Sorry for the late post... Just saw this and laughed my ass off for a good ten minutes or so:
Arguably the best part is the helmet cam inset, so in case watching him from the side is too suspenseful, you can look down and quell your fear of his raw speed.
I like seeing ideas like this realized, though it seems somewhat useless on the downhills; I mean, all you can really do is coast right? Uphills are understandably the focus of much innovation in bicycle design, though are only one aspect of cycling (lets not forget about downhill and flats).
I think negating utility in one place in favor of high mechanical advantage in another is a little like buying new jeans to make cutoff shorts; then again, riding this slow would also likely force you to become masterful at bike handling, so maybe its not so half baked after all.
9.23.2009
9.22.2009
...roller bored
So I was perusing the cycling blogs and whatnot just now and came across this interesting video of professional skateboarders talking about something that I'm not terribly interested in. What I am interested in is Eric Koston's little skid there at about the halfway point and what this means in regard to inter-subcultural trading.
I honestly had no idea that for some reason, skateboarders were turning to cycling (fixed gear riding, specifically) in droves. While I was aware that many of the bike shops that seem to be popping up all over the place happened to sell decks, trucks, and wheels; I'm amazed at the number of former skateboarders (such as myself) that have turned to cycling in great numbers.
Well, its pretty obvious that freestyle fixed gear cycling would draw constituents from skateboarding as both sports revolve around hanging out at strange locations and hucking oneself off of and over objects and obstacles; something John Prolly can certainly attest to.
Then you've got people like me who take on hobbies or sports for entirely different reasons... Personally, I gravitate toward activities that allow me to be somewhat antisocial since I detest the idea of team sports.
I started skating in sixth grade (I guess that means I was about 11 or 12), the most socially formative years of one's life, in part to have a hobby and develop skills at something I enjoyed, but also because it allowed me quiet, deeply personal time for solitary thought.
Getting out of the house and rolling around by myself were some of the fondest memories I have of growing up in Texas; given that, its really no stretch to see why I like road cycling so much. I enjoy letting the miles slide by in silence, simply enjoying the moment, taking in the scenery and getting a lot of thinking done in the process.
While skating is a decidedly introverted sport, cycling is even more so, which makes me wonder if I would do well to join a cycling team next season. As I'd stated before, I plan on racing as much as I can next summer and will hopefully manage to make it up two categories in one season (cat5 - cat3). However I'm hesitant to join a social cycling group despite the benefits I may reap from such involvement (racing tactics, fast group rides, snazzy logoed-up club kits, etc).
Being a highly critical person, I must very carefully choose which cycling club (if any) I would join. On one hand, there are big teams like Kissena and NYCC that everyone and their mother belong to, and on the other hand there are very small, tight knit clubs that are "invite only" status.
Initially, my rough plan of attack is as follows:
At any rate, starting last week, I'm training at Prospect Park as often as possible. I'll be doing race-pace rides around the 3.4 mi loop on Tuesdays and Thursdays every week at 8:00 p.m. with the remaining days being devoted to honing bike handling skills, endurance, climbing, and interval training.
If anyone feels like coming out for a zippy ride on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, you're more than welcome to join.
I honestly had no idea that for some reason, skateboarders were turning to cycling (fixed gear riding, specifically) in droves. While I was aware that many of the bike shops that seem to be popping up all over the place happened to sell decks, trucks, and wheels; I'm amazed at the number of former skateboarders (such as myself) that have turned to cycling in great numbers.
Well, its pretty obvious that freestyle fixed gear cycling would draw constituents from skateboarding as both sports revolve around hanging out at strange locations and hucking oneself off of and over objects and obstacles; something John Prolly can certainly attest to.
Then you've got people like me who take on hobbies or sports for entirely different reasons... Personally, I gravitate toward activities that allow me to be somewhat antisocial since I detest the idea of team sports.
I started skating in sixth grade (I guess that means I was about 11 or 12), the most socially formative years of one's life, in part to have a hobby and develop skills at something I enjoyed, but also because it allowed me quiet, deeply personal time for solitary thought.
Getting out of the house and rolling around by myself were some of the fondest memories I have of growing up in Texas; given that, its really no stretch to see why I like road cycling so much. I enjoy letting the miles slide by in silence, simply enjoying the moment, taking in the scenery and getting a lot of thinking done in the process.
While skating is a decidedly introverted sport, cycling is even more so, which makes me wonder if I would do well to join a cycling team next season. As I'd stated before, I plan on racing as much as I can next summer and will hopefully manage to make it up two categories in one season (cat5 - cat3). However I'm hesitant to join a social cycling group despite the benefits I may reap from such involvement (racing tactics, fast group rides, snazzy logoed-up club kits, etc).
Being a highly critical person, I must very carefully choose which cycling club (if any) I would join. On one hand, there are big teams like Kissena and NYCC that everyone and their mother belong to, and on the other hand there are very small, tight knit clubs that are "invite only" status.
Initially, my rough plan of attack is as follows:
- Train all winter against category 3 race times.
