September 21, 2009

on zoobombs, polo and such...

Fine canadian (Taiwanese) steel ehem...
frame sanded down and redy for primer....primed and first coat of paint on half the frameThe finished frame
Lately my goal has been to cut down on bikes, and try and have a staple of a few good bikes, in stead of many bikes of various quality. This has resulted in many sales of bikes and currently I'm down to six. Soon to be five. My latest project is a Bianchi Volpe Cross/Touring bike which will replace my Cannondale rigid mountainbike as my Cross machine. I don't have any pictures of that at the moment but they will soon be posted. Another project I'm working on is my polo bike! Yes I know I've said before that the Cannondale would become my polo bike, but since that one has gone trough so many incarnations and has been with me for such a long time, I don't want to kill it in a stupid polo crash. So the Cannondale goes into storage and will be pulled out for single speed mountain biking. I had an old Rocky Mountain Hammer frame kicking around and I thought that would make a perfect candidate for Polo, so I started trowing parts together. I thought I'd paint the frame green and was going for Forest green when I went to the hardware store. However when I came across the "Hunter Green." The choice was obvious. I'm a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan so I have a tendency to find strange connections to him in the most obscure places. So Hunter green it was. I sanded the frame down, just enough to make the primer stick, primed it with non-sandable primer (big mistake) and after a second sanding, on came the green. I'm pretty happy with the finished frame. It's a disc brake only frame so I'll be running an old Shimano mechanical disc brake in the rear with the lever mounted on the left side (right side will be holding the mallet). The spec will roughly be as follows: Rigid steel fork (traded a Motobecane for that at Bicycle-itis, a great shop by the way). Syncros stem, flat bar with Ouries, Easton seat post, WTB saddle, deore rear hub on old double track rim (complete with green nipples) bontrager front wheel, off my Fuel EX-8. Crappy altus cranks from the recycle bin. Steve, the mechanic at Rider's, straightened those in the vice for me. Old Deore LX derailleur off of the Cannondale. 7 speed casette, and thumb shifter. I'll post more pictures as soon as this monster comes together. To make it even more monstrous I will be adding this basket from Wald to it, once I've devised some kind of a quick release system to it for polo. The Polo bike will then double as my Laundry/Delivery bike. Perfect for cruising to the garage sale or delivering two flats of beer to the Barbeque etc. zoobomb!

Zoobomb Freeride from Billy Meiners on Vimeo.

September 11, 2009

Cyclocross!!!

Geoff Kabush is a demigod. He showed up for last years Juan De Fuca race.
Cross season is upon us and I still don't have a Cross bike. This is hardly an excuse for not showing up for races, at least not here on the Island. The Cross on the Rock series is a very laid back affair, and you can race your chopper bike with coaster brake if you want to, although you'd be unlikely to have any sort of succes on such a contraption. However, mountain bikes don't make unusable cross machines and I have the Cannondale SS to race on. I have done one CX race in my life and that was on that particular bike, so I might as well continue riding that untill I get the cross bike. So I'll be switching back to 1:2 gear ratio and throw on some new bars, and presto!> cross bike. Nevertheless, I'm hopeful that I can get a race or two in on an actual cross bike. Hint hint. Dave Shiskoff the Vegan powered racer is doing cross clinics on Saturday mornings over the next couple of months and he's urging everyone to come out and practice their cross skills. Dave is putting this on for free (how wicked is that?) so if you're not doing anything on Saturday mornings I'd check it out. Unfortunately, us bike store employees have to show up for work on Saturdays. Hope to see you out there on the cross circuit.

September 07, 2009

Peaty wins and riding in Iceland

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Halldor Gunnarsson <halldorphoto@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 12:00 PM Subject: Peaty wins and riding in Iceland To: post@posteros.com

Not much to say this morning so I'll post a couple of videos instead. Steve Peat took the gold after a few years wait, proving to the young pups that he's still The Man.

And then some mountain biking in Iceland!!!

. <p><a href=" ">Icelandic Mountain Biking</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1891126">Joe Schwartz</a> on <a

Posted via email from Halldor's posterous

September 02, 2009

Police contacted cyclist before Bryant collision

Interesting how much the media focuses on weather or not Sheppard was drunk or not...yet they try not to focus on the fact that Bryant was trying to leave the site of an accident. Now why was he running? the Police say he was not drunk, but I'm a little suspicious of that... Police contacted cyclist before Bryant collision Shared via AddThis

September 01, 2009

On Alleycats, birthdays and Pro Riders taking on Iceland

Shayne rocking the Jordan
Mitch hates riding his bike
Justin's tri-suit comes in handy once again. Andrew in background
Group Shot at King George Terrace
We watched Macaframa at the shop after the race.
A group of us went out for an alleycat/birthday party on Friday. The Alleycat started from Capital City Cycles where the birthday boy works as well as owning the shop. Me, Justin, Mitch, Shayne(still recovering from injuries) and Andrew (still recovering from injuries) showed up for the race. We decided to race as a team and enjoy each others company while riding between points and so off we went. The race was a lot of fun as always, and just about the right length. It took us about 48min to ride the course if memory serves me right, and we came in 8th place as a group. Which is alright I suppose, especially given the broken wings on the team, not that they had much trouble keeping up, but it's an excuse anyway. Here's a rough map of the course, although we took a slightly different course. View Larger Map Also Check out Matt Hunter's Blog, he's been riding in Iceland lately with, Andrew Shandro, Joe Schwartz, photographer Sterling Lorence, and writer Mitchell Scott. Their Guide in Iceland is an acquaintance of mine Magne Kvam. I've been seeing Facebook updates from him and he seems super stoked on the riding they've been getting in. http://www.i-am-specialized.com/gravity/rider/matt-hunter/398/#/blog