So tooling around on the web I found this site called MeetUp in which meet up groups are created by interest and then they have meetings. The site is a hub to gain members and the meetings are organized and info is emailed to your email address. So naturally I typed in “cycling” in the search box. I came across a page of cycling groups and I just signed up for two of them!! The first one is called NYC Cycling Chicks. It seems there are one hundred and twenty seven members, and I guess I make it one hundred twenty eight–though I’m not sure yet because I had to fill out some questions from the organizers asking me about my riding and experience and level of difficulty. I hope they add me, that would be weird to turn someone away don’t you think? The second group I signed up with is called Beacon Bicycling. This is a new group and I think I”m member number thirteen. Lucky!! No, really, thirteen is a good number for me.

So I finally signed up with Facebook recently, hoping to get this blog out there, and I came across this pretty cool online bike store. It’s called

I Bike Do You 2 has some pretty cool stuff, including BMX gear and unicycles!! I also just happen to like the way the site looks. I urge you to check it out, see if there is something that is of use to you!! I think I want to get the Race Face Hoodlum Hoodie…..

Also, I got the little picture of the logo for the shop by using this thing called Clipmarks. You can use it to add stuff you clip from other sites to your website, blog or save them and put them into pages like I have here. Pretty neat little tool!! Now this site is going to have a lot more visuals. Yay!!

Yes, kids, the stubborn one here finally made the switch to clipless pedals!! What ultimately prompted me to do it is the fact that the regular metal pedals had those spikey things on them that kept stabbing, knicking, tearing and outright cutting my legs. I couldn’t take it anymore. So down to my regular bike shop I went, Bay Ridge Bicycles. Those guys are awesome.

So I was very trepidatious about getting the clipless for the first time. I was worried about being attached to my bike during a fall and breaking my ankle or even worse, falling in front of a car and not being able to get away in time, still being attached to the bike. (As you can see I was terribly afraid). I have even seen plenty of folks falling down not being able to click out in time. I didn’t want to add another item on the list of things that can hurt me on my bike. However, getting cut on the leg everyday from those awful metal pedals changed all that.

I didn’t realise that there were the clipless that were a hybrid of sorts. The pedals I got (above) can be used with the shoes that lock in, or they can be used without. I figured that during the learning period I could just switch to regular shoes. Well the first day I fell. Twice. The first time I caught myself on a fence. The second time was a full on fall, in the street, foot all caught up in the front wheel. How embarrassing!! I even hit my elbow and got a speed knot that really hurts when you touch it. But I’d rather a speed knot on the elbow than a broken ankle any day. I got up, dusted myself off, with the help of my friend John, and was kind of shaken. For a moment, I considered putting my sneakers back on and just trying at it again another day. But I wouldn’t let myself. I clicked my feet back on those pedals, shaking, but I did it. I didn’t fall again the rest of the day. I almost fell again the next day, but got my foot out in time. I realise now that I still have to be rolling to get out. And what has really helped is the advice that one of the guys in the shop gave me. I have played it in my mind like a broken record. This is what he said:

“When you’re coming to or even think you’re coming to a stop, click out.”

His advice was great. I click out when coming to corners like twenty feet away or if I think something is going to keep me from being able to move on, I click out about ten feet away and I have my foot out in time. The problem I keep having is forgetting that I’m clicked in sometimes and I stop on a dime and think I can just put my foot down. When I do that, I make myself roll some more and click out. Man, it’s an experience I can tell you. It’s almost like learning how to ride all over again!!

Now what I also get out of this is the power I get from using the clipless. I get more out of the rotation and man I swear even the dreaded uphills are not as bad!! I feel I have more control… Why oh why did I wait so long to go clipless?? I used to use the stirrups when I raced. I forgot how much power you get when attached to the pedal. But then when I stopped, I just went with the laceless and didn’t think any more about it. How stupid, especially now with my penchance for demoning through traffic, I need the control. I almost see now why fixed gear is so popular with the messengers.

The shoes I got are from a company called Lake. Check out the website. The shoes I got are these:

They are so comfortable!! And they are very sneakery, so you can ride and then also walk around without wearing the stiff, clicky road shoes (which now that I think about it is another reason I didn’t want to go clipless). They also have a really cool reflector on the back. Because of shoes like these, I feel much more comfortable with the switch. They are utility and fashion in one (girly coming back out…). I am really glad I got them!!

