So after a week to the day of doing nothing my back is feeling better so I have decided to go to the track for a tester ride this afternoon as some friends are heading up later!
I have been trying to get rid of the orange paint on my Black Market Contraband 24″ frame for the past 2 weeks but, it is proving really tough in a lot of places even with a wire wheel on a drill! I even tried paint stripper again and bought some wire brush attachments for my Dremel multi tool but all they did was throw wire bristles in my face and didn’t really touch the left over paint! As you can see from the photos below there is a fair bit of paint left which looks really bad:
I have decided that I will give up on doing the frame myself and instead I will take it to be sand blasted and painted next week when I get paid then it should be ready at the same time as the wheels are then i can build it up all in one go 🙂 I have found that the original colour that the frame came in is gloss pms# 1675c (Pantone) which relates to RAL 2001 (Red Orange). I also like the neon green colourway too but I think that I will stick with the Orange as it is a bit more understated. This also puts the frame as a 2010 frame not that it makes much difference really!
I was going to paint it myself then take it for a refresh in the winter but I think that I have wasted almost as much as getting it sand blasted and powder coated already with the paint stripper, and sanding stuff so I may as well bite the bullet and get it done properly now while I can;t ride it as I have no wheels 🙂 That way its done properly first time so there is no need to get it re-done in the winter and I can use it as my winter bike as well 🙂
So gates went well other than I hurt my non-hurt shoulder and twisted my ankle twice 🙁 I was gating OK and I am starting to manual properly now too as well so feeling pretty good at the moment other than the stupid injuries 🙁 I found out my wheels are almost done so I decided to try paining the frame chrome and bought a can of paint from Amazon this afternoon to paint the frame with! If its bad I will put up with it now as I don’t want to spend any more money on the bike at the moment as I need to start paying off my debts ASAP so that I can not be living paycheck to paycheck any more.
We setup the gate timing system today and had a play with it which was fun although I hit the gate every time which was annoying to say the least 🙁 The gate timing system takes about 5 minutes to setup so once I have my iphone on Monday I will set it up and start using it to get better!
I plan to get up early tomorrow and go for a walk first thing to start getting my steps back under control as I have only been making 1000 steps a day for the past week due to my back being hurt 🙁 For the next couple weeks I will try and get 15000 steps in a day again to rain that back in again!
Tomorrow morning I will get up early and look for the Wick BMX track as it may well be an option to train on at lunch times as its only 15 minutes to my house so it is about the same distance as the Bath BMX track so I can pick and choose where I train if it is any good! If not I will just go to the track as normal! I would like to ride more pump tracks so that I can work on my pumping, manuals and jumping more as they all need work and pump tracks are really good for that! Also its somewhere else to ride that is not Bath BMX track!