July 2010 Archives

The pinnacle of summer to me is a long ride in the sun, followed by Chinese take-out. Back in G-ville, my take-out spot was China Express. When they closed after I left town, I felt guilty…like they closed because I didn’t go there 2-5 times a week. Here in Seattle, I go to Little Shanghai on Capitol Hill. Usually not too busy, they cook it fresh to order. Since it’s on the roof lot of QFC, it’s not so sketch that I feel anxious leaving my Sycip just outside the door.

Ride another 8 blocks home, eat, and then pass out on the floor. Call me simple, but that’s what I love about summer.

Spotted in downtown MPLS. We’ll see more Dahons and Neon in Vegas this September during the Mobile Social Interbike Remix.

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Besides the bike culture and new Novaras at Carnivelo, they do fun stuff like this slow bike race. The rules: slow as you can ride, feet on pedals, no track standing.

The Start

Halfway

Finish

Many of us into the bike view it as a way of life, even a religion, and a new book takes that further into the discussion of a philosophy. Robert Jolly tipped me to a Psychology Today article about Cycling - Philosophy for Everyone: A Philosophical Tour de Force that asks if Lance Armstrong is a success based on Philosopher Thomas Morris theories, which he calls the 3-D Approach to Life:

1. Discover your positive talents.
2. Develop the most meaningful and beneficial of those talents.
3. Deploy your talents into the world for the good of others and yourself.

It’s interesting take, another angle on Lance, and worthy of discussion on your next bike ride. My guess is the bike is already part of your philosphy. Hopefully you can also find success and do good with it.

Visited REI HQ yesterday for Carnivelo, a celebration of bike culture and a preview of Novara’s 2011 line. Highlights include:

Single Speed

Mixed feelings on the combination of colors with a minimalist single speed, but still a nice bike and Novara’s take is to do a single speed without a flat bar or ridiculously uncomfortable drop. It has bottle cage bosses too.

Steel

With the exception of their folding bike, the urban line is all steel like this one. That’s a good industry trend to forego crap aluminum for steel.

Prototype

Seeing this, I said, “don’t tease, build this please.”

We’ll have more details as this line gets finalized. REI is also returning to Interbike with us this year, as a sponsor of the Mobile Social Interbike Remix.

More Carnivelo photos on Flickr.

Where to begin? … chained to a plastic newspaper bin, mini velo, bag over giant saddle, oversized produce rack. Wonder who rides this and what they do cause that bike is so funky, it’s cool.

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Before frame builders could weld or glue aluminum, they bolted it together.

You could build a retro frame like this today, copper plate it and call it Steampunk for the Tweed crowd. Your local shop would groan though, like they do when various old French bikes show up for repairs.

Spotted at Elliott Bay Bicycles, downtown Seattle.

Wow look at the polished CNS delight and probably worth as much or more than the bike it’s attached to.

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A full triangle indicates high and an empty one indicates low. We had to pedal hard, but 5 speeds were just enough to get us up the steepest Seattle hills and that’s how this bike is built. It’s got just enough of what you need for a commuter with little maintenance.

Drum brakes, internal Sturmey Archer hub, chain guard, fenders and you could retire with this bike or hand it down to the next generation. All you’ll need to replace is the chain and tires.

The comfortable steel frame and big tires rolled over the roughest road and we had fun riding it. If this bike shipped with a playlist it’d shuffle between Los Amigos Invisibles, Morphine, and Big Pun. A strong backbeat, thick bass, meaninful lyrics, and purpose. Don’t get this bike if you’re in a hurry. Just enjoy the ride and know it’ll get you where you’re going.

The Torker Graduate is available from youir local bike ship and MRSP is $499.00. We suggest you add lights and mud flaps. Maybe next year they’ll udpate it with colors that range beyond “battleship.”

Note: Torker is a Bike Hugger advertiser.

Spotted in Downtown Seattle, near Pikes Place Market. They later passed us riding back to West Seattle.

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After much consideration, marketing departments at bike companies decided the consumer trajectory was first being awesome like this

then upgrading to cool with disposable income

and alternatively hip options for the urban areas.

Hat tip to @CtrlFollow for the awesome photo, Mark V posted about Popular Mechanics man earlier this year, and the hip photo is from the photographer Robert K. Hower in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection.

