the rest of the bike story

When I posted about the bikes all finished, I looked for previous posts to reference back to for the in progress pictures, and discovered I never posted them. Oops. So here they are.

early on, sanding off stickers and paint:

afterwards, with mud sullying the beautiful paint:
all in pieces, right before final assembly:

hmm, grinding again

one of many coats of paint:

taking masking tape off after painting:

Ave, all sideways, with finished beautiful paint:

Ave helping with Max's paint:

Both bikes did survive the roll over and got home safely. Thanks goodness, after all that hard work!

Ick

This overexposed photo is of a rubber gecko, stuck to my ceiling. Courtesy of Max and Owen. I get these icky lizards for the cat to play with, and until they get a bit dirty (linty) they're sticky. Apparently, sticky enough to adhere to my ceiling. YUCK!

Unrelated, the children and I rode bikes to Loelle's this morning (3rd time this summer). If it wasn't a completely hollow threat, I'd be swearing I'll never ever ride bikes with them any where ever again! First time the kids jumped out of bed and raced out the door. I wasn't even late to work. Second time, we left a little late, but it went well, and I caught the second of the 2 trains that get me to work on time. Today? Couldn't get them out the door, the ride took twice as long as normal, Ave wailed and carried on something awful, she scared a nice lady jogging on the path by not giving enough room "on the left" as she passed, fell because she was doing random 170 degree turns (side to side on the path), and my chain derailed so bad I thought I would have to walk it the rest of the way. Scraped the heck out of my knuckles trying to free the chain. Stomping on the bike petal finally did the job.

But, I will sort of forget how awful it was, and we'll do it again. Someday. In the far, distant future!