Many of you have probably come across, or at least heard of the incident in NYC at the last critical mass where a guy was violently knocked off his bike, unprovoked, by an NYPD Officer. If you haven't seen it, here it is.
I've been rather thoroughly anti critical mass for many years now, and I believe my cohorts at the shop feel the same. But rather than go off on my own tirade, I'll let Dave Moulton do it for me, as he's far more eloquent than I can hope to be. I suggest reading the comments following his post as well, some very well stated arguments posted on there, much above the typical level of blog-post-comment incoherency that I usually see.
It just seems to me that if all these people showing up at critical mass rides actually rode their bikes everyday, then there would be no need for such a ride, because cyclist awareness and accommodation would occur naturally.
That being said, I saw a lot of people on their bikes this evening on my ride home from the shop. By a lot, I mean maybe ten, but it's a welcome change from zero.
I've also felt lately like I've been getting a little more room from drivers, and that I've been generally honked at and cut off less. Of course now that I say that, I will most certainly encounter a few a-holes on my way to work tomorrow.
Stay safe out there.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Almost a month!
Its been almost a month since I put anything up on our site. Wow, I am negligent. I should remove the post date so it's not so obvious.
My only excuse is that the shop has been busier than ever. June was by far our busiest month to date, and we nearly doubled sales in July. If we're not careful, we're going to find ourselves employers soon, and that's a whole other can of worms. It's definitely an exciting problem to have.
Just found out about a cool online shop, Velo Orange, thanks to Richaround. He was trying to help me style out my newest bike acquisition, which is his old 1984 Stumpjumper, which he got new in 1985. It was already sans-paint, so now it is in the process of getting powder coated "extreme chrome", and then it will be built up with many original parts to become my new ultimate commuter / baby towing machine. I really wouldn't consider it as a regular commuter, except my commute is under three miles long, so really any bike becomes a good candidate for a commuter.
If your building up a dedicated baby trailer towing bike, does it indicate that maybe you're approaching having too many bikes?
I've also built up a few other bikes recently, speaking of too many bikes. I finally got around to re-building up der Fusion, my obscure German freeride machine. Don't actually know too much about the bike, as my German is limited to "a pint of beer please" (learned while in Munich, essential when in a beer hall) and "where is my underwear" (learned prior to my visit to Germany from my wife, who studied German in highschool, and wanted me prepared for the trip).
I believe it is a 6.5" travel bike, and they are handmade in Germany, and they don't have any US distribution, but they do have some sponsored world cup DH racers, and they seem to be pretty sweet bikes.
I finally got motivated to reassemble der Fusion because I had decided to head up to Pajarito a couple weekends ago to ride the lifts. I had been hearing about how many fun trails had been built up there, and I decided it was irresponsible of me, as a local shop owner, not to go check it out and show my support. It was a blast, there are plenty of trails to keep you entertained, enough stuff to scare your self on (or to be scared of and not do, as was generally my case). They are very enthusiastic up there, embracing the downhill and freeride scene, and plan on building more and more trails. There was quite a few riders on Sunday, and I hear Saturday is substantially busier. Everybody was friendly, no douche bag attitudes, and everybody sat around in the parking lot after the lift stop for a beer. In general, I'm very happy I went, and now I'm all fired up to go ride some big bikes some more.
To go along with my new big bike riding enthusiasm, I've been doing a little bit of shopping, you know, for safety gear. Most recently, I got a sweet new full face from 661.
That's my "holy cow I'm totally going so fast ... ohh f@#k!" face. It's good to practice these things so you can get it right when the time comes.
I also got a new singlespeed frame, one that I can finally run discs with. I acquired an On One Scandal 26. The frame was on closeout from one of our distributors, so I snatched it up in a hurry. It's sweet, I've always been a fan of Scandium frames, and it has a nice long (24.4 in) top tube, which is a welcome chance after so many bikes that were too small for me (a bad habit that took me several bikes to break). Of course, I shouldn't be talking it up too much, as we don't have any for sale in the shop, and rumor is the US importer isn't going to be importing any more (hence the closeout pricing). So we'll just leave it at that.
