it's been quiet, I know

I hope you all are having a good festive season.

I have looked in on my bike just once over the holidays, just to check all is well.
And, it was. The good fairies hadn't been in to do the fiddly things I've been putting off or to deliver all the shiny new bits I'd like to have fitted, to improve the way the bike looks. But again, neither had the roof of my lock-up fallen in so, on the whole, things are good.

Although I've had a bit of time I just haven't been able to get anything done. The weather (it's been snowing for days now) and the fact there's been other things to spend on, have slightly hampered what I've been able to do.

I need to buy extended cables before I can do any more to the handlebars. I'm almost daily changing my mind about how I'll set up my bars. One day I think I'll just go with the 10" drag bars. Then the next I find myself thinking about apes.
I've even contemplated just re-fitting the stock bars and waiting 'till I can get the front end completely built, then swapping over the whole thing. That way I wouldn't have to buy a brake line to fit the single disc then replace it when I fit the twin disc wheel.

No matter what I end up with though, I can't really proceed until I have spent some money. I need to go out and buy the cables and other bits and pieces like billet grips.
Until I get the next lot of parts I need, I will just have to be patient and content myself with making plans and changing plans.

By the time I get started again who knows what direction the "train" will be going in.
So, in a few days time when the new year is upon us, I'll start once again to work on getting my bike to where I want it to be!

setback

Well, that's another idea sunk into the depths of good intentions.

I had been e-mailing back and forth to Simon at Ironside Choppers about unchromed bars and finally got the answer that I didn't want. The unchromed ones have been discontinued. Despite the disappointment, the service I got from him was great. Definitely folk I would recommend for their helpfulness, even though I can't vouch for their craftsmanship.

There's not much point buying the chromed ones as I already have a pair, even though the ones they would have supplied are a good bit cheaper. I doubt if the two inches shorter I had planned to get them would have made that much difference in look. It was primarily the colour I wanted changed.

Maybe now I should look at getting a set of bars made up. Then they would be truly custom made!

the devil and idle hands (or minds)

It's been a while (a whole week) since I did any work on my bike.
That's as much to do with the rainy weather as anything else. When it's over-cast the light goes early here in Scotland and so, some days at the weekends, I can only effectively utilise a couple of hours. And, as usual, it always seems to be rainier at weekends!

My wheel arrived and it's a good 'un! So that will now sit in the garage until I can afford to get the front end built around it. With Christmas coming up on us like a freight train, I'm not able to go out and purchase the things I need to even get on with re-wiring the bars, never mind swapping the forks.
Which has caused me to have my next crisis!

I've been putting the bars on to the yokes, just to give me some idea of how they'd look and that's got me thinking. That's always a dangerous thing, especially when it comes to customising my bike.
As I'm hoping to buy black, upside-down, Cerianni forks, matched to black billet callipers, I finally decided that the bars would look much better in black. So one evening in an idle moment, I googled and came across a site which sells the same bars as I've already got. The only difference being, they also do them in raw steel. The web-page had a pic of a bike with them fitted. They looked just right until I realised that the ones on the bike were 8 inch risers and not the 10 inch that I bought.
So, now I've e-mailed to get a price and am seriously considering buying them. I can then decide on the height I prefer and if it turns out that I keep the lower ones I'll put the chrome ones on e-bay and powder coat the raw steel ones.

Just as well I hadn't started to rewire the bars, as I would probably have regretted fitting them and only wanted to do the swap anyway!

Why is nothing straightforward?