- Buy USAC racing license as an "Unattached Rider"
- Attend 10 races and category up to 4 by early next summer
- Enter Prospect Park Race series and ride in all races.
- THEN I will toy with the idea of joining a cycling club.
At any rate, starting last week, I'm training at Prospect Park as often as possible. I'll be doing race-pace rides around the 3.4 mi loop on Tuesdays and Thursdays every week at 8:00 p.m. with the remaining days being devoted to honing bike handling skills, endurance, climbing, and interval training.
If anyone feels like coming out for a zippy ride on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, you're more than welcome to join.
9.21.2009
...the weekend madness (installment 9)
So this weekend past, I had planned a number of exciting activities for myself in attempt to stave off boredom more effectively than in previous weekends. Friday I did essentially nothing, I presented myself at work in a timely fashion as usual, and then went home and caught up on satirical punditry before going to bed.
On Saturday I did manage slightly more productivity, doing laundry and cycling around from bike shop to bike shop hunting for another knog frog to compliment the two I already own. I had noticed that not only were my knogs getting dimmer with age, my front light needed a compatriot so that I could mount them on the fork blades without worrying about which side I was weighting more.
At any rate, I found the "frog" surprisingly difficult to track down as it seems Knog is promoting their "beetle" light now and all the LBS's are flush with beetles and devoid of frogs. Because of that, I was forced to finally settle on a frog in the clear-ish 'colorway' as opposed to my usual choice of black (depicted above).
Still not wanting to appear unbalanced, I removed the electronics from the new clear-ish frog and swapped them out with the red light from one of the frogs I already owned. This allowed me to be able to affix the two black frogs to my fork blades and the clear-ish frog to my seat post, where the red light would be more visible from the sides through the rubbery housing.
Also, I bought new batteries for the two frogs I already had, but was shocked at the steep cost of frog ownership, for the batteries it requires (2032's I believe) are "medical batteries" and $8 a pair at Duane Reade, which is just crazy. On that note, I needed to buy batteries for my camera as well (hence the extreme lack of first-person documentation on this blog recently) but opted to wait since I was going to see the Decemberists at Terminal 5 later, and didn't want the hassle of toting around a brick of AA's at a concert.
As I had come to expect from these Oregoners, the concert turned out to be pretty awesome. They got some MC to draw songs written on plastic balls from a tumbler that the band would then play before a preppy looking tennis guy came out to lob the song ball into the audience.
I didn't manage to catch one of the balls, but I did catch a cool vibe from both the band and my fellow spectators. This was the first crowd I had pushed my way through (in following the much smaller girls toward the front) that peacefully accomodated my path by scooting aside as much as they could or pointing out gaps that I could exploit to that end.
For me, the Decemberists were merely an indie-rock group that my girlfriend liked, and that was the end of it until I actually took the time to listen to their work. I'm no musical authority, but I found that I really enjoy their music and even moreso their good-clean-fun approach to putting on a show.
After the concert, we went home to sleep though I was having trouble doing so, either because of or in spite of the fact that I was planning a ride to Bear Mt for Sunday morning. I washed my bike, filled my water bottles and tires, packed a fresh tube into my seat bag and set out all of my gear and clothing for the morning.
Then Sunday morning everything went off without a hitch, I left pretty much right on time and was well on my way out of the city enjoying the cool weather when my bicycle broke.
I'm being vague about what "broke" because to be honest I have no idea what happened or why. All I know is that while riding normally, my pedals seized up for a split second, then made a very loud snapping/cracking sound and then I could no longer shift smoothly in the rear or at all in the front.
Using my meager set of bike maintenance skills, I attempted to reset my front derailleur but could not get it to work, so I pedaled back to Soho from about 170th St in my next-to-lowest gear (aka slower than molases). Once I made it to Bicycle Habitat, the head mechanic, Hal, corroborated that my front derailleur was both out of alignment and bent badly. As usual, he happily fixed it while dropping some lesser known bike facts on me about the parts he was fixing.
(my derailleur looked like the photo on the left, above, though much more exaggeratedly bent)
For a while I had noticed that though I have only two chainrings my derailleur was indexed for a three-chainring setup. Not quite understanding why this was, I chalked it up to the fact that my bike came with mid- to low-end components that may not have been paired properly with my setup. Hal elucidated for me why this was: apparently its just easier for companies to include triple-indexed front derailleurs on all the bikes they make. This, like the tire misconception, is another instance of people's stupidity driving product development.
If you have a geared bike, one of the first things you will read about shifting gears (If, like me, your inclined to read at length about such topics), is that the #1 no no is what's called "crossing over". This just means that its bad for the life-span of your sprockets and chain if you get into the habit of riding with the chain on the leftmost (smallest) sprocket in the rear and the right most (smallest) chainring in the front, or vice versa. So Shimano, Campy, and SRAM all offer triple indexing so that you can "trim" the derailleur position if the chain is rubbing it when you're crossing gears badly.
Hal went on to say that if bothers you to the point where money is no object, then the top-o'-the-line Dura-Ace comes in a "double indexed" variety; but at those prices, most people are content to deal with the extra click required to shift.