The following picture accomplishes two things at once.
Here you see a very cool, small, light and bright Hope light that I know none of the specs of, but Charlie just bought it and is excited about it and it's cool so here it is anyways, sitting on top of a picture in the current issue of Decline of local fast guy Chris Boice, who is a pro on the Yeti national team and good friend of ours who likes to come into our shop, grind things for hours with the dremel (something I've found most downhillers to be fond of), let his dog puke the most rancid dog puke anybody has ever smelled all over the sales floor, and yet we still like him.
Way to go Chris, it's fun seeing people you know in magazines that you read.
Of course, no post would be complete without a plug or a link to Bikefix.net. There's some new stuff on there about nice but too short Endura shorts (we agree, and so does our new rep, so maybe they'll change in the near future) as well as a write up about Mary from Siren bikes, who recently became the first woman to race the entire length of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Race. But most importantly, he finally did a review of the Maverick Durance, which we all know is the most superior trail bike available today. Marc agrees, and fortunately is eloquent enough to put it's pure awesomeness into words without resorting to use of grammatically questionable words such as "awesomeness".
And last but not least, we had sad news today as we found out that my old Pinarello cross bike died a sad death at the hands of a stupid car with a presumably stupid person behind the wheel (in our shop, you're presumably stupid until proven un-stupid when you go about running your car into bicyclists).
Fortunately, our friend and current owner of the late Pinarello came out relatively unscathed (relative to how the bike faired). The bike is bent in more than a few directions, without much hope of being straightened. I'm particularly impressed with the stem, which is bent in a way none of have ever seen a stem bend before. I guess that's a testament to the toughness of the Salsa CroMoto quill stem. You can rest assured that thing is never going to shear on you. Farewell Pinarello, I will miss your flamboyantly Italian rainbow dotted painjob.
And that's about what I'm good for tonight. Hopefully it won't be another 28 days before I get around to putting up another post. I actually intend to start a running list, with pictures, on the site that will show all the used bikes and major components we have for sale at the moment, which will be updated on a very irregular basis.
Thanks to everybody who has been coming around. We're thrilled about the customer base we've built so far, and we've been very busy largely because of all the positive word of mouth. It's starting to look like this whole "owning a bike shop" thing might work out.
My only excuse is that the shop has been busier than ever. June was by far our busiest month to date, and we nearly doubled sales in July. If we're not careful, we're going to find ourselves employers soon, and that's a whole other can of worms. It's definitely an exciting problem to have.
Just found out about a cool online shop, Velo Orange, thanks to Richaround. He was trying to help me style out my newest bike acquisition, which is his old 1984 Stumpjumper, which he got new in 1985. It was already sans-paint, so now it is in the process of getting powder coated "extreme chrome", and then it will be built up with many original parts to become my new ultimate commuter / baby towing machine. I really wouldn't consider it as a regular commuter, except my commute is under three miles long, so really any bike becomes a good candidate for a commuter.
If your building up a dedicated baby trailer towing bike, does it indicate that maybe you're approaching having too many bikes?
I've also built up a few other bikes recently, speaking of too many bikes. I finally got around to re-building up der Fusion, my obscure German freeride machine. Don't actually know too much about the bike, as my German is limited to "a pint of beer please" (learned while in Munich, essential when in a beer hall) and "where is my underwear" (learned prior to my visit to Germany from my wife, who studied German in highschool, and wanted me prepared for the trip).
I believe it is a 6.5" travel bike, and they are handmade in Germany, and they don't have any US distribution, but they do have some sponsored world cup DH racers, and they seem to be pretty sweet bikes.
I finally got motivated to reassemble der Fusion because I had decided to head up to Pajarito a couple weekends ago to ride the lifts. I had been hearing about how many fun trails had been built up there, and I decided it was irresponsible of me, as a local shop owner, not to go check it out and show my support. It was a blast, there are plenty of trails to keep you entertained, enough stuff to scare your self on (or to be scared of and not do, as was generally my case). They are very enthusiastic up there, embracing the downhill and freeride scene, and plan on building more and more trails. There was quite a few riders on Sunday, and I hear Saturday is substantially busier. Everybody was friendly, no douche bag attitudes, and everybody sat around in the parking lot after the lift stop for a beer. In general, I'm very happy I went, and now I'm all fired up to go ride some big bikes some more.