RABRAI is a bike tour/party we need to do someday with ten thousand other cyclists. The route is mostly flat, hot, and 442 miles with lots of beer.

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Feeling unfit? A package of carbs will get you in shape — goes well with Michelob Ultra.

What do you do if you’re a bike cop and want to pop into a local restaurant to have dinner? Why lock you bike up like a perp.

Book em Dano.

Ignite Bikes is part of the Mobile Social Interbike Remix. The fun will happen at the Urban Legend Lounge on September 23rd, 2010 during Interbike. After Ignite Bikes and the Fashion Show, we’ll ride a roundtrip on the Vegas Strip.

Ignite Bikes

You’ve got 5 minutes and only 20 slides that rotate every 15 seconds, to talk about bikes—what would you say? Around the world, geeks have been putting together Ignites and we’re bringing the format to Interbike with us.

Submit your talk now. We want to hear about some crazy idea you have for a new product, how you’d change the world, or how you already did.

Me talking about Bike Culture at an Ignite last year.

For your commute, charity ride, group ride or whatever, a reminder like this one will keep you on track.

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In 2008 when Lance Armstrong announced his return to professional cycling he made it quite clear that he was intending to use his media presence to help promote his “Global Cancer Initiative.” (Source: SportsIllustrated.com) SI’s Austin Murphy wrote “Earlier that morning, at the CGI’s “Plenary Session,” Armstrong had been introduced by former president Bill Clinton, who lauded him for the Livestrong Global Cancer Initiative that is being rolled out in lockstep with his return to racing.”

Has Lance’s performance in the pro peleton in 2009 and 2010 helped or hurt his campaign, and by extension cancer survivors?

I’m not trying to be facetious here—while I’ve known several people with cancer it hasn’t touched me as directly as many who are part of the Livestrong campaign. When Lance was on his Tour de France winning streak I talked with and read the stories of many cyclists who were inspired by Lance’s domination of professional cycling after winning his battle against cancer. I’ve personally donated a large amount of money to the campaign to support people participating in his (and other) events.

So do things change now that Lance’s last tour didn’t manage to get him on the podium and saw him falling meters short of having the power to win a stage on this year’s tour?

Our Bro Shawn from @sxsw impressed us with his skills and fashion choices earlier this year, including the stylish wool hat. He’s riding a Raleigh Rush Hour, a fav bike of ours.

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That scene is way bigger than we expected. Noteworthy that like cats and dogs, roadies and mountain bikers warmed up together before their respective races.

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Photos from Wheeled Migration’s Wanderlust Bicycle Tour. They rode from Chico to the California Worldfest in Grass Valley July 12-15.

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A Dutch Bike is parked in front of the Thai place in Downtown Kirkland this weekend. Late afternoon sun on the lake and temps in the 70s was perfect for an easy roll down to dinner and some outdoor dinning.

I noticed this little tableau the other day during the Tour and for my money it is by far the best thing I’ve ever seen.

Sometimes better not to ask.

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iBike has come out with a new use for the iPhone platform and seem to have build a decent looking solution to combine Byron’s 2 loves: Bikes and Apple hardware. The specs are on the page, but I want to see it in action before I weigh in. The steerer tube mount is a little iffy for me, but it might be a new standard.

We’ll try to get our hands on one and see what’s up. At $849 it better be pretty dang awesome.

Perfect photo for a Friday, going into a Summer weekend. Spotted this family on Alki with their custom choppers. Not shown in the photo is the sidecar. See it in this video.

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In todays’ sprinters stage at the Tour, Mark Renshaw was removed from the race after headbutting Julian Dean. That lit up Twitter like the fight earlier in the race and Lance’s pedal-clipping, tire-rolling crash. We’ve been discussing it most of the day on Twitter and Facebook. I asked Local Pro and sprinter Russell Stevenson to explain what’s going on.

