Winter is coming to a close and for many that means time to pull the bikes back out and start commuting again but for many commuting is a year long commitment because that IS their primary form of transportation. The City of Boulder is going to launch a new campaign called Driven to Drive less in which this campaign challenges Boulder residents to dump their car and go carless. Sounds difficult and scary right? Wrong. Recently I purchased a book titled How to Live Well Without Owning a Car. In the book they talk about the destructive auto culture and true costs/savings of going car-less. The book covers all alternative modes of transportation but does dedicate an entire chapter to cycling. If you liked (or was moved by) the movie Food Inc then you should check that book out! Anyone can write about going car-less, so this series of stories will tell the stories of REAL Colorado citizens who have made the switch.
Story 1, comes from Diana and Nick, they have even gone carless to bike races!
Yup! I have been doing all my work commuting and grocery shopping with the Xtracycle for a couple years now… It has huge compartments on the sides that are super easy to load, and I can definitely do a full week’s shopping with it, fitting about three big grocery bags on each side. The bike parking is good at most grocery stores in Boulder, so post-shop I just wheel the shopping cart out to my bike and load it up, kickstand side first. My favorite part is definitely riding home with my baguette, flowers, and veggies peeping out the sides. The center of gravity is nice and low on the Xtracycle so the handling is great! It holds so much stuff that I can commute with a change of clothes and yoga mat for some evening downward dogs, then hit the grocery store on the way home. Having a cargo bike has definitely allowed me to run around town doing errands just like with a car, only the parking is easier and it is often much faster.
If you have a car-less story you’d like to share please let us know And for those who have already contacted us with your story THANKS, we will get you story out in this month long series!
With regard to the second story, upon hearing it I immediately tested out the bicycle direction-giving thingy by plugging in an oft-traveled route of mine, and I was presented by three meh-inspiring options, one of which seemed to include my mounting an inconsiderate and possibly illegal assault on the pedestrian paths in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. As far as the first news story goes, actor Cory Haim was of course the star of the 1998 film “Licence to Drive,” along with a young Heather Graham, who spent the bulk of the film passed out in the trunk of a Cadillac. In fact, the name of Graham’s character in the movie was “Mercedes Lane,” and it just so happens that streetwear enthusiast and fixed-gear freestyle impresario Prolly recently alerted me to a Mercedes advertisement starring a local bike messenger by the name of Austin Horse. The plot is the tried-and-true “bike races car in an urban environment” storyline, and here is Part I:
Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Mercedes automobiles, for the entirely subjective reason that I find them “douchey.” Even so, I enjoyed the video since it seemed not to take itself too seriously and was also corny in a sort of endearing way. More importantly, even though it was an advertisement for an expensive luxury car, it was at least straightforward about being an advertisement for an expensive luxury car (this is what used to be called a “commercial” back in Corey Haim’s heyday) and wasn’t some kind of creepy “viral” ad designed to fool you like that one with the guy who gets the glasses tattooed on his face.
Really, the only problem I had with the advertisement was the Mercedes driver’s route choice. Basically, they’re racing from Harlem to Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn. Naturally, the messenger drops straight down through the middle of Manhattan, but the driver for some reason decides to take the Brooklyn Queens Expressway:
This seemed like a very bad idea to me. Not only is he traveling out of the way, but he’s also bound to get caught up in the eternal congestion at the Kosciuszko Bridge. Then, once he gets through that, he’ll soon find himself at a standstill again, since he probably plans to exit the BQE at Cadman Plaza and on a weekday the traffic backs up all the way to Wythe Avenue. Instead, he could simply take the FDR:
Even though traffic is generally sluggish around the RFK Bridge (formerly the Triboro), he’d probably be fine as long as he gets on below where the “Black Cherokee” mounts his installations:
Or, traffic lights notwithstanding, he could spare himself the crosstown trip altogether and take the Henry Hudson Parkway to the West Side Highway and then straight through the Battery Tunnel:
Anyway, it’s precisely the sort of logistics driving in New York City requires that often makes the bicycle a much better option, and it should come as no surprise that the driver loses to the messenger. (An outcome that would no doubt have been the same regardless of the driver’s route choice.) Here’s Part II, in which the driver gratuitously uses the vehicle’s creature comforts while driving from Manhattan to Brooklyn via a circuitous route to the accompaniment of a languid saxophone leitmotif:
In the end, the advertisement makes its point effectively: If you’re in a big hurry, ride a bike; If you’re very wealthy, slightly “douchey,” and you value comfort and ass warmth over efficiency, drive a Mercedes. It’s basically “The Tortoise and the Hare,” but with the twist that the tortoise actually loses yet is totally fine with it, and it’s an outcome with which neither cyclists or Mercedes-coveting douche-aspirants are likely to have much of a problem. In its own way, the advertisement is actually pretty honest.