To go along with my new big bike riding enthusiasm, I've been doing a little bit of shopping, you know, for safety gear. Most recently, I got a sweet new full face from 661.
That's my "holy cow I'm totally going so fast ... ohh f@#k!" face. It's good to practice these things so you can get it right when the time comes.
I also got a new singlespeed frame, one that I can finally run discs with. I acquired an On One Scandal 26. The frame was on closeout from one of our distributors, so I snatched it up in a hurry. It's sweet, I've always been a fan of Scandium frames, and it has a nice long (24.4 in) top tube, which is a welcome chance after so many bikes that were too small for me (a bad habit that took me several bikes to break). Of course, I shouldn't be talking it up too much, as we don't have any for sale in the shop, and rumor is the US importer isn't going to be importing any more (hence the closeout pricing). So we'll just leave it at that.
The following picture accomplishes two things at once.
Here you see a very cool, small, light and bright Hope light that I know none of the specs of, but Charlie just bought it and is excited about it and it's cool so here it is anyways, sitting on top of a picture in the current issue of Decline of local fast guy Chris Boice, who is a pro on the Yeti national team and good friend of ours who likes to come into our shop, grind things for hours with the dremel (something I've found most downhillers to be fond of), let his dog puke the most rancid dog puke anybody has ever smelled all over the sales floor, and yet we still like him.
Way to go Chris, it's fun seeing people you know in magazines that you read.
Of course, no post would be complete without a plug or a link to Bikefix.net. There's some new stuff on there about nice but too short Endura shorts (we agree, and so does our new rep, so maybe they'll change in the near future) as well as a write up about Mary from Siren bikes, who recently became the first woman to race the entire length of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Race. But most importantly, he finally did a review of the Maverick Durance, which we all know is the most superior trail bike available today. Marc agrees, and fortunately is eloquent enough to put it's pure awesomeness into words without resorting to use of grammatically questionable words such as "awesomeness".
And last but not least, we had sad news today as we found out that my old Pinarello cross bike died a sad death at the hands of a stupid car with a presumably stupid person behind the wheel (in our shop, you're presumably stupid until proven un-stupid when you go about running your car into bicyclists).
Fortunately, our friend and current owner of the late Pinarello came out relatively unscathed (relative to how the bike faired). The bike is bent in more than a few directions, without much hope of being straightened. I'm particularly impressed with the stem, which is bent in a way none of have ever seen a stem bend before. I guess that's a testament to the toughness of the Salsa CroMoto quill stem. You can rest assured that thing is never going to shear on you. Farewell Pinarello, I will miss your flamboyantly Italian rainbow dotted painjob.
And that's about what I'm good for tonight. Hopefully it won't be another 28 days before I get around to putting up another post. I actually intend to start a running list, with pictures, on the site that will show all the used bikes and major components we have for sale at the moment, which will be updated on a very irregular basis.
Thanks to everybody who has been coming around. We're thrilled about the customer base we've built so far, and we've been very busy largely because of all the positive word of mouth. It's starting to look like this whole "owning a bike shop" thing might work out.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Shop awesomeness
We did a little shopping, and ended up with a big ol' TV. Just in time for the Tour de France, hopefully I'll get the cable hooked up today or tomorrow and we'll be all set to watch some doping scandal drama, and maybe a little bike racing thrown in too.
Tony did a little shopping, and we ended up with a couple of sweet new integrated headsets from Cane Creek, with ash topcap and spacers. That headsets almost better looking than the Slowdown Brown behind it.
Speaking of beer, our friends over at Il Vicino had a little present to go with our most recent keg, in the form of a rad tap handle. We also reportedly have another 5gal Cornelius shell lined up for us that we should be acquiring in the near future, which will cut down on those sad days at the shop when we're inbetween kegs and forced to drink bottles.
