Moraline Free: Raleigh Twenty

Showing posts with label Raleigh Twenty. Show all posts

12.12.2012

4.11.2010

It began as a small creak. It seemed to go away. Then some rides later it grew into a horrible shrieking sound. I almost walked the bike home it was so horrible. It is the hardest thing listening to the screaming of steel on a bicycle that you love. Today I pulled the fork and I saw what I expected to find.

Then, thinking I'd at least clean up and repack the bottom bracket while I looked for a new fork, I busted the cotter pin. A bent cotter can be worked out, but a ruined Raleigh Twenty fork is not worked out so easily.

11.09.2009

Ride to River Forest

I rode the cinder path along the Des Plaines River through fields and old growth forest. There was mud and the fallen leaves made for slippery riding. I crossed the tracks. I lost the trail and recovered it. A fat nerd on a recumbent called out to me, asking what was I riding. I explained and he said his friend wanted one. His friend had cerebral palsy. I did not ask how someone with cerebral palsy could operate a biycle. I wanted the fat nerd to go away. He charged ahead of me and looked back for my acknowledgement. He slowed, fell behind me, and continued to talk to me. I ignored the nerd. "Watch this!" he yelled and powered down a hill and up the other side, turning to wait for me at the top. "I have to go home now," he said when I reached him.

The light was still strong when I reached the Frank Lloyd Wright homes in River Forest. On the way back I road the Des Plaines River Road. There was none of the beauty of the forest and the river and the leaves, but the wind was behind me and the asphalt was fast. If you can ride hard enough, and keep your head down, all that is ugly you do not see.

93km.

www.flickr.com/photos/moralinefree/sets/72157622766473758/

9.27.2009

We used to dream,
now we just worry about dying.

8.30.2009

Wind

It was a cool day and blowing, and I started out riding into it. Then back towards the lake, when it should have been with me, I road into a lake wind. The wind catches in your panniers and grabs at you and and though it was cool, and chilled me through my jersey, the cold wind is an other sort of challenge. But it is still the summer. The cold winds come later.

41km.

8.23.2009

Ride Around Milwaukee

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church at 9400 West Congress Street, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956.

77km ride through Milwaukee.

More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moralinefree/sets/72157622126225790/

8.10.2009

Beach at Lake Bluff, IL

8.09.2009

8.03.2009

Eyeballs Out

Unity Temple at 861 Lake Street. Completed 1906.

Nathan G Moore House at 333 Forest Avenue. Completed 1895.

To Oak Park, IL to see many Frank Lloyd Wright houses.
102km.

Eyeballs out, all the way.

More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moralinefree/sets/72157621930604032/

7.27.2009

7.26.2009

Ride to Glore and Vanderkloot Houses

Herbert F Glore House at 170 North Mayflower Road, Lake Forest, IL
Frank Lloyd Wright architect, finished 1951

William J Vanderkloot Bungalow at 231 Prospect Ave, Lake Bluff, IL
Frank Lloyd Wright architect, finished 1916

From the pictures I had seen I was very much looking forward to seeing the Glore House. Unfortunately, the summer growth was too thick to get a good look and I shall have to return in the fall or winter. But the house being built above a deep cut streambed was spectacular enough. You can just make out some of the house through the trees from the bridge over the cut.

Ride of 63km.

7.23.2009

Omotola

7.22.2009

With Pannier

Construction required the attachment of jeans buttons to the bag for the leather straps to be pulled down and attached. Two bungee cords hold the bag in place, running through the inside of the bag (against the plastic cutting board) and out through brass grommets on the back, hooking onto the rack and dropout. Picture frame hooks, hack-sawed to size and screwed through the bag and cutting board, hook the bag to the rack. A second pannier is to be made from the same design.