handlebars

Some great animation here...and they ride bikes in the video too.


It's a video from the Flobots - a Denver band that's quickly making the rounds.

Austin 2008 video

Want to see what a 1300 person bicycle scavenger hunt looks like?

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Thanks again to everybody that came out to ride circus bikes, play human bumper cars, and do the keg swim. Thanks to our staff of 100 that helped make everything flow. And thanks to our incredible sponsors for supporting such a fun and unique two-wheeled event!

Scenes from Austin

We're still recovering from Austin. It was huge - the biggest UAR ever and the biggest competitive cycling event in TX. 1300 riders is a lot to handle - to say the least. We're still taking it all in.

I'll soon be posting some photos of the event, but first I want to thank the folks that made it happen:
Jackie - the lovely lady who took care off all the staff, and so much more.
Hans - the man out on the course - working to hold down 12 checkpoints all at once

Austin Ridge Riders
Austin Cycling Association
Texas Bicycle Coalition

These are our beneficiaries and they supplied the staff to keep the gears turning. We also had about 50 other staff helping out as well.
TimBo - who offers to suffer swamp ass each year...and miss a day with his baby, Josie
Sammy - who helped set up the checkpoints, raced with his son Jonah, then helped clean it all up.
Soliolio and Nicole- who wrenched prior to the UAR, then offered to let a Austin American Statesman camera crew following them around all day.
Rusty with New Belgium - this fellow and I met over a couple Fat Tires to talk about partnering on the UAR 5 years ago. And today we couldn't be happier to have NBB as our title sponsor.

Last but not least...these guys helped me inflate 40 inner tubes on Saturday night. With the money I gave them for their efforts, they planned to go buy a 12 pack. They danced a little jig to say thanks and they were on their way.

More coming soon!

There's a party brewing...

It's been a long day of picking up a 'refir' truck, a little bit of beer, and tuning up the obstacles. The Austin quizzes are all in. If you scored a 65 or above...you're in the 1st start wave...congrats. It's one tough quiz...and no, the answers will not be available online ;)

See you at packet pick up at the Rio tomorrow.

And now for something completely un-bike related...

Oh Long Johnson.

Good clean fun. That cat seems a little upset...and I wonder where it picked up the Indian accent.

Good to be back in Austin

Ahh....Austin. Sure it's a bit on the sweltering side, but it's still one of the coolest cities anywhere. It's crazy to see what's still here and what's not here...and what's newly popped up - like 50 or so high rises. Such a different cityscape now.

Jackie and I headed out on bikes to make our rounds today. We saw some of our favorites...


One thing I love about Austin is how you can take bike trails all over town. After living here for 11 years, I know some short cuts. It's something I really miss - how easy it is to get to a trail in Austin. And don't even get me started on the Green Belt. It may be rocky, but how cool is it that 10+ miles of single track are right in the heart of downtown Austin?
Here's something you can't get in Colorado: Migas tacos and a ginger bread pancakes. Then when we visited various friends - 3 different people offered us breakfast tacos. Sure do miss these too. My favorite tacos were the ones from Whole Foods before they moved to the new huge OganoMegaPlex.
Vytis at Ozone was happy to show us some of his favorite artwork. Next time you go in, ask him to see the framed Soldier Crab. He's very proud of it.
Check out this sweet Masi - 29er/700C wheels, flat aluminum fenders, brooks-ish leather saddle, internal shifting hub. It's at Ozone. Good for commuting. Yessir.
I love it when businesses hire graffiti artists to do murals. This is at the Co-Op - the Univ of TX bookstore. It's a burnt orange incredible hulk...with 'Texas Longhorns' cryptically written on the sides. nice.
Soliolio taking a breather from the action at Austin Bikes. Sol is my long time Austin training partner and 1st employee of Adventure Fit. He's since gone on to build one helluva pro-shop and I'm darn proud of him. They used to have this smooshed-face Persian shop cat. This street girl walked in one time and looked at the cat in a state of confusion. She then asked, "Can I axe you something? Is that a cat... or a dog?" She really didn't know. I love that one. I'll try to get a picture next time. Sol looks like he's enjoying the wind in his hair in this shot. But he's just posing - trying to be provocative.
I bought me a new commutin' helmet. Jackie is purty. I saw this sticker in Portland that said "Helmets are sexy". It's true.
True dat. Well not really, but it won't be long.

Ahh...Waterloo. Here's Hans checking out some new tunes. Waterloo is where I 1st heard Ozomatli, Jack Johnson, The Roots, and Reverend Horton Heat. It makes me feel bad for buying MP3s when there are cool indy record stores like Waterloo.
And finally, a cool custom rasta painted bike - complete with pretty leaves.

We've eaten nothing but Mexican food since we've been here. I guess you can say were a bit deprived. Soon, we're off to the RIO for margaritas and more mexican. Yum.

ATX bound

We head out tomorrow to our Austin event - the biggest event of the year. We're super excited to see it all go down. In my opinion, you can always judge a good party by the number of kegs at the end. On Sunday afternoon, we'll have 20 keg shells. That's a party...in my book at least.

Since I got my Blacksheep, I've been doing some long rides to the MTB trails. Yesterday , Kurt and I pushed it a bit. We went from Longmont to Ft Collins via Devil's Backbone and Blue Sky trail....then we got some lunch and did it back the other way. It was amazing how much better we felt after some tacos. I think I'm going to eat lunch on all my rides now!