So I got some info about a cycling club called “Dykes on Bike-Cycles” from some nice girls at the Tour de Brooklyn. They are looking for riders for their 2008 Pride rides. There are three of them. One is for the Queens Pride on 1 June. Second is the Brooklyn Pride on 14 June. Third is the biggest Pride parade (and my favorite parade of the city so far) in Manhattan on 29 June. It is five bucks to ride. To RSVP go to dykesonbikecycles@gmail.com.

Check out their blog here. It’s a pretty neat page.

Check it out.

As I was walking out of the door with my bike, heading down to DUMBO to sign in for the ride, I wondered just why they have to start an eighteen mile tour so early. The start time to sign in was eight o’clock. I knew there weren’t that many people riding and I was a bit cranky on the way down.

However, my attitude changed as soon as I got down there. First, the vibe of a crowd of riders is always infectious. People were jazzed, dressed up in their tour outfits, kids were excited, people were chatting with friends, people were wearing their bike gear and all kinds of bikes were in attendance. So of course a bike nut like me got excited too. Not only that, but the day was gorgeous!! Not a cloud in the sky. I even had to pull off my riding jacket to cool off. (Tis not me looking at the map. I just thought this would be a cool shot.)

As I waited there for the ride to start, these two awesome girls came over and chatted with me and we ended up spending the ride together, along with another friend of theirs. They were really cool people and I enjoyed hanging with some new people!!

The ride itself was kind of slow moving. At first I was a little irked. But chatting with new friends and the beautiful weather overshadowed the pace. I thought the turnout was pretty good too. It wasn’t that crowded, but still it was big enough to make a show of it. The crowd wasn’t as diverse as the 5 Boro or even the Tour de Bronx (which, by the way, I have already signed up for). But that was cool, because I think the riders were all Brooklyn natives so you know they were all cool!!

The ride was cool and I had a good time out in the sun and getting some fresh air and more exercise. I even got a shot of this really cool ride:

Pretty bitchin’ if you ask me. The owner even wore a leather vest over his T-shirt, bandanna and black jeans. He looked like a Hell’s Angel!!

I would totally recommend anyone doing this ride. It’s a great way to get to know your fellow Brooklynites, your fellow city dwellers, and just some good clean fun….

So I went out for a bit to a friends house party on Saturday, much to the chagrin of my sickened body, but I am the ever vigilant socialite and must abide to an invitation by a friend. So off I went, riding pretty smoothly actually because I had been bedridden for a while, and I get to the gorgeous duplex apartment and, wheeling my bike in hoping to keep it off of the street, wow!! Here is a parade of old school bikes, belonging to the folks that live in the apartment. So like a dork, I whip out my camera and investigate.

The first bike that caught my attention is this one:

A John Deere?!?! Like the tractor dudes? I mean, is that for real? And I am genuinely asking because I really don’t know. I didn’t know that John Deere made bicycles. I can tell you that this bike was old because when I lifted the frame it felt like I was bench pressing a weight in the gym. Yikes. I can’t even imagine trying to get up a hill riding this bike, but I sure as hell would surpass the speed of sound if you put me on a downhill on it!! Here is the far-out shot:

Pretty cool for tooling around the neighborhood, grabbing scant groceries and some cat food no? I am a sucker for the front basket on a bike. It always makes me want to get out, pedal to the nearest Italian shop and buy some vine ripened tomatoes, fresh baked Italian bread and a brick of fresh spun mozzarella, and some flowers. Yeah, I girl out like that sometimes.

Next in line was this one:

Peugeot. Classic. Funny how being a more contemporary biker, I don’t come across bikes like these anymore and it is more reminiscent of my childhood than being a kitschy throwback for the uber-cool. I think it’s awesome that people ride classic bikes like they ride classic cars. It’s all about being in the know. Anyway, looking at the handlebars, I kind of squirm, as I have never liked the brake cords hanging out like this:

I am more of a streamline kind of gal.

But in speaking about these classic bikes, I have a a treat of sorts. I came across this site in my ongoing research to find all bike knowledge that I can. It is called Bicycle Classics and they have products to keep up your classic ride!! They seem to have a pretty good collection of parts and they seem to be as geeked out about bikes as I am!! Major plus in my book. Check it out. The site itself is very basic, they do not have any pictures of the parts, but it seems to me to visit this site, you really have to know your stuff, and perhaps this site is geared to bike geeks as well. It’s well worth checking out if you are serious about wanting to upkeep a classic bike.

