eBay Out Door

With all this stuff heading to me, where, I hear you ask, am I puting it all?


Well, of course I'm only selling OTHER people's stuff to make space, like the wife's road bike! Hoof it, woman!

And her pedals!

And her shoes! Women don't NEED shoes!

OK...she'll slap me for that last crack (and she should!) But I dig the rough stuff. I should stop there of I'll have to file this post under "Goats"!

White EWR Update!

Flipped a few parts around on the white EWR. Now running the silver Race Face System stem and a 36-17 combo. I likes it fast.

said stem

Said 36 tooth Atlas crank. Dig the Topo. I get all 'slutty-prom-queen' antsy for Topo.

Alteks. More slutty prom queen action. When these are in the room, I'm like a German Sheppard at the airport! Woof *point* Woof *point*...the smack is in THERE!

Gotta zoom to the Fresh Frame logo. I don't got a FF on the blue EWR. Other new EWRs got a FF. I got screwed out of my new FF. Kenn? Jay? Where you at?

Big ass hips.

You got a purdy mouth, boy!

Jacksonville Tourism makes it to Fox News dot com!

It's not often that my city gets recognition for its tourism offerings, so when it happens, I gotta flaunt it! A coworker sent this to me, and I figured...pass it on!

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Jacksonville might not be the first city you think of when planning a vacation to Florida (or even the second or third). But visitors who do take the time to explore the River City by the Sea find its cultural attractions, natural wonders, and small town charm the perfect antidote to over-the-top theme parks, cramped beaches, and jaded locals.


5…Beach blanket bingo

Collectively they’re known as the Beaches, but the three towns that border Jacksonville’s 20-plus miles of white sand are as different as the beachcombers, beach bunnies, and beach bums they attract.

Atlantic Beach is almost entirely residential with limited public beach access along Ocean Boulevard, but the pay-off, once you get there, is peace and quiet.

Jacksonville Beach is the complete opposite. The area around Comfort Inn Oceanfront (1515 First St. N., 904-241-2311) has a definite Spring Break feel with blaring radios and cocktails a-flowing. Surfers, fishermen, and families with screaming kids congregate around the Jacksonville Beach Pier (503 N. First St., 904-241-1515).

Neptune Beach is a hybrid of the two with a largely local crowd (with better behaved kids) that enjoy walking, running and bike riding on the beach, as well as a cold one, especially at The Lemon Bar at the Seahorse Oceanfront Inn (120 Atlantic Blvd., 904-246-2175).

Parking at Jacksonville Beach and Neptune Beach is catch-as-catch-can with public access lots and street parking scattered along First Street. Arriving before 10 a.m. certainly helps.


4…Do feed the animals

Ever been slobbered on by a giraffe, tickled by a stingray, butted by a pygmy goat, or dive-bombed by a lorikeet? These are only a few of the up close-and-personal experiences that await you the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens (370 Zoo Pkwy, 904-757-4463, $13).

Unlike some big city zoos where the animals seem far removed from visitors, the Jacksonville Zoo attempts to bring visitors as close as (safely) possible to its 1,500 rare and exotic animals with a whole herd of interactive exhibits, zookeeper talks, and animal feedings. In some cases, however, it might feel a little too close for comfort, like in the Range of the Jaguar exhibit where the only thing separating you and a 200-pound obligate carnivore are a measly post-and-rail fence and chain-link enclosure.

To fully appreciate the award-winning zoo as well as its botanical garden - thought to be the first of its kind to be integrated into actual animal exhibits - you’ll want to visit between March and November when the gardens are in full bloom. Also, consider a behind the scenes walking tour ($25) led by zookeepers. You might even catch a glimpse of the zoo’s biggest celebrity, Ali, an elephant that once belonged to Michael Jackson.


3…Welcome to Riverside, m’lady.

It’s no surprise that the merry marauders of the Shire of Castlemere, the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, bring their rapiers and rattan weapons to Riverside Park to do battle every Sunday afternoon between 1 and 4pm. The historic neighborhood is, after all, is where the eccentric, artistic, and just plain odd thrive. But don’t be alarmed by the tattoos and piercings; these marauders are friendly.

