Back in Iowa, and Time to Breathe

The last few days have been pretty much dedicated to painting, roofing, and general preparation for Kaia's graduation party next Sunday. So finding both the time and the energy to ride have been a little difficult for the last week or so.

Kathy and I rode with the Owatonna Group on Tuesday night, for me it was mostly a Level 3 low level 4 ride which after a day of roofing meant my legs had done just about all they were capable of on Tuesday! It is pretty hard to take a good picture on the fly with an Iphone-- You have to hit a virtual shutter button on the side of the other side on the phone while pedaling, and steering, and hoping you don't drop the darn thing. Anyway, I got Dave and Jim and my shoulder lol. But there is a nice advertisement for My Friend Richard's B&B in Washington Iowa if you are ever in the area....

I have got a first layer of Carbon fiber on the bike frame now, I have decided that I will need to let the first couple of layers fully cure so the I can fill and fair out the imperfections that have become apparent now the the core is covered with CF. I have been trying to figure out a way to bond the dropouts to the top stays and chain stays. I chose Nova Cycle dropouts I did because they are set up for disk brakes. The issue is that I think they were really meant to be welded to an aluminum frame. The challenge is that I have to find a way to wrap them with CF well enough that they are not going to be a weak point. They have a ridge to strengthen them and that makes a sharp corners that is difficult to get the CF to wrap around. I have been thinking about this ever since I first attached them to the frame. Here is what I am trying, first I thickened some epoxy with fumed colloidal silica (my universal thickening agent of choice) to fill take up some of the space. I made some temporary inserts out of a couple pieces of bungee cord wrapped with electrical tape then I folded the CF around the corner and taped it into place-- more to come lol