(Photo taken from Bicycle Film Festival website, Bikes Rock 2007)

So today, staying in bed because I’m sick (booo) I had to at least do some more valuable surfing to come up with more and more info to post. I’m a dork like that. So in my vigilant quest to be in the know about everything I can, I cam across a wonderful and wacky site called Bicycle Film Festival 2008. Apparently it is the eighth annual event. There is all kinds of things going on with this organization and it seems there can be something here for anyone into the culture. Especially we artists!!

What kind of looks really cool to me coming up is an event called Bikes Rock. It’s happening Wednesday, 28 May at 9 and going on until late. It’s at Studio B, 259 Banker Street between Calyer and Franklin here in Brooklyn!! It seems to be a mixed media event, crossing film and music, sounds being created from bicycle parts. Very interesting. And what self-respecting film festival wouldn’t have a dance party afterward??

See you there dude.

On my ride home today, I happened to have come to a red light and waited next to a dude who was on a fixed gear–an old Bianchi. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. (Please refer to my previous post about riders that do not wear helmets.)

Anyway, when the light turned green, I wasn’t in the mood to try to race him, as it was the end of the day and sadly, I am sick today. And this hill was a doozie. So he takes off like any cyclist would, tearing out of the crosswalk in which we waited, baiting me for a race up the block. I bet he felt great peeling ahead of me and riding over his bar to get up the hill.

However, I wasn’t that far enough behind him to miss the fact that he was one of those riders I spoke about in my previous post about track or fixed gear newbies. As he rode over his bar, cranking his pedals to get up this hill, it was obvious that he had no real riding experience. He was rocking his frame back and forth so much that it looked like he had a metronome hanging off of his butt!! And riding as wrong as he was, expending so much energy into rocking the frame back and forth, I was still able to keep quite near him, as tired and sick as I am today!!

Novices!! Especially fixed gear newbies. It’s sad when they sport the fixed gear, chain wrapped around their waists with the trendy little mini U Kryptonite and their trendy hipster clothing, and CAN’T ride. And they don’t even know had bad they look to a trained cyclist!! As I have stated before, they think it’s just enough to sport the flashiest gear and most don’t take the time to learn how to actually ride, getting the full benefit of working out on a bike and actually beating the hell out of a good bike. You can ride the living bejesus out of a good bike and it’ll never let you down.

When will these trendsters ever learn??

I came across this site called Crank Brothers and nearly fell off my chair when I beheld this beauteous sight. This is their Cobalt XC wheelset, aluminum, stainless steel spokes, disc brake only, tubeless compatible, and in my favorite color, blue.

And being the bike-head that I am, I love tools. I can’t get enough of the Swiss Army style tools that cycling repair has to offer. I dig the fact that you can carry an array of tools on you in one little space in your bag and whip it out when you or a fellow cyclists need to fix a ride. So imagine the squeal that came out of me when I beheld this:

This too is on the Crank Brothers site. There are nineteen tools on this baby….nineteen!! Dude, I could sit for hours and play with this thing. And it comes with a “flask” to keep it in!! Oh my god, oh my god!! I need this to add to my collection of other fold-away tools, to keep in my bag and admire like Smiegel held on to the Ring of Power…

“Precious!!”

I can’t say that I can even begin to imagine whay anyone in this city, ANYONE, would set out to ride a bike without a helmet on. Even despite the warnings I’m sure they hear, even peripherally, yet also the rants that I myself have posted regarding the drivers here in NYC as well as other posts I have read by other bloggers in and outside of the city also ranting about careless drivers.

I have had this conversation before with folks that do not wear helmets. I get distressed when they want to argue against wearing helmets. It is quite disturbing the things people say, and even sometimes the blase arguements that they throw together at the last second when confronted about not wearing them. And I see all kinds of riders not wearing helmets, from pro riders to the average rider, to people riding on cruisers in the middle of traffic, just nonchalantly peddaling as if there were not semi-trucks whizzing by them so close, their hair picks up in the breeze.