At the center of it all is a colorful shopping and dining district called Five Points, home to Edge City (1017 Park St., 904-353-9423), a funky women’s boutique heavy on Betsey Johnson and quirky accessories; Fans & Stoves (1059 Park St., 904-354-3768), a compact antique mall known for its original artwork (grab anything by R. Land while you can); Wall Street Lounge (1050 Park St., 904-355-6969), a dark and smoky hole in the wall with one of the best jukeboxes in town; and Al’s Pizza (1620 Margaret St., 904-388-8384), consistently voted best pizza in Jacksonville.

Riverside is also part of one of the biggest historic districts in the South and boasts the largest variety of architectural styles in Florida, including Mediterranean revival, prairie style, Queen Anne, and Tudor style. Some visitors remark that the turn-of-the-century homes and century-old oak trees draped in Spanish moss remind them Savannah or Charleston—minus the marauders, that is.


2…Art for art’s sake

Art lovers will appreciate Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens (829 Riverside Ave., 904-356-6857, $10) for its extensive collection of artifacts from ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece; paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen, Benjamin West, Winslow Homer and Norman Rockwell; and one of the most comprehensive collections of early Meissen porcelain in the world. Of course, you don’t need to know the difference between Dada and Degas to enjoy your visit.
The museum’s idyllic riverfront location, not to mention its two acres of historic gardens, gives it a serene vibe. Adding to the ambiance, which is anything but intimidating, are the docents, who are incredibly friendly without the slightest hint of art snobbery. Art Connections, the museum’s multidisciplinary hands-on learning lab, however, can get a little hectic at times, especially when it's overrun by school-age children on field trips.

The best way to see the museum is on a docent-led tour, given Sundays at 3 p.m. and Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Tuesday evenings are a particularly good time to visit since admission’s free between 4 and 9. And bring a sketch pad, since artists frequently whip out their pencils and paints in the garden at a moment’s inspiration.


1…A real fish tale

With its weathered exterior, unpaved parking lot, and gators in the immediate vicinity, Clark’s Fish Camp (12903 Hood Landing Road, 904-268-3474) looks—and smells—like your standard fish camp. But it’s the interior of the seafood restaurant, located on Julington Creek in Mandarin, which makes it unlike any other eatery you’ve ever seen before.

Rumored to be one of the largest privately owned collections of taxidermy in the country, Clark's menagerie of preserved animals includes lions, tigers, monkeys, bears, giraffes, deer, bobcats, and a flock of birds that gaze eerily at guests in the bar area and dining rooms.

The menu is equally as imposing with more than 160 appetizers and entrees, ranging in price from $11.95 to $25.95. There's the typical fish camp fare of shrimp, catfish and hush puppies; landlubber offerings like chicken and prime rib; and then the just plain bizarre antelope, rattlesnake and kangaroo, which, for the record, kind of tastes like pork.

On weekends, you can expect a wait for dinner (unless you arrive before 5:30 p.m.), so bring your patience, along with your appetite and sense of adventure. Just don't bring anyone who's squeamish, it could get ugly.

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Se the story and slideshow here!

Klein Update!

Started the fitting of the A-Tac stem and Taperlite bar. There's new Avid Ultimate levers on here now too. All nice and silver and black. oooooooh!


No booger welds here, just a stack of dimes.

Are retro boxes as valuable as retro parts? I'm not keeping this stuff, but give me a shout if you want to buy my garbage.

We'll step back and take a look...

...and yup yup. That's retro! This 150mm 10 degree stem may look dorky by today's standards, but 150s were common stems in the good old days. 135 stems were considered short then and anyone worth his neon brake cable housings and purple Grafton brake levers would have been riding a 150mm zero degree stem. Like the old guard says..."If it's long enough to be used as a dildo, it's Retro!"

After that dildo joke, I'm going to have to file this post under 'goats'...just because!

