We’ll the finishing for this bike has been along time coming, between moving houses, buying houses, setting up the workshop and then finally doing the finishing bits of stainless welding and bar/stem building treatments… the winter months have ripped on by.
The paint job is a 3 tone: Blood red/ burgundy lugs/ cream headtube, I masked for the lugs, gold leafed it and did the gold pinstripe work – the shots don’t do justice to show up the lug colour so you’ll just have to wait till it goes into the studio for the good shots, or come on a ride to check it.
There are more shots of Deflux 1 here if you haven’t seen them already: Flickr


There are a few people I need to thank for help with sorting some of the parts – Mike Zombie sorted me out the Kashimax Five Gold NJS saddle and the Miche seat post (felt bad powdercoating a blue anno one!), Chris for the Stainless bits, and Deano at wideopen got me sorted with the steel Soma Drops and steel atomlab risers which I feverishly butchered into bar stem combos (risers not shown but colour matched to frame).

Simon

Ivan is out of the country and I have the keys to the SR site for the week!

I have been accused of being alittle leisurely at bringing the content from crimeschurch so I’m going to post up for a solid week to make up for lost time – I’ll fire up the harddrive and show some framebuilding progress shots, some random chch happenings and a stash of old gems that for no real reason never got posted…. this could be interesting!

Simon

A long time ago – like over a decade they built a massive Hilton in Rarotonga and the developer ran out of money and now there is an almost finished resort village with 2 swimming pools just sitting there abandoned.

Kia orana!!!

Coming to the end of the week and the end of the posts of Raro shots. Jeff is coming by later today with some shots we took on his camera of riding inside an abandoned Hilton resort complex -  crazy place, I’ll post them a bit later. I’m off to snowy Austria for a week tomorrow so won’t be taking my bike or having much time to update. I’m going via Tokyo and I’m stopping over for a night and getting to hook up with some friends. I’m going to visit Yohei at WBASE too and say hi and pilfer his stocks a little. We are working on a Spring line release website facelift for the week after next. I fly back in on Sunday 15th for Red Bull Tires of Fire – the longest skid contest. I got a full road closure on Beaumont St- so come down! Ken White will be there defending his title the day before him and Pepe fly out to Japan.

Simba! The circle of liiiife!

Justin attacks on the only slight decline on the island!

MASH / Sag Backpack also doubles nicely for snorkelling gear.

Frank and Ivy’s wedding was right on the coast, a special evening!

The ladies.

Justin and Kirstin rollin’ with the top down, closer to God apparently

I sent Mike Martin from MASH some shots from the trip and he did a cool post on the blog: http://www.mashsf.com/blog.php

The whole reason we were in Raro was for Frank and Ivy’s wedding – which was amazing! I’ll post some shots on that geat day tomorrow.

I scootered Justin the 16km to the place I was staying so we could ride my bike back to the central spot so we could all depart on rides together.

Mike Lawrence was out tanning those guns and chasing the fish.

The fish seemed to take Jeff’s ink as either a possible threat or a potential friend because they were taking a special interest in his tats.

The good ‘ole Commonwealth Colonials did a thorough job in Raro, the Missionaries were clearly busy after Captain Cook landed- there is a church about every 300m. They also have these graves with apex stone slab covers like little death houses. And there is a tendency to have them in front yards which I thought was quite weird.

We did a full lap of the country, it’s 32km! We stopped to jump off blackrock and have a swim. It wasn’t all riding bikes. We also formed  a scooter gang. We all got our Rarotongan motorcycle licenses and went on some adventuring pack rides and snorkelling trips.

We are all in the process of getting back to NZ, I just got back to the office. Apologies for the lack of posts – internet in Raro is not a very developed technology, just like their roads (I mean ‘road’)! I’ll post a stack of shots asap This shot of Jeff sums it up nicely:

yo! I’m back home! I wanted to post this up straight away. For those of you who like to roll on dubs, we have a ledge riding BMX jam happening this Sunday.