What I have always said about driving I will now apply to cyclists: You cannot for one moment think that anyone else on the road is going to move around YOU. How can they when they are not paying attention to the road like they should? The best defense for navigating the road is to be hyper-aware of what’s going on around you and to treat everyone else on the road like they are out to get you. Think about it. If you are walking down a dark street at night to get home, you don’t just walk like it’s a bright spring day. You clutch your bag a little tighter, you perk your ears up for sounds of footsteps behind you, you may even, like me, keep an eye on the shadows around you to keep abreast of any sudden movements behind you. That is how you should treat riding your bike any time of the day. You have to treat it as if you are being followed down a dark street at night and you are prepared to protect yourself.

Now first and foremost, I believe that a lot of riders here in the city don’t wear helmets just for the simple fact that they have not seen an actual accident involving someone who has fallen without a helmet and has hit their head.

I have.

Consider this: the accident to which I am referring involved a woman who was on rollerblades. This was about a hundred years ago when I used to race and was training everyday in Prospect Park. On one lap around, there was a woman lying in the road, and I kid you not, her brain was partially hanging out of her head. Or perhaps it was just some scalp or something. However, it was a serious accident, she was bleeding profusely and was most certainly in shock. She was still conscious and talking, but you knew she was in shock because she was saying how she was fine and could get back up and go. Then she started rambling about something other than laying there in the road and it was quite scary to see that she was obviously not fully functioning. There was already a small crowd around her (those of us that could stand to see this horrific sight) and waited until the ambulance came for her.

Now I brought that up not only to demonstrate that head injuries are real from road related falls, but the fact the she was on rollerblades is even more sobering for us cyclists. Why, you ask? Because we are moving at higher speeds than a person on rollerblades and if this poor woman could bust her head open on rollerblades, imagine the effect of moving at 30 or more miles an hour!! Yeah, I get that queasiness in my knees too.

I also happen to know of people who got into biking after watching a lot of Europen races. Now those races can get anyone jazzed about riding, if even not for racing, but just to get on a bike. And I am all for that. However, it is very misleading, I think, for Americans to watch these races as the riders–what seems a lot of Italians–do not wear helmets, but those cloth hats with the floppy rim and tons of logos on them. I have had people tell me if the Europeans can wear those cool hats, then they too will want to wear those and look the part of the suave Italian racer. Oh boy.

People who propose that argument fail to realise that for one, the hats are worn to keep longer hair out of the eyes of the racers. Yes, being that they had something else on their body for advertisers to cover with logos was what happened, it did not spring from an idea for another cool accessory to wear with thier logo covered jerseys. The hats came from a need to help a rider with loger hair be able to see. Yet also what seems to elude folks watching these races is the fact that the riders are riding on closed courses!! If the rider so chooses not to wear a helmet, that is his choice, but he is riding in a controlled environment (for the most part) and they are not riding in the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn, contending with traffic and spaced out vehicle operators. They are NOT on city streets: I cannot stress that enough!!

Track riders seem to be the worst offenders. They believe that their own control keeps them safe. Again, I don’t care how controlled you are, there are drivers on the road driving with shitty brakes, and will hit you. Or perhaps a driver may hit an oil slick left on the road from a car or truck leaking oil onto the street. Again, this is something beyond your control. And in fact, what will you do if YOU hit that oil slick left in the road? What happens if god forbid (and it has happened to me) an important part falls off the bike, your chain splits, you go flat during your “patented” corner turn?

You have to think ahead. You have to think in a way that you will protect yourself at all times on the road. And as such, we want to road to be safer for all that use it, and make potential riders want to be out there too, enjoying the same high we get from riding!!

And trust me, I feel like SUCH a dork when in dusk I have to slip those nerdy lights onto my bike–both front and back. But you know what, I have gotten a much different response from drivers when using the lights. They actually acknowledge me, which is important. Same thing with helmets. That helmet on your head shows that you are serious about protecting yourself on the road.

Don’t ever give anyone else the chance to decide your own fate.

Well, thanks to Olivia of Super Vegan who I met last night at the Brooklyn Blogfest, I got this tip about Time’s Up Doggie Pedal Parade happening Saturday 17 May 2008, in which cyclists ride with their pets in vehicles altered to carry their little loved one’s. But also interesting about this ride is the route has animal adoption sites and also some animal friendly locations. From the looks of the page, it might be kinda fun!!

There never seems to be a shortage of things to do around here….

Above is my camera shy little girl.

