60 smiles per hour

Here's another sweet video in the developing cute-girl-riding-a-basket-bike genre. This one features the Latina singer Andrea Echeverri, and she has a pair of killer arm warmers that are worthy of Mario Cipollini.

Memo to Michael Ball: the next time you switch up the Rock Racing kit, two words-- Sleeveless turtlenecks.

Didi's red tights are Castellis! Who knew?!

We mentioned a few months ago that Didi Senft -- the German dude who dresses up like the Devil for every major European tour -- had built a gigantic bicycle shaped like an electric guitar. Here's moving pictures of Didi rolling. (Sweet Adidas Minretts, too, Didi!)

I can't think Didi will have much trouble with his application to be recognized as the "world's largest mobile guitar." I just can't think of that many other mobile guitars, without taking the whole "phallic metaphor" approach.

Notes on the state of my "pro cycling journalism"

OK, so we're back. I covered the Nature Valley Grand Prix again this year for VeloNews, and it was -- as ever -- a hoot. Those athletes are something to see, and one of the pleasures of covering it with a MEDIA laminate hanging on my neck, is that it gives me an opportunity to run around talking to as many of them as I can. Being a shy and introverted person who makes a lot of bold and brash statements from behind my little screen and keyboard (we used to call this "cocking off" in the dark days before the Interwebs) this poses some interesting challenges. And it provokes a couple of interesting thoughts.

• Isn't it strange that Kristin Armstrong is completely unrelated to Lance, and yet dominates the pro women's field as much -- or even more -- than her male predecessor? Isn't that kind of a strange coincidence?

• CyclingNews.com's Kristin Robbins is a former pro bike racer turned journalist who cranks out the copy and gets the story straight, often from the mouths of the racers themselves. She knows which breaks were key, she gets inside strategy, and basically can spin a perfect yarn around any given race. That's what happens when you have her connections and history, and when you practice your craft 50-weeks out of the year. I think she's likely the best workaday journalist covering the domestic pro calendar, and I know that all the riders read her pretty closely.

• Robbins is also connected with Colavita/Sutter Home, one of the big pro teams on both the men's and women's side, where she has worked PR and media relations. In trad journalistic circles, that would be seen as working both the dark side and the legit side, but I can't see how that's much of a problem. Maybe if she had something ticklish to write about, some kind of major scandal within the ranks of her employers (The chamois butter is Canola-based! OMFG!) , then she'd be in a pickle. But frankly I think her longterm association with pro cycling is aces, and it's not like the domestic pro peloton is festering with secrets and intrigue. And if it is, it's probably just those goofy Aussies who wreck every after-party with their drunken derbying.

• I myself felt a little compromised in a couple of ways. First, it's great to cover this race year to year, but I'm at a significant disadvantage to folks like Kristin, Amy Smolens, and Kent Gordis (more about them in a second). Without regularly following the pro schedule in person, I don't have instant mental access to the general trends -- who's riding strong right now, who's injured, what happened at the Reading Classic last weekend, where is the peloton headed to next. True, I could stay on top of that stuff, but you know how it is. How much of your free time do you spend reading books that will help you do your part-time job better? (Part time as in about 20 hours per year.) But more than all that publicly available data, it's the inside information that would really help: the team directors personal cell numbers, the hard-working promoters, the USCF officials. I could get my sweaty mits on all that stuff, if I were more tenacious and anal and generally type-A.

• Another way that I was compromised in a more obvious way, relative to being an "objective journalist," was that I'd agreed to help out with the NVGP this year on the volunteer side-- I stood in to provide "race radio," which means riding in one of the officials cars and relating all available and relevant information about the race back to the team cars: You announce breaks, you call up cars to provide support to their riders, you give warnings about situations on the road-- loose gravel, railroad tracks, hard turns, the time gaps and the numbers of the riders in them, and so on. This is an ideal position to be in to try to reconstruct a race, incidentally, and by far the best place in the world to be. (One of the motos at the head of the peloton would be a slightly more advantageous place, but it would be hell to take notes. Truly at well-covered events like the Tour De France, television viewers have by far the best seat in the house. Those moto-guys with their cameras are amazing athletes in their own right.) I'm a terrible note taker, but I have an awesome memory for details-- what the course looked and felt like, how the peloton is behaving, what their mood appears to be, and so on. But I have almost no memory whatsoever about anything numerical or mathematical. Sometimes I think I'm a little dyslexic. Or maybe just an idiot savant, without the savant part. So it can be a significant challenge to take good legible notes about what happens during a race. The best way, in the end, is to make sure you get the numbers of the riders, the time gaps, and the portion of the course. No need to worry about teams or individuals until afterward, when you can reconstruct the race like a baseball box score. (You really can tell the story of a ball game, at least in broad strokes, from reading a box score, if you know what you're doing.) The officials I rode with in the Mankato Stage were brilliantly talented at remembering numbers, instantly editing them in order to read them back and confirm in ascending order-- meanwhile, I'm not sure I got about a third of those numbers even right. Luckily, the officials have a very redundant system of reading and confirming the numbers of any riders making a move or needing help or what ever.