Brian, a friend of ours, did a little shopping, and ended up with Danny building one of the hottest road wheelsets of his wheel building career. We started with some White Industry hubs, 20 hole up front and 24 hole in back. Then we added some Edge carbon aero tubular rims, and a collection of Sapim bladed spokes, and we ended up with an 1160 gm wheelset. Brian brought his bike by yesterday with the wheels on it, and they're definitely fast.
That's it, time to go do a little singlespeed ride before work.
Monday, June 30, 2008
South Boundary Kicks My Head In
We spent yesterday riding. All day. The ride was Elliot Barker to South Boundary to Taos. We got shuttled by the local bike shop shuttle service, and were dropped off at Pablo Flashado (pretty sure I'm spelling that wrong) which is the high point between Angel Fire and Taos.
From there we hopped a fence, got onto Elliot Barker trail, and proceeded to ride for the next seven hours or so.
In this photo, you can see our favorite doc Dave explaining the proper way to put on medical gloves, in case we needed to operate on the trail.
We were riding with a big crew, 10 guys total. Shown in the pic above, we had Dave, Kip (open faced baloney sandwich) Malone (.com), Marc, Richaround, and of course Tony. Also riding were Charlie, my pops Lee, Kent, Sean, and myself. Ten guys total, which is a bit of a big group for such a long ride.
The ride was Charlie's idea, it's a route he's done several times. And as with any Charlie ride, it was long, and there was copious amounts of lung busting climbing.
Sometimes when you take pics of really hard sections of a trail, they just don't look that difficult. I assure you that the section of trail in the pic above was really quite steep, most of us didn't clean it.
Here's a pic of Tony. He's doing a little celebration after our first descent, because everybody was covered in cow shit, but Tony was in front, so nothing got flung on him and he managed not to hit any. Yayyyy Tony!
There was ten of us riding and seven Mavericks. There was an ML7, an ML7/5, four Durance's, and an ML8. Above you can see them all piled together, along with a very sleepy Sean, who reportedly got about 1.5 hours sleep the night before. He also hadn't been on a cross country ride in a year or two, and he was on a borrowed bike (the ML8 demo from the shop) that he'd never ridden before, and he powered through the whole ride. Good show Sean.
There were scenic meadows to be ridden through.
And scenic overlooks to pose in front of.
Four hours and seven miles later, we were officially finished with the "hard" part of the ride. With most of the climbing behind us, we stopped for lunch. At this point we were finally onto the legendary South Boundary trail, which I had never ridden before. Right after lunch was one of the most fun downhill sections I've ever done, starting with a loose high speed double track that led into a super buff, fast and narrow single track carved into the side of the hill. We were all hauling, enjoying some well deserved descending after several hours of brutal climbing.
Kent was riding with a sweet HD camcorder strapped to his helmet, taking footage for a website that he's going to put together that combines riding footage with GPS maps and navigation info. He got some good footage of me catching up to my dad on a high speed section, as Kent was standing off to the side of the trail, watching us come and go. Hopefully I'll get some of the video from him and put it up on the site soon.
Shortly after that first amazing downhill, it started to rain a little. Then it started to rain a lot, then it officially went from a rain to a downpour, and then a little hail was thrown in, probably because I was there and had just moments earlier been explaining to Tony that I dislike rain, but hail is my mortal enemy. The camera was buried safely inside of my pack, and all the wet & cold weather gear came out as we regrouped and huddled under some trees.
It was at this time that I became very proud of myself. For the first time in my entire mountain biking career, there was inclement weather and I was completely prepared. The night before, I picked up a new Endura Superlight rain jacket on my way out of the shop. Then I remembered to pack my Craft waterproof biking pants, which I've owned for a few years and never had the opportunity to use. I also had some water resistant Pearl Izumi heavyweight gloves with me, and I was wearing a Swobo wool short sleeve jersey and some sweet lightweight Swobo wool socks. The temperature dropped, everybody got soaked, people started shivering, and for once in my life, I was perfectly warm. I have never been so happy to own good gear. I expect to be seeing at least a couple of the guys on the ride in the shop this week to be stocking up on some legitimate rain gear. "Kind of" water proof jackets and hefty bags just don't get the job done when you have 20 miles and 5,000 feet of descending left between you and the truck.