Specialized is similarly honest in this video, in which they present their Stumpjumper 29er to the Dutch, though unlike Mercedes I’m not sure the point they actually make is the one they intended to make:
In the video, we hear from designer Robert Egger:
Who has this to say:
“It’s very important to have a bicycle that looks very sexy, it’s very important to have a bicycle that looks very fast. So, our job as designers is to make bikes that look fantastic and make bikes look like people want to jump on and ride them.”
Is it really that important for a bicycle to look sexy and fast? Anyway, why does this even take work? “Sexy” is certainly relative, but pretty much any race bicycle is going to look fast, since the properties inherent in a race bike are the ones that imply speed (aggressive position, lightweight components, and so forth) and if you’re one of those people who thinks speed is “sexy” then the “design” aspect is basically going to take care of itself. Anyway, here’s the sexy, fast-looking 29er:
Did it work? Well, it’s hard to say. According to the video this 29er mountain bike with a multi-geared drivetrain and suspension fork weighs about 20lbs, and pretty sure such a bicycle would be a lot of fun to ride. However, this bike also costs over $6,000:
As a cyclist interested in performance bicycles, I don’t doubt the bike performs, but this price becomes very difficult to accept when a designer from the company has just explained to me how much time and effort (and presumably money, since I doubt he works for free) they put into making sure the bicycle “looks very sexy” and “looks very fast.” Really, it just makes me want to say to Specialized, “How much am I paying for the ’sexy and fast’ look? $1,000? $5,000? What if I don’t want to pay for design? How much will you knock off the price tag if I decline the ’sexy and fast-looking’ option and just take the performance?” I mean, you wouldn’t pay $2,500 for a Langster with a $2,000 headset top cap–you’d say “Give me the bike for $500 and keep the top cap.” So why shouldn’t you do that with the design?
Basically, you have an option of a cheaper bike with “lesser” equipment but all the design, when you should really have the option of a cheaper bike with the same equipment and lesser design.
I guess what this whole “sexy” thing comes down to is that some companies believe that, in order to make us want to ride bikes, they first need to trick us into wanting to hump them. Essentially, it’s a big bait-and-switch operation. First, we see this “sexy” thing we want to hump, so we leap on it. Once we’re on it, though, we realize it’s only a bicycle, and by then it’s too late so we figure we might as well ride it. (Plus, most bike shops have a strict “You hump it, you own it” policy.) Then, as so often happens with things we want to hump at first sight, the lust gradually cools, and by next year they’ve released an all-new model with a bunch of sexy lumps in all the right places, and the cycle continues. In this sense, the definition of “design” is that it’s the art of making people want to hump things that aren’t actually fuckable, thereby fooling us into purchasing things we don’t really need.
I could not disagree more strongly with this article. The truth is we used to take our coffee seriously; now we’re starting to “bullshitify” it like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. Consider this:
Some of the obsessiveness may get a bit off-putting. Want an espresso to go at Ninth Street Espresso? Forget it. The baristas there believe it should be drunk immediately from a warm ceramic cup. Want a cappuccino made from single-origin beans at Kaffe 1668? Sorry, you’ll be told, but milk would overpower the subtle flavors of the coffee. Wonder why the barista pulled and tossed out two shots of espresso before she served you yours? She was making sure it was perfect, the coffee evenly tamped, the water temperature ideal for the particular beans, the timing just right. (The best baristas will “dial in” throughout the day, tasting the espresso and adjusting the grind and dose.)
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with fancy coffee (just like there’s nothing wrong with fancy cars or fancy 29ers) but if we really took our coffee seriously in New York we’d still be purchasing it for pocket change and drinking it from paper cups on the way to work. Turning the drinking of a beverage that wakes you up in the morning into a lifestyle is the complete opposite of being “serious.” It seems to me that if you want to sit around all day doing nothing except obsessing over the plant you’re consuming then marijuana would be a more appropriate choice. Coffee is for working; “Wednesday Weed” is for not working. In that respect we should be copying Amsterdam and not Portland.
Nevertheless, I suppose coffee is no different than bicycles in that people need to make it “sexy” in order to sell it. Consider the description of Blue Bottle Coffee in Williamsburg:
I have no idea what “five Japanese slow-drippers” means, or why you need them to make coffee. If anything, that sounds like something you’d need to make a bukkake film. Then again, I have never experienced the pleasure of driving a Mercedes GLK while leather seats warm my ass, single-origin Japanese slow-dripped espresso warms my cockles, and my feathery Specialized 29er hangs like so much toilet paper from the trunk rack.
I really should learn to take life more seriously.
Recently I spoke to the folks at Bcycle in Boulder but haven’t been able to craft up the full details yet so instead of waiting on me to complete the story check out the write up at Bike Denver on the Denver Bike Sharing Launch.
What details we do have…
Program should launch in late April with 500 bikes and 50 stations
by Jamie Mack
Cyclocross is not an inexpensive endeavor. And while these may not be the worst of times, for a lot of us they are not the best of times either. After our recent story about indoor cross and promoters thinking outside of the box, I started to think that racers need to apply that…
…view the full story & post your comments at our site: http://cxmagazine.com
As I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday I (or, more accurately, my Scattante) was the victim of a brazen cockpit theft. Well, I’m pleased to report that yesterday evening I performed approximately 20 minutes of cockpit reconstruction surgery on the victim,and it has now been restored to full rideability. Furthermore, thanks to my ability to operate simple tools (roughly on par with that of a capuchin monkey) as well as my substantial cache of bicycle crap, the procedure cost me nothing apart from the subway fare I incurred in transporting the victim home. (I briefly considered simply leaving the Scattante where it was, returning later, and performing the surgery in situ, but I prefer to “wrench” pantsless and didn’t want to end up in prison–or worse, on some schlocky local news blog like Gothamist.)
Once again, I will use this opportunity to reiterate that when commuting in New York City or any similarly theft-prone environment one should be reconciled to the loss of one’s bicycles or bicycle components prior to setting out in the morning. If you are, then the theft is simply an inconvenience rather than a gut-wrenching loss. In this case the incident was only marginally more irritating than incurring a flat and not having a tube or patch kit, and I only wish I had had the foresight to carry a spare cockpit with me. Actually, after seeing the following video which was forwarded to me by the filmmaker I’m now considering traveling with a spare bicycle at all times:
Notice the rider is “saving the track bike” by reserving the BMX for tricks.
Still, while I was only slightly bothered by the purloined cockpit incident that does not mean I’m not on the lookout. One reader has forwarded me the following Craigslist posting, which might offer a clue:
Bike Steerers - $1 (Greenwich Village) Date: 2010-03-08, 4:53PM EST Reply to: [deleted]
Can you help me it wont fit on my bike and I cant ride without it on there that well. Im looking for trade for a necklace with a crystal or maybe a coupon for something or if youre chill with it i have a bike seat and a copple of petals too. i also found a brake handles on it as well but they come as is because i dont think they work too well. HOT HOT HOT looking to sell real quick. A bike is the best way to go in the New York City if you know whats up. Coem to visit and you wont regret it. I have a coppel of other bikes as well because im a busness man and always looking for good deals. Call to book a reservation I can meet you or you can meet me but i really cant bring too many bikes because i can only ride with like 2 at a time. Ok the steerer is looking like the one in the photo but it says Tompson on it and the boss at the bike shop says its PLATNUM plated and the best you can get its what Lanse Armestrong uses on the Tour it feels real lite. Also I think the bars are mountain bike bars with gripts of rubber so you can ride off road if you are a mountainbiker. the second picture is of anothe r bike if you want to trade for the steerer that goes in there ill bring the price down.
Thansk for looking and happy bidding!
