The mighty iron steed:

further to the preparations for next month's globetrotting, fund-eating trips I've been pratting around with posting to my Flickr account via email, and so I now present to you the first fruit of this astonishingly nerdy pursuit: the finished form of my over-described bike.

The last big piece to fall into place were the forks - a pair of Kona Project 2s - sized to mimic suspension forks with 80mm of travel. This suits the frame much better than the £10 under-the-counter specials I was using until this week, and suddenly it feels like a real bike. The steerer of the original forks was very slightly narrower than the 1 1/8^th inch headset diameter and so there was far too much play in the steering; the Project 2s look to be made to a much lower tolerance and everything is rock solid now.

It now goes, stops, turns and imbues the builder (i.e. me) with a trememdous sense of smugness. Job done!

I took this photo with my phone's camera, and well, it's not great. Bit of fish-eye type distortion evident on the back wheel and despite the original image being 1600x1200, there really isn't a lot of fine detail. A bit of experimentation is going to be required, I think...

Anyway, stay tuned for more similar techy high jinks. I bet you can't wait.