“First off, all these guys are Pro’s. The are the best sprinters in the world in their best form. These guys race against one another every week so it’s not a secret who’s who and what tendencies each rider has. Mark Renshaw is not a sketchy sprinter. Today he did some pretty blatant hacking. From what I saw, Dean came up along side of Renshaw very clean. Renshaw sensed the block and decided to take a head to the guy. That’s a mistake on Renshaw’s part. 1. ) you can do that, it’s in the rule book. 2.) They were on the front line at the Tour where everyone can see. Bad call on Renshaw’s part. 3) The officials are hyper aware of sketchy riding and he defiantly was. ”

“I disagree that he should be booted. That’s a little harsh. Penalized yes, or a heavy fine. Booted from the Tour should be left to those who dope. What Renshaw did is very much a part of the game of sprinting. It was over the line for sure, but not as bad as I have seen in past Tours or on the track. If he had done that 4 or 5 wheels back no one would have seen it or cared. The bottom line is this: No one crashed and Cav was gone regardless. I would be pissed if I were Tyler Farrar, for sure. It can also be attriubted to that fact that Julian and Tyler were beat. Renshaw has done that exact lead out 100 times without incident. Punish him but don’t DQ him.”

I think there’s a long history here and expect that a Lou Pinella-style explosion came at the officials from the Team managers when they saw it happen. Earlier in the year, Cavs was relegated at the Tour de Suisse and the riders protested him the next day. There is a code amongst this guys yes and today we saw that get broken.

I’ve raced a handful of times with Tyler, when he was coming up, and he’s a straight up dude. You can see in this video how shaken he is.

Late today Mark Renshaw released a statement regarding the incident

“I’m extremely disappointed and also surprised at this decision. I never imagined I would be removed from any race especially the Tour de France. I pride myself on being a very fair, safe and a straight up sprinter and never in my career have I received a fine or even a warning.”

“Julian came hard in on my position with his elbows. I needed to use my head to retain balance or there would have been a crash. If had used my elbows when Julian brought his elbow on top of mine we would also have crashed. The object was to hold my line and stay upright.

“I hadn’t started the sprint yet. We were still at 375m to go. After that Cavendish had to start his sprint early and I was also ready to finish off the sprint as I still had a lot left in my legs. It would have been good to try to take some more points. I only saw open space on my left. I had no idea Tyler Farrar was there. By no means would I ever put any of my fellow riders in danger.”

I’m not sure that Renshaw saw the video — you can dispute what happened and everyone is, but that was not a steadying-head move, that was a repeated butting. Richter, another local pro, summed it up on Twitter

Headbutts are 1.) not legal…unless not seen. 2.) to be used only on someone who is capable of firing one back at you. 3)supposed to be subtle.

That one does not meet Richter’s criteria or mine. Renshaw should’ve been removed from the Tour. More likely what caused the ejection was this move, when Tyler has to put his hand on Renshaw’s back to stop him from “putting him in the barriers.”

You can see it at 5:47 in this video.

We’ve been squinting at the TV, trying to read the messages Chalkbot writes on the roads of Le Tour. Here’s a photo from Flickr that shows it well, including the bot itself.

Photo: Livestrong Army

With every pedal stroke cancer loses

Follow Chalkbot on Twitter and the spots it stops at on Gowalla. Communications Arts profiles the creatives behind the project in their Interactive Annual.

Using Robots for Good

For more background on cancer-fighting robots and using robots for good, see these posts:

• Near Future Writer — Chalkbot Versus GraffitiWriter
• Big Shiny Thing: Chalkbot Vs StreetWriter. A Nike Fail?

They discuss a controvery last year between IAA’s Streetwriter and Chalkbot (apparently since resolved) and corporations like Nike appropriating street art projects for its brand.

Spotted on a shirt over the weekend.

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This is Mara Abbott the very first American woman to win the Gira Donne (which is the Giro for female cyclists). The very…first. This is an amazing bit of cycling history because not only did she win a race that I am barely in shape to watch but she beat the second place finisher by more than two minutes.

Abbott is riding for Peanut Butter and Company’s Team Twenty12 An astounding ride for an American, and fortunately the world’s cycling press will cover this amazing, historical moment. It will be great to see the press highlight her ride especially in light of the current poor-showing from US men in the Tour de France. In fact since it’s a rest day I bet we’ll hear all about Abbott and her amazing Giro-clinching ride yesterday.

Breaking News! Alberto Contador played soccer on his day off!!!!!! Holy shit!

