Lance – LOL
Don’t get off the bike Lance… Stay on the bike… Stay on the bike…
(via Prolly)
Archive for 'Just Cool'
Bikeridr in Paris
So what do you think of when you hear the words ‘Paris, France’? You might say the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame, or maybe you’ll think of something more gastronomic like fine cheeses and delicate Bordeaux wines… I certainly think about all those things, but I also think of BIKES. Yes, I think of Parisians riding home from work with a bottle of red wine and a baguette under their arm, and of course the Tour de France!
My wife and I recently spent just shy of two weeks in the City of Light, and let me just say, what a city! But beyond all the romantic Parisian experiences that we managed to enjoy, like walking along the Seine River, sitting under the Eiffel Tower, sipping café crème in little Brasseries that people like Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald once frequented, and dining in some of the most incredible Paris restaurants, I wanted to see the real European cycling scene! I wanted to browse in incredible boutique bike shops, and oogle over the finest road racing machines Europe had to offer. I mean, after all, Paris and the Champs Élysées is where the Tour de France finishes up! This is a cycling Mecca, right?!
Sheldon’s epic rides
Well, it took some digging, but I finally managed to track down photos of all of Sheldon’s past rides.
It’s true, dear readers, sheldon wasn’t always the Element rockin’ stud he is today… Indeed these photos tell a very different story.
But I’ll let you be the judge…
2011 Rocky Mountain Element
I always like behind the scenes stuff – be it movies, Discovery channel’s “How it’s made” or anything like that. Similarly, when there’s a little bit of background about what goes into making a bike, I eat it up.
It’s also really nice to see companies leaning on their pro’s for feedback and product development. I know it’s commonplace with most companies now, but it’s nice when that aspect of the relationship is highlighted (Specialized and Cervélo also spring to mind), and it’s always nice to see it first hand (well, through video anyway ;-)
Sheldon will be stoked about this one… Though I’m still baffled it’s taken Rocky until 2011 to upgrade their XC race rig to full carbon.
2009 – Rapha Continental in Retrospect
Over the last three years the riders of the Rapha Continental have explored some of the most beautiful regions and roads in North America. With the help of customers and friends, the chronicle of our ongoing journey has now grown to fifty rides and our journal is complete with stories, cue sheets, photography and films.
The Rapha Continental continues in 2010 with a slightly different approach but the same goal—find, ride and share stories of some the most beautiful roads in the country—only this year we are going to join a handful of organized ride events. As we have done for the past three years we encourage you to ‘join us’ with the tales of the road, but this summer we are looking forward to joining you at these classic American rides.
Embracing the Dark Side
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
– Yoda
Isn’t suffering what cycling is all about? ;-)
There was a time I never thought I would own anything other than a mountain bike. I literally scoffed at the idea: “Why would I ever own a road bike?” I asked myself, “Road riders never look happy, and they can only go where the paved road takes them… LAME!”
Well kids… I have to say I’ve been converted.
Any cyclist who starts taking their off-season or early-season training more seriously can attest to the benefits of having a road bike. It enables you to start putting in some serious miles long before it’s possible on a mountain bike. From a training perspective it makes sense, but there’s more to it than just that.
Project Uranus
Pearl Izumi hits it out of the park with their 4D Chamois and some heavy hitting journalism on “Project Uranus.”
From Road.cc:
US-based cycling clothing firm Pearl Izumi has revealed that it is working on a project, kept secret until now, to test its new chamois insert in outer space to help ensure that you get the maximum comfort possible during your ride on that most delicate of contact points with the bike…
Advantage: Cyborgs
I always think it’s cool when some aspect of science-fiction finds its way into our reality. Most of the time, if you look for it, you’ll find all kinds of examples and one of the most common ones has got to be the proliferation of the cyborg. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a cybernetic organism (i.e. an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). Fictionally speaking, as in science-fiction, this is usually thought of more like the Borg from Star Trek. This month, WIRED magazine published an article called ‘Advantage: Cyborgs’, by Clive Thompson, which looked at how in the world of chess, the best of the best aren’t the Chessmasters, or the Super Computers, but instead the computer-aided humans – this combination is unbeatable…
Some Assembly Required
How awesome is this… I remember the excitement of peeling off the cellophane packaging and opening the box of a new model. Carefully placing all the plastic cut outs onto my table and painstakingly dissecting the parts prior to starting the intricate build process… I can almost smell the model glue now ;-)
Artist Michael Johansson has taken this visceral experience and augmented it to a real-life proportions in his exhibition “Some Assembly Required”
As Michael explains:
As a child I was fascinated building models. I remember breaking off the pieces from the surrounding plastic sticks that were leftover from the casting process and subsequently gluing the pieces back together in the right order by following the instruction manual.
A real bike is turned back into a space of imagination. By this I wanted to address the similarities between different contexts and spin concepts such as size and belonging.
Worth a look for sure!
via Prolly
Sometimes this big world seems small
I want to say just how crazy I think it is that people from all over the world read our little bike blog. I mean you start a blog and post articles so people will read it. That is the point, but I just think it’s super cool that people actually do! So, on my last post, Pascal, a rider from Belgium commented, mentioning that the weather was a bit gloomy there that day, and that he’s been reading up on our Transrockies adventures because he’s going to be racing it this summer. (I hope you don’t mind me singling you out here, Pascal) When I read that comment, I just thought ‘Huh… You know… How cool is that, that riders, like Pascal, from thousands and thousands of kilometers away are able to so easily read our stuff.’ Sometimes this big world seems small, indeed… So yeah, this comment of Pascal’s got me thinking about the Transrockies again. I know quite a few people racing it this year, and so I wanted to share another quick story from last year that I think is pretty cool.