So tonight I went to the third annual Brooklyn Blogfest 2008 at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Avenue. It was really pretty cool. I went with a friend from work who sent me an email about it this morning, I checked out the webpost and decided I had to come to promote my blog here. I got to go up on stage at the end and talk intoa microphone and tell about my bolg. I got a realy good response!! I’m thrilled I went and got to meet other Brooklyn bloggers and we met and connected and there are some really awesome bRooklyn blogs and Brooklyn bloggers out here.

However, one of the bloggers, a woman named Heather, got up and spoke about her blog called New York Shitty and she referenced a joke on one of her posts. However the post was about bedbugs in the subway system!! Here is a little clip I swiped from the post:

“It was at this point that one of the more terrifying points of this entire meeting (in my opinion) was brought up: bedbugs make good “hitchhikers”, e.g.; they can attach themselves to a person’s clothing and spread. Five different subway stations have turned up positive for bedbugs. Three of them (the ones Mr. Brownbear could recall) are:

1. Fordham Road, Bronx
2. Union Square, Manhattan
3. Hoyt-Schermerhorn, Brooklyn

At the latter most they were found on a subway bench, which makes sense given it is has been established these little critters like wood.”

Ewww!! God I always knew that riding the subway was bad from the fumes, the dirt, the passing of flus and colds and what really made me stop riding was people farting all the time. But now this?!?! I am SOOOO glad that I stopped straphanging!!

Check out the rest of Heather’s post here.

Thank you Heather for letting me know this!!

What IS IT with the drivers here in NYC?!?!? I mean seriously, getting sideswiped on me bike not twice, not three times but FOUR times on my way to work this morning? One dude sideswiped me on the drivers side, had his windows open and his kid was in the back seat also on the drivers side and heard me go, “Whoa!!” as he grazed past me, and I swear I think even the kid got scared for me!! Another driver rolled down a long street with me on his right, knew I had to be there because (YAY!!) they just put a brand spaking new bike lane on this big street near my house. They took out the second lane to give us riders our own lane!! So anyway, here I am rolling on the right and this dude speeds up to the light so he can cross into the bike lane at the corner to make his precious right turn. However, it’s a red light. Um…yeah….so what’s the point of trying to overtake me at a red light? I had to slam on my brakes to keep from speeding right into the back right side of his van.

Now, I have no energy to argue with people, I really don’t. It’s just not in my nature. I pick and choose my fights and if I argued with every driver that did me wrong on the street, I’d never get down a mile of an avenue. Usualy what I do is to try to roll up into their sight and give them a dirty look. This guy wasn’t even looking in my direction, so I had to roll on without displaying my fury with the carefully crafted “Don’t fuck with me” look that I have. You should see it, it’s genius…..or maybe you shouldn’t…..

Luckily, or thankfully, however you’d like to look at it, I do not freak out when cars come too close or just turn me off my path. I think cyclists that freak out and tense up end up falling or making a bad move and make things worse for themselves. Like scaring themselves more or even worse, getting hurt by falling. All I do is go Whoa!! and then contemplate the near miss later….like on here.

Fucking NY drivers. I don’t know how half these people got their licenses or even stay on the road, but there has to be more to getting your license than just being able to move a few levers…..like any trained chimp can do. Drivers don’t respect cyclists, they NEVER pay attention turning, they think speeding through a red light in traffic is going to get them where they’re going faster. They park in the bike lane!! I want to break out all their lights and windows with my lock and chain when they do that, then leave a sticker right on the windshield in front of the driver’s eyes that says, “Don’t park in the bike lane!!!”

Hey, that may not be a bad idea. If I got those reverse stickers that say the words on the sticky side….but wait, no. I can’t go to a place to have those made up and then get caught by someone who’d track me down by finding me through the printer. Hmm. Maybe then just regular stickers that I can stick on cars that say don’t park in the bike lane. It’s a really good idea, but risky. If caught by drivers, I’d get my ass kicked. If caught by the authorities, I’d probably be charged with defacing property. Maybe I can find some psycho riders that would be willing to do that…..

Must meditate on this one……..

So like I stated, I didn’t do the 5 Boro this year, and god was it hard to be riding around yesterday and seeing the riders coming back into Manhattan, still wearing their little blue smocks from the ride, and seeing the look of contentment on their faces. Yes, I must admit, I was a little miffed. BUt I kept telling myself, “The Tour de Brooklyn, the Tour de Brooklyn!!”

