Category Archives: Bikes

Smart Bike DC Launches. Will the Bikes Last?

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I rode my bike to work today, so had I not run an errand in China Town, I wouldn’t have noticed that SmartBike DC launched today.


Ironically, I was coming back from the camera shop and had a real camera this time.

According to SmartBike’s website, 10 locations opened today, and the one I visited (Gallery Place) had about 12-15 slots for bikes. This is a far cry from the 750 lockup stations and 10,000 bikes that Paris launched on its opening day (they’ve since doubled both numbers), but still infinitely more than have ever existed anywhere in this country. Continue reading →

Let Levi Ride the 2008 Tour

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Levi Leipheimer, new to team Astana for 2008, is currently barred from racing in the 2008 Tour de France due to a doping penalty incurred by last year’s Astana team.

VeloNews covered Levi’s announcement of a new website to protest Amaury Sports decision.

Levi’s website is taking online registrations/signatures to the petition. Swag is also in the works.

www.letleviride.com/

‘Seasons’ – A new film by the Collective

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The Collective, the Canada-based filmmakers who created the Collective and ROAM, is about to come out with their third film, Seasons.

The website is up at www.thecollectivefilm.com and includes a downloadable trailer.

Seasons’ premise seems to be different than its predecessors, using the Collective’s production knack while grounding the movie theme a bit more in reality. Seasons doesn’t quite bill itself as a documentary, but it certainly has elements, such as rider interviews, training, and competitions.

Here’s the official teaser:

Seasons is a film that follows 7 of the world’s top mountain bikers through the course of 4 seasons of one year. The film explores what it means to be a full time rider as told through the lives of downhill racers, slopestyle competitors, and big mountain free riders.

Continue reading →

Atlanta Endurance Riders Featured in Cycling News

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Two of the nation’s best endurance mountain bikers, who happen to be married and happen to be good friends of ours were profiled on Cycling News yesterday. Eddie and Namrita O’Dea will both be racing for Vassago Cycles next year. This should make for some interesting laundry, as probably 90% of their stuff on any given week will be similarly logo’ed jerseys and shorts, which will require diligent sorting (and you do want to separate them Eddie, because you don’t want to show up to a race having packed one of Nam’s jerseys).

In the last few years, they’ve made some serious life commitments to their training and also left their desk jobs to found a performance bike fit and coaching company, 55nineperformance. Not to mention promoting and running mountain bike races such as the Fool’s Gold and the BURN, which Jen and I attended back in May.  Jen and I also had the privilege of putting together a racing clinic with those two, and the notes can be found here (I’ve been slowly working on a repository of helpful cycling documents and hope to add many more in the coming year.)

Huge congrats to Eddie and Namrita for their successes in 2007, their deal with Vassago and good luck to them for the 2008 racing season.

Chicago Toying with Rental Bikes

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Mayor Daley is considering a test of 1,500 public rental bikes in a program similar to Paris’ Velib experiment. After visiting Paris this summer, Daley was very impressed with the Paris bike rental program; the Economist reports that Velib has seen daily rides hit 100,000 for its fleet of 10,000 bikes.

This would continue Daley’s long streak to make my hometown one of the greenest in the U.S., and transportation has always been a key component. Though its public transportation authority, the CTA, continues to face financial shortfalls and maintenance issues, Chicago still has one of the nation’s best transportation systems. Millennium Park also offers bike commuters a secure, public bike lock-up facility featuring public lockers and showers.

Eddio O’Dea finishes 4th at U.S. 24 Hour Solo Nationals

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Eddie O pulled a repeat of last year and finished 4th at Nationals! Last year’s race was punctuated by some of the worst conditions the sport had ever seen, with torrential downpours and tornadoes popping up across the Midwest. The trailer of 24 Solo actually uses that storm as its opening scene.

The top 4 places at Nationals have been the same for two years in a row:

  1. Chris Eatough
  2. Nat Ross
  3. Mark Hendershot
  4. Ed O’Dea

The first three guys all have full pro sponsorships with Trek, Gary Fisher, and Santa Cruz, respectively. After 2 years at #4, I have to think the big sponsors are looking really hard at Eddie.

Eddie’s race report

DirecTV Kills the Tour

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For the record, I do not currently have cable nor satellite TV. I have a 1992 20″ TV with rabbit ear antennas and we receive maybe seven TV stations semi-clearly, one of which is public TV and another is in Spanish. I might subscribe to pay TV if it wasn’t such a headache.

This afternoon, we were at a friend’s house watching the last stage of the Tour de France that she’d recorded that morning on her DirecTV DVR, or set-top recorder. (I still don’t know anything about the stage, so don’t tell me.) About 20 minutes into the program, a heavy rainstorm knocked out her satellite signal, and with it the DVR’s ability to play a pre-recorded show. Satellites need an unobstructed view of the Southern sky. Makes sense, got it. But I don’t understand why the box can’t play a locally recorded show without a satellite uplink. I’m guessing it has something to do with keeping you tethered to a DirecTV monthly subscription and avoiding the sharing of recorded content.

When we finally got the thing back up and running, we tried to resume the Tour stage, only to find out that the DirecTV box had mysteriously decided to record 9 minutes of Extreme Cage Fighting (as opposed to the non-extreme cage fighting shows) over the Tour Stage. The DVR menu still said “Tour Stage 20, 7:30 AM”, but now the notes stated it was recorded at 1:57 PM. A few calls to customer service and tech support confirmed that the program was probably gone permanently. In fact, when we mentioned that we thought the storm had done something to the DVR box, the tech rep replied “Yep, that will happen with storms.”

Continue reading →

Paris Introduces 21,000 City Bikes to Curtail Auto Traffic

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In an attempt to reduce auto traffic by 40% by 2020, the Parisien Mayor, long-time friend to bike commuters, has staged another bold move to make the city more bike friendly.

This time, Paris has added a fleet of bikes that consumers can check out for about $1.38 per day. There are bike check-in/check-out stations all over the city, and it sounds like it works like those luggage carts that you rent temporarily at airports.

The city added about 11,000 bikes last week and has plans to expand to 21,000 by the end of the year. A private corporation popped for the cost of all bikes in exchange for exclusive advertising rights at the bike stations (and probably on the bikes as well).

The new movement is called “Velib“, a marriage of the terms “velo” (bike in French) and “liberte”.

The Parisien Mayor has also added 125 miles of bike lanes to Paris since 2001, angering some motorists.

Broken legs and prohibition.

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So I can’t do anything. I just found out I’m not supposed to be consuming any alcohol, as it may impede bone healing. I read it online from a British medical study, and Barbara (Dr. Pike’s surgical assistant) corroborated it. She explained to me that alcohol thins my blood, which lessens the effects of bone laying down a new matrix for bone growth.

Then it occurs to me. I’m taking aspirin for the expressed purpose of thinning my blood to prevent clots. And thinning is good. But I can’t drink beer because it thins my blood, therefore thinning is now bad. Huh?

So I repeat the above out loud to Barbara as I weigh my dilemma and propose the following: why don’t I lay off the aspirin and instead drink the beer.

Javaun's Dilemma

I don’t get an affirmative from Barb. I’ve had my share of chemistry, biology, biochem, what have you, so this seemed plausible.

So let’s review what you CAN’T do with a broken leg:

  • Can’t drink beer.
  • Can’t ride a bike.
  • Jen is out of town so I can’t… hang out with Jen.

Anyone have any ideas? I don’t have cable. What do normal people do to kill time?