Monthly Archives: July 2004

Picked up a Matt Hoffman BMX for some computer work..

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Picked up a Matt Hoffman BMX for some computer work at the bike shop today.. thanks Mick!

Obviously I don’t need another bike, but I saw it in the shop and thought about using it as an office run around – for grabbing spares and the like. The 3-piece cranks currently hit the chainstay but I’m sure this can be sorted with judicial use of washers. Riding my roadie home and pushing the bmx along made me realise how heavy this thing was and wonder how those jump grommets actually get these things into the air! 😉

I don’t have pictures of it yet but they will come soon enough. It’s cheap blue paint over chrome I think.

Finally.. A Black Cat!

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Meet Hatchback the cat:

HatchbackMore Hatchback

Steve and Chris have been taking care of this stray for some time now. He is super friendly and appears to have come from a domestic-cat situation before being strayed. Formerly known as Panther, Black Cat or Half-Tail, I named him “Hatchback” due to half his tail being cut off at some stage. Just like a hatchback car, he has a shorter rear end!

My first experience with ebay fraud..

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This dude was selling a $10,000 Trek Team TT bike for bugger all – the winning bid was ~$3k: Dodgy Ebay Trek

Before the bidding ended I noticed the ad was simply taken straight from Trek’s website. I emailed the seller about this:

Dear jayt91,

This photo appears to be from promo material. Do you have pics of your actual bike?

and shortly after, when I noticed no size, I emailed this question:

Dear jayt91,

Oh, also, what size is it?! You’ve cut and pasted the details from Trek’s website (which makes it look well dodgy) and didn’t specify a size..

I received this:

From: Mihaela Lacraru [jayt91@msn.com]

Dear potential customer,

First of all I want to thank you for your message.

I have a various sizes of bikes right now so please let me know what size do you need so I can see if I can find the size that you need.

The bike model year is 2004. All my bikes are new in boxes and be sure that it will be a prompt delivery and the bike will be fully insured for the total amount.I’m handling the liquidation of a big store stock. The product is brand new in box with all the warranty papers for lifetime. So the best price that I can make for you is $2400.00 including shipping. Let me know if you like the price in order to go ahead with the deal. If you are ok with my price and we will decide to move forward with our deal you must know that we will close our deal under protection of eBay.

Feel free to ask me any other questions. I’m waiting for your reply.

With all due respect,

Mihaela

and 10 minutes later (without me doing anything else) this:

From: Mihaela Lacraru [jayt91@msn.com]

Dear potential customer,

First of all I want to thank you for your message.

I have a various sizes of bikes right now so please let me know what size do you need so I can see if I can find the size that you need.

The bike model year is 2004. All my bikes are new in boxes and be sure that it will be a prompt delivery and the bike will be fully insured for the total amount.I’m handling the liquidation of a big store stock. The product is brand new in box with all the warranty papers for lifetime. So the best price that I can make for you is $1200.00 including shipping. Let me know if you like the price in order to go ahead with the deal. If you are ok with my price and we will decide to move forward with our deal you must know that we will close our deal under protection of eBay.

Feel free to ask me any other questions. I’m waiting for your reply.

With all due respect,

Mihaela

Wow! Some guy just won the $10k bike for 3k and in the space of 10min the price for me has dropped to $2400 and then $1200!!! That’s the price of the groupset alone, let alone the frame, wheels and extras! With some well-justified doubts in my mind I emailed back:

So you are offering a 56cm Trek Team Time Trial bike, complete with wheels, groupset and extras like saddle, stem, seatpost.. all for $1200AUD, including shipping?

..to which I received:

From: Mihaela Lacraru [jayt91@msn.com]

Hi,

I have a size 56 cm avaible for you.

I will ship the product as a gift and you don’t pay any extra taxes. As I have told you the product will be ship via UPS 2nd days air insured in my shipping cost. It will be there in two days.

Usually, I accept paypal but for the moment I can’t do that because I want to sell this item quickly and I haven’t enough time to clear the deal in a week (4 days for charge my bank account from paypal account +3 days shipping) and second, I had many transaction though paypal in the last days and I’m over the limit (I can’t transfer in my bank account though paypal more then $5,000/month and I already transferred this amount).

You can do the payment via wire transfer under eBay protection because I need the money to pay my bill in time. If yes I will announce eBay Safety board about our transaction and we can do that under their protection.

Thank you,

Mihaela

Oh, really?

What do you mean ship it as a gift? You said you were based in Sydney – there wont be a need to pay taxes, hence no need to ship as a “gift”.

Ebay’s protection only covers items up to $400 worth. This is a $1200 item. Where will the extra protection come from?

Will you do an escrow transaction?

How do I do a ‘wire transfer’?

..and for some strange reason I have yet to hear from him!

It appears that someone has hijacked this account and was trying to con someone into handing over clams for a deal ‘too good to be true’. I feel sorry for whoever actually won this auction and hope that they realise just how dodgy it is before they lose $3k.

