For those not familiar with S&S couplers, they allow you to break your frame down for travel. Really the advantage to these is you can fly with your bicycle and not have to pay oversize luggage fees with the airline. Spotted at Ashland Coffee and Tea yesterday.
I figured with the Quake-icane followed by tropical storm never ending rainshower we all need to remember, it’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Stay thirsty my friends….I mean dry…ok thirsty too.
The day after we were hit I took to the streets and surveyed the damage I could find and to explore the conditions of the trails around town (mainly to see I could make it to work). There just are sometimes in life when it is actually better to be out on a bicycle and your mobility is actually increased. Immediately in the aftermath I was able to navigate areas of town where fallen trees had blocked access for autos or where power lines had spanned the road but I could still go under them along the sidewalks. Anyhow, Richmond.com has also published an article about cycling after the storm and check that here. In the meantime here are some after storm photos for you as well.
Yesterday after work I went to Nicks and got a Tomato and Mozz sub for dinner before starting back at VCU for Grad classes. A friend of mine lives in Jackson Ward so I headed to his place to chow down and came across this gentleman with an incredible setup. I asked politely if I could grab some photos of his rig and he explained to me how he has curated this build completely by himself and some of the high lights of the setup which include:
1.)Automobile style mirrors
2.)Bar-Ends for up to 6 hand positions
3.)Custom Water Bottle Cage to hold a CD player
4.)Some sort of drink holder thang
5.) A special arm to hold his cell phone off the stem to manage his GPS tracking capabilities.
He pretty much said this was his car (duh, it has more electronics than my car) and he did everything himself (double duh, they don’t sell them like this at Wal-Mart but I am sure they will soon). While I question the wisdom in putting all of this effort into such a low quality bike, I am certainly not second guessing this gentleman’s passion and spirit in making his ride perform and function in a manner which truly suits the needs of the modern urban commuter. If we could only get our public policy to reflect the needs of the masses to transport themselves around in a manner as efficient and effective as the modifications to this bike are for his uses, perhaps we could see a wholesale change in the way our urban environment ebbs and flows like the living organism it truly is.
One final note, as of 5pm today I am on vacation until next week. I know the posts have been somewhat slow in recent weeks, and I haven’t been cycling as much as I would like simply due to life circumstances I won’t go into here, but if I can I’ll try and get some post curation from another city not too far from here where I hope to go on a day trip to. Perhaps this beach town will be all cruisers and bruisers and hopefully chic for sure. Stay Classy.
Today this Univega Nuevo Touring is for sale on craigslist:
While I don’t normally have a position on craigslist listings, every once and awhile I see something come along (and I stress once and awhile becuase most good stuff is taken already) that looks to be a good buy. At $170 it’s a little more than I would want to spend but you would be on the road immediately with this bike. Personally, I’d replace the wheels down the road with a 700c version with a cassette in the rear and the saddle (but thats a personal preference). Looks to have a very tall stem which will keep you upright and comfrotable, cantilever brakes which afford additional wider tire clearance if the frame will allow, lugged frame goodness, and forged dropouts from the looks of things. As it stands, most everything is here to give you a very capable commuter/touring bike at a reasonable price with money left over for upgrades down the road.
http://richmond.craigslist.org/bik/2563392401.html
So I got an extreme blister from trying to stop my wheel with my hand when mounting new tires. I couldn’t be happier with this set of summer gloves from nashbar that totally have a bunch of padding and protection for those sensitive tender hands. If you got problems with hand comfort or numbness on long rides, check your positioning first, then get these after everything is dialed in. You’ll love it,
I dropped one of my bicycles off at Pibby’s bike earlier this week to have a bracket fabricated for my randonneur rack on the front of my bike. After carrying a 50 lbs rock back from the river the metal fatigued and broke. While there it really hit me that one of my good buddies was finally back from a summer in Germany (and traveling in the rest of Europe as well) finishing up his Masters in Urban Planning Degree. He had bought a Dutch front rack for his bike and it required some tweaking to be installed correctly so when I arrived at the shop, unbeknownst to me, there was his Redline 26″ single speed commuter/MTB. His bike is the older version of this frame and has akward spacing for the rear hub. When I spoke to him on the phone he indicated that he would like to someday get an internally geared hub for the bike but wasn’t sure if that would work given the spacing of the frame (which is aluminum as well so it can’t be cold set either). I was searching around and I found a website called Hubstripping which is pretty much Nirvana for internally geared hub enthusiasts. As I know there are plenty of folks around here who love the simplicity of a singlespeed but sometimes would like to carry groceries up some of the larger hills around town I figured I’d post on here to help all y’all find what your looking for in an internally geared hub. This site has some pretty fantasic and comprehensive reviews as well.
Follow this link to see some photography from Panama and all the mods that people are doing to their bikes down there.
…..it’s Friday. you know where my mind already is. BEER! So check out how a brewery in Colorado decided to transport their local deliveries….sounds like a good idea now that the University is about to start back up again….a rolling party, just don’t let the driver partake (we don’t want the beer to get too shook up!)
JunkMiles 