Brrr! Take me back to the present

July 2 2004
E-mail from Peter Branfield regarding June posts about 20" shopper conversions. Peter has turned up yet another. The Twenty wave mounts.

July 3 2004
Bad news from Taiwan, suffering badly from Typhoon Mindulle. Not too bothered? Think typhoons only bother characters in Joseph Conrad stories? It may bring things closer to home if I say that the freak weather affected production at the factory which makes Kogswell hubsets, and that our supplies are thereby disrupted. I hope they recover soon.

July 7 2004
Nice e-mail from Charles, who put a Nitto-sourced moustache bar on his restored fix. So far, pretty humdrum--but Charles' bike is a 26" frame custom monster which he found in a barn 50 yards from his back door. More details will appear on the Fixed Gear Gallery, but Dennis hasn't run the story yet.

July 9 2004
John does the fastest ever Blog turnaround, sending in this picture of his Revivified Raleigh. I considered sticking on an arrow to show the Hubjub-sourced lockring, but decided against.

July 11 2004
A straggler. Way back at the beginning of the year, Rory from Cambridge custom-ordered a gorgeous HKK Vertex Gold chain. He was kind enough to send in pictures of his Mercian fix, and I filed and promptly lost them. Sorry, Rory. It's really a lovely bike. Rory says: "I'm not too sure whether the picture shows it, but the chain matches the frame transfers!"

July 15 2004
Rob Seall sends in photos of his 1969 Allin Track Pursuit, now with wheels built on Hubjub-sourced Phil Wood high flanges. I have a particular fondness for fillet brazing, and this is a fine example of the art by Cliff Shrub. In another unexpected combination of old and new, Rob is threatening a Flying Gate with disk brakes. Watch this space.

July 16 2004
The latest stateside delivery shows up, with a new line--battleship-grey Nitto bullhorns, surely the most elegant example ever of a roughneck species. (I spend most of the afternoon bagging custom orders.) I think I've found a reliable source of cheap lockring spanners, so the long-planned Tools page will shortly become a reality. And it looks like Taiwan is getting back to normal, so with a bit of luck Kogswell supplies will only be constricted, not knocked out altogether. Phew.

July 26 2004
Nice e-mail from Mark Forster, who bought a moustache bar and Technomic stem a few months back. They were destined for his Holdsworth La Quelda, but have ended up on a gorgeous Bob Jackson Vigorelli in the meantime.

July 29 2004
Kind of a slack month while England bakes in an unaccustomed 85 degrees. This is a good time to bring up Alex Baker's SSWC. The SingleSpeed World Championships are a beer-und-wurst fuelled lost weekend in Berlin that I should have plugged months ago. There are still three weeks left to register, and a good time can be had by all, competitors and spectators alike. Go on, get that bike onto RyanAir--you know it makes sense!

July 31 2004
Joss Winn, the guy who turned me on to Nitto Deep Drops, mails in photos of his fix. Under all the pursuit bike drag, this is a Surly Steamroller, formerly #395 on the fixed gear gallery before Joss nologoed it and took it beyond its makers' original design parameters. The whole thing is a great illustration of how flexible a solidly designed frame can be.

Here's the twist. The bike is for sale--a service which I hope to extend to more Hubjub customers. (Hint: place an order *before* you ask for webspace.) If you're interested, check out the mini-gallery on Joss's site for more details.

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