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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

So long, CoMo

Here we are sans bikes at the library. We did a little photo shoot for their program cover.

It's time to fess up. The reason we've been away from the blog so much lately is because we've been planning some big, big changes for our little family.

A couple weeks ago I was offered a job in Springfield. I took it. My last day working here in Columbia was Monday, and a sad, sad day it was. I love the Tribune, and I loved working there with so many delightful people. Plus, I saw the bike culture around the office burgeon and then thrive. When I started working there, there were one or two guys who rode their bikes to work Now there are at least six, and half of them are women!

Anyway, we've been busy preparing to move. Our house went on the market last Sunday. I start my new job on Monday. We've spent our nights boxing up some of our stuff and our weekends house shopping. One of the things that got boxed up was my tripod and camera clicker so it's been a little hard to do pictures lately.

You better believe we'll continue biking to work in Springfield, and we'll keep on blogging about it. You'll get to see how Cody sets up his new Tinkery, and how living in a bigger city changes our biking habits. Our boy just got a tricycle for his second birthday, and you're going to see him learn to navigate the big city sidewalks on his new rig. In short, there's plenty more to come, we'll just need a little time to start bringing it to you.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Tinkernation: In Pieces


My second Tinkernation installment was posted this morning.  Again, it's somewhat short.  The tandem came apart quite easily and it didn't take me long at all to rid the parts of rust and clean everything up.  For as daunting as the project seemed at first, it's been surprisingly straightforward.  The cleaning and rust removal took a little longer than it would have if this had been a single bicycle, but it wasn't overly tedious.  So I didn't really have much to say in my Tinkernation post, except to give a brief update on how things were coming along.


As I mentioned in the main post, I was really unhappy with how the wheels turned out after treating them with oxalic acid.  To remove the rust from the rim surface, I dropped them into a cooler full of oxalic acid solution.  I let them sit overnight and then turned the wheels the next day so that a fresh portion of rim was in the acid solution.  I did this until the entire wheel was rust-free.  Unfortunately, after each turn of the wheel, I didn't rinse off residual oxalic acid, instead leaving the rinse step for the very end.  And I think the exposure of the acid solution to air on the metal surface caused the steel to end up with a tarnished appearance.  There doesn't seem to be much I can do to fix this except replace the wheels, which is next to impossible since 26" fractional wheelsets with threads for a freewheel AND drum brake are exceedingly difficult to find.


My third Tinkernation post will likely be going live in a couple of months and will detail reassembly of the bike and showcase the finished machine.  As always, I'll be posting an addendum here with some additional pictures and information that didn't make it into the final draft of the main post.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

We've gone international

We got a little shout out in the July/August issue of the Canada-based Momentum Magazine. They have a monthly feature in which they ask a question of their readers. This question was "What do you like to do on your bike in the summer?" I sent them a picture with a little thing about how we take our toddler out on bike rides, AND THEY SELECTED IT FOR PUBLICATION!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Momentum is an excellent resource for the urban cyclist. They have the latest on style, gear, advocacy and everything else I care about when it comes to bike life. You can read every issue online, and right now they are running a great contest. If you give them a little feedback, you'll get entered into a contest to win a snazzy new bike.

Okay, enough with the gushing. We are in the current issue of Momentum (page 16), and we're pretty stoked.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

The name of the game is comfort

It's not the most stylish thing I've ever worn, but it's comfortable. Bonus points: it's shiny.

I'm a big fan of visibility, and this simple sequined tank was one of my favorite summer shirts last year. It's just layered over one of Cody's undershirts and paired with this ancient, stretchy pencil skirt. I swapped the flats for wedges at the last minute, and I stayed comfy for both my commutes.

Hope you're staying cool out there

Monday, July 2, 2012

New and Improved!

You may have noticed that we've made some changes to the overall design and layout of our blog.  We did some fairly heavy customization of the basic Blogger template, with fantastic results.  The new design really makes the content the focal point of the blog, which is what we were going for, and the whole page looks a lot more clean and crisp.  We may be making a few more small changes and additions here and there over the next few weeks, but this is the new overall layout.  Pretty nice, eh?