In any case, I went out yesterday to get some of that beautiful sun and air, despite the fact that I was still hungover form the night before. Rock and roll I always say. But I got some beautiful shots from my ride…

And believe it or not, but this shot is down by the Staten Island Ferry dock where people were still coming back, but somehow I snapped this corner with no one in the intersection!!

And here’s one more….

Looking at the beauty of mine own city, is there any question as to why so many of us ride?

…or do you have to? Who’s to say that a rider can like only one style of ride? I must admit that I have had problems with the fixed gear community–mostly (as I stated previously) the problem being the same as we snowboarders vs. skiiers. I suppose that there must always be two sides to every equation.

But going by my years of riding experience, I have come across many riders. All outdoorsy, clean air loving, out of the box kind people. I cannot say that I have any animosity toward another fellow two wheeler. (I have seen a rider in Prospect Park hit a roller blader, knock him down, injure him and take off without stopping. I wanted to smack the hell out of him and remind him of how cars treat us riders, but alas, he was faster than I was and I lost him on the criterium.) However, it’s like in any movie you see where one car pulls up alongside another at a red light, both drivers look at each other, nod in silent understanding, and as soon as the light blinks out of red and starts glowing green, they peel off in thunderous screeching. Classic American rivalry.

And rightly so it should bleed into the cycling community!! Granted there are sub-divisions of the track and free wheel groups, but I’m sure we can all agree that these two categories are the parents of our own little miniverses. Also at red lights, we too, check out the “other” guy/gal on their wheels and thus begins the drag.

My first thought when you say fixed to me is, “Damn snobs.” I can’t tell you how many times I have been sitting at the end of the turned up nose of a fixed gear rider when we talk shop, and they scoff at the extra components on my bike. Gears? Laughable, they shout out. Brakes? Ugh, they huff, I’m bored with you already. And you know what? That is really not the way to make friends. It’s bad enough that the road is divided among pedestrians, runners, roller bladers, cyclists and drivers–and none of us seem to get along!! So why do the fixed gear-heads want to keep themselves apart from we free-wheelers?

Apart from that, I think that riding fixed gears on the city streets is not really a good idea. I only say that because I know how badly the streets are chewed up, and rolling over bumps, potholes and outright canyons in the asphalt is so much more navigable on a free wheel. With a free wheel, you can roll over these crotch-busters, riding over the bar, legs stationary and ready for anything, absorbing the shock with your knees. With the fixed gear, you have to keep pedaling no matter what…that can’t be good for the bottom to keep pedaling, can it? And to go barreling toward traffic at the end of the block with no brakes…my knees go weak just writing about it… I can stop on a dime with my brakes and even on days when your body is just tired, squeezing those grips to save your life is heaven sent. (Not to mention those days you may be completely hung over and the difference between squeezing handles and having to use more musclature to stop is also what creates the divide for me.) You have to have a higher level of control in order to ride, period. Most people in general don’t pay much attention to their environments around them, even less in the city, but to be hyper-aware on two wheels takes a certain kind of mental fortitude. Fixed, I admit, you have to be Jedi. That is, only if you are a demon on your wheels and know what you’re doing.

I understand that there are fixed riders that have been riding forever and know how to navigate through the urban jungle, but there are a lot of newbies with their tracks that think just because they have a track, they are immediately taken into the fold and, by association, they are cool and knowledged. These newbies ride for a crazy short amount of time, perhaps thinking that by being able to get up that hill on the way home they, by right, are a true fixie. Dropping thousands on a track that you only tape up immediately afterward seems to be the thing. Or collecting variations of fixed gears, with pretty colors and straight bars (GRRRRRRR) by default–even having three or more bikes–gets them in the know. It’s easy to differentiate between the old schoolers and the newbies. As for one, I can easily blow the newbies away!! They handle potholes with kid-gloves, slowing down considerably to circumvent the hole. They think of their frames as designer labels, something to show off, not as an extension of thier own bodies!! And if the frame takes a beating, so be it any seasoned rider will say. Chicks, as well as dudes, dig scars. It’s cool.

Keep in mind that I call them newbies because I know that some will truly get the bug and stick with it for years to come, whereas most (by law of permutation) will drop the notion like every other trend they have followed. And many good bikes get recirculated back into the community for those of us that are broke but would spend their last dimes on the used dream bike and forego eating for a few weeks.

