Monday, November 24, 2008

Things not made of lycra

Our new club t-shirts. Thanks to ESP printers for the nice work. Sweet!



Jeans specially made for cycling from swrve. Note the reflector strip on the cuff. Cunning!




Helmets that look fairly normal from yakkay. Cool!


And belts and bags made from recycled bicycles tyres. Nice!



Bike of the Week - here comes the sun

Nice to see some blue skies again this morning. Made me think of this...





Thursday, November 13, 2008

Pinus Radiata. The new carbon fibre.

A few wooden frame bikes seem to be popping up here and there. Likeabike has a cool plywood bike for kids and Calfee's  bamboo range looks pretty cool.  Then Steve sent this through this morning, a concept bike by a dutch design student...solid wood, all the way. 




Bicycle of the Week


I was doing this daily but weekly now feels about right. This weeks bike is another Fast Boy bike out of NYC. Nice clean lines and real attention to detail. Enjoy. Still amazes me that a Brooks leather seat looks great on almost every kind of bike.


Bicycle Film Festival




Les Ninja Du Japon


Sutts from Avanti was trying to get the bicycle film festival over to NZ but wasn't having much luck. Maybe we should start a petition? Looks far to good to miss out on.

The revolution will not be motorized


The world needs more bike shops like the MC Cyclery. It doesn't actually sell bikes,  just repairs them, which is quite nice in itself. This is from their home page:

We're not your typical bunch of bike riders, we don't all shave our legs (at least not for riding), we don't all ride the latest carbon road bikes and we don't do AMEX. But we all love riding!

We ride to work, we ride trails, we ride to our girlfriends place, we ride to the pub and roll back home again, we dream of magical trails, of roads with no cars and refreshment stands. When we're not on our bikes we work on them, we read about them, we tell people about them. We believe in them!

MCC the revolution will not be motorized!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Simple never goes out of style

Found this on flickr. Lovely bike from 1899/1900, which apart from the double top tube isn't a mile away from a modern fixie. Looks fast just standing still. More details and a great related story here




Sunday, November 2, 2008

Elite breakaway group dominates Tour de Tamaki

Nice work to the four hardy riders who actually made the day. I'm sure 30 years from now you'll be telling your grandkids 'I was there'.

Rich emailed a fairly random race report and some pics as follows....


"Steve took stage one - he was the only rider making it to the start line on time....Halfway through his first glass of Pims when I arrived.

A mechanical cost me huge chunks of valuable time.Darn pedal fell off and I returned home for a replacement bike. For a minute I thought my director Sportif was going to suggest an abandon, but luckily the mechanic had set up a replacement bike and I was quickly back in the saddle, zigzagging through team cars to minimise losses.

However, I lost points for style - a 1980s Morrison Town and Country doesn't have the same cache as a 1940s BSA.

A generous tailwind took us to the Mission Bay feeding zone, where Steve ordered Nachos and we were joined by Team Bauer rider Stu Jones and Glen,who lost points for breaking rule #103 - turned up on a flash mountain bike and wore a poncy jacket.

A nice hard braking broadside down the car ramp saw Steve secure most aggressive rider of the day.

Later, Glen's points were reinstated when he told us about the hard line his missus took on mowing the lawns before riding.

The stage 3 sponsor refused to open the doors to the corporate feeding zone and we were forced to swap allegiances. I think Steve's JC Penny walk shorts and leather suitcase had something to do with it.

Further stages were abandoned when Steve distracted the peleton with stories of his German nanny (how do you spell o-pear?). She's still trying to reconcile Steve's 1970's Wimbeldon/bowling club crossover look with a "bike tour".