Sunday, August 10, 2014

Wildcats, rack hacks, and six packs



Spent the weekend riding out to Wildcat camp in Point Reyes, here are some highlights in no particular order:



 Shifting to granny the hard way

 Best blackberry bramble of the summer


 Found a little gravy too

 Then there's this funny thing. The night before I was getting the bike loaded and figeting with my faux Carradice seat bag. (note: It's a terrible idea to buy an imitation Carradice) Anyway, I've never been happy with the Bagman support and wanted something I could strap more things to. I had some time that night and some stainless tube around so I fired up the torch and made this thing. This has pretty much no finish work done and even has flux left on it but I was happy with how it came out.


I was inspired to make my little rack partially from helping Steven modify this VO  Randonneur rack a few nights before.  It's hard to make out here, but these racks don't work on old mtbs because the stays have a fixed angle and they land right on the canti studs area. We just cut off the VO stays and brazed on new longer ones a little forward of where the old ones were and with an angle that gets the stays below the brakes.