Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh Sports

It's interesting how my bike hobby has been going recently. It seems like whenever I get an idea to build something, whatever it may be, the perfect bike shows up. It may be partly that I only notice when I start looking, but it seems a lot more coincidental than that. Take my mixte project that I have yet to write about, for example. I'd been searching for a while before a good candidate showed up. I contacted the seller and we set up a meeting time. In the meantime, I start buying parts. Hours before we were set to meet, he tells me that he has found another seller. Amidst the disappointment, my search comes to a near halt, but not before being offered a different, better frame by another person. My DL-1 Tourist is another example. Or my friend's Hercules, only coming up for sale moments after he voiced his interest.

I May Be On To Something

I've always loved buildings, I've always loved wheels. I've never thought about it in this way exactly, but I have also had a special fascination with homes that go. Building and designing compact, movable living quarters such as campers and mobile homes require clever packaging and often times modular, multi-purpose fixtures, all of which are things that I strangely take pleasure in figuring out. More often in the case of RVs, people can hire designers and builders to specially construct a vehicle to their needs on top of an existing chassis. This process is called coach building, a practice more common decades ago for personal cars but mostly reserved today for larger vehicles. More on this at the end of the post.

My earlier attempts at "not-quite coach built custom bodies" from nearly eight years ago might not have turned out to be very elegant but alas, I have made some improvements to my craft:

New cover photo for the blog? I think so. 

Gear

After these few years of cycling experience, I have firmly established myself as purely a transportation rider. As I made clear in my previous post, I do enjoy the occasional race and inter-city trek but those are not regular or scheduled occurrences. All of my bikes are outfitted to be able to carry cargo in some way should the need arise, and all of them have fenders to keep dirt off my clothing

As my experience accumulated, so did my preferences. I used to have more of an "anything goes" mentality, in that whatever I was wearing or carrying books in would be good enough to ride in. While this is still mostly true since I am unwilling to change clothes upon arrival to my destination, I have made a few changes to my daily "gear" to better suit my lifestyle.