Ah, sunshine

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So, since it was sunny, and because I wanted to I tried out the rebuilt Raleigh today. Well, repaired, renovated, re-working’d. Something like that. I decided that I wanted a hunk of wood and that a nice little trundle down the river to BWRP would be just ideal for testing the bike.

I was mentally prepared for a looong walk back after something broke, or sheared, or fell off, or exploded, or failed. I was envisaging no brakes by the time I got there. I was preparing mentally for disaster.

Apart from 1st gear being a little tricksy (it’ll occasionally slip out of gear, I think I need someone more experienced with Sturmey Archer’s to get it set up a bit better, that and a new cable) the ride was hitchless. Smooth (in so far as she’s smooth. There’s some clattery-clicky noises coming from inside the chain guard – so smooth isn’t quite the right word).

Test run.

I was impressed though, when I turned up at the Bristol Wood Recycling Project the lass there popped out and instantly proclaimed “Nice bike! Rod braked, isn’t it…” and then we had a brief chat, during which she correctly identified it’s lineage – saying “It’s a raleigh, isn’t it?” (despite it being completely free of identifiers apart from a sprayed over badge on the front). She, apparently, is a rod-bike afficionado, but abandoned them because she now cycles all over Brizzle, and Brizzle’s a bit hilly for 3 speeds (or 2½ speeds as the case may be). After wandering around for a bit & realising that’s the place to get the pallets from for building the deck, I went back to pondering a variety of solutions to the Superpad Problem.

The Superpad problem is, basically, that the Superpad 2 needs a portrait mode stand with its cables attached and, ideally, hidden. This is because I wish to use it as an audio player. And so it needs an audio cable, and frankly, it needs to be on charge. I have (as I said yesterday updated the firmware to get it a bit more flexible. Tests have proven that it’s a bit crap, but adequate. And so, now I want a stand.

So, while I was there I meandered around and stared at hunks of uncut timber, offcuts, random bits of willow tree… and finally settled on some ‘eucalyptus type wood’, which I’m planning to make into something that looks less like I’ve taken chunks of timber and randomly stuck them together:

Superpad stand precursor

And more like a gracefully sculpted T-shape that’ll support the pad vertically and have the cables running through-and-then under it. That’s the *plan*.

If there are more photos, you know it worked. If not, you know I spent 50p on some firewood.

KateWE

Kate's allegedly a human (although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise). She's definitely not a vampire, despite what some other people claim. She's also mostly built out of spite and overcoming oppositional-sexism, racism, and other random bullshit. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, she's here to reassure that it's all fine.