Anyway, by the time He straightened everything out and bent the derailleur cage back into position, it was already well into the afternoon and thus far too late for me to get anywhere interesting and back before nightfall (though I am still itching to try out my new 'lightway'). Knowing this and bummed that my ride was scrapped before it even really got started, I rode home and cleaned house with my roomate.
Oh well; 'til next time y'all, maintain your drivetrain...
On Saturday I did manage slightly more productivity, doing laundry and cycling around from bike shop to bike shop hunting for another knog frog to compliment the two I already own. I had noticed that not only were my knogs getting dimmer with age, my front light needed a compatriot so that I could mount them on the fork blades without worrying about which side I was weighting more.
At any rate, I found the "frog" surprisingly difficult to track down as it seems Knog is promoting their "beetle" light now and all the LBS's are flush with beetles and devoid of frogs. Because of that, I was forced to finally settle on a frog in the clear-ish 'colorway' as opposed to my usual choice of black (depicted above).
Still not wanting to appear unbalanced, I removed the electronics from the new clear-ish frog and swapped them out with the red light from one of the frogs I already owned. This allowed me to be able to affix the two black frogs to my fork blades and the clear-ish frog to my seat post, where the red light would be more visible from the sides through the rubbery housing.
Also, I bought new batteries for the two frogs I already had, but was shocked at the steep cost of frog ownership, for the batteries it requires (2032's I believe) are "medical batteries" and $8 a pair at Duane Reade, which is just crazy. On that note, I needed to buy batteries for my camera as well (hence the extreme lack of first-person documentation on this blog recently) but opted to wait since I was going to see the Decemberists at Terminal 5 later, and didn't want the hassle of toting around a brick of AA's at a concert.
As I had come to expect from these Oregoners, the concert turned out to be pretty awesome. They got some MC to draw songs written on plastic balls from a tumbler that the band would then play before a preppy looking tennis guy came out to lob the song ball into the audience.
I didn't manage to catch one of the balls, but I did catch a cool vibe from both the band and my fellow spectators. This was the first crowd I had pushed my way through (in following the much smaller girls toward the front) that peacefully accomodated my path by scooting aside as much as they could or pointing out gaps that I could exploit to that end.
For me, the Decemberists were merely an indie-rock group that my girlfriend liked, and that was the end of it until I actually took the time to listen to their work. I'm no musical authority, but I found that I really enjoy their music and even moreso their good-clean-fun approach to putting on a show.
After the concert, we went home to sleep though I was having trouble doing so, either because of or in spite of the fact that I was planning a ride to Bear Mt for Sunday morning. I washed my bike, filled my water bottles and tires, packed a fresh tube into my seat bag and set out all of my gear and clothing for the morning.
Then Sunday morning everything went off without a hitch, I left pretty much right on time and was well on my way out of the city enjoying the cool weather when my bicycle broke.
I'm being vague about what "broke" because to be honest I have no idea what happened or why. All I know is that while riding normally, my pedals seized up for a split second, then made a very loud snapping/cracking sound and then I could no longer shift smoothly in the rear or at all in the front.
Using my meager set of bike maintenance skills, I attempted to reset my front derailleur but could not get it to work, so I pedaled back to Soho from about 170th St in my next-to-lowest gear (aka slower than molases). Once I made it to Bicycle Habitat, the head mechanic, Hal, corroborated that my front derailleur was both out of alignment and bent badly. As usual, he happily fixed it while dropping some lesser known bike facts on me about the parts he was fixing.
(my derailleur looked like the photo on the left, above, though much more exaggeratedly bent)For a while I had noticed that though I have only two chainrings my derailleur was indexed for a three-chainring setup. Not quite understanding why this was, I chalked it up to the fact that my bike came with mid- to low-end components that may not have been paired properly with my setup. Hal elucidated for me why this was: apparently its just easier for companies to include triple-indexed front derailleurs on all the bikes they make. This, like the tire misconception, is another instance of people's stupidity driving product development.
If you have a geared bike, one of the first things you will read about shifting gears (If, like me, your inclined to read at length about such topics), is that the #1 no no is what's called "crossing over". This just means that its bad for the life-span of your sprockets and chain if you get into the habit of riding with the chain on the leftmost (smallest) sprocket in the rear and the right most (smallest) chainring in the front, or vice versa. So Shimano, Campy, and SRAM all offer triple indexing so that you can "trim" the derailleur position if the chain is rubbing it when you're crossing gears badly.
Hal went on to say that if bothers you to the point where money is no object, then the top-o'-the-line Dura-Ace comes in a "double indexed" variety; but at those prices, most people are content to deal with the extra click required to shift.
Anyway, by the time He straightened everything out and bent the derailleur cage back into position, it was already well into the afternoon and thus far too late for me to get anywhere interesting and back before nightfall (though I am still itching to try out my new 'lightway'). Knowing this and bummed that my ride was scrapped before it even really got started, I rode home and cleaned house with my roomate.
Oh well; 'til next time y'all, maintain your drivetrain...
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