Archive for the 'Bicycle' Category

More positive

Published on February 6, 2009 in Bicycle, Future and Radio. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I just found out Sunday
I was lis­ten­ing to an inter­view with Sally Car­son (Fix­pert) on Bike Talk on KPFK today and she was say­ing cool stuff about the way you should act as a cyclist. About not being all aggro and flip­ping the bird, but just truck­ing along in all weather hav­ing a good time. When you send out pos­i­tive vibes to drivers, you inspire them to bike because it looks so fun (and then you won’t inspire dri­vers to hate cyclists more). 

I needed to hear that. I some­times get really frus­trated with cars and suvs cut­ting me off or almost hit­ting me and I yell and flip the bird. It can really get to me, about how cars have more rights, and can just run you off the road, and that the police or who­ever would take their side. And how cars con­tribute to smog and exhaust just chok­ing me and short­en­ing my life. Bitches. 

But like Laura tells me, it is not worth get­ting so mad and worked up over. Also, like Sally said, you can inspire them to ride bikes, which is like bet­ter for the whole world. And they were talk­ing about on the show that any­one on any kind of bike (road, moun­tain, beach cruiser, fixed gear, what­ever) is GREAT because it is SO MUCH BETTER than them dri­ving around in SUVs. There is no rea­son to be an elit­ist about it. The main goals of the cycling com­mu­nity should always to have more peo­ple riding. 

I have always been inspired by peo­ple like that, being so cool and nice to every­one. I feel like there are elit­ist and accept­ing cool peo­ple in any com­mu­nity. I would like to be more like that, not all aggro and elit­ist all the time, but be really cool, pos­i­tive, and accept­ing. We all have a right to love life and not to be shamed for trying.

I am prepared for amazing things to happen

Published on January 10, 2009 in Bicycle and Future. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .


Cyclist Takes Bed Along in Home­made Trailer (Oct, 1940)

I am siked! Stoked! Wack! I don’t know. But I’m pretty pumped. We are at this cross­roads in our life, our econ­omy, etc etc and all that yucky stuff, where we can really do any­thing we want. WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO LOSE? Very lit­tle really.

This pic­ture is maybe the third thing to really get me pumped this year so far. First was read­ing Swim­ming to Antarc­tica by Lynne Cox. I mean, she has to be the coolest most inspir­ing per­son. Like really UP THERE with Gandhi or Dr. King or Obama, you know? She has been swim­ming her whole life. She swam the Bering Strait! No wet­suit, no spe­cial warm­ing noth­ing, she just swam it in her bathing suit. Not only that, she swam from the USA to the Soviet Union DURING THE COLD WAR. How pow­er­ful and inspir­ing is that? Not only was she swim­ming in like 40° water, but she was swim­ming for diplo­macy. And swim­ming the Bering Strait wasn’t her only or biggest accom­plish­ment, she has set all kinds of world records and swam in all kinds of places where no one ever has. In short, read her book! Buy it or get it at the library or bor­row mine. It is very important.

So that was the first thing. The sec­ond thing isn’t as spe­cific. It is a more gen­eral con­cept, or a move­ment really. L has been get­ting pretty deep into the idea of per­ma­cul­ture (to over gen­er­al­ize and state the obvi­ous). She has been an incred­i­ble wealth of knowl­edge and keeps shar­ing these mind-blowing things that peo­ple are doing. Like “…there is this farm run by two ladies near santa cruz and they deliver the CSA on bike.” Whoa! Right? And that is only the tip of the ice­berg. There is a quote that maybe typ­i­fies the sec­ond thing.

…cook­ing, sewing, wash­ing, clean­ing, read­ing, gar­den­ing, fix­ing, writ­ing, draw­ing, craft­ing. woman’s work? per­haps. but i think its bet­ter than lin­ing the pock­ets of some­one else, work­ing for basi­cally noth­ing (for what end or pur­pose), prob­a­bly harm­ing the earth more (we have 30 less envi­ron­ment impact by me not work­ing). this work i do at home ben­e­fits us, not some unknown corp exec and doesnt pol­lute the earth.

We have made the choice to live off of one salary (and my hus­band works only four days a week) and that means that we will always be poor. one car, less “stuff”, noth­ing new for years, but much more hap­pier. that means we get to see and be part of her mile­stones, hear each new word uttered and each new task mas­tered.
– per­ma­cul­ture of family

It is about mak­ing a choice, decid­ing what you want to live for or to work towards. This may be a painfully obvi­ous and juve­nile con­cept, but I feel like I’m real­iz­ing its mean­ing fully for the first time.

The third thing is, as I have stated, this image from the Octo­ber 1940 issue of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence. Chet Jr. trav­eled 1,200 miles in 14 days fund­ing his trip by sell­ing post cards? WHAT? Are you kid­ding? That is very awe­some. AND he made that awe­some trailer to sleep in? Can I do that please? But seri­ously, what is stop­ping us from liv­ing out our dreams and doing very cool things like Chet Jr.?

