Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Converting a nice solution into a kludge


When I was in Seattle last weekend, Alex met me at a park with a giant bag of rad bike stuff. It was sort of like a drug deal. Probably my favorite item in the giant bag of goods, was the Alex-made LED rear light. This sucker rules. It's made from an old Cat Eye fender reflector. It's a nice mounting deal. And it's bright.

I mounted it on my 747. As you can see, I didn't fuss much on the wire routing. I just wanted to get it rolling, so Gorilla tape saved the day. Looking at this and knowing my tendency to leave stuff alone if it's working/not broken, even I am embarrassed by how shitty that looks.


Routing the wires under the fender is not rocket science: I can un-do the edge of the fender where it's rolled, stuff the wire in there, then re-roll it. Or, I can figure out a way to clip/tape the wire to the underside of the fender.

The section from the bottom bracket to the fork crown presents some problems -- I guess I could zip tie it. Or even do some drilling.


In any case, all the wire-routing/fussing takes time that I don't want to spend. I currently have two sets of wheel components awaiting transformation. And there's always other hacks, fixes, and ad hoc repairs popping up.

I'd like to think I would just take care of this wiring deal to show the proper respect this caliber of bike deserves, but my guess is that the wiring job will look like this year from now, so I might as well get used to it. Sorry Jan. Sorry Mr. Lyon.

In other news, here's what a tree will do to fixed, rigid tree house attachments:


You won't see that on our fancy tree house. This riveting video proves it:

2 comments:

Lee said...

I was just talking to JimG about this the other day: once someone figures out an easy, elegant, and somewhat standardized way to wire a generator tail-light, it'll be game-over. With the great generator hubs out there now, combined with LED front and rear lights, my cycling life will be complete!

Lucas said...

Brilliant work letting the treehouse float like that.