Shift up, slow down

Alrighty then, it has been a while.

I have wanted to move away from suburbia for a long while now, and had droned on to my wife for so long that I got an 'Ah just do whatever you want' response. As everyone knows this is secret woman code for 'I have a happy and enthusiastic acceptance of your charming if somewhat alarming foibles, and shall follow you to the ends of the earth my love'.

So we packed things up and moved 385kms away to Nelson.

So far this appears to be a pretty sound move, in the first week of residency we had so much good weather that I started to question why we had waited so long. The summers in Christchurch can be pretty good, but it is a rare day that has sunshine and does not have the Nor'easterly freezing your tits off. In Nelson we got a solid two weeks of calm sunny days before the more unsettled spring weather set in. I have high hopes for summer...

Not a bad place to stop midway through your ride...

One of the joys of Nelson are the cycle trails. From my doorstep I can do a 40km bike ride that has about 5% riding on roads. If I do choose the roads, there are awesome gravel basher loops on back roads that suit the Disc Trucker perfectly, then there is the Mountainbike trail network. I did a ride called the Coppermine on the Fatbike a few weeks ago, and it was just spectacular. If you ride nowhere else in Nelson, you should do this.

One other thing I have now is shed space....... a lot of shed space. 240 square meters of shed space, to be exact.

Ample Pogward shed space, yesterday.

This picture shows all of the things that I had in my garage at home, with the addition of a drum kit and a piano, and it comfortably fills up just one portion of my sheds, about 1/3rd of the total.

Yay for me.

So as I have the space and we have mostly settled in to our new life, I have resumed the bike building;

The beginnings of a fatbike for my lovely wife, small recompense for what she puts up with I am sure.

This frame I intend to TIG weld entirely, so I am borrowing a much nicer welder than mine off a lovely chap called Alex. This welder has HF start, pulse and a foot control. This is so I do not blow big holes in those expensive tubes...

One of the things I did before leaving Christchurch was to get rid of a lot of old bike parts. As part of this exercise I built up a bike to sell as I figured I might get more money that way, unfortunately the bike I built was so cool that I could not part with it. Bear in mind, I built this entirely from parts I had lying around, I did not even have to leave the garage...

An entirely convincing parts bike build and indifferent Burmese, sometime in July.

This bike now resides at work, where it gets a daily workout.

So there it is, and rest assured you can look forward to more exciting blow by blow accounts of the trials and tribulations of Pogward Framebuilding Enterprises, there will be more to come shortly....

Putting it all together with kittens

A fair bit of movement has been happening, I dropped the frame off to the painters and it was ready by Friday. I thought that I had nailed the finishing of the lugs well enough to look pretty sweet, but expecting a few scratches and things to show up. I was right on the money as the matt clear coat showed up every little sin. I hate to think how much time would be needed to get a finish like this ready for NAHBS. As this is a dirty daily commuter and not a show piece I am happy with the finish level. Interestingly I took these pics with my rather flash work camera, amazing how much better the photos look using this...

From a few feet away it almost looks like grey paint

The Frogmouth MkII singing his little heart out

Here you see the extra brazeons for the rack mounting

A closeup of an averagely finished seat lug

A closeup of an averagely finished head tube lug

Some bottle mount brazons and the lovely scratchy finish

The further away you are the better it looks

The chainstay bridge

I like it, sort of steampunk industrial.

So over the weekend I bolted all the bits back on including the mudguards, and then I rocked into the build of a simple but effective rack. This was made out of some 3/8th 4130 tubes that I got from the lovely Lianne from Aviation and Performance Parts. I have also ordered the tubes for my stem that I am going to make soon.

A fine gentlemanly steed

Can't get much simpler than that, I am pretty happy with it although it probably needs a bit more bracing. I will add that if it breaks

I have ridden it all this week so far, and apart from a lingering fear that the fork will break and I will smash my face into the tarmac, it is totally sweet.

In other news, we have bought two new Burmese kittens to replace one of our cats that died, they are pretty cute/awesome;

The ging runs up to you and flops down on his back so you can scratch his tummy just like a dog, and the brown one likes lying on my shoulders at all times, and purrs like a mad wee chainsaw when he does.

We need some names now, any suggestions welcome..