So for 2009, a year of “change”, I am resolved to really think through what I want to accom­plish in my life and start doing it.

The things we never do

Published on September 25, 2008 in Beer, Bicycle, Dreams and Rants. 3 Comments

Lunch at Snug HarborThere’s always a hand­ful of things that I put off. Put off until when? Some mys­te­ri­ous time in the future? Some spe­cial occa­sion that never seems to hap­pen? I would like to air some of these ideas out.

I’ve thought for a long time about doing an Azusa/Glendora beer ride. I’ve thought about it since the Hot Knives beer ride. Although this really wouldn’t work any­more, it was a pretty good plan. There are four really good liquor stores in the Greater Azusa area. They actu­ally make a really good loop and tour of the area. And you know what? The Brown House would have been the per­fect end­ing des­ti­na­tion. Why did I never get this to hap­pen you ask? I have no idea! I thought about it being on my birth­day last year, but it felt like a lot to ask of peo­ple. But would it have been? Prob­a­bly not. Would it have been really fun and doable? Probably.

A lot of the other things I put off have to do with food. Mak­ing soy choco­late milk­shakes? Apple pies? French fries? There never seems a good time to do this. These are the quin­tes­sen­tial spe­cial occa­sion foods to me. They are my absolute favorite items. Are any of them hard to make? Not really. Well, crois­sants would be. I should add crois­sants to the above list. I love croissants.

It’s also like why don’t we have peo­ple over? Why don’t we have a spe­cial occa­sion roof party? I don’t know. There is no time like the present peo­ple! It’s like the roller blades you got for Christ­mas but kept in your closet because you didn’t want to get them messed up. One day you pulled them out to go blad­ing and they didn’t fit any­more! True story. Well, not really, but probably.

What are the things you put off? What are the things you always want to do but the time never feels right? Com­ment away friends. Let it out.

Possible future for my bike.

Published on March 20, 2008 in Bicycle. 0 Comments
Possible future for my bike.

I bought my bike about a year and a half ago with the inten­tion of pimp­ing it out. Or maybe not pimp­ing. Pimp­ing usu­ally has to do with adding tons of stuff. More like sim­pli­fy­ing my ride. Most parts I’ve bought over time. There was a lot of trial and error in this process.

My bike is a late 80s white Peu­geot road bike. (From what I can find I think it’s called Tour­malet.) When I bought it it had most of the orig­i­nal parts, all Shi­mano grupo, Mavic rims, that kind of stuff. So far I’ve replaced the han­dle bars with Nitto bull horns from Ben’s Cycle, the sad­dle with a nice Brooks sad­dle from IRO, the bot­tom bracket and cranks with IRO parts from Orange 20, and the back wheel with a cheapo Alex Rims wheel from Coates. I’ve been look­ing into Veloc­ity Deep-V Rims since the begin­ning because the are so hot, but I haven’t got­ten up the courage to drop $300 on that yet. When I do I think I will put a blue on the front and a white on the back. I want the blue to closely match the top tube pad I bought from R.E.Load.

Well, the future is unknown. This is only one pos­si­ble direc­tion. Besides who needs Veloc­ity rims, that just makes your bike more valu­able to steal.

Fixed!

Published on August 16, 2007 in Bicycle. 4 Comments


Fixed! (Dou­ble mean­ing indeed!)

I don’t really remem­ber when I started this project exactly, roughly it’s been just under a year. It is per­haps the best feel­ing to have it finally fin­ished. Speak­ing of finally fin­ished Prescott Fam­ily is get­ting pretty darn close. Any­ways, need­less to say, yes­ter­day was a pretty good day. 1) I picked up my bike, 2) We got jars for mak­ing the kom­bucha, 3) I ate udon noo­dles, 4) PLUS! BONUS! We watched the Office (by the way, have you seen this or this?)

So the bike! I’m look­ing for­ward to becom­ing less sheep­ish about going fast down hills; I’m get­ting used to the whole “stop­ping” thing. I feel pretty proud of this lit­tle project though. I replaced the bot­tom bracket, cranks, ped­als, sad­dle, han­dle­bars, rear wheel, the won­der­ful blue chain… It’s so sexy. I guess it’s not com­pletely done. I still need to tape the han­dle­bars, fig­ure out the front brake sit­u­a­tion (It’s the law, right? Or even if it’s not, I would feel a lit­tle more con­fi­dent in going really fast…), and it would be nice to get a match­ing front wheel. But all that isn’t nec­es­sary, I can ride it now. I CAN RIDE IT NOW!!! It’s been too long lit­tle bike. It feels so right because a) my other bike is huge, my body gets all tense rid­ing it for too long, and b) rid­ing fixed gear feels so log­i­cal, you’re mov­ing, the bike is mov­ing. If any­one wants to ride soon, well, in two weeks, after our trip, hit me up because I’m so down.