Rach and I had a great Christmas at home, we even managed to cook an entire Christmas Lunch without a shortcoming; pretty good for beginners.

You can guess what Rach got, perched under (well, next to) the tree when she arrived in the kitchen for breakfast. So after lunch, fueled on our turkey breast roll, I attached a cold bottle of Champagne to the pannier rack of the Super Style and we headed off around the lakes. The rain held off 'til we got home.

We had a great day and hopefully you all had the same. All the best for the remainder of the festive season.

Long ago you may remember JP and I heading off on a couple of cold and wet jaunts around Canberra on what we called soft-roading expeditions. On these rides JP rode a very special bike, one that I'm willing to bet neither you or I have ever seen in the flesh; and other than his example, are likely ever to.  Even Google provides virtually nothing. The bike is a Ritchey Mount Cross.

Legend has it that Tom Ritchey only ever planned to make 50, that it was designed for the legendary Thomas Frischknecht to compete in the CX worlds (he didn't like drop bars, and he won) and that it is the first 29er EVER!

Either way, it was too small for JP and now it's mine - Merry Christmas to me.

I picked it up yesterday in all its handmade Tom Ritchey fillet brazed goodness, with most of the parts that it originally came from the USA shod with. I spent most of today (when I wasn't at the doctors, but that's a different story) rebuilding it. The drivetrain has come from another bike I bought specifically to canibalise, the idea being that I will run another White Industries eccentric hub to rid the bike of the ghey chain tensioner.

Yes, those wheels do have tie-dye coloured titanium spokes and 26 inch rims. They will soon be in many pieces and the hubs laced to Open Pros.

Much excitement was had today as I revisited the art of tuning v-brakes (something I lost in 1999) and I found nail polish in exactly the same colour as the original midnight blue metallic paint scheme!! Oh, and of course I was also excited to find that in its current guise it weighs in at 8kg.

It feels like quite an honour to have a bike handbuilt by one of the creators of MTB in my house, I can just imagine it back in 1999 cooling on the rack in his workshop............

Of course I couldn't neglect to mention the other new addition. Practically painful to look at less than a few days ago; $25,  some elbow grease, a few swapped parts and the Folder is ready to roll. Even smaller wheels than the Cyclops make her even better for indoor shenanigans - must clean up those skid marks before Rach gets home.......

EDIT: 23 Dec 2010

Well she had her maiden voyage today. I'm quite bewildered to say the least.

If you know me well enough you know that I think CX bikes are a complete waste of time for anything other than well groomed dirt roads, well groomed CX race tracks and people who occasionally jump a gutter or take a shortcut on their commute to work. I've built many of them just to ensure I wasn't wrong, and they all sucked - Kona Cindercone 26er with 700c wheels, Ventana 29er with skinnies, Karate Monkey with Rohloff and skinnies and finally the SlingShot with skinnies and drop bars. The last straw was the Slingshot and I believe I've got the ideal long distance trail basher in it with full sized 29er tyres - not skinnies (which makes it a drop-bar 29er, not a CX bike). The issue I had over and over again was the fact that just a couple of corrugations, golf ball sized rocks, loose ascents or long technical descents can really ruin your day, and other than fenced national parks such as Mulligans Flat, where are you going to get perfectly groomed roads? I saw a couple of riders well and truly hating life at the highland fling and that sealed the deal. I now stand corrected, there is one bike that can do it.

I haven't studied the geometry or frame material for an explanation and I haven't had a drink in hours but the Mount Cross just works. I took it out for a short burn through Mulligans Flat, planning on returning home after that, an hour tops. Three hours later I returned. I could not stop riding. So here she is in her natural habitat.

The weather has settled a little, enough to get back out on the bikes and make the most of the late setting of the sun.

I caught up with the guys at Mal's for the weekly ride, which hasn't occurred for a while. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I turned up with a carton, then bear arrived, with another. Nevertheless, we fitted said cartons in pack and pannier and headed out around the lake for some music and Christmas lights at Ben's uncle's.

Friday was a beautiful day so I finished work early to make the most of it. Caught up with Ben and then Eddy; and Rach caught us at The Phoenix for a bit. A bit hazy with the details......but what I do remember is that unfortunately the Yacht Club is full of cashed-up-bogans, University House is the best kept secret in Canberra, the Dumpling House at ANU is second to none and ........ as I said, the rest is a bit hazy.

Other random stuff also happened during the week. Mostly involving commuting (a miniature horse? WTF) drift wood from the floods, mutant carrots, mail from America and Elroy.

Rach and I headed to the gorge for a look around. Lots of amber coloured water flowing from the resent floods in and around Queanbeyan. So Rach decided to carry the D90, which has been collecting dust since slow photography has taken over my life.