I’m assuming this posting is fabricated, but then again one should never overestimate the literary prowess of the typical Craigslist seller. Could the stem that “says Tompson on it and the boss at the bike shop says its PLATNUM plated and the best you can get its what Lanse Armestrong uses on the Tour it feels real lite” be mine? Could the “mountain bike bars with gripts of rubber” be mine too? Am I mistaken in thinking “grips of rubber” sounds vaguely Dylanesque, like “Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather?” Since the seller was interested in a coupon I did send a reply offering an expired voucher from Jiffy Lube good for one free car wash, but unfortunately my email bounced back to me. I guess I may never know.
Elsewhere in the Craigslist universe (but having nothing to do with my missing cockpit) was this $40 “vintage single speed,” forwarded to me by another reader:
Up for sale is a stripped Allpro 10 speed bicycle converted to a single speed. Features: Orange/Blue New Your Knicks colorway, spray painted blue wheels and seat post, JUN stem, Schwinn seat, Trek grips, cut&flipped bull horn style bars, mid-city gear setup. Bike is in working order with (1) working front brake, tires that hold air and tight components. Ready to ride and a perfect commuter for a great price. Get your ride on while the snow is gone!
ATTN: This is a cruiser style bike with 26×1 3/8 tires! Not a Road Bike or Fixed Gear! Please read description closely!
Wheels: 26in. Size: M (fits rider 5ft 6′ to 5ft 9′) Standover height: 30in. Gear: 42×15
Big pic here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/riskyrax/4412701460/
Really “feeling” the “New Your Knicks colorway” and the “epic” blue pie plate, but otherwise the post was little more than a hastily spraypainted cul-de-sac.
Since Craigslist was no help I realized I had to turn my attention to the real world, and as any good detective will tell you, anything out of the ordinary can be a potential clue. (Actually, I’ve never spoken to a detective, but it seems like something one would say.) For this reason, I paid special attention to this truck:
While a less savvy person might not think the phrase “Follow this van for the freshest fish in town” has anything to do with bicycles, I knew immediately that “fresh fish” is criminal underworld slang for “hot bike parts,” and so I gave chase. Unfortunately, only moments later, I lost the vehicle in the wilds of Grand Army Plaza (a highly dangerous place where the Audis and Subarus of Park Slope do battle with the “dollar vans” of Flatbush and the Hasidim-filled minivans of Crown Heights) and so I now have no choice but wake up early one of these mornings, don my noseplugs, and hit the fish market.
Admittedly, I was disheartened, and like so many who lose faith in the real world I turned to The Great Lobster for guidance. Visiting me in a dream, He told me that if I turned my Oracular Jake Gyllenhaal Pie Plate upon the Great Skanky and peered through it, I would find that for which I seek. So, the next morning, I did just that:
At first nothing happened, but after a few moments I became kind of queasy (like I had just eaten some tainted peanut butter) and saw this:
I’m not sure what it means, though I suspect the so-called “Nonplussed Journalist” may be trying to tell me that my cockpit was stolen by two men wearing green pants.
Once my revery subsided I grabbed hold of my newly-installed cockpit and continued to pilot my Scattante into Manhattan, where I not only looked for the Green Pants Gang but also gazed longingly at other cockpits. (I generally don’t recommend staring at other people’s cockpits, but if you absolutely must do it at least try to be discreet.) Here’s one in the classic “snake fangs” configuration:
Here’s the less common “double joystick” setup:
It seemed as though everywhere I looked there were bizarre cockpits. However, there were no men in green pants–though I did see a woman in a pink helmet riding a bicycle on the sidewalk with her dog:
As you can see, the dog is wearing a jacket. Since it was a warm day and this is right around where I saw that hawk I’m guessing the garment was intended to protect the dog from airborne attacks. Presumably it’s also lined with kevlar to prevent it from being pierced by razor-sharp talons.
Speaking of menacing creatures stalking the streets, a short while later I found myself sharing the bike lane with an inline skater:
(All You Haters Skitch Off My Backpack Straps)
At one point, the light in front of him turned red and a gaggle of people in sensible suits began to cross the street. However, instead of stopping or even slowing, the skater simply kept going and charged right through them, leaving in his wake a whitewater of nonplussed expressions. While I’ve seen innumerable cyclists do just this, pedestrians have a special look when the perpetrator is using inline skates. The reason for this, I believe, is two-fold. Firstly, unlike a cyclist, an inline skater is practically a pedestrian too apart from the fact that he’s wearing shoes with tiny wheels, and so the failure to stop amounts to a betrayal. (The skater is able to commingle with pedestrians yet at the same time move much more quickly than the traditionally-shod. In this sense, inline skates have the power amplify a pedestrian’s prickishness in the same way a microphone allows a bad singer to suck even louder.) Secondly, the fact that the skater is just so dorky makes the whole thing just that much more insulting.
Here’s another view of the menacing skater:
Notice the fleece pullover, which is to inline skaters what a leather jacket is to a Harley rider. By the way, I feel as though I should make it clear that in principle I have nothing against those who like to have wheely-feet, for I too have felt the thrill of wearing shoes that roll. Granted, it was many years ago in the relative safety of Hot Skates, but that made it no less intoxicating. Indeed, just as fast brakeless cycling is often best performed in the velodrome, perhaps Mr. Greenfleece should consider “hitting up” the roller rink. (Though hopefully he doesn’t wind up terrorizing some 10 year-old’s birthday party.)
Alas, it would seem that my stolen cockpit would not reveal itself on this particular commute, and that I had come to a dead end–much like this bike lane Guangzhou (wherever that is) which was sent to me by another reader:
Our connection to Boulder is well established. We’ve been rolling and having fun riding with children in and around Boulder each and every year since our inaugural season in 2004. We know the kids. We know the youth agency staffers (many bike nuts themselves). We love Boulder! Thus, we are inspired and excited to create TFK Boulder for them and other underserved youngsters in Boulder County.
A few years ago, we started seriously chewing on the TFK Boulder idea. “Will it fly?” We asked our Boulder friends and youth agency staffers. The PG answer, in general, was a sarcastic, “Are you kidding me? This is Boulder.” True, true, TFK Boulder seemed like a no brainer, but last year as the economy tanked, we called off the TFKB dogs. Then our motivation and belief in this new endeavor percolated again over coffee last fall on a cold, snowy morning in Boulder with a local mountain biker and homebuilder, Tom Nasky. At that meeting we decided to team up with Tom and other like-minded Boulderites to establish TFK Boulder, giving children without means, in this bicycle-crazed town, the opportunity to ride, like the rest of them.
And here we are…TFK Boulder is a go! It’s a go people! Let’s kick this thing off right in Boulder with a proper party April 10th at the Boulder Velodrome
Community Cycles is looking to hire a full-time shop manager. The ideal candidate has several years of bicycle shop, mechanical, retail, managerial and nonprofit experience. Experience working with youth a plus and a familiarity with older bicycles and parts is required. General responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Run and oversee our community bike shop and its programs
Manage volunteers
Inventory and ordering
Oversee sales and their promotion, including daily/petty cash management
Checking in repairs/estimates
Quality Control
Bilingual Spanish/English a plus
Basic computer skills a must, Proficiency with Google Docs preferred
$24,000 annual salary
Resumes will ONLY be accepted at resume@communitycycles.org. Please copy the contents of your resume into the body of the email and attach your resume document. DO NOT phone us about this position.
In a crime that may or may not be retaliation for last week’s “ANTgate” affair, the stem, handlebars, brake levers, and grips (or, in bike review parlance, the “cockpit”) of my beloved mehloved Scattante Empire State Courier were stolen at precisely lunchtime-ish on 6th Avenue in the Greenwich Village neighborhoodway of Manhattan. Here is the grisly scene to which I emerged:
(All You Haters Decapitate My Scattante)
As you can see, the brake cables were snipped and the so-called “cockpit” was simply unbolted and removed. Naturally, I was shocked when first viewing the crime scene, though my concern subsided when I noticed that the thief had left the bottle-opening capabilities of the bike intact:
(The thieving teetotaller totally left the best part.)
While I certainly would have preferred a bicycle ride to a subway ride home on this pleasant day, I’m only minimally bothered by this brazen heist. Indeed, my only regret is having equipped the bicycle with a fancy stem, which is undoubtedly what inspired the theft in the first place. However, as the stem fit the bicycle perfectly and was lying fallow I figured it made more sense to use it than to purchase another, cheaper stem and keep this one secreted in my underwear drawer. (I keep all my “bulletproof” components in my underwear drawer, which is why I often find Chris King headsets in my underpants at urinals.) In fact, I thought to myself this very morning, “It would not surprise me in the least if some brigand decided to ‘house’ my stem today,” and so it did not surprise me when a scant few hours later that very thing came to pass.
In any case, the first rule of New York City bicycle commuting is to always use a bicycle you will not be upset to lose, and having followed that rule I actually feel as though I’ve come out ahead since the foolish thief neglected to steal the rest of the bike. That said, if someone tries to sell you a 120mm silver Thomson stem in the 25.4 clampway, perhaps bundled with a Ritchey flat mountain bike bar, a pair of black Oury grips, and maybe even a couple of Tektro brake levers with a few inches of brake cable housing dangling from them, feel free to use the fact that they are stolen to negotiate a very low price–and then keep them with my compliments. (I’d offer to reimburse you in exchange for the components but I hate the idea of paying for things twice.)
In the meantime, you will be pleased, indifferent, or nonplussed to know that plans for the Scattante’s rehabilitation are already underway, and I expect it should be rideable by this evening at little or no cost to me. Most importantly, now that the weather’s improved and the streets are flush with bicycles they are flush with thieves as well, so be careful with your bike.
And remember–yoinking your own cockpit may be fun, but if you’re going to yoink someone else’s you should at least ask them first.
by Josh Liberles
After what Zdeněk Štybar describes as a “dream season,” he finally had the chance to head back to the Czech Republic to revel in his accomplishments on Thursday. “I wanted to celebrate with my fans after the (World Championship) race in Tabor, but I had to fly to…
…view the full story & post your comments at our site: http://cxmagazine.com
This past weekend, the weather in New York City turned suddenly from craptacular to spring-tastic, and while there’s ample time for throwable forms of precipitation such as snow to fall one can be forgiven for feeling as though the worst may be behind us. Still, winter weather is liable to pounce again at any moment, and while some look unto the groundhog for confirmation of spring, I prefer to seek surer signs. In New York City, these seasonal indicators include the annual running of the bike salmon:
Calls of “On your right!” emanating from pacelines in the park (I was already on the right side of the road when the calls began):
And of course the First Pallid Calfs of Spring:
But while the seasons are cyclical, other things are eternal, and among these immutable constants are concept bikes. As I’ve mentioned before, aspiring designers are compelled by the bicycle as crappy musicians are lured by the guitar, and their swoopy, useless design concepts hover perpetually and intangibly in the future like some swoopy, misshapen carrot dangling from the end of a stick, or like a Tour de France victory for Cadel Evans. Furthermore, if you look at pretty much any designer concept bike you’ll notice they all have two things in common: Firstly, they’re idiotic; and secondly, they never have hubs.
This is indeed a brilliant concept, since the designer has eliminated not only the hubs, but also any place to install pegs and thus like 75% of the BMX trick repertoire:
Sure, you could always just do a grind on your chainring instead, but this bike doesn’t have one of those either. BMX riders are like strippers in that both love grinding on poles, so removing all the metal parts from a BMX bike is like replacing the pole in a strip club with a gigantic Hacky Sack. Also, while the designer has succeeded in eliminating pesky hubs from BMX bikes in his mind, he has no idea how to actually do it in real life, and so his equally brilliant peers are asking for help:
So why is the hub the one thing all futuristic bicycle designers want to eliminate? Well, on one level, I suspect that this is because the traditional bicycle wheel is probably the most functionally elegant part of the functional and elegant machine known as the traditional bicycle. Naturally, then, if you’re bent on destroying the functional elegance of that machine simply for cheap thrills you should hone in on its best part, in the same way the true subway pervert knows to go right for the crotch. On another level though, it may be that these designers have an irrational fear of the hub-and-spoke design, fueled at least in part by horrific images such as this:
Instead, they dream of happy animals safely jumping through their futuristic wheelsets. Here’s a dog:
And here’s a hairless sea dog:
I too hate to see cute furry creatures meeting their demise at the hands (or, more accurately, wheels) of the “Fred.” However, I also think it is unwise to tamper with nature. Really, animals only jump through hoops because we train them to do it, and it is probably only the aberrant squirrels that try it when they see a bicycle rolling down a country road. If these creatures are not killed in the process and instead live to reproduce, it will not be long before the planet is overrun by squirrels who are driven to leap through any round thing they see. Futuristic bike wheels; manholes; hula hoops; bagels; nothing will be safe from their bizarre compulsion. Soon flying squirrels will be bringing down passengers jets. Forget saving the track bike; we need a campaign to save the bicycle hub!
