Brian's Bike is Almost Done

Hello to whoever may be reading this! I know it's been a while since my last post here. To be honest, I have just been lazy. I've been thinking of making a post about the financial reform bill set to pass Congress soon, and also a post about the Save More Tomorrow retirement savings program based on behavioral economics. But both of those require some research on my part that I haven't done yet, so take the jump to check out my work on Brian's bike.
If you remember from my first post on this blog, I have been fixing up a bike for my roommate Brian. My progress was stalled because I didn't know how to get the gears shifting properly. So, instead of fixing the gears I convinced Brian to make his bike single speed like mine:

Who needs gears anyway? For biking around town, a single speed bike works perfectly well and is also less maintenance and weight than a geared bike. So I snipped the ends of the shifter cables, unscrewed the shifter and deraileur (however you spell that...) and converted his bike to a beastly single speed machine. Here's what it looks like now:

Had some trouble raising his seat......... I had to take the seat apart, figure out how it works, and use a screwdriver to get it on the seatpost all the way, which was interesting. I also had to cut some of the chain out so it was the right length. It took a while to get the back wheel the exact right distance back. If it's too far forward, the chain has too much slack and will fall off all the time. If it's too far back, the chain is too tight, making it harder to pedal. The brakes still need a little adjusting, but other than that it's just about done! Hope he likes it, I am looking forward to biking to bars with him.

Stick around, in the next few weeks I'm going to cover some work I've done on my bike, financial reform, the Save More Tomorrow program, and much more!  Update: I also have a story about an epic bike ride across the twin cities!