Mechanical day - ending with country music at the bottom

It's been another sweltering polluted bit of nastiness weatherwise - typhoons running up the coast to Taiwan and Japan, scooping everything filthy and hot off the top of Southern China and bringing it down to us.  So when you can't delight in the outdoors, perhaps time to indulge in a dismantling of the stuff that transports you there when you can.

So I decided to dismantle and service my beach-bike (which I have been loving riding) - and why would I fool around with something working?  Can't be helped.

What's unusual about it is that it has a hub mounted eight speed gearbox,  rather than a derailleur, and a belt drive.  I bought it second hand - been looking for one for a number of years - and it's four years old, seems to have been very well cared for.  The big thing about gearbox hub bikes (called IHG bikes) are that they don't require regular maintenance - but a bit car-like, they do require servicing (and I'm not sure what this one's service history is like.  I went down to the Hang Hau bike shop and asked the guy there if he could service it, he said no way, never seen one of those before, let alone worked on one. So onto the web it was, and then into the tools - and off on a bike-geek adventure.  I had lots of help of course.  Ev kocked the dismantled bike over.  Holly pawed the bits that I'd lined up on the table.  Aiden watched it all.  I think (hope like hell) that I got it all right, certainly got it all apart, cleaned and inspected it, greased it up, and then back together.  There was one alarming loud clunk sound while testing it (but this has not repeated ... and all seems to be fine :-/

So this is what it looks like - something along the lines of those before-your-time 3 speed things, just a modern and sophisticated one, with eight speeds.  You have to get through all those layers (note the belt drive - not a chain sprocket.  All those coloured dots want to be lined up in various ways when you are re-assembling it all).

Inside the hub, when you've broken into it through all the layers - and one especially anti-christ snap-ring - looks like this (not my pic this one).

Also not my picture (clearly) but that all dissembled looks like this (and I am left wondering which one of these pieces breaking represents the loud clunk?)  I did not take the thing apart to this extent (again, obviously, or I would be swearing like a devil instead of typing this).

Learned quite a bit too about all this.  Grease for example, is complicated stuff.  I've got the wrong grease in the thing, it turns out - no worries though, time to change that to marine grease, with aluminium thickener - want to know why?  Check this out if you are determined to get into the abstraction of lubrication and weather-sealing: http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/functions-of-grease/ (and believe me, Bob is the guy).

Turns out the absolute rolls-royce of gear hubs is this one, the Rohloff Speedhub - it is a beautiful piece of German engineering at its best, apparently lasts longer than the pyramids, has very near to the same energy efficiency as a direct chain drive derailleur system - and has 14 gears (going to find an old one in some garage one day). Pretty cool.

Watched the second iteration of True Detective - loved it, but not with the ferocity I felt for the first.  Sound-track is divine too.  Do you like country music?  Didn't think so, can't imagine who would.  But check out this - just give it one try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwVX4cG6F9s (she's the soundtrack, though not this song).  This is the soundtrack - an astounding wonderfulness for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjg43nzSYck 

A Darwin award in the making?

Holly is good company while you are trying to type something, likes the keyboard, keen to participate.






















However her grasp of the principles of IT (or just the basics of what powers a computer) are definitely lacking; poor choice of thing to sink your teeth into whilst being naughty.

A milestone day

Today Ev turned 9, and Aiden went to high-school.  Here is the birthday boy, with his new watch and (winking for the photo) cat; below that, Aiden heading off - moving inexorably away, away.

Holly - smiling

Fundamentally, Holly was about Evan - but of course we've all ended up massively enjoying her.  But just officially, here she is with the main reason for getting her.

 We decided, primarily for cat allergy reasons that Holly should sleep in Evan's room.  So this is how it all started, sleeping at the bottom of the bed (this being how she's found in the morning).

But cats being cats, she has steadily worked her way north, much to Evan's delight, and the last place she was spotted sleeping at night was on his pillow.  Nothing could be better.

 Of course, she is doted upon by the only other female in the house (trust me, there would have been no holly had Ange not been keen on her, so here they are in the morning, after liberation from Ev's room.

Holly is a very active participant in a number of activities, ball games in particular are one of her favorites - though she's restricted to ping pong balls, and is reduced to observer status when there is a game of one-bounce going on outside.

All of this can get pretty exhausting though, for a small ginger cat, so the rest of the time has to be spent in various states of abandonment - we checked, kittens sleep 16 hours out of 24.

Jigsaw art

Real Thailand

It was just great to have a holiday, time with family, no emails and phones, sleep.  Thailand is interesting in a range of ways, principally for the falseness of its representation.  If you buy a postcard or look at pics on the web, it looks like this, which is fair, the colours and cliffs are unreal...

But what is left out is the stuff that gets cropped, because the place is insanely busy, like being in central, but on the azure sea, so more accurately looks like this...

With boatloads of people having a swim, or mass pee, one is never sure, in their life jackets.  Its the equivalent of the airport with the tour-guide with a flag - just the aquatic version.  I must add that none of this is offensive to me, its just that I don't want to participate in the falseness - and what is probably most interesting is the change of people since I was here last; then the majority was Russian.  Since then the oil price and the Ruble have collapsed, now the majority of tourists are Chinese. It's an interesting little cameo of geo-economics.  There are also some South Africans.

At Phi Phi the scene looks like this, though of course the height and direction of light make the water look very different (the pictures above comes from the the place in the left of the photo, below).

And then to give you an idea of the volume of water traffic, I've cropped out that piece, which close-up looks like this; its just an absolute zoo of boats.

Phi Phi harbour itself looks like this: still spectacular - the jungle and cliffs, but man is it under the cosh of people pressure. If one is looking for a getaway, this is not it.

Finding a restaurant amidst the zillions of people to have lunch was a job in itself.  But it did give Evan a chance to find and pat every cat on the island - which had a profound effect on us, collectively, because we decided OK, we have to get this child a cat - and that is the thing that led to Holly.

Seventy is the new thirty - motorbike smiles (and worries)

Really enjoyed spending time with Angie's folks - they are super relaxed and I think had a good time. I smiled when they headed off on Tracy and Simon's bike - seventy is the new thirty.  This was at Paul's Restaurant (definitely our collective favourite on the trip) - which is about all you see in the picture (barring the actual kitchen which is also a very temporary looking thing - fantastic food, hot and fresh, smiles all round).

Not to be outdone the youth of course responded ... Courtney and Aiden heading off to Surin Beach ... amazing how short the journey is from making your parents worry about riding a motorbike to worrying about your kids riding a motorbike (as represented in the presence of helmets).  And then to have it spiced up by worrying about your parents riding a motorbike!

Thailand

Been loving being on holiday - realised that it is my first in more than a year, which is a bit of a waste of life really - but as welcome as overdue.  Been lazy about photos, sorry about that. Highlight events? Had a fantastic snorkel over fabulous coral, which included seeing some blacktip reef sharks of respectable size. Ev popped his head up and asked simply "will it eat me?"  I said no. He said  "oh, ok" and carried on.  Very beautiful sharks they are, archetypal with striking markings.  Can't seem to upload the photos .... Grrrr ..... Still learning mobile blogging it seems (ok, sorted at lunch time on the 5th :-)

Evan and Aiden, Layan Beach, bruised sky, great light on the water.

Blacktip Reef Shark - archetypal shark, but with beautiful markings.