Our type of advocacy is to ride bikes and blog about it. The blogs and websites that advocate are good at it and we mostly leave that topic to them. I waiver back and forth between covering bike advocacy more and then settle back on our social rides. I think we can do our best work at creative events where we ride bikes with other geeks. Riding the Strip in Vegas during Interbike is a good example. We also work hard at being another voice in the cycling media, an alternative to the papers and news. While we maybe missing the specific bike advocate editorial, it does drive much of what we do.

I’ve seen the recent anti-bike news, laws, and response from our community. This letter to the editor got my attention.

The following is an open letter to Mike Nozzolio and Gary Finch: The morning of Saturday, July 3, I had the displeasure of driving to Auburn on Route 34 amid a convoy of bicycles stretching for miles. Needing to buy gas, I had planned to stop at the Pit Stop Sunoco station on South Street. My right side turning signal was on in advance, and just as I started to turn the wheel, one of these suicidal, imbecilic bicyclists at full speed, passed me on the right, narrowly missing the front of my truck and passed in front of another vehicle waiting to enter the road.

If I had turned faster as I would have had the other vehicle not been there, that bicyclist would undoubtedly have died against the side of my truck.

I am still angry and upset that I was very nearly forced to participate in the senseless and unnecessary death of another person.

My advice and plea to you two representatives is to sponsor legislation to ban all bicycle races from all public highways.

Other than riding to the right, these bicycles racers do not obey traffic laws.

They will not slow down, stop or yield. When their events are held on county roads, they effectively convert the road to one lane for motor vehicles.

These bicyclists should be required to use a private race track.

Otherwise it is only a matter of time until one of them is killed and an innocent motorist is guilt ridden for life.

I think my reaction is based on the weekly deaths I see in my news feed. Not a week goes by without a car/bike accident and deaths. As offensive as Lee Gamlen’s opinion is, that’s what people think, they get that mad, and I’m wondering if the advocacy community is doing it wrong.

Maybe it’s a blip, but the car/bike hate seems on the rise. I’m no scholar, but wonder if there’s a correlation between the popularity of cycling and the backlash. I do know whenever Lance is on TV, I get yelled at more and it seems like more this year. Earlier this year, he said

To me this is all about a relationship. It’s bikes and cars. Both will be here forever. Awareness needs to exist as well as mutual respect.

There is a lack of respect and I think it’s tribal. People are sitting in their cars and we come whizzing by with bright plumage. We’re scofflaws, doing whatever we want on the bike, blowing signs, in between cars. For them, what’s to like about us? For us, their cars can kill us.

This post is based on dialogue I’ve been having with my colleagues on rides. I wanted to get your opinion about it, maybe we’ll reach some conclusion.

From turn 1 at Redmond Derby Days. We didn’t see it at the time, but a reader noticed how the corner marshall was framed. Sometimes the iPhone takes remarkable shots.

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Photos: from Getty Images via www.daylife.com

While the racers are burying themselves out on the roads of France, their crews are working hard too. Andy from Hed Cycling checked in this morning with a quick report:

This is a very time intensive venture. Much more than I thought. Lots of driving involved - yesterday from Paris to Belgium to get some stuff for the team, and then back down here almost to the Alps. About 1100 KM. Two days ago we finally saw our first racing, at the finish line in Reims. We got there 2 hours before the earliest scheduled finish (the big Tour bible that teams have lists three finish times per day, for regular, slow, and slower ride speed). The closest place we could see from was at 325 to go. We stood for two hours on a protective fence that went around a tree and waited for the finish… And saw the entire publicity caravan. Longest parade I have ever seen. Eventually the race came by, I got some perfect photos of other people getting ready to take photos, and we saw the Columbia train come by with Cav in 3rd wheel. As you know, he got swarmed, but the past two days have had better results for HTC Columbia.
We were invited to eat dinner with the team staff and mechanics last night. About 9:00 the riders came down, and there were several toasts to Renshaw, Cav, et al. SUPER NEAT! The lads were asking the mechanics what cogs they were going to get today for the mountaintop finish. They’ll be on mostly 25s, Cav gets a 27.

Oh look, someone I’ve never heard of is in second place in the GC in the Tour. Better head over to the very expensive Versus iPhone app to find out more about him.

Of all the repainted bike lane signs we see, this one is the cutest. More in this pool.