Coming off the high of road racing, I rode my road bike for years on the city streets and realised that the streets were killing my poor bike, but I liked the urban course. I did some research and found that the cyclocross was what I needed. Free wheel (of course), drop bars, thinner-than-mountain-bike tires but more bite than road wheels, aerodynamic, lightweight and durable, this was the bike that I had searched for. Then it took a few more years to find the right one. And the right one I did find.

That in mind, I find that a lot of the fixed newbies don’t do any research, they just know what is trendiest (even without history behind the trend), buy blindly and get out there to be seen. This is cycling: sweat, dirt and broken bodies, not a runway guys… get over yourselves. I can’t deal with a rider who thinks that they know everything about riding but have never entered a race. Fashionable gear and flat rides in Manhattan do not a rider make!!

I am making a call to all riders!! We are a breed all our own, whether free-wheel or fixed, but at the end of the day, the result is still the same:

Sweaty, salty and dirty bodies
Another cool story of how you have avoided death one more day on the city street
Dirt, asphalt, tar and grime on your body/bike/clothes/sneakers
Rockin’ thigh/calf muscles
Almost total disdain for drivers
Awesome blood/oxygen circulation
Blood rush to the head that beats any drug or drink you put in your body
Kick ass face/arm/leg tans
Runy nose (hehehe)
Keen insider’s knowledge of city streets–i.e. the Grid
SCARS
Freedom to move around the lanscape anyway you like
Sprocket markings on the ankles
Chain grease on everything you own
Inability to function without your bike shoud a situation arise where you can’t ride

Am I right? Let’s all be friends….can’t we all just get along?

For those of you who ride track or fixed gear rides (GRRRRRRRRR…..) I have some info for you too!! I found this page on the web on a site called oldskooltrack.com.

I tooled around a bit, and found it to be pretty interesting, despite the fact that I don’t like track riders just as being a snowboarder, I don’t like skiiers. I know, it’s stupid–we’re all out there to do the same thing and have fun, but human nature dictates we draw lines in the sand. I’m on the free-wheel side. You want to cut a line into the free-wheel side and I jump right into the cyclocross group.

But anyway, this site got me jazzed because, after all, riders are riders and we all love the rush no matter what the ride. And in fact, I had this crazy dream this morning before I woke up about riding a track bike around the city!! They obviously have some kind of subliminal messaging on the page….

Soon to follow are my thoughts on track bikes in the city.

Read the links and have fun!!

I came across this wondeful page by reading another blog. And being the hopeless information whore, I must post and share!! If you click on this link you will come to a page that details how to do things like making left and right turns in traffic, yielding (by both you and drivers) and defending yourself against mindless drivers.

I am already an urban rider and I knew a lot of things on this page. There were a few new things I picked up which made the read enjoyable, but also I just recommend reading something like this anyway, even if you DO know all the rules. It’s good just to reiterate and get info back to the forefront of your crazy (helmeted) biking head.

I don’t need diamonds, I don’t like pearls, flowers die on you and men come and go…..

Cyclocross is FOREVER.

Take that DeBeers.

Here I will post for you some information I have come across regarding eyewear for riding. Good stuff, very informative. I have gotten all of this info from the Village Cycle Center catalogue (link in sidebar). Read on…

Road Cycling Lenses tend to be darker than ones for mountain biking and generally use a red tint to filter out blue light and glare.

Off Road Lenses need an orange or amber tint also for filtering blue light that causes glare. Orange or amber tints increase contrast on the trail that pop out obstacles a little more than if you were not wearing glasses at all.

Road and Trail Lenses call for brown tints which improve depth perception and also reduce glare. They are good for variable conditions and the dark tint reduces eyestrain.

Grey or Smoke Tints keep colors in their most natural, unfiltered state, also reducing eyestrain.

Low Light Conditions, like cloudy days, yellow, red or orange tints are the way to go. They help protect the eyes and also create contrast.

Clear Lenses don’t provide contrast but are good for keeping wind, bugs, dust and other outside factors away from eyes.

I have just learned that your chain can stretch!! Who knew??

But apparantly it seems that if your measure your chain for a full twelve links, if the distance is longer than twelve and one sixteeth inches pin to pin, it’s time to replace the chain. If it is over twelve and one eighth inches, then it is probably necessary to change the cassette as well.