Even in the rain, and the resulting puddles, and the complete inability to see out of my sunglasses, South Boundary is an unbelievable trail, as many of you know. I can't believe that I've been living in New Mexico for 12 years and have never ridden it. This is going to become a ride that I do at least once a year from now on. I'd definitely like to get back out again this year, hopefully without the rain this time.
The rain had stopped by the time we got to an amazing overlook of Taos, and it was safe to bring my camera out again.
At this point, I had gotten quite muddy.
In the end, we all made it out relatively unscathed. Some were colder than others, a small amount of blood was shed, but for a group of 10 doing a 30 mile mountain bike ride things went incredibly smooth. Furthermore, there wasn't a single mechanical on the entire ride, despite the incredible amounts of mud and abuse on the bikes, which I can only assume is a testament to Bikeworks' mechanic's skills, as we've built or worked on every bike on the trip.
We regrouped, cleaned up, and then feasted at Eskies. Numerous pitchers were consumed, and slowly you could see life creeping back into everybody's eyes.
Some weren't quite satisfied, and needed a little ice cream to help get them through the long and tired drive back to 'Burque. It was at Baskin Robbins that Tony found Jesus... in his ice cream cone, his face made out of chocolate chips.
After the ice cream, all that was left as truck full of filthy bikes and bags full of soaking wet gear.
Basically, it was a perfect Sunday.
From there we hopped a fence, got onto Elliot Barker trail, and proceeded to ride for the next seven hours or so.
In this photo, you can see our favorite doc Dave explaining the proper way to put on medical gloves, in case we needed to operate on the trail.
We were riding with a big crew, 10 guys total. Shown in the pic above, we had Dave, Kip (open faced baloney sandwich) Malone (.com), Marc, Richaround, and of course Tony. Also riding were Charlie, my pops Lee, Kent, Sean, and myself. Ten guys total, which is a bit of a big group for such a long ride.
The ride was Charlie's idea, it's a route he's done several times. And as with any Charlie ride, it was long, and there was copious amounts of lung busting climbing.
Sometimes when you take pics of really hard sections of a trail, they just don't look that difficult. I assure you that the section of trail in the pic above was really quite steep, most of us didn't clean it.
Here's a pic of Tony. He's doing a little celebration after our first descent, because everybody was covered in cow shit, but Tony was in front, so nothing got flung on him and he managed not to hit any. Yayyyy Tony!
There was ten of us riding and seven Mavericks. There was an ML7, an ML7/5, four Durance's, and an ML8. Above you can see them all piled together, along with a very sleepy Sean, who reportedly got about 1.5 hours sleep the night before. He also hadn't been on a cross country ride in a year or two, and he was on a borrowed bike (the ML8 demo from the shop) that he'd never ridden before, and he powered through the whole ride. Good show Sean.
There were scenic meadows to be ridden through.
And scenic overlooks to pose in front of.
Four hours and seven miles later, we were officially finished with the "hard" part of the ride. With most of the climbing behind us, we stopped for lunch. At this point we were finally onto the legendary South Boundary trail, which I had never ridden before. Right after lunch was one of the most fun downhill sections I've ever done, starting with a loose high speed double track that led into a super buff, fast and narrow single track carved into the side of the hill. We were all hauling, enjoying some well deserved descending after several hours of brutal climbing.Kent was riding with a sweet HD camcorder strapped to his helmet, taking footage for a website that he's going to put together that combines riding footage with GPS maps and navigation info. He got some good footage of me catching up to my dad on a high speed section, as Kent was standing off to the side of the trail, watching us come and go. Hopefully I'll get some of the video from him and put it up on the site soon.
