And now…

As you can see my Fujiyama is back from the powder coaters. I haven’t built my new rear wheel yet, but it’s back together for the most part. I’ve got new, really nice, cantilever brakes, sweet Tektro levers, and some badly applied Resurrectio decals. Darn it all.

It also appears that I’m not going to be able to put that Nitto rack on the front of the bike, but I haven’t given up looking for some that will work. Cheap is good at this point.

Aloha!

I was out playing with my S100 again today. This time I thought I’d head up to the back of Manoa and check out the Manoa Chinese Cemetery. I pass by it all the time on my Manoa loop but have never stopped and made images there. Today that changed.

I did a bit over an hour of a riding this morning and think I’ll head back out this afternoon for a bit more.

First, however, I wanted to charge up the S100′s battery. It was doing fine, even using the GPS when it was on, until I turned on the GPS Logging function. It seemed to drop the battery indicator to half full within minutes. Not good. That’s the first real problem I’ve seen with the S100 (other than my lack of ability which isn’t, technically, a problem with the S100 – I have it with all cameras).

Anyway the battery is charged and it’s time to start thinking about heading out again.

Aloha!

I bought a new camera today…it’d been a while. It’s a Canon PowerShot S100. It’s the best P&S I’ve ever owned, bar none.

The real reason for the purchase can be boiled down to GPS. On my long bike trips I have a hard time remembering exactly where I made this image or that. In Iowa, for instance, one cornfield looks much like the next. Unless I’m actually in a town or can find a sign it’s hard to know; was I 10 miles from X or only 9?

So here you have it, a new camera.

The S100 feels like a professional camera. It’s solid and feels nothing like a cheap plastic P&S. You can tweak pretty much every setting you want. It’ll shoot RAW, it’ll geotag the shots, it’ll…well you get the point.

I also decided to upgrade my Lightroom and Photoshop software today so it ended up being a rather expensive day. Sigh.

Still I love photography (whether or not I’m any good), so it’s money well spent.

More photos to come of course.

Aloha!

So, back in the present, Rivendell had a sale recently (actually it’s still on at the moment). It’s was their first ever sale and while they weren’t happy to have to have one, it turned into fairly good fortune for me.

The upshot is that one of the things I bought was an FSA Vero crankset which I figured I could use on my Fujiyama.

It arrived several days ago but I didn’t have time to put it on till this afternoon after work. It turned out to be a pain to get the old cranks off. They were original to the bike with the original welded-on chainrings. I got it off eventually with a little elbow grease (and some of the other kind as well).

The new FSA set went right on and I used the MKS Touring Pedals I had laying around, having removed them from my Quickbeam eons ago.

The only hitch was because my new chainring is a few teeth bigger my chain was now too short. I’m using a 1/8th inch chain on this beast (which helps with the chainline a bit having a bit more play) but that meant I had no links around as I do from the various 3/32′s I have around. Luckily a trip back to McCully Bicycle fixed that.

Ben, the (one of?) son of the original owner always seems happy to see this old beater, given that his dad used to import them as a house brand (name after his buddy, Mr. Fujiyama). Another fellow who’s worked there darn near forever looked at my bike again, laughed, and said I should donate the bike to the Bishop Museum.

In any case Ben put a new link in my chain saving me the trouble of buying a new one. All is well again.

Here’s a photo of the whole bike with its new drivetrain and one of the drivetrain a bit closer up. What next, 2 speed kickshift? Hmm….

A bit of glare but…

Aloha!

The weather on the south shore was a lot nicer than on the windward shore, though the wind decided it should follow us over. Sigh.

Speaking of sighs, I also figured out why I ran out of steam on the way back – I seem to have forgotten that I had bad cold for the entire week before the ride. Even on Christmas, the day before we did our ride, I wasn’t quite up to snuff as I did a 36 mile round trip to visit my family; still on medication in fact.

I’m looking forward to our next adventure (though we will be having another ride here on Saturday – a short one).

Aloha!