This is not the bike I outlined building a few posts ago, you might say. And you would be correct on that. Indeed this is how far I have gotten with the first part of the working together with my helper – this is a LongJohn type bike with a big basket in front of the handle bar, that helping my friend working on his bike inspired me to do. I will get back to that original plan in time, I will.

But in the meantime, this bike is coming along well. I was bent on making the basket be able to fold up, so it is easier to store this long bike, at least it will only be long, and not very wide. And it seems to work out.

Because long it is, this bike! In fact I am a bit concerned whether I will be able to remove it from the shop through the door… Not really, as I already tried and succeeded, but with not much extra room. Somehow I must have mis-measured the length of the bottom rod, so the bike came out longer than I planned. But by the time I realized it, I had the indirect steering mechanism installed, and working, so I didn’t want to take the whole thing apart. It is still quite strong, and when I took it out for a test, it ran very smoothly, and while the length felt funny, it didn’t much affect my ability to keep my balance. Maybe starting was a bit more of an effort.

This is a picture of the front of the bike in case you care. I will still have to:

• clean up the welds,
• paint the frame,
• install the rest of the basket, and
• work some of the last minute details out, like how the kickstand remains folded while moving,

but basically that’s it otherwise. The next time I report on this, I make sure the picture is not in a messy shop with a bunch of other pipes and wheels protruding everywhere, but like on the road, in action, so you can better see what it looks like.