The Thursday Night School Project.

So I had assumed the position on the couch after a long day on the job. Dinner was good and I'm thinking of some college football. No teams that I really care about but I can't be choosy on Thursday night. My son comes in and asks if I could help him with his math (so I thought). I asked him what kind of math and he says, "Not math, MASK". He reminded me that he had a project due at school the following day. Mask? Oh, I remember now, World War 1 gas mask. They are studying WWI, you've heard about that, it was in all the text books. He also told me that it had to be made out of things found around the house. Yeah, right.

Following a hefty sigh, I slowly moved off the couch and the two of us headed down stairs to look for bits and pieces to make a gas mask. The junk er… project room should have what we need. We started looking through the boxes of stuff and began picking out the possible items. After a few minutes of looking we had found a pair of safety goggles, plastic bowl, canteen, camouflage duct tape, hot melt glue gun, and a flexible hose that makes sound when you twirl it over your head.

As projects go, this came together pretty quickly. About a half an hour later we emerged from the basement with a genuine WW1 Gas mask. It’s surprising what you can come up with sometimes.

Now back to the game!

Recycled DVD Holder

Saturday morning found our family doing some cleaning and organizing around the house. My wife noted we had a large stack of DVD's in the front room. She looked at me, in a way I understood to mean, that it was now my problem. Glancing at the pile, I remembered a project on the internet using some old shutters. I thought of my junk room and knew there were some old wooden shutters and barn wood hiding some where in the well organized chaos. Not much of a basis for a project, but what the heck.

I quickly grabbed the "junk" and headed to the workshop. About an hour later I emerged with our new DVD holder. Cost? $0 and we saved something from the landfill. Can't beat that! The best part is my wife loved it. There are some things that I would do differently if I had to build it again (so whats new) but overall it was a nice quick project.

Get Bent

I was downstairs in our junk room the other day looking for something to complete another project when I saw the old frame in the corner. It was a bike... years ago. Well I guess it still is technically, but it has been cannibalized for other projects. (This must be an illness). It is not just any bike frame, it is a one of a kind, because I built it. It was about ten years ago and the last big project I completed prior to moving out of California. It is the second of two bikes that I have built from scratch. Both of them were recumbent bikes. Neither were perfect but both were a blast to ride.

I tried riding "regular" bikes over the years but never enjoyed the numb hands and sore crotch that developed after a few minutes of "fun". I started looking around for options and soon found the answer, the recumbent bike. The problem was that the cost of recumbent bikes was significantly more than the groin grinders. I brooded for a few days and decided why not build my own. I'd never built a bike before but gee, that's never stopped me before. Over the next week or two, I found a couple of free bikes as parts donors. I rented some oxygen and acetylene tanks and began to create. What resulted was a long wheelbase (LWB) style recumbent with under-seat steering.

The first "ride" was VERY interesting but I soon got the hang of it and it became quite natural to ride. No numb crotch no numb hands, I was sold! I began to get other ideas. One was a front wheel drive, foldable recumbent. I did build it but it was too ungainly and was quickly scrapped. The LWB recumbent was great for long straight distances but not for around the neighborhood. I just had to have a short wheelbase (SWB) recumbent. This next one was going to be built from scratch.

I called a local supplier of aircraft steel tubing and several days later I was welding together a new bike out of 4130 cro-moly tubing. This from a rough sketch on a piece of paper. It took about a month to build, but was great fun right from the start. Definitely not an off-road bike though. It did not do well with loose gravel. (Don't ask how I found that out.)

Well the bike was placed in storage after our move and slowly lost its identity to other projects as mentioned before. Recently I decided to return it to service reasoning I needed to get back into shape (yeah, right. Anything for another project even if it is a re-do).
I have been riding a little lately and remember now why I originally chose to Get Bent.

If you are interested in weird and wonderful homebuilt human powered vehicles try this site: http://www.ihpva.org/