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Photo: Martin Gisborne, shot with an iPhone

As it was told to me:

“the interesting thing about that puncture… the screw was 50% longer than what you see… instead of just pulling out, I knew I still had 7 miles to get home… so I unscrewed the screw from the tyre… kept the hole itself small… put a new tube in and safely rode home.”

No amount of puncture resistance is going to stop a screw like that.

From the Oakland riots last night by Thomas Hawk.

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Massive

From henry in a’dam, spotted in Amsterdam, on a Workcycle.

Beautiful

From brooklynbybike, spotted in SoHo, on a Linus.

More from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Mad Fiber has been making waves in the wheel market of late. They showed up a the Amgen Tour of California to show off their new offering and a buzz has been following them ever since. I got a chance to spend the better part of an hour with Ric Hjertberg (the technologist) and Russ Riggins (the business guy) talking about what they have cooking in the vacated bakery space in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

At the center of this new product is a new approach. Traditionally, wheels have experienced a slow evolution as companies have targeted parts of the wheel to replace with better/faster/lighter materials. From Wood, to Steel, to Aluminum, to Carbon (and many others tucked in there), wheels have made incremental improvements as updates were made to the spoke, the rim, or the hub. Ric’s idea was that this piecemeal view is flawed. Instead he approached the wheel as an engineer and came up with: “What are loads and properties we are trying to solve for.” He and his team looked at the physics involved from point of view of an scientist and not a cyclist and arrived at the Mad Fiber wheel (the lead engineer is an aerospace guy - not a cycling guy). It’s not a carbon rim with carbon spokes and a carbon hub (which is already out there). Instead it’s a bonded, unified object that supports the tire, and from there distributes the load not just through traditional spokes, but across the wheel edge and the entire “system”. Of course they were constrained by some regulations specified by the UCI (e.g. 1cm spoke width max). What resulted was a complete wheel that is stronger than any other on the market against a static load, while weighing in at a hair over 1000g.

We’ve enjoyed the times we’ve ridden in London, hanging out with the LFGS crew. While there, we just found a pub to drink, eat, and play darts with AM — even saw a dude get a dart in the butt (it lodged in his chamois and he couldn’t shake it out), which was totally awesome.

Anyway, today, T Magazine reports on London’s Bike Cafes

Photo: Risa Sano

Despite the occasional suit-wearing office worker who wanders in for lunch, Look Mum No Hands functions as a kind of cyclists’ salon. Serious riders bring in expensive racing bikes for repairs; bike messengers sit in the attached courtyard fueling up with quinoa salads; and curious commuters lock up their bikes out front and come in to use the free Wi-Fi or study one of the giant cycling maps.

Certainly not a new idea, but servicing a growing demographic and a great location for Bike Snob to steal away and write another book. In our travels, we’ve visited One on One, Juan Pelota, and more. We’re back in London this Fall and we’ll check these new cafes.

What’s your local bike cafe or haunt?

As our readers know, we’ve got a wheel fetish and Ric Hjertberg in a lab coat with a set of prototypes gets our interest.

Full report is coming — Andrew got an hour with their team and returned in full-on engineering geek mode.

They’re from Madfiber, Ric’s latest company. Bike Intelligencer profiled them last month.

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In a preternatural bit of kismet today I stopped en-route to my kitchen for breakfast to see if any packages had come.

What I found makes me wonder if the folks at Clif are capable of not only satisfying hunger but predicting it as well. In a nice brown box was this Garmin musette bag, filled to the brim with Clif bars in all of my favorite flavors!

A note inside the package pointed out that the riders on the tour have to eat about 7000 calories a day just to break even (showing how fit they are. Based on my Polar OwnCal numbers, six hours of race-speed cycling would require at least twice that for my physiology). And the Garmin-Transitions riders (those who are left, in any case) fuel up with yummy snacks from Clif.

In any case, thanks to Clif for sating my hunger without making me go to the bike store.

Cavs is a topic at le Tour today because of his failure to sprint. Wrapped up in the commentary is his personality: the ego, the antics, and some sketch riding.

What we saw happen today is his train get disrupted and the Boy Racer had nowhere to go but backwards. It was a classic counter move by another team and us old guys are cheering Ale-Jet. Dude is wining sprints in the Tour at 37.

I’ve written about Cavs before, disgusted by the PR machine spinning his behavior into something that it isn’t. He’s a sprinter and that’s what they do. Sprinters in the Tour are like Elk in rut, spraying their musk, knocking horns around, out for one thing, and at any stage they can get smacked down by another sprinter.