Fire Pit

Hey, when you can't get to the campground, bring the campground to your house! The weather has finally been warming up enough that we've been able to get outside a bit. That means I'll get to ride some soon! (I hope!)

And, seemingly in honor of Paul's carpenter buddy, who always totes a big trash can of construction debris, you know what's in the black can, right? Scrap wood! No pressure treated though, I no wanna get the cancer. Folding chair and bike added to complete my fraudulent 'camping trip'. I'll get one in for real here shortly. Throw some Fox Bros BBQ down my gullet too.

Door Knobs

Spent a good bit of time replacing all the 1949 door knobs in the house. The originals, while cool as hell and certainly something I'd tried to save for years...had a few glaring issues. First, the little rug rat has learned to close doors and lock them, and most of the knobs either work so poorly that you can't get them open again, or they offer no functional possibility to open them from the outside at all. Second, some are so worn that guests get stuck in various rooms of the house! Not good. So, 7 door knobs later...

Out with the old...

In with a nifty little template guide borrowed from a friend at work...

And finally, in with a new nickel knob. I must have been drunk with celebration of a job well done, what with the quality of this crappy picture! I'll need to paint the doors now. This one I had to kick in to free the rug rat after she locked herself in out bedroom. Then I had to glue the door. That episode was what touched off the whole knob replacement plan.

Next up...Swimming Pool! Gonna dig it myself. How hard can it be?

The Weekend's Booty

Sorry. No ass pictures in this post. Get your mind out of my gutter!

First trophy. Ritchey threadless stem. This sucker will get the topo fade paint headed for the Yokota. If I ever get the weather complimentary enough to facilitate painting the Yokota, that is!

Second. With all the hullabaloo about international shipping kicking around on the Retrobike boards, I thought I'd do a little buying from Europe and see how the shipping experience works the other direction. So I found some little doodads I have a use for, offered by a top rated seller in France, and took the plunge. Seller has already left feedback, so it looks like he's on the stick and things are going good. Now I just wait to see how long a trans Atlantic ship-job takes for four little wheel skewers...

Finally, the Rascal needs new mittens, and Ourys just seem a little too 'oomphy' for such a sleek bike. WTBs are comfy from back in the day, so why not?

Rascal got some new goodies this weekend too...more on that in a bit...

The Fox and the Ninja!

No not a B-grade Golan and Globus action movie from 1982, but instead my eBay domination of the day. Remember, there are no eBay auction wins, only crushing domination. Merely winning at something, even something as goofy as an online auction, is unsatisfactory. Dominance should always be the goal. Much like the fat man behind the wheel of seemingly every Tahoe and Suburban on the road, you should always strive to enter the eBay super highway with Blind Arrogance, and Reckless Abandon. Don't forget to never signal. Win? Please! Winning is so 90's. Dominate!

Fox Vanilla. The Revelation on the blue EWR is a leaky pile of muck. I'll send that sucker off to PUSH and get on with the Vanilla. When the Revelation comes back, then I'll mount that sucker to the Titanium bike, use it for pure cross country and commute on the Beast. Clear as mud, everyone? Good.

Sakae Ninja chain ring. My NOS ring from the bookshelf is now on the Rocky, so you KNOW I had to run right out and get another NOS spare. Hey I'm no fool.

!!!

Rocky sprouts some parts!

First things first... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Starting the process of hanging bits on the Rocky Mountain Avalanche. Not all parts are correct vintage but then again I've never really given a rats patootie about that in the past, so why start now!

Deore cranks, NOS, with NOS Race Face bash guard and Sakae Ninja granny ring. The bash is surely not correct vintage, but I want to ride this bike and the technical trails around here don't like low bottom brackets and 46 tooth big rings. And I'm a fat slob that can't push a big ring. Yeah...that too.

Deore DX rear derailleur. Short cage. I picked this one because it has patina. That's French for it's got scratches on it. Duh!

Dia Compe 986 brakes. I assembled these out of a bin of salvaged 986 parts I snagged on fleabay cheap.

