bike trip journal/research?

ok so here's where the journey went

obsessed by bikes (agreed?), lots of background but right now wanting to ride a mini-bike on a slackrope, juggle wheel rims, the colour wheels project, the white bike (a la white horses on the hillside - it's an iron horse after all) and the automata bike band.

so i heard of martin who sells bikes, rang him up, asked about mini-bikes, told him what i wanted it for, he say's I've got a mini-bike but i also have a clown bike, do you want it? 'Oh yes' i say as you can probably imagine. So i took away a mini-bike in poor condition and a bike with off-set wheels so the axles are not central meaning you kinda 'lollop' along in a genteel fashion. Not perfect nick but not bad. no idea what to do with it. The mini-bike turns out to be not worth saving so I took the tyres off and will be de-spoking them for juggling. The mini-bike frame was a joyful learning experience, i took it apart piece by piece, breaks, head set and handlebars, pedals, cranks and cassette - the whole lot. While I was doing this I thought about making a normal automata thing but making it out of bike bits. Could chop a frame up and mount a box over it, use the pedals like normal - i have a sketch of what i mean to put on top.

so automata. i visited Machinations in Llanbrynmair the other day. it's a home of automata, including the gorgeous stuff that i saw at an eisteddfod a year or two ago. crazy automata by Charles Byrd. He trained in aircraft stuff at filton i beleive.  http://www.artinwales.250x.com/ArtistsBy.htm I asked them about work experience, they're looking for someone to take over who's ready to just run with it. i'm not quite there yet... they weren't sure about having a work experience person but say'd it'b be worth approaching the boss.

I'm going to order the cabaret mechanical whatsit book and also remembered the paper automata that you can make. I'm going to try my idea with stiff paper I think. see if it might work like that. Thinking make a bike running down a hill into a pond.

So i have lots of bike ideas. all good ideas but i'm not getting round to making them. if i listed them there'd be too many to think about