The Fremont Solstice Parade has come and gone, and the lobster bike has been returned to its lair. What comes next, is up to you.

Would you like to pilot the lobster in a parade? Does your art group have visions for a fully chrome lobster retrofit with mirror ball and disco dancers? Maybe you want to wear your best underwater creature outfit and accompany the lobster along the parade route? Maybe you are inspired to create a new art bike for the next parade? All these lovely ambitions begin with reaching out to the Fremont Arts Council as a volunteer and letting them know your ideas.

Some future improvements that might be considered for the lobster trike:

As you may have seen on the news, etc., the parade went swimmingly! The volunteers did an incredible job getting us started on time, and the crowd did an incredible job showing their love and energy for the community. We had a blast, and we hope you did too! The lobster trike performed admirably, and we were asked to park in the Art Cars lot for the day, where we got a lot of attention and Q&A from the very supportive crowd of attendees. Lots of kids getting to pull the cables and sit in the seat making smiles all around.

The lobster trike is ready to go! Piece by piece, and hour by hour, we've got the lobster ready for its debut at the Solstice Parade! We're feeling pretty confident in the lobster's ability to make a strong first showing at the Solstice Parade. The lobster is ready to go, and we can't wait to put it into action!

On Monday evening, Mark went back and finished the last putty fills, last coats of paint, and managed to get the last swimmeret attached and secured! We've added one final element to the walking legs. Using bicycle inner tubes, we span across the old pontoon booms, providing an elastic surface on which to the arms can bounce. We hope they give some good walking motion when we ride.

Sunday was our last full day to get work done on the lobster and the timeline is feeling pretty good. We had a lot of work to do, but we were able to get a lot of it done, and we're feeling pretty good about the progress we've made. Here's what we got completed:

Mark made it down to the parade lot tonight and did some priming work on the lobster. He used a matte yellow spray paint as a base layer over the putty filled areas. Before heading out, he gave the two enormous chains a good cleaning and a bit of lubrication.

With the weather good and the mechanicals mostly squared away, Mark went out to start the patching work on the carapace.

There are a couple of types of injury to the outer shell. The shell is a tape/fabric/paper laminate layer over a chicken wire support, and there are several places where all material down to the chicken wire has been lost.

Once again, the lobster crawls the Earth! That's right, a day of maintenance work on the trike has ended with a solid shakedown ride.

We have accumulated all the mechanical replacement parts for the project. Here's a short list of the planned replacements:

• New tires and heavy-duty tubes for all three wheels
• New brake and shifter cables and housing
• New 1/8th inch insulated cable rope and install kit for the controls
• Soaps and solvents and degreaser for cleaning the chains and sprockets
• Shop towels and scrub brushes.

Inspecting the Beast​

Today was assessment day. Mark and I took some time in the staging lot to get the tarps off and give this contraption a good look. Maque was able to get us some sawhorses to we could get it lifted to check out the drive train and the brakes.