Froggie went a-ridin'

This weekend I took a break from smashing our kitchen to pieces and took part in Festival 542 down in Glacier, WA. The main significance of this for me was my first ever organized road-ride event, and my first serious ride on Kermit, the bike I welded together. The idea of Kermit was to make a fast, nimble feeling bike for getting around town. My design has most of the geometry of a normal-ish road bike, but much less stretched-out riding position. From my boxes of interesting old bike junk I put it together with a mid-90's revival assortment of mountain bike parts and the old wheels from my long-defunct Cyclocross bike.

Despite being a bit porky by road-bike standards (like about eight pounds heavier than Paul's road bike), Kermit feels pretty fast and is certainly fun to ride. The short wheelbase resulting from the short road-ish back-end combined with the stunted front-end makes it pretty lively to ride, though I still managed to keep things under control at 60-something km/h on the way back down Mt Baker. It's really rewarding to have built something that works, and seems to do what I wanted rather well. Now I just need to get my own TIG welder and start planning my next frame. I found a Miller Dynasty 200DX on sale today. That is quite a temptation...

Paul's version of the weekend's events and pictures of it are here, and I stole one of his photos which shows Kermit enjoying some clouds and mountains...