Here are some photos from the adventure...
At the trail head to Devil's Backbone. Kurt pointed out that there are lots of ridges that look like this, but for some reason, this one seems rather glorious after riding all the way to it.Starting the Blue Sky trail - some very sweet Colorado single track. it's great both directions.We had a motorcycle dude tell us there was a big snake in the road...sure enough. I think this little guy escaped unharmed
The ride home from Ft Collins felt great. I highly recommend Chipotle's barbacoa tacos as a mid-ride snack.

Rasta was very happy to see us home safe. It was a 7 hour MTB ride.

So now...we get ready for a solid week of 100+ degree temps in ATX. Thank goodness we got to experience some beautiful early summer Colorado weather. Barton Springs, here we come!

Big shirt

Kurtie Kropp and I did a big ride today. I'll update soon.
In the meantime, check this out:

Caution: more bikes on road

I just checked out this clip on MSNBC.

It seems that people are riding bikes more than ever - as a substitute for driving. I guess $4/gallon was the tipping point. That's a good thing if that's what it takes I suppose. It was an interesting point in this story that people are trying to tune up their existing bikes, rather that purchase a new bike. Of course, the story was shot in Minneapolis which has a huge bike scene. So, everybody already has a bike - it's just that gas was too cheap?

Very clever...

I have to say that the economy/gas prices/our environment are downright frightening these days. I've had many discussions with many different types of people about how they have been affected lately and just about everybody is personally hit hard.

I rode my bike with a B.O.B. trailer today to run errands and ended up taking home 20 oven mitts (perhaps for a new obstacle ;), 80lbs of dog food, and a harmonica. During this trip, I had a reoccurring daydream of a Mad Max type scenario where cars reserved only for outlaws since there's so little available fuel. In this fantasy, bikes become the predominant means of transportation, serving as the primary source for moving items and getting from place to place. I envision rows of cyclists - like horses, pulling a trailer making deliveries. Kinda like the riders in Triplets of Belleville - except in this future society, the riders will be highly prized. It's a fantasy that I plan to further develop.
It's unfortunate that most of our culture is overweight, out of shape, and very unfamiliar with hard physical work. The concept of cycling is almost inconceivable. So a strong set of legs and lungs will very very valuable. There are many tangents that I then take this vision including massive bike road races on roads no longer used by cars, resourceful uses for huge SUVs that no longer serve the same purpose, and bike shops taking over the real estate of Wal-Mart since bikes and bike products will be in so high demand.

Let me tell you folks, things are happening and they're happening fast. If there's something positive to take away, it's the fact that you are a bike rider and from everything that I can foresee, there's a big place for us in the future. I'm not anti-car...far from it. It's just that cars may not be a viable transportation option in the very near future. So it's time to plan ahead.

It's time to consider:
The Big Dummy
The B.O.B
Kona's Ute
The Newt

For those of you not riding your bike for transportation, consider this: a 125 mile away destination (250 miles round trip), using a mid-large size SUV will cost you $80. That's just 4 hours on the road. Now just think what that would be WHEN gas prices rise to $10/gallon.

This is not to scare you...more to pat you on the back for riding your bike more often. So best of rides...think about this next time you ride to work. You'll be getting a leg up on the rest of society.

Want to see a freaky retro bike video?

May I present..."1 got FAT"

A smorgasbord of sports

We cruised down to Vail CO last weekend to checkout the Teva Mountain Games. It's a cool multisport event with climbing, kayaking, mtbing, road bike hill climb, fly fishing, dog events, slack lines, yoga, and many more sports I'm probably missing. I tried my hand at the mountain bike race. I seem to forget that racing MTBs in TX is nothing like racing in TX (where my skills were developed). There was also a $17K prize purse on the line, so the talent was out in full force.
My favorite event of the day was this crazy dog jumping contest which had doggies doing a running jump off a dock to see which dog could get the most distance. The winning dog (which was sponsored by Cabela's and the 2nd best in the US) jumped almost 26feet.
It was a good day. I do have to say that I was perplexed with the alcohol set up. The only drink available was PBR. It's cool that this beer is making a strong comeback with the alley cat scene, but this was VAIL Colorado - town with some of the most expensive real estate in the world. No quality beer (sorry PBR fans), no margaritas, no full bars...just PBR. I suppose I'm just spoiled with New Belgium.

Ok enough talk about beer...it's time to ride! I hope you all had some good rides today!

Sticker Contest!!!!

Our neighbors down at Sticker Giant made some sweet CUSTOM stickers for us which we proudly put on everything we can think of: bikes, speakers, signs, traffic cones, cars, cats. It's simply amazing how many places these things will stick.

Photo courtesy of Dapper Lad Cycles

So how would YOU like your very own shiny, new, pretty ,sticky, and colorful New Belgium Urban Assault Ride sticker?!

Here's what you've got to do:

Send us your best ideas for a line/saying for a bike/bumper sticker.

The best entry wins a pair of UAR socks and a sticker. 9 others receive a sticker mailed right to your door step.

Do not send the following bumper stickers ideas as they have already been done by Stevil Kinevil:
"Guns don't kill people, people with mustaches kill people"
"I've missplaced my air guitar"
"Virgin Blood is Vegan safe"

Good luck and thank you Sticker Giant for our cool stickers.

Random things seen while riding my bicycle

In between Longmont and Ft Collins, you can take a trail called Blue Sky. Nice way to get from point A to B
Last Saturday's ride in Golden
Red Rocks amphitheater - before we started up Mt Falcon
Little Maple getting her run on
baby goose season
the most colorful bike I've seen in a long time. Pink Spokes!
A cool statue in Loveland.

Sometimes it's nice to stop and smell the roses (or at least take pictures of all the cool things out there). And if I wasn't on my bike, I would not have seen any of these things.