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...

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!

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

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".

No more calls we have a winner

Steve scored a mint old Healing off trade me over the weekend, just in time for the Tour de Tamaki. Loving that double top tube.




 

A good start

Righto. We seem to be underway. Rich set a high standard by not only hosting the first meeting but also catering. Nice work Rich. 

So what happened? Well we talked a bit about what we are trying to achieve with the GBC, but quickly agreed that we are not actually 100% sure. Beyond having a good time with friends while riding bikes, we don't have much of an agenda. Riding for fun with other lovely people seems more than enough really.

We also decided on our first event...the Tour de Tamaki. It was a close call between sprint races up the Waitak's or fancy dress races up Mt Wellington, but those will have to wait for another day.

The 'Tour' will take place on November 1st, starting from the Paddington pub in Parnell at 11am then winding our way to St Heliers over the course of the next few hours. There are four or five good pubs along the way which we are hoping will be bike friendly. If not, I guess we will just keep riding. If your interested in joining in the rules are simple. No bike over $100, you must wear a helmet of some description and no lycra. Email mike.pepper@bravenewworld.co.nz if this sounds like something you might just enjoy.

We also talked about some club t-shirts or some kind of formal club apparel but Steve Davis had a great idea...felt flags. I'll try and post up an example I've since drawn up but they should be quite useful...perfect for your scout blanket or back of the bike as a safety device. 

So there you are. Four founding members, a real event and some felt flags. We're all go.