December 27, 2009 – 2:35 pm
Our trip to Aruba was basically perfect. The weather was great and just about everything about the trip was relaxing. I would definitely recommend a trip there to anyone. We stayed at the Manchebo Beach Resort which was beautiful and not crowded.
It felt like we had the place to ourselves at times. The end of December is the off season so the weather was just ok by Aruba standards (high 80s with low humidity) but felt perfect compared to Detroit winter. I guess most people stay over in the high rise area of island in one of the big hotels. We stopped over there for an hour and hated it. It was filled with chain restaurants like you would find in the US near a shopping mall. The Eagle Beach area was much nicer in our opinion.
Like other parts of the Caribbean, Aruba has a lot of jewelry stores including Little Switzerland which is one of my clients. It was really helpful to see the stores in person. I now have a better understanding of the brand. Little Switzerland seems to be the leader in Caribbean jewelry stores and I am proud to be associated with them.
November 2, 2009 – 8:26 pm
I had a good time this Halloween and it is really becoming a favorite holiday. Our pumpkin carvings and costumes turned out great and it was great seeing everyone at the costume parties.
I know a lot of people think that 70s custom vans are lame or creepy but I have wanted one since I was a kid. TV shows like the A-Team are probably to blame. I found this riteous specimen on craigslist Sunday night and bought it Monday afternoon. It is a 1977 Chevy Van originally from Nevada. The body is solid and it is in pretty good running condition. It needs a lot of work but I only paid $1000. It has a good running Chevy 350 engine and trans and a lot of new parts; Edelbrock carb and intake, headers, flowmaster exhaust and quite a few other things. I might be in over my head on this project but that hasn’t stopped me before.
I recently finished a couple bike projects. The Goodyear cruiser and the Schwinn Breeze for Maritoni. We took them on a long ride with the Defying the Law Bike Club earlier today or technically yesterday. There are a few kinks to work out but so far the bikes are pretty great. You can see before pics and follow the restoration in my flickr account. There is a separate set for the Goodyear and the Breeze.
I have been buying way too many bikes lately. I keep finding really great deals on craigslist. I am keeping 2 of the ones I bought recently. One is a 1981 Bianchi Nuovo Touring. It was originally an 18 speed. I am refurbishing it and converting it to a singlespeed. The other bike is a 1980s 26″ GT BMX Cruiser. Both need a ton of work but I got both plus a box of parts and tools for $60! I will post more photos when I am finished with them. You can follow the Bianchi project or GT project on Flickr. Here are some before pics.
I attended a Critical Mass Ride in Detroit last night. I guess it was the first one in a long while. It was pretty fun. I think about 60 people showed up. We rode around downtown and midtown. It was a pretty good ride. Here are a couple pics.
I am working on three bike builds this spring. One of them is a 1940s Goodyear brand bike I bought last fall from my buddy Dave. It is a straight bar cruiser frame and I want to build it in sort of a late 70s mountain bike/BMX style. In my head it looks really cool. We shall see. I bought a Nexus three speed wheelset from a Nirve. I am stoked that the back wheel seems to clear the rear dropouts even with the roller brake installed. So far so good. I plan to add photos of the project to this project log on flickr.
I have been wanting to learn how to build up bike wheels for a while. Today I finally got all the parts together to give it a shot. While I was waiting for parts I read about how to do it so today went pretty smooth. It took most of the afternoon trialling and erroring but I am happy with the results. I used a 3 leading, 3 trailing pattern to try to be fancy.
February 14, 2009 – 12:50 pm
I bought Maritoni a 1975 Schwinn Breeze for Valentine’s Day. It needs some work but that is cool because I am going to strip it down and rebuild it for her. She wants it to be pink. It is still in the planning stage. It was hard to find a cool old bike to fit her her diminutive stature. I will post more pics in this project log on flickr.
December 16, 2008 – 7:10 pm
This is my new bass. I put it together from parts I bought on ebay. I also refinished the body. I really like it so far. It is a Precision bass body with a P/J pickup set, wilkinson bridge standard jazz bass wiring and controls. The neck is a standard Jazz bass neck with Schaller tuning machines. I like the gold sparkle/metalflake paint and black pickguard.
Here is the body before. You can see some more before pics and stuff in my flickr account.
