Busy, busy

   Before I get into the next steps of my project I wanted to ask if anyone else has tried SportLegs capsules. I'm don't usually experiment with suppliments, etc. when working out, but Carrick and I met a rep for this company at a endurance sports expo a few months ago. What he described sounded interesting, and he supplied us with a few samples. I used them today before a long ride and felt amazing! SportLegs contains lactate compounds of calcium and magnesium.  Taken an hour before exercise, it pre-loads your bloodstream with lactate and tricks your muscles into thinking they don't need to make more. You just don't get that terrible burn in your thighs after pedaling hard, enabling you to go faster for a longer period of time. I probably wouldn't use it for every ride, but for the longer or hillier routes, it sure seems like a great product.

   It took a while for me to really get going on the Motobécane restoration, mostly because Sue drummed up so much repair business for me through her colleagues at school - word really got around! At one point a couple weekends ago I had six bikes in various stages of repair completion around the house. I was awaiting parts for some, and wanted to get started on the others, so I was struggling to find places to put everything. I was somewhat glad Sue and the boys went down to the shore early without me so that they weren't having to negotiate their way through the obstacle course. I finished two of the bikes and had them picked up, only to have some Oakies (Sue teaches at Oaks Elementary) bring over a couple more!
  

  



   I completely disassembled the Motobécane, and was pleasantly surprised to find how shiny the chrome was after some polishing with light oil and fine steel wool. The cranks and chainrings cleaned up amazingly well, as did the Suntour derailleur and shifters.

   I masked the bottom bracket and headset with layers of duct tape and set the frame out to my local sandblasting connection. Before painting, I sampled some paint schemes by using a simple outline of a bike frame and the Microsoft Paint program and filling different sections with color. I love the look of the chrome lugs on classic Colnago bicycles, so I’ve decided to replicate that with a French flag tricolor design for the rest of the frame.

  

   After masking the headset, bottom bracket and dropouts, I threaded a section of clothesline through the headset from which to hang the frame for painting. Because the fork will be red, I used brown primer on that section, but I used gray on the frame so that there won’t be as much of a problem with the primer showing through the white paint. The photos actually show the frame pre-primer and the fork ready for the next process…color!