Change

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to run an update on the site, partly because I’ve been developing things over at The Owners’ Club and partly because I’ve been working on Ladybird Estates for a friend and former colleague, who has done what seems to be a sensible thing, because the option of looking at this doesn’t look to shabby when there’s icy sleet hammering against your window. Both sites seem to be doing well and I’m fairly please with them both. Of course they both need some further development and there are some plans in the pipeline for both of them.

It seems like ages since I rode around South Wales with Mike and Dan, but their hard work has now paid off and the latest issue of What Mountain Bike features a route guide based on our exploits. It was a great day out and the weather was good as the shots show. Dan was carrying around a camera pack that weighed more than the Enduro I was riding or the whole day. My photos from the trip are up here. you can catch up with Dan’s latest exploits over in Canada in his blog and of course Mike can be found keeping Bikemagic running smoothly.

I was up in Scotland last Monday and managed to get out into the hills and escape from civilisation. Captain Thorne and I negotiated raging rivers, near-certain death, stormed hill fort encampments, spotted for deer, swigged single malt and found a fantastic bakery that did haggis pies for lunch. There was much discussion about politics, the future of the world economy and quite where we were. Admitting I had been carrying a compass around for the whole day at a certain key point seems to have saved the day and meant we ended up finishing the route we had planned when it wasn’t looking certain that we would. Photos are in the gallery.

The Kona Project will get one step closer to completion this weekend as I’m taking the frame over to the paintshop on Saturday. C&G in Liverpool are the local sprayers of choice at the moment. Apart for a set of quick releases I’ve all the parts that I need to build it up. With the racing season approaching this classic little steel number is going to be getting some solid use. I have also been thinking about getting the cranks off the Singlespeed powder coated as they’re looking fairly tatty these days. My searching around leads me to think that this reasonably local firm might be a good bet for the job.

Talking of Kona, they’re gettinga lot of respect from people for setting up the Kona Africa Bike Project off the back of Hank & Frank’s Adopt an AfricaBike scheme. Here’s how it works:

* For $100, you, your shop, your family…can adopt an AfricaBike.

* Payment can be made either through our PayPal account (mgeraci@base-camp1.com) or by mailing a cheque to Base Camp (USA), KonaWorld (Canada) or Kona Europe (other international).

* Along with your cheque you can include a small sticker from your favorite bike shop and we will paste it on to the bike.

* After the adopted bike is built and tested, we will take a photo of the bike and email it to you upon our return.

* Kona will keep a gallery of the bikes posted on this site as well as a listing of people and organizations that have adopted a bike.

All funds collected through this program will go towards financing future AfricaBike projects. That’s it. Kona are going to keep it clean and simple, an efficient way to support the program. Sounds like a plan.

Wondercaty sent me three links. First up I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but after watching this, I don’t think I need to. Secondly this looks like something those crazy Germans might come up with – a bike pedaled by seven people sitting in a circle that has a top speed of 10mph – the conference bike. Then there was the story about the IT gigolo – I actually know some one who’s not to far of the mark on this one. Girls love cars and money (and men who can fix their computers it seems). Finally there’s this: