Ride Lugged

ridelugged is finally getting off its collective ass and putting together a custom wool jersey.  this wont be one of the those bs wool jerseys with elastic this and spandex 23% that, this will be 100 percent merino, and not chinese made.  we are going to sell that for exactly what they cost, which at this point will either be 75 for a flocked lettering jersey or 87 for embroidery, depending mainly on which gets the most votes.  personally, i vote embroidery, but i know it costs more, and not all of us are tight with trump.  for what its worth, the cost includes shipping the jersey to yer house, from mine, after they get here in a big box.  mel, occasional poster and stalwart wife, has two of these jerseys already, and says, quote: ‘i like them’.  a more ringing endorsement would be hard to come by, i think.  here are some color choices: orange with black sleeves, red with a black chest stripe, and two blues of varying blueness with cream chest stripes.  classy, not to loud.  i vote orange, personally.  visibility is never a bad thing.  (note: the orange isnt neon, that, friends, would be a bad thing).

this is basically what it will look like.

this post is just an intial feeler, to see who would be interested.  leave a comment if you need an affordable well made jersey that happens to have a siloutte of a lug and the words ridelugged and i’ll tell you what: we are going to put the abbreivation of  whatever state you hail from on the jersey along with the same for everyone else, ie PA-MD-SWE-CZ-PO  to make it look like we are cultured.  so in a way, it will be personalized.  this isnt some weird advertising thing.  there wont be a www or a .com on it anywhere i promise.

hopefully this doesnt flop like the plan to sell my kidneys to a malaysian wig trader.

how to make all elementary school kids think they are badasses. 

So I’ve been having these thoughts recently that I’d like to share. I would also like to put forth a proposition to the readers here. Since every Tour is marked with positive results for blood enhancing, I suggest that these caught individuals be punished by the following way.
Give them two choices.
1.) Never enter another bicycle race again.
2.) Ride a single speed bike circa 1920 for the rest of the tour wearing a jersey that says something like the “Dopers Suck!” kinda statement.

I feel like in this day and age, people are so readily let off the hook by just paying a fine. I kinda like the punishments that sorta humiliate the offender in some public way. So what better way to both punish those caught AND return the tour and cycling back into something of interest.
I propose that we sort out some agreed upon punishment like this and start a petition for the cycling world to sign. We could even buy a URL like www.takebackthetour.com or something and post it up there. Let’s hear some ideas. Is this a waste of time? Am I on to something?
Whaddya think?
RobQ

joe was being a good email buddy when he shot me a link to a story about kirk pacenti’s new panaracer 650b knobby. 

i responded with something innane about rivendell being the forefront of alternative bicycle culture, and how they were more influential than bridgestone.  he wrote back with this:  “Personally I don’t see the need for 650b on the dirt, 26″ and 29″ seem to cover things but it might be interesting to see how things shake out.”

to which i wrote the following mouthful:   “i think the problem with the whole 29er thing is market demand.  by that i mean: short riders demand that makers come up with 29ers that ‘work’ for them.  even if the frames arnt suspension corrected (but all the mass market ones are) they still have these baby little headtubes, which leads to failures.  not to mention: toe clip overlap.  to compensate, big wheels and small frames mean slack head angles, high bbs, steep seat angles, and lastly bad aesthics.
companies (cough kona cough) try to shorten wheelbases by using plates where they should use steel, leading to almost inevitable failure (and more weight).  i dont think you can build a good sus corrected 29er under say, 19 or 20 inches, and you cant build a non sus corrected one with any structural integrity under 17 inches.  the headtubes literally try to tear themselves off.  thats where 650b comes in.  it still doesnt make sense for say, a 14 inch frame, but it does eliminate some of that super small headtube leading to failure.  i dont even work in a shop anymore and i have seen 6 broken 29er frames in as many months.  how many broken 26 inch frames have i seen?  nada.
also, i see 650b as a huge fuck you to the mainstream industry (which is in dire need of a fuck you), where, if it catches on, is gunna cost big companies big bucks to develop all new tires, forks, rims, spokes, ect ect.  maybe we’ll see drop bars come back full force to the mtn scene?  who knows?  all i know is this: whatever this bike industry shake up means, i wish that it would translate to A. the rest of the consumer market and B. to politics.  wishful thinking i’m sure.  apologies for the rant.  i bet if i post this, at least 24 people will jump down my shit for criticizing the 29er scene, which i am not doing.  i’m criticizing the bike makers inability to say no.”

” Constructed of high-modulus carbon fiber with a hexagonal honeycomb cross section”

first of all: try to look up modulus in a dictionary, or on wikipedia. if it aint there… could it be a made-up buzz word? i think the new plug in for “high-modulus carbon fiber” should be ‘chinese plastic’.

hexagonal honeycomb cross section: where? to do what? and arnt all honeycombs hexagonal? ok so: hexagonal honeycomb cross section = structural marketing non-sense.

“the SL1s is designed to be light” there are bikes that are designed to be heavy?

“To ensure your power is translated into speed, Fuji incorporates short, 405mm chainstays and an interlocking aluminum bottom-bracket shell for stiffness.”

interlocking? does that mean its wedged in like a puzzle piece and not glued?

“Adding a bit of aesthetic beauty, and a bit of compliance for comfort, according to Fuji, the top tube arcs to join the seatstays, and is pierced by the seat tube.”

ok first off, this bike looks like every other black carbon bike ever, except it has the name of some film i used to use in giant white letters. shouldn’t makers aim for a ‘bit’ more than a ‘bit of aesthetic beauty’? is that all your 6,000 dollars gets you is a bit of comfort and good looks? what a sad world. i know 20 dollar goodwill bikes that have more comfort and better aesthetics than any chinese plastic bike ever could.

“On the short and steep 12-percent grades we rode in coastal Orange County, California, the SL1s proved to be a powerful platform that practically solicited out-of-the-saddle attacking.”

luckly i am on the no call list.

‘encourages a run-and-gun riding style.’

um, are they encouraging shooting other riders while running with your bike? i like to ride my bike, and shoot cans when not riding the bike.

i do love how completely non-informative most bike reviews are.

“A proprietary technology, called Wrap, is used in the junction of the head and top tubes. A 6/4 sheet titanium is built into the heavily shaped top tube. It flares, pinches and partially wraps around the 3/2.5 double-butted ti head tube. The multishaped down tube encircles the head tube to create a highly stiff focal point for control and responsiveness. The 3/2.5 seat tube ovalizes and wraps around the bottom-bracket shell for increased weld surface and additional strength. Chainstays are asymmetrical 3/2.5 butted titanium with a V bend for solid power transfer, and the oval seatstays are designed for vertical compliance. Cosmetically, the Archon undergoes a 14-step finishing, graphics and coating process for a lustrous sheen that will turn heads.”

amazing that the writers can wank off litespeed with one hand and type with the other. this is 90 percent of the article. it is followed by more wanking, in the form of a 2 line endorsement of how the bike rides like a carbon bike. so: actual bike review to wanking ratio: 5:27. kinda like the anna nichole coverage vs the walter reed coverage at fox ‘news’.

the next review, on some kestrel chinese plastic bike, has a startling 10:1 ratio of marketing buzzwords to actual ‘analysis’. my guess; these cats don’t even ride these bikes, but rather ask the company to tell them what they think it rides like, and then they cut and past tech BS for the online catalogue, and presto! article written, paycheck received.

out of 50 bikes bicycle magazine reviewed, only 2 were not chinese plastic, and zero were steel or aluminum. none of these bikes could accept fenders, a rack, a generator light, a bag of any kind except those tiny 1 tube and a co2 bags, and only a few could handle a broken spoke. this from a magazine obviously aimed at beginners. also, only 2 bikes reviewed cost under 1500 dollars. what message is ‘bicycling’ sending

what message are the makers sending by continuing to support this magazine? speed sells, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Lemond, long a hold out on carbon crap, has gone almost totally carbon for 07. bianchi and jamis remain the last hold outs for production steel bikes.

some of the hype is so preposterous that it would function as a joke in an earlier age:

” all-carbon bike attracts attention, and from just about everyone, tech geek and fitness rider alike. During testing, I heard comments from “that red paint is sooo sparkly” to “I can’t take my eyes off those seatstays.” That’s because there’s a lot going on, with not only the seatstays, but also with the tube shapes. The Buenos Aires is built with LeMond’s new Min/Max technology, which minimizes weight by using less material and maximizes stiffness via smart tube shaping. Tube diameters are also adjusted by frame size for lower weight and increased strength.”

last time i checked, almost every quality steel bike made had tubing specific to the size of the bike. the butts would be out of wack if this were not the case. isn’t it the goal of any tube spec’er to find the lightest tube to reliably do the job?

also: ’sparkly red paint’ …are 5th graders writing this crap? no, that demeans 5th graders.

i wish these mags would start writing about how to finance these bikes. imagine if this marketing were to be applied in other, non-sports walks of life. ‘the stanley pro-ccountant desk unit account-o-typer: add and subtract faster than your officemate with advanced high modulus pressure sensative sub-static key interfaces.

just gimme the pencil and paper, asshole.

so rob and christine and hutch came up for the weekend.  hutch still proclaims cory is the master, even though i explained that cory is a commie defector.  we sized up rob and christine: rob is currently riding a 56, needs a 63, hmmm and christine needs a 56 currently rocking a 52.  rob has about a foot of seat post showing, it looks like mark on his vicious.

anyway, they weren’t super hot on a long ride, so we drove a bit and found a good spot to a do a ‘flat for PA’ route of about 16 miles.  here are dey pictures.  if it looks ridiculously nice out its because it was about 75 degrees with a slight breeze.

here is the slideshow, and for those who are lazy:

I’m supposed to write captions for these photos but you know what you’re looking at.-Mel

This article grabs you by the warm and fuzzies, hence the new tag. It has everything, bikes, electricity, gruby english people, movies, the environment, fireworks, a circus, a jam band, muskrats, shoelaces, grubby english people, more bikes. Well it actually only has a few of those but it doesn’t matter. I think we have all tried a version of this, either watching a movie while riding a bike, or watching a movie about riding bikes, organizing a fleet of bikes to generate enough power to run a projector.

here is a video with an extremely annoying sound track.

Jess give’s it a single thumb up.

That’s actually the same face she makes right after she rips one.

After about 20 seconds of thought I realized that this is probably also trump tight, because as nick says, if trump would want it then it’s trump tight. I’m sure the grubby hippie bike powered movie theater market is a billion dollar a year industry and I’m sure that trump would want a piece of it.

google images produces some weird shit.

I’m don’t like making new tags for every post, but this should defineatley be under “fucking hilarious youtube stuff.”

so i have about 60 miles on the trek 650b project, and after some minor adjustments, and the installation of the headlamp, it’s about as perfect as one could imagine. the only thing that remains to be seen: how it feels at the end of 100+ kilometers. if i were to have someone build a custom bike for rando riding though, i would sent them this one to copy.

still need: fenders, thats it.

emily’s boyfriend steven found this old puegot mixte in the trash. we spend way too much time fixing it up, scraping off rust and repolishing stuff. she wanted the shifters moved off the downtube, so i mounted the old simplex shifters to some new barcon mounts. we bought some french city bars from velo-orange, as well as cork grips and simichrome polish. new pads, cables and housing, and a lot of elbow grease later, and the bike was back in order. it has full fenders, internal wiring for the lights, and enough inherient beausage to not feel like a museum piece. she rode it 3 miles to the bar last night and 2 miles to school this AM, so thats a good start.

i have more pictures of the process. i’ll post them soon.

on a tuesday ride with the boalsburg bikers, we encountered a rather idylic scene: an amish farmer cruising along with his kids skipping along behind him.  six mules pulled the equipment, which i forget the name of.

encouragement for christine:  my new purple bike has downtube shifters, just like yer new white bianchi.  i am used to friction shifting, but the whole reaching down thing is a whole new level of adjustment.  but its getting easier.  just stick with it.  its worth it.  maybe 100 miles to master it.  thats not much.  it took alot more than that to learn how to ride a bike right?