Ritchey Logic brake levers and Deore XT thumbies. These levers are also patina'd out, and the shifters are NOS, although the clamps are not, and they are pretty faded. Again, that French word applies.

SDG Kevlar. Surely NOT proper vintage, but my fat butt likes these, so tough it out, VRC goons. You know who you are! Besides, this one has PATINA! Weee!

Original 105 headset fitted by Rocky in the factory. It gets to stay.

As does the Suntour post.

Next up...wheels.

Answer A-Tac stem

The A-Tac shown here via ganked auction pic cost a bit more than I'd hoped, but thats how it rolls when you play the snipe game. Sometimes you piddle out a slight percentage of your max bid, and sometimes you blow the whole load. If you're thinking that there must be some reason that these parts are being collected by yours truly...some project that these babies are destined for, you're right.

Stay tuned!

Rats! I just read the LAST post, and dammit if I didn't spill the beans already! Yeah...these bits are destined for the Rascal. I was holding out hope that I'd be able to find an old school IRD 'Ricky Racer' stem for the Rascal, as I had one of those bad boys on the old Rascal back in the day. Alas...I think there are only 10 in existence, because not only do you never see them for sale, you never see them on a bike at all! It was a cool stem back in the day, although not terribly functional, as the double quill style mounting never stayed tight, and during technical rides, your handlebars would cock 30 degrees to one side at the most inopportune time. Still, they were swank, and they are rare, and I'm a slutty tramp for the swank and the rare. And besides, random bar misalignment just makes riding more "technical!"

Got a picture somewhere of the Ricky Racer. I should post that up so the 99.8% of you out there who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about can at least have an idea what the target of my lust looks like.

Anyway...no IRD, meh! I'll plug in an A-Tac and a Taperlite and call it a day. Either way, I should get my big carcass out on a bike soon or the stem/bar combo on the Klein won't matter, as my ever increasing winterized girth will snap the Klein itself into a lump of soda-can kindling, A-Tac be damned!

Fat Man + Klein = Fail

Answer Taper Lite 2

More fleabay goodies, and therefor more fleabay auction picture ganking as is always the case with my auction domination announcements here on the blog. Of course I mean 'domination'! Everyone knows that a full 73.4% of eBay's business is based solely on the average Americans uncontrollable need to win at everything. Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Bar is for the Klein Rascal. I need to actually ride one of these bikes at some point.

I'm home today, from work. The child, AKA Rugratius Infectus, had a slight fever last night, and she's been sputtering like her daddy for the past few days, so we kept her home. Which means I'm at home. Which means I have unlimited access to the Internet.

Which of course, means I'm on eBay again! Bwah!

My brakes must really suck!

More fleabay action. Sometimes all you find on eBay in the way of brake boosters is Odyssey crap, or maybe some Brodie Rock Rooster weirdness that only fits a Manitous suspension fork that nobody in their right mine would spend a dime stiffening up with something so inevitably psychotically overpriced as a Brodie Rock Rooster!

Then fleabay throws you a curve. Literally.

Blog Neglect!

I'm sitting here with my lovely wife, watching "Julie and Julia" on Comcast On-Demand ($4.99! WTF!) and feeling strangely guilty for not updating the blog for a week. Not guilty enough to write something specific to updating the blog, mind you. Rather there's more to this update than just pointless blog updates!

Oh no! Instead, I've paused the movie (for $4.99! WTF! I'd better be able to pause the damn thing!) so that I can snipe some goodies off fleabay!

Picked these babies up tonight, movie paused. The best part about this auction, is that I found it days ago and punched in the minimum bid, a pretty fair price I might add, and then settled in for the multi-day wait culminating in tonight's paused mediocre movie snipe fest! Here's the best part!:...these babies are so obscure that nobody else put in a bid! My weirdness knows no bounds!!!

TahDah! Ionic brake braces. (the two braces in the front only, That Gorilla stuff in the background is there, well, I have no bloody idea why it's there! Nasty things.)

Aint them Ionic braces just the dog's danglies? Don't you just want to put on some women's clothes and stuff these babies under your pillow and sing show tunes? Wheeee!