bonnie & jason

Sweet Bea

Ravi and Jen stopped by today to introduce us to Bea (and drop off a couple trays of pasta for the poor housebound family.) We’ve been waiting to meet her for a while now and it was really nice of them to drop by, especially with food!

Anyway, I took a couple quick snaps. Isn’t she a cutie!?

Definitely a mellow baby. She sat there and looked around for a while before drifting off for a nap. Didn’t make a peep the whole time. Enjoy it before she turns into a little monster like Alissa!

California Academy of Sciences – trip #2

I took Alissa to the CAS again today. This time around, we went through the four story rainforest. There were lots of cool geckos and butterflies as well as fish and birds. Also, since I’m too cheap to pay for parking in the garage, Alissa got a good workout walking to and from the museum from 10th and Irving. Recently, she’s grown weary of my “Come on, hurry ups” but instead responds to “faster, faster.” She also says “two, three, GO!” Sometimes she says “one,” but more often not. (However, she does remember 8 and 12 now.)

Walking through the park:

Insisting on holding her jacket:

Raisin break underneath the rainforest pool:

One of the many cool frogs:

Time to go home:

Two, three, Go!

Running by Ebisu (which is closed for renovations by the way.)

Detail work in between the chain and seat stays

I wanted to put some braces between the stays but all my scrap was tapered so I had to use two pieces, butted together to make a single symmetrical brace. Instead of doing them plain jane straight across, I decided to give them a little flair and angled them a bit. Here’s the result:

Chain stay stiffener:

Seat stay stiffener:

The only other thing I did today was trim off the excess head tube. Now I just need to spend a little time making some of the joints a little prettier and then it’s off to the bike shop to get the head tube faced and reamed for the headset and have the seat tube reamed for my seat post.

Main frame done!

I got the main frame done today by brazing on the chain stays and seat stays. Still have to put in a bridge between each set of stays and do a lot of cleanup. But this is a major milestone! Yeehah!

My wheels came today!

Other than the frame itself, the biggest expense on this bike is the wheels. I didn’t go as cheap as possible since I think the wheels play a significant part in how the bike looks so I semi-splurged on a new set with radial bladed spokes in the front with black hubs, black spokes, and black rims to match the color scheme I’m planning. Black on steel.

Not a big fan of the decals so I’ll take a hair dryer to them tonight and peel them off.

Brazed on the track ends

I brazed on the track ends today:

I also mitered the chain stays and will be getting ready to braze them to the bottom bracket shortly.