How Cavendish will handle the other teams ganging up on him will tell us if he’s matured from a Boy Racer to a Man. You can read more about Cavs in his book available from Amazon.com.

A recent AP article reported that tech firms are working on “creating applications that do everything from making a smartphone screen transparent to transforming speech into text.” They doing this to prevent people from injuring themselves and others while looking at their phones:

A personal friend almost walked right into a manhole while looking at her phone,” he said. “Another friend was actually run over by a bike messenger. She wasn’t paying attention, walked into the street and the bike messenger walloped her.

Sidenote that Apple’s iPhone 4 seems to have solved this problem with proximity detectors that put calls on hold, mute, or hang up when the phone touches your face.

Anyone working on bike-related apps for this? Voice-activated GPS? Do you wear a bluetooth while riding? One of our bros rides with a Jitterbug, with the big buttons so he can use it easily on the bike.

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On days when I’m not in the mood to listen to Robbie Ventura jinx riders (to Tyler Farrar: “Well it can’t get any worse.”) I’ve got Europsort on in the background streaming on one monitor while I’m crafting prose on the other. I’m digging listening to the Irish(?) commentator getting pissed off at the Brit’s questions, but what I’m really liking is their commercials.

Here’s Contador trying to look manly in a stunning white tuxedo while pimping shoes. It’s the sort of classic image that’s not found in ads here, sadly.

The tread was fine, it was the sidewall that cracked — all brittle and crispy. The tire was a Schwinn Puff High Pressure Road Racer on a Varsity with lots of French parts. While we may celebrate Urban cycling and the amount of bikes like this on the roads, guys in the shop are not thrilled to work on 40-year old tires and irreplaceable parts.

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Following the “carnage” of the last two Tour stages, I asked on Twitter

Wondering what other sport puts their athletes at such risk without innovating safety equipment for them? Shoulder pads, rib protection?

Our followers were wondering the same thing:

• @rosspdx — there’s plenty of body protection innovation coming out of the downhill mtb companies.

• @SDVeloSocial — safety equipment exists, downhill Mtb uses it, if the roadies want to wear the restrictive extra weight it’s there.

• @Chrismurphy101 — Is there any rule against wearing such protection?

• @bonggg_com — i just thought about that. some sort of protection for collarbone breaks is warranted

• @bpotstra Rugby? Skeleton/Luge? I dunno… I still can’t believe it wasn’t until 2003 when helmets were mandatory in road cycling!

• @svdodge Rugby. In any case, your point is very valid. TdF organizers have apparently thought

After two deaths in the past decade, the UCI finally forced helmets and only previously required them on the flat stages. Races would toss them off before the climbs.

The point of my tweet and question is with the sport maturing into good TV and attracting big money, there is tremendous risk and loss for a rider to crash out in a grand Tour. Losing Shleck cost Specialized what in lost marketing dollars? I’m sure more than we’d think. As a bike racer myself, you never want to see racers crash. All that’s between them and the road is lycra, a helmet, gloves, and shoes.

Photo: Leon van Bon

Couldn’t a Formula 1 type R&D effort take existing body armour from mountain biking and modify it for the road? Helmets used to weigh twice as much and not long ago look like you had a ice chest on your head. I don’t think the UCI or race promoters want anyone to crash, but sending Pros onto roads where crashes are expected seems irresponsible at best; especially when you consider what’s a stake.

NASCAR has made considering improvements to safety. Also see the work on Airbags for Alpinestars.

As we wrote earlier, we’re not covering the Tour as much this year — we are discussing it on Twitter with related links and on Facebook.

Photo uploaded by Leon van Bon | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

I’m getting a tad bit worried about Phil Liggett. In the last four days of Tour coverage I’ve heard him make more mistakes than in the last four years. I think that perhaps the riders aren’t the only ones affected by the Tour’s heavy-hitting stages. Anyone else noticing this?

In Belgium he’s mentioned that the riders were in France. He’s calling people by the wrong names. The capper was listening him (at the finish after the cobbles) saying (this is a paraphrase) ‘Contador is pulling Wiggins, which isn’t good for his teammate Alberto.’