1 arse monkey ran a red light…

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1 arse monkey ran a red light…this morning, forcing me to veer around his ute as I hurtled downhill through the intersection. I still brought home a 55min commute (on my road bike for the first time in 3+ months) so no biggie.

Coming home, 3 more arse monkeys tried to take me out in the space of 5 minutes! 1 pulled left into me, turning before indicating, trying to go down a slip lane. I clipped his door with my foot (hopefully taking paint off!). The other was a dumb cow who decided she would pull out of her carpark into traffic, forcing me into car traffic. I can’t even remember what the third was.. I was probably too busy swearing at the first two dicks.

What’s going on? As soon as I ride my most expensive bike around, instead of the SS, every car wants to take me out – fuckers!

Lets do that again!…

I hit the passenger door of a car last night coming to some lights. As I passed on his left (legal.. I hope 🙂 ) he turned towards a slip lane when I was right beside him. He indicated, but it was only AS he turned so I could only do my best to swerve around. Clonked his door and rolled up to the lights. Looked back, he was stuck in the traffic still (he couldn’t even get into the slip lane due to other cars) so I mouthed off a bit, considered myself lucky and rolled on.. only to have another two ‘incidents’ with people pulling out when they shouldn’t, not indicating, etc.. PLUS some idiot had run a red that morning, forcing me to swerve around him through a downhill intersection! Sheesh!! First time I commute on my _good_ bike in 3+ months and it’s like ‘they know’! I think I’ll stick with the ss – maybe because it’s slower – cars don’t seem to mind it?

www.fearlessgearless.com

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I found this guy’s site today in some Vancouver blog collection. While I don’t necessarily agree with all his comments, most of ’em are pretty funny/cluey. He’s a singlespeeder/fixer AND anyone who can do this to their cranks gets much hippy respect! 🙂

Behold the Weasel Wisdom:

“Of course being a singlespeeder, not only makes you a sex beast, but it also makes you a better person in general”

:: A Weasel’s World ::

Vegemite Street Fix.. RIDES!!

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Here are pictures from the build process of my first street fix:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Stage 6 was after its first road ride around home. It’s fun! My legs are quite sore from all the leg-braking (oh and a hilly road ride might have something to do with it).

The frame is an old Apollo road bike frame that I scored off bikesoiler for a 6-pack of Mountain Goat.

It uses a new Miche groupset from my LBS, Profile Airwing bars from ebay, Dia-Compe TT brake lever from my LBS, cheapie caliper that was included with a frame I bought a while back (Lynzz?). Other parts were in my parts bin or from Croydon Cycle Works (plug.. plug.. plug..).

It needs a better seatpost and saddle, better brake caliper and I’m yet to decide on clips/straps or clipless pedals. The wheels are off my track bike so I’m going to build up some new ones for it, hence “complete-ish”.

In case you are wondering “Vegemite” is a ‘food’ spread that aussies like on their toast for breakfast. I figured I was powdercoating the frame to a similar colour as the spread.. “Vegemite” it shall be. I’ll get some red and yellow parts to complete the vegemite look.

Comments welcome..

hippy

Is New Zealand really as good as everyone believes?

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These people don’t think so:

“Takaka miraculously fuses two oppositional but equally unattractive elements of society into a monstrous whole. On the one hand you have the bog-standard New Zealand bogan brought up solely on a diet of spaghetti and white bread, dropped upon head at birth and beloved of white gumboots, whose accidental education has come from mistakenly reading those ‘brainy’ articles allegedly published in a well ‘thumbed’ copy of Playboy. Drinking, being emotionally stunted and eating things with pink icing are favourite pastimes.

On the other, one has an influx of those unbearable alternative hippy types drawn hither ostensibly for the indisputable beauties of it’s natural surrounds. Clearly that’s a lie. They want to strut their hand knitted Peruvian tights and Mongolian lichen dyed ponchos down Commercial Street earning the oohs and the ahhhs of fellow enthusiasts whilst exhibiting deeply irritating holier-than-thou lifestyles including such wonders as hand suckling small soy-based goats on a diet of wheatgrass and toe-pressed lesbian tambourine bands. Yummy. If you want to prop up your flagging self esteem with faux spiritual enlightenment and you want your chakra opened compadres to know abut it, you’ve come to the right place. Quite good for wife swapping too.”

from: New Zealand Crap Towns

The most addictive toy ever created…

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The official Powerball website:

www.powerballs.com

Our office scoreboard:

OWA Powerball Scores

Initially I thought the Powerball gyroscope was the silliest toy I’d seen a grown man purchase in a long time. I was wrong.

It’s THE most addictive thing our office has seen!

Start it with the string (most of us can start it with a thumb flick now) and then rotate the ball-gyro at the correct speed and “circle size” with the emphasis on using your wrist, rather than your arm. The idea is to get it going as fast as possible. An LED counter on the side tells you the fastest RPM for a “go” and can also give a figure for the power/endurance over a 30 second period of frenzied spinning.