Bike Work & Cuttin Wood

At long last, I repaired my bike. I installed new brakes, brake levers, and drop-bar shifters! I re-wrapped my bars with nice gel grip-tape, indexed my gears, made my bike a lean, mean, petal-powered machine. My friends and I went on a 30 mi training ride in the Orinda hills on Saturday, and she flew down hills and powered up them. She managed to keep up with some of the kids riding carbon-fiber bikes! My bike purrs like a kitten. She's getting old enough it's time to give her a name.

Along with that, I started taking careful measurements of the dimensions at the back of my bike. Xtracycle recently posted their OpenSource Longtail Technology Page, which put the measurements and angles of the FreeRad on the public domain. But the carpenter's motto is measure twice, cut once, so I double-checked the dimensions and transfered them to a piece of 7-ply birch I had leftover from building my bed. I drilled holes for and mounted the snapdeck hooks, which attach the board to the FreeRad. I rode around with it on the back of the bike for a night, and it is properly designed and solid.

I will need two of these boards overall. They will be identical in initial shape, and then due to the perhaps aesthetically sloping angles of the front and rear sidewalls, the top will be slightly smaller. Having made the measurements of the bottom already, I just need to transfer those to another board.