Phil is unquestionably my favorite thing about professional cycling, so I’m hoping it’s just been a long season for him.

This Saturday, 8 p.m. Saturday, at Gallery 1412 there’s a special concert for a Haulin Colin bike trailer built for John Teske’s double bass. John is on a mission with the bike and his music:

Teske hopes the spread of a bike-only transit ethic will help spur improvements in the biking infrastructure in Seattle. He cites Copenhagen, Denmark, where bike paths are clearly separated from motor and pedestrian traffic, as inspiring in this regard. He fondly recalls a woman he met there who was moving from one apartment to another entirely by bike. Everything but her bed, he marvels.

The trailer project is also on kickstarter and funded. We haven’t met John, but did meet Brad Hawkins who is a Seattle author and often rides around with a cello.

For more of Haulin Colin’s work, see the Madison Market bicycle-powered float he made and read more about John in a Seattle Times article.

Wheeled Victory, or The Cyborg of Interstellar Justice, is a bike sculpture made by Luke A Idziak.

Avenge the Universe with a Fixie!

and a cargo bike inside …

Hat tip Boing Boing.

Frank Steele wrapped up yesterday’s chaotic stage well on the TDF Blog and it was a worst-case scenario: wet, narrow, slippery roads with oil from a crashed motorcycle.

Behind, the descent of the Col de Stockeu looked like the train station scene of “Gone with the Wind,” with riders all over the roadside. Some reporters estimated 70-80 riders went down, and there were reports of soigneurs climbing out of cars to help their riders, then falling down themselves. Some riders (and Eddy Merckx) have suggested there must have been some sort of oil on the road (leading to my favorite tweet of the day), because the road seemed so much more treacherous than when it’s been raced in LBL in the past.

AP Photo via Daylife.

I’ve crashed with a whole peloton before and it is surreal. Our Tuesday Worlds is ran on a car race course with a drag strip. They use detergent to soften the dragster tires for grip at 200 MPH and over the years, a layer of polished rubber has been laid down. Add water to that polished surface and it turns into a well-lubricated skating rink.

My injuries weren’t that bad and I didn’t have to get up and ride a stage on the cobbles the next day, but I’ll never forget how that crash happened in slow motion. Racers fell in front and around me, until I went down myself with a thud. As I tweeted earlier when the crashing started, “never want to see racers go down, they’re not surrounded by sheet metal, like in car racing.”

They’re hurting out there today and also worried. Regarding CVV, who seems to crash out of a Grand tour every season, I’ve broken ribs too and that really hurts.

The BVSA Rocket Bike will appear at TechnCRAFT later this week. The NY Times article didn’t say if it was inspired by Evel Knievel, but considering a jump was attempted, we think so.

Photo: Laird Rickard.

We covered the Rocket Bike a couple years ago, in a post about Cyclecide It’s built by Jason Broemmel, who also built the Golden Gate Bridge bike.

Dude shows up today with an Oil Derrick and Orca on his jersey. Bests our jerseys for the day, I was wearing a Bike Hugger one. It was from an old MS 150 in SoCal where Orcas swim around oil wells.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Checked in with Andy from Hed Wheels — he’s in Belgium with Team HTC - Columbia and building up spare wheels in anticipation of the cobbles on Tuesday. He wrote:

I am in the upstairs appartment at service course. As a native Iowan, I am rather stunned at how much Belgium reminds me of my home state. I kid you not… The view out the front window is of a cornfield directly across the street. Yesterday we got in a short ride - I am borrowing Pinotti’s road bike from last season. Fastest and lightest bike I have ever been on - an I don’t even have aero wheels, just plain Ardennes. We rode out and within 5 minutes were on a country road, only about 1 1/2 bike lanes wide. Potato field on one side and corn on the other. I was following the ‘72 olympic tandem gold medalist (in the scratch race I think) - a Polish guy named Andje. The road was already small , and then he turned off onto a gravel path about 2 feet wide, and we cut over to to the canal for a flat and windy hour. Got back just in time to see the sprint for Stage 1. Service course is a racing nerd’s nirvana.

Lined up

I’ve ridden one of Columbia’s ProTour bike and it was right at 14 pounds. If Andy has time, he’ll check in with us again. He’s expecting a busy day tomorrow.