I think she was stalking me too.

So here's my vintage version of events.

Hmmm, I think I might have some competition, but she cheated, obviously. Then we headed into the galleries to look at other people's photography; firstly Martin Schoeller - lots of photos of celebrity's faces up far too close for comfort, then Anton Bruehl - who proved to Rach and I that PhotoShop and digital cameras were not needed by artists such as Anton, wow. On the way home we stopped by Mt Stromlo to look at the remains of many a big telescope.

I was lucky enough to meet Bob a few months back. I think it was through my posting of images from the Yashi TLR. He offered to lend me an original 'olde time' instruction book, which came in mighty handy as it wasn't the factory edition and had some great hints and tips on photography in general. He's moving up north so the other day gave me a few books and guides as he minimised his collection, then his chemicals, as generally you can't pack toxic type stuff. Then today he gave me a call and offered up his stash of film. Of varying vintage; some expired, some not; frozen in the depths of his freezer from way back, hundreds of rolls of 135 and 120. Can't wait to start testing this stuff out!

On impulse I recently purchased a Holga. I was planning on doing this for some time; however, was not planning on buying a pinhole version. Put simply, a pinhole camera is the original camera obscura or 'dark chamber', which is nothing more than a small hole which lets light into a box in such a way that it projects an image onto a roll of film. No lenses or settings what so ever, the shutter is controled solely by your hand, not even a timer. A typical image in bright daylight exposes for around 7-9 seconds and requires an external shutter release in order to keep the camera still. In fact, this camera is nothing more than a plastic box and I even held it together with electrical tape to ensure no light leaks would occur.

The Holga takes both 6x12 and 6x9 images (that's measured in cm with the 6x12 taking an image roughly 120 degrees wide) with absolutely no distortion and no need to focus as the aperture is f/133! In order to calculate timings so far I have been using the very brief guidance on the back of the camera (Sunny 7-9 sec, overcast 10-12 sec, morning or dusk 13 sec and upward). Soon I'll actually get organised and calculate them more accurately including reciprocity failure, but I just had fun testing the thing this weekend.

So here's the result, without a view finder it's a bit difficult to compose, so I really need to get closer to some things. Live and learn.

Yes, I may have double exposed one of those images. Nice of you to notice.

Edit: It's been a week since I posted, since then I've experimented with some 35mm film in the pinhole. It took some modifications on the inside, and some non-practical loading and unloading techiniques (not possible in the wild) but the results are really great. Enjoy.

Rach has been cramping my style lately, with three weekends off in a row I haven't had much time in the man-cave to potter and play with bikes. So this weekend, off to work she went and I spent my time well.

Stano and Eddy have both donated bikes to me lately, resting assured that I of all people will cherish their poorly velocopedes, transforming them back to their former glory. So that's what I did over the weekend. No new paint, no blemishes removed, just a complete dismantle, polish, broken part replacement (I knew those four quilled stems of different diametres would come in handy one day), grease/oil change and reassembly; ready for full sized humans to once again grace their saddles without fear of their lives.

Of course the Cyclops is a beautiful beast (and the only bike I own that I can comfortably ride around inside the house), but the SuperStyle is a REAL Amsterdam bike, complete with shop stickers from the beautiful city. The stories that bike could tell!!

I'm having a bit of a revolution. 'Mini' because it's quite small and no one else really cares, but also because the rangefinders are 'mini'. But don't let their size fool you, they are both solid chunks of metal in the hand and performance wise they fight well outside their class.

So here's some images from the test rolls. Nothing special, just enough to make sure both cameras work, after all they are both substantially older than I.

I took this little baby for a romp around the city and surrounds on Friday, the usual street stuff and some of the wreckage from the recent rains. Honestly, I didn't want to load the next roll into the Voigtlander, I just wanted to keep shooting with this. It may never leave my side, it's small enough that it may never need to.

I was a bit unsure about this one. Noticeably smaller than the Oly but with some quirks. After sourcing a workaround for the unobtainium battery and repair of some light seals it still had an awkward winder and average rangefinder. Nevertheless, it works like a little champion. Wont be my go-to for a small camera but will remain a spare if need be.

A long time back I found this. It's a half frame camera, meaning it takes two frames in the same space as a normal camera or 72 frames in the space of a normal 36 frame roll of film.

The ironic thing is that I've not been able to enjoy it because I haven't been able to finish the film, so on the way home from work today I took some more photos and then wasted the rest around the house. Single frame pics are pretty average, especially using a noisy 400 ASA film, so it was panoramic mode that I enjoyed the most.

Something different, definitely one of the most stylish looking of my cameras. I can see it could be good for something, maybe. We'll see..........