howdy, everybody!

hope this finds all doing well! i was going to go and kick out another grueling armbike ride today, but i'm getting "tennis elbow" from all my armbiking, fishing, boating and filing. decided to take it easy today, do some food shopping, try to finish jen's bike and just generally move in slo-mo. when you only have 2 limbs left that work "perfectly" and they start to go south, you better take it easy. almost done with jen's bike. henceforth, S&S couplers will be a $475.00 upgrade. the couplers alone cost me $240. they are not technically challenging, but they sure are one hell of a time sink, and the painter charges more, as they must mask them off twice, once for sand blasting, and once for painting. oh yeah, you have to polish them too. they sure do look cool. i have included the closeup of one so you can get a better look at one. they open with a spanner wrench, i'l post a pic of it taken apart when it's all polished. went for a great ride two days ago, felt really good! climbed up climb 3, down weinie walk, up little gnarly and over to second dry lake, where one of my steering braze-ons promptly blew out, leaving me with almost no steering. good thing it was *mostly* downhill. i was having to pedal with one arm while steering with the other. [gee, where did i get tennis elbow?} also check out this cat track. about 4"/100mm wide. there's some big kitties out there in the woods! sooooo......after polishing fillets for almost 5 hours yesterday, i did a marathon 4 hour armbike makeover. i took the front end off, put on burly new steering braze-ons, added 2 new water bottle mounts, gave it an awful-looking orange touch-up paint job, took the front two-speed bottom bracket off and replaced it with a non-shifting lx crankset {lighter and simpler, i don't use the entire lower gear range, so why tote it around.....} adjusted/replaced alot of the cables and housing, and tuned it up. as i write, new armor has just showed up for it. guess i'm not done yet! so, lots to do. and, a request, one you don't have to accept at all, but how about readers add a comment, maybe just a first name and where you live, just to satisfy my own curiosity. i know alot of people read this, and i just wonder how far my little chunk of the world travels! thanks for reading/looking. trying to keep it interesting here in flagstaff, arizona, usa. steve.