Whiteboard

While Andy’s at the Tour, we’ve got a new set of Stinger 4s he sent us on test; raced them yesterday, after Mark V glued ‘em up.

Hey we love you readers and want to bring you our flava of Tour coverage this year, but last year it overran the site too much and we’re working on writing projects into the Fall. So expect less Tour this year, but Cap’n the Pug is still interested. She can’t read so doesn’t know about Floyd, the Federal investigation, and Jim Ochowicz telling the NY Times

“But I have no clue what went on. I wasn’t a part of it.”

We’ll have the Tour on daily in the background with tweets, links, and video in our Community.

I also added select Tour products from Amazon.com into our affiliate store, like this Tour-themed accordion music.

I’ve been trying to bring myself to write a post about the upcoming glory and spectacle of the Tour de France, but so far I’ve got bubkis. Nothing. Zero. Why? Well because this year I just don’t give a shit.

It all started last year when Versus went back to saying the name Lance every third word. It’s not that I don’t like Lance, I thought he was dandy back when it was his Tour de france and it wasn’t a big comeback story. Actually maybe that’s part of the problem. It’s not really a comeback story in the sense that a comeback story usually has the returning champion return to glory. Each stage of last year’s Tour Phil and Paul would comment about how it looked like Lance was just about to strike. Only he never did.

Then it was doping. And more doping. And so much more doping that now even bicycles are doing it. Floyd pulled a Greg and now we’re waiting to see if the FBI arrests everyone ever involved in US Cycling for fraud. Ugh.

Then Bicycling magazine came yesterday with a photo of Lance and Alberto on the cover. And a photo of Lance on page 3. And page 5. And in some ads between pages. And in the Tour highlight coverage. And in the bound-in booklet for the Nissan. And in the classified. And in the product reviews. I’m surprised he wasn’t listed on the masthead.

Hey, how about a photo of Alberto in there somewhere guys? You know Alberto, the guy who won the tour recently? The guy who will probably win it again? Should win it again?

I’m so media weary already that I can’t stand to watch the Tour this year. Really, I can’t stand the thought of the Versus intros and outros doing profiles on Radio Shack. I can’t stand the thought of every climb being compared to the one with The Look. I can’t stand the thought of seeing a ton of Radio Shack and Nissan ads.

Really it’s not about Lance for me. It’s about battle fatigue. My sport has been besieged by more marketing campaigns than I can stand. More doping than I can stomach and more potential for the possibility of future cataclysmic fallout from alleged doping I care to think about it.

Besides hypnotizing motorists at stop lights, trackstanding indicates a level of skill both on the track and on cities streets. Mark V can trackstand any bike at any time — seen him do it with a folder and cargo. He does it while eating a burrito during his lunchbeaks at the shop, to keep his skills sharp.

On occasion I ride fixed and have been doing so more while recovering from busted-up ribs. On the fixie, I focus on my legs, cadence, and control because I can’t do much yet with my body above the hips. Yesterday Mark V rode up on me on Alaskan Way and, of course, trackstanded at the next light. Being a competitive person, I attempted to match his skills with mixed results. Later on Twitter, I tweeted

Mark V said a Track Stand does not involve forward motion? What? What is that called then when you don’t clip out and move a little bit?

@JohnFriedrich replied

I guess on average it involves no forward motion, but a trackstand is a nice example of dynamic stability. Meaning moving.

If we had a band, we’d make a record, and use this photo for the cover.

The tracks would include music remixed from 1976, the year Cray-1 was developed, Apple was formed, the Ramones release their first album, and Patty Hearst was sentenced to jail.

That’s Shorty and Friend near Lake Dreamland, Jefferson County, KY, by the photographer Robert K. Hower in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection. Seen in the Plonsky group on Facebook.

Pacific Northwest race promoter “Wick” is sick and we don’t mean that in the cool, hip hop, dope way, but mounting hospital bills, devasting sickness way. He’s in hospital now and the community is rallying around him, raising money.

Race the White River Revival @ Greenwater to donate

Wick has been an area race promoter for 20 years. He is the host of the famous “Wednesday Night World Championships” and has served as an integral part of our racing community. Currently our friend is in the ICU unit where he is battling a monumental infection that could keep him there for some time.
Registration is now open on bikereg and details here

Updated to remove the link to Caring Bridge.