• So anyway, I wondered: Working for the race and covering it would not pass the smell test of traditional journalism. But I didn't get paid, and it was actually a way of doing my job "out loud" and in service of the peloton and their support. Plus I only did it for one stage: The official kicked me out of the car in Canon Falls (I'd arranged to have someone else do radio tour that day because of the "smell test" issue.) If you want to see the difference between covering a race from inside an officials car versus covering it from the lawn at the finish line, you can read the Canon Falls report and compare it to Mankato.

• I'm not sure who, incidentally, really cares about the fine details of every little attack and every little 5 second gap, but maybe a lot of people are interested. Surely the riders and their sponsors would love to get every mention they can-- that's the business side of pro cycling, the pro part of pro cycling. Press coverage is PR. It's the reason companies like Colavita and Jelly Belly support cycling the way they do (though it very often has to do with a particularly enthusiastic cycling fan or amateur athlete high in the ranks of those companies marketing departments).

• If Kristin Robbins is the best "print" journalist working the domestic pro cycling scene, then Amy Smolens and Kent Gordis are surely the best on the broadcast side-- and more purely "journalists" in the traditional sense. Both self-employed, they cover many of the world's biggest cycling events from the Olympics to World Championships to the Tour de France to-- well, to the Nature Valley Grand Prix. It's a real honor to be chasing those two around and hoping just a tiny bit of their knowledge and expertise rubs off on a pretender like me. I envy them their expertise, but I definitely don't envy them their travel schedule. They live in hotels and airports and in rental cars, and probably have zip for a social life, and probably don't get to see their families very much. I don't think I could handle that trade-off very well, so there you go. That's the moral of the story: trade-offs.

• Finally -- for now anyway -- I hope that my work this year conveyed one thing most of all: What an astonishing athlete Kristin Armstrong really is. She's one of those athletes that establish whole eras. You know, before Kristin Armstrong and (inevitably) after Kristin Armstrong. And in many ways she personifies why pro cycling is really fun to cover as a journalist. She may be the best female cyclist in history -- the XX-chromosome Eddy Merckx (the Eddy Merckx with two X's, ha ha), and that's no exaggeration. Naturally, she's a cannibal on the road in every stage of every race, a take-no-prisoners kind of competitor. And yet she's so modest and approachable off the bike, taking extra care with media parasites like myself, almost looking for children and begging to meet them and sign autographs. She recognizes fans and makes friends with them. She wins the most competitive domestic races virtually alone, with no team, putting minutes into a field that is otherwise separated by seconds. She is head, shoulders, hips and thighs above any of her nearest competitors -- and yet you could never hope to meet someone more down to earth. If you never have the pleasure of seeing her race, you are missing a historical opportunity. An historical opportunity.
  

• Pinch Flat News is about bike culture. Less and less, maybe, as I just don't find the time to devote to it that I should or did. Several people approached me during the race to tell me how much they enjoyed the cyclocross coverage last fall, and I had to admit that I had "burned a lot of matches" on that coverage. Maybe I'll hit my stride again this fall, I don't know. Mainly, I just don't get a lot of feedback or ROI for goofing off here as I do, and I realize that's all a get-what-you-give deal, but you know. See "trade-offs" above. I get a lot of return for hanging with my amazing kids, making my Thursday night dirt ride, and occasionally, you know, showing up for the dayjob.

