Here is a bike tinkerer's parlour game for you: Assemble a complete bicycle using whatever wayward frame and spare parts happen to be in your possession at the moment. You can't go out and buy anything - not even cables or bolts. And you have exactly one evening. What would you come up with? The Co-Habitant ended up with something kind of neat. And mostly French. And both of us could ride it!We have thisMotobecane Grand Touring frame that we considered selling, but in the end decided to keep. The frame is too small for him and too large for me, but we were curious about the Vitus tubing and wanted to compare it to other Motobecane models we'd ridden. Maybe some day we'd build it up just for the heck of it, we thought - though not really expecting this to happen. But sometimes, things fall into place. Say you're cleaning, and you notice a box full of stuff you'd forgotten about. And then remember another box, with more stuff. Then out comes the frame and in a matter of hours a bike is born. Vintage touring wheels, Suntour derailleurs and original Belleri Porteur bars were mixed with amodern Sugino Alpina crankset, VO city brake levers, Tektro sidepulls, and Shimano bar-end shifters. We found a sanded-down stem from another French bike, a seatpost that happened to fit, and an old saddle. It was getting too late in the night to mess with fenders and handlebar tape, but we do have some.
The result so far is unexpectedly lightweight - especially compared to the Super Mirage the Co-Habitant had earlier. We took turns riding the bicycle around the empty neighbourhood in the middle of the night and marveled at how nice it felt. I've ridden lower end Motobecane bikes and have also tried a couple of higher end ones - but this one feels different from either. No toe overlap on the 58cm square frame.Not sure what we will do with this bicycle, but he may keep it as his fast city bike - especially since he is infamously nervous about leaving his Pashley locked up on the street. I will post daylight pictures once it's fitted with fenders and handlebar tape. Not bad for a neglected frame and a box of spare parts!
As the summer season of bike shopping continues, some are still looking for the right bicycle while others have already snagged one. And if the emails I receive are any indication, those in the latter category are often plagued with "the grass is greener" regrets. 
We've been in fresh produce heaven since we arrived in Holley. I can walk across the street to the above produce stand and that's just one of many in this area. I'm taking advantage of the bounty and trying to do some batch cooking to make some home cooked goodness that we can eat now and freeze some for later.
I took a series of photos of my claret cup cactus as it is the only thing in my dirty, windblown, dreary yard that is bright and cheerful.
Cancun El Centro scenes. I ordered Nachos at the hotel and look what I got, some rolled tortillas with frijoles refritos - not really a Mexican food fan anyway. Nachos I learned is a Texan thing and not really Mexican. Upper right foto you can see a street food vendor selling tortillas. Below foto with the tall buildings is my hotel room view. 
Rotunda monument in Cancun. The Mexican Peso. I did a little walk into this park and saw this colourful row of houses. Bought myself some nachos to munch in my hotel room.
And I sauntered into this concrete park as well with a covered podium. There were a number of stalls selling native Mexican items.
Daily life on the streets of Cancun El Centro. The buses, the traffic (scary to cross the streets there!), the roads, as well as the people there remind me of the Philippines.
in front: Miriam Midkiff (AnceStories), fM (footnoteMaven and Shades of the Departed), Becky Wiseman
Thomas MacEntee (Destination Austin Family and Geneabloggers), Joan Miller (Luxegen Genealogy), Becky Wiseman, Randy Seaver (Genea-Musings), Miriam Midkiff (AnceStories), Craig Manson (GeneaBlogie), and Susan Kitchens (Family Oral History).
Wiley, our youngest cat of 1 year, decided the other day that he would tear up one of the pillows I keep on the couch. I have had dogs do this a lot but this is the first cat. Of course it could have been because there was a small tear in it. But who knows. Maybe it is because Wiley is just a fun loving wild cat.
Here is mine:
Not quite blue skies, but no precip
Today we headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We hiked the Laurel Falls Trail.
Laurel Falls is one of the most popular destinations in the park.
Laurel Branch and the 80-foot high Laurel Falls are named for mountain laurel, an evergreen shrub which blooms along the trail and near the falls in May
It appeared to me that the falls were not as abundant as they are sometimes, so I'm guessing the water levels must be low.
They were really beautiful! This is the upper falls.
Here you can see the upper falls and lower falls. The upper falls are in the far left corner.
The lower falls from below:
I didn't go down to the lower falls. Nathan and Aric did. They ended up having lots of excitement down there. I'll let Aric share it with you, which you can read on his blog here: Aric's Blog
Those who have been reading this blog for some time, are no doubt familiar with my rants against unicrown forks. "The bike is nice... if it weren't for that unicrown fork," and so forth. When the topic comes up, some agree, others question my fixation on this detail, and others still want to know what a unicrown fork is. Now that I am temporarily living with a unicrown forked bike, the time seems right to elaborate.
For some time now I've been trying to figure out the history of the unicrown fork, and I keep reading about the first mountain bikes, BMX bikes, and the quest for rigidity - suggesting that its origins were in the 1980s. But then I see antique bicycles- like this ancient Sterling pathracer at the Larz Anderson show last summer - which to me look like they are sporting hundred year old versions of unicrown forks. I have also seen what I can only describe as antique crownless flat-top forks - which appear to be similarly constructed, but are squared-off, rather than round. Would someone care to educate me on their history?
The thing about unicrown forks, is that I don't actually dislike them per se, at least not in of themselves. What I dislike is when they are incongruent to the overall design of the bicycle. On a welded frame, a unicrown fork looks perfectly natural - integrating harmoniously with the bicycle frame. Just like I prefer lugged frames to welded frames, I similarly prefer lugged forks to unicrown forks. But objectively speaking, a unicrown fork looks fine on a welded frame - like on the D2R Boogie above.
Unicrown fork on a welded DBC Swift, also looks appropriate. The frame joints and the unicrown fork match, and all are filed equally smoothly.
Unicrown fork on an ANT mixte. Now, if I were getting an ANT, I would opt for his segmented fork or his dual-plate crown fork - just because I prefer those styles and they are kind of his specialties. But I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with ANT using unicrown forks on TIG-welded bikes - again, the overall design is harmonious.
The only time a unicrown fork actually bothers me, is when it is attached to a lugged frame - which is done quite frequently nowadays. Azor/Workcycles puts unicrown forks on their lugged frames, as do Batavus, Velorbis (balloon tire models only) and Abici (above), just to name a few. The reason is most likely a cost-cutting measure, undertaken perhaps with the hope that most customers simply won't notice. And it bothers me, not because I think that unicrown forks in themselves are "bad," but because I feel that a traditional lugged bicycle - especially when the manufacturer takes pride in describing it as such - calls for a traditional lugged fork. When the frame is lugged but the fork is not, the overall look of the bike comes across as disjointed to me; it doesn't "flow." It's only my opinion, but I think it's a fairly simple and logical notion as far as design goes.