for doing proper paint jobs, but for now, I settle for Krylon eloquence.