Had the day off today so I decided to try and flatten my Nimbus Gel. My wife gave me the biggest pot that we had (a wok) and I proceeded to disassemble the seat. I boiled it in the wok for 8 minutes with the steel stiffener attached but no seat post. Then I removed it from the water and installed the seat post and clamped it flat to my bench. Two hours later I removed the clamp and it was fairly flat. Yeah!
I bought a $20 pneumatic stapler at Harbor Freight for getting the cover on. I tested it on a different piece of plastic and found the penetration to be very satisfactory, but while covering the real thing I encountered many jams. Not sure what I was doing wrong or if it is just a junky tool. The staple lock/slide would open unexpectedly and cause double feeds and failures. After I inspected the slide after every shoot to ensure that it was fully closed it worked a little better. Anyway I got it all together and it turned out really nice.
My wife (still learning) found it to be much more comfortable. She did a half hour practice yesterday and got three revolutions in several times:). After the practice she complained of some discomfort in her pubic bone area. She tried on the new seat and was excited about her next session. Awesome.
Later I went out in the driveway to work on learning to idle my Nimbus 26 Muni. I was not making much progress so I thought I would work on my hops. I would ride a few revolutions and attempt to stop with my chocolate foot forward and start Hopping and then repeat. One time when I was stopping I didn’t really come to a complete stop when I hopped and probably traveled a good foot when I came off of the ground. Mind blown! So I tried to reproduce the rolling hop and was able to do it every time. Getting up my curb is probably just a couple of sessions away. So Stoked.
Mark.