Shortly after that first amazing downhill, it started to rain a little. Then it started to rain a lot, then it officially went from a rain to a downpour, and then a little hail was thrown in, probably because I was there and had just moments earlier been explaining to Tony that I dislike rain, but hail is my mortal enemy. The camera was buried safely inside of my pack, and all the wet & cold weather gear came out as we regrouped and huddled under some trees.
It was at this time that I became very proud of myself. For the first time in my entire mountain biking career, there was inclement weather and I was completely prepared. The night before, I picked up a new Endura Superlight rain jacket on my way out of the shop. Then I remembered to pack my Craft waterproof biking pants, which I've owned for a few years and never had the opportunity to use. I also had some water resistant Pearl Izumi heavyweight gloves with me, and I was wearing a Swobo wool short sleeve jersey and some sweet lightweight Swobo wool socks. The temperature dropped, everybody got soaked, people started shivering, and for once in my life, I was perfectly warm. I have never been so happy to own good gear. I expect to be seeing at least a couple of the guys on the ride in the shop this week to be stocking up on some legitimate rain gear. "Kind of" water proof jackets and hefty bags just don't get the job done when you have 20 miles and 5,000 feet of descending left between you and the truck.
Even in the rain, and the resulting puddles, and the complete inability to see out of my sunglasses, South Boundary is an unbelievable trail, as many of you know. I can't believe that I've been living in New Mexico for 12 years and have never ridden it. This is going to become a ride that I do at least once a year from now on. I'd definitely like to get back out again this year, hopefully without the rain this time.
The rain had stopped by the time we got to an amazing overlook of Taos, and it was safe to bring my camera out again.
At this point, I had gotten quite muddy.
In the end, we all made it out relatively unscathed. Some were colder than others, a small amount of blood was shed, but for a group of 10 doing a 30 mile mountain bike ride things went incredibly smooth. Furthermore, there wasn't a single mechanical on the entire ride, despite the incredible amounts of mud and abuse on the bikes, which I can only assume is a testament to Bikeworks' mechanic's skills, as we've built or worked on every bike on the trip.
We regrouped, cleaned up, and then feasted at Eskies. Numerous pitchers were consumed, and slowly you could see life creeping back into everybody's eyes.Some weren't quite satisfied, and needed a little ice cream to help get them through the long and tired drive back to 'Burque. It was at Baskin Robbins that Tony found Jesus... in his ice cream cone, his face made out of chocolate chips.
After the ice cream, all that was left as truck full of filthy bikes and bags full of soaking wet gear.
Basically, it was a perfect Sunday.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Pics
We've been having fun.
Sunday we went to Santa Fe and did a sweet mountain ride. Not sure exactly what the route was, Charlie is the tour guide, and as I've mentioned, I usually get hopelessly lost once in the woods. But I know we spent some time on Borrego, Rio en Nambe, and Rio en Medio trails. We finished by climbing up Rio en Medio, back to our cars, which were parked at Aspen Ranch on Pacheco Canyon road.
The ride was a whopping 13.7 miles long, and took us nearly five hours. I think it's safe to say that it is the most difficult 13.7 mile ride any of us have ever done. The climbs are excruciating to impossible, but the descents are epic and the scenery amazing. Here's a couple pics.
Julian got himself a bike too.
Yesterday was Danny's birthday. Turns out he's not 40 yet, but he's old none the less.
That's it, I'm out.
Sunday we went to Santa Fe and did a sweet mountain ride. Not sure exactly what the route was, Charlie is the tour guide, and as I've mentioned, I usually get hopelessly lost once in the woods. But I know we spent some time on Borrego, Rio en Nambe, and Rio en Medio trails. We finished by climbing up Rio en Medio, back to our cars, which were parked at Aspen Ranch on Pacheco Canyon road.
The ride was a whopping 13.7 miles long, and took us nearly five hours. I think it's safe to say that it is the most difficult 13.7 mile ride any of us have ever done. The climbs are excruciating to impossible, but the descents are epic and the scenery amazing. Here's a couple pics.
Julian got himself a bike too.
Yesterday was Danny's birthday. Turns out he's not 40 yet, but he's old none the less.
That's it, I'm out.
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