Speaking of squirrels and saving the track bike, this past weekend saw the running of the 11th annual “Monster Track” in New York City. If you’re unfamiliar with Monster Track, it’s not only the most monstrous of tracks, but it’s also “the biggest, badest, most controversial alley-cat around:”
I was actually surprised to learn that people still participate in “alleycats,” since the whole “Save The Track Bike!” campaign had led me to believe the alleycat was extinct and had been replaced by the fixed-gear freestyle “sesh”–which itself only exists in order to provide raw footage for the proliferation of awkward stunting videos known as “edits.” However, not only is the alleycat seemingly alive and well, but you can also see from this video that the “Monster Track” was quite well attended by slow-moving Nü-Freds on their brakeless bicycles:
Here’s a rider on a (presumably) geared bike filming the other riders, and when you consider that he himself is being filmed this very well could be the most well-documented “Monster Track” in the history of monstrous tracks:
But it wasn’t all videography–there was still photography as well. However, pausing even momentarily to take a picture meant you might sacrifice your position. See how this rider uses a moment of inattention to launch a devastating attack up the left side of the “Nü-Fredoton:”
His hands are almost off the bar tops, so you know he means business.
While watching this video, I contemplated the “alleycat” phenomenon. Ostensibly, alleycats are designed to replicate the daily working conditions of a messenger. However, now all sorts of people participate in alleycats–many of whom have never delivered a package on a bicycle in their lives–and so they’re now basically big fixed-gear scavenger hunts. In a sense, messengers have a lot in common with lumberjacks, since in both cases their livelihoods have become the basis for competitions, and one might go so far as to say that the alleycat is the “lumberjack competition” of the cycling world. Some messengers still resent the influx of so-called “fakengers” into their scene, and I wonder if timber workers in the Pacific Northwest sit around in bars complaining about “fakerjacks.”
Furthermore, I wonder if there’s a “fakerjack” equivalent of the now-ubiquitous u-lock holster:
I’m sure somewhere there’s somebody walking around Portland wearing a bespoke hatchet holder.
Speaking of u-lock holsters, a reader recently forwarded me a picture of something called a “FeltBelt,” which can be used in this capacity:
For a second upon viewing the flesh-colored FeltBelt I thought that the rider had somehow placed the lock through her skin. Perhaps one day, when the bicycle hub has been successfully eliminated, u-lock muffin top piercings will become knuckle tattoos 2.0.
Many thanks to CSU Cycling President Caley Fretz for reporting on this seasons first weekend below!
Photo Credit Caley Fretz
The first races of the season are always a crapshoot. Nobody knows what kind of form their legs hold, who else is going to be on or off their game, or even who’s going to show up. So when a team’s first few races go as well as it did for the CSU Rams Cycling team this past weekend, it’s particularly encouraging.
Races opened up on Saturday at the Denver University City Park Crit, a triangular loop complete with three roundabouts and a nasty little chicane. Not an ideal course for brand new racers, as much of the Men’s C and Women’s B fields were. But the Rams were ready- this wasn’t their first rodeo after all. Thanks to some pre-season team practice crits, the new Ram racers weren’t quite as new as everyone else, and it showed. In the first four laps, a field of 60 in the C’s was whittled down to 30, and all but one CSU rider (who got caught up in a nasty crash) made the selection. A few laps later another selection was made, this time in the form of a breakaway of 8 heading off the front. Four of the eight were CSU.
by Jamie Mack
As most of us enter the off-season, there is a very important segment of our community that doesn’t get much time for the well-deserved rest. While most of us are contemplating how much weight we can gain or trainer sessions we can skip, there is another group already…
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