• Is pro cycling a part of bike culture? Definitely. It's a bit removed from the world of advocacy and spoke cards and mess bags full of PBR and clownish couch bikes, and there are elements of it that seem incredibly decadent and wasteful. The carbon footprint of any given race is gigantic, with all the huge vehicles chugging around the country just to put on a show of a couple hundred hardbodies in funny skinsuits. Decadent indeed. I was super bummed to see how the peloton threw water bottles this year during the extra hot Mankato stage, littering every little farmyard with plastic, stopping in front of a little ranch house to have a group nature break and whipping it out in full view of a little ranch house with a picture window -- when 100 meters up the road there was 5 miles of uninterrupted cornfields. Whatever. I just mention it because bike racing is still pretty exotic in rural America. To see the looks on the faces of these humble and generous people standing in their years to watch the show, and then to have their children literally pelted with litter, and their lawns urinated on by about 100 men-- well, I was embarrassed. I really was. Call me a puss. I know a lot of the guys could give a crap -- they're animals during a race, and that's fine. I'm just saying. There is actually a rule in place in Minnesota that riders are supposed to be fined for throwing their bottles. It's actually a matter of life-and-death-and-taxes, because livestock that eat plastic bottles can and do die. Any idea what a head of beef costs a farmer? Let's just say it's worth more than a handful of those fancy carbon bikes with Dura-Ace and Zippy wheelsets, and when they autopsy that Black Angus and find the shard of plastic that pierced the animal's intestines, and it has the words "Team Bissell Pro Bike Racing," what do you think their view is? Don't kid yourself: one head of beef is every bit as important to a farmers' livelihood as three or four bikes are to Team Health Net presented by Maxxis. I was chagrined that the officials made no effort to enforce this rule, although I announced it several times to the caravan on race radio. Maybe it's unrealistic, I don't know. And maybe the worst that will happen is that a few angry farmers will refuse to honor the road closures (which would not necessarily be all that harmless, come to think of it), or they'll just pull their shades. Whatever. I just know -- having grown up riding my bike around Mankato and knowing how little sympathy and understanding there is out there in that beautiful rolling and windy country -- that the last thing everyday cyclists need is less sympathy for our sport.
  

The biking over-under on Barack Obama

Sen. Barack Obama went for a bike ride yesterday, and a number of PFN operatives asked us to comment. We'll go with the tried-and-true plus/minus system that works so well in professional hockey.

1. Bike helmet: +1
2. Trek bike: 0
3. Seat too low/frame too small: -1
4. Underinflated tires: -1
5. Adams trail-a-bike with superlame seatpost coupling. -2
6. Implicit pro-bike advocacy and all that implies: +2
7. Riding a rigid hardtail in granny gear: +1
8. Schrader valves (Blue Collar, yo!) : +1
9. Pulling an entire nation's head out of its collective ass: +9

Score: A perfect 10

Variations on a cliche: "Bicycle Race" naked!

RE: Queen's "Bicycle Race"


Remember how we used to stroll over to YouTube and see which video had been watched more often -- Monty Python's "Bicycle Repairman" or Queen's legendary (and much overplayed) viddy?

We sorta gave that gag a rest for awhile, but I noticed today that some thoughtful young man has posted the uncensored version of the original music video. I didn't even know there were uncensored music videos in the Paleolithic age, but there you go.

Still can't believe Freddy Mercury wore that weird Brooks Brothers shirt, sort of the opposite of seeing your grandma in a knit tube-top. Course, maybe it was the undue influence of the Bay City Rollers.

Que pasa? Lowriding across enemy lines

Lots of cyclists -- especially those who don't regularly commute and therefore have funny ideas about entitlement -- help stir up the pot of vehicular aggression by just generally acting like self-righteous assholes on the highways and biways and bike paths of America.




And, you know, I'm pointing four fingers back at myself here. I've done it too. Once while I was standing at the corner of 50th and Minnehaha waiting my turn and losing my patience, a carload of punk kids poured a Big Gulp of Sprite over my head. I caught them at the next stop light, and -- I'm ashamed to admit -- went a bit Medieval on their car with the empty soda bottle. They had to pull out of line, blow the light and squeal their tires to get away from the crazy red-faced middle-aged guy screaming every word in the book. That week, I gave myself a break from intervals, and y'know tried to reexamine my priorities.



Anyway, there is one particular subulcha in America that actually celebrates cars and bicycles at the same time and in the same way, together, and that's the nifty Latino tradition of lowriders and chopped out bikes. Yesterday in Phoenix, for example, the Dia de Guadalupe and Lowrider Car Show featured significant contributions from the kids and their superpimp Stingrays.

School Daze: How'dya like to be a REAL bike mechanic?

United Bicycle Institute is a nifty mechanics' and framebulding school out in gorgeous Ashland, Oregon. Tuition for a typical course is around $1500, and there are about 500 students enrolled at any given time. Framebuilding is currently the hot topic -- courses are apparently filled for the forseeable future, in everything from fillet brazing to aluminum welding.



If you're like me, you assume you know just about everything there is to know about fixing a bike. And if you're like me, you're wrong. Way wrong. (Take UBI's mechanics' quiz if you'd like a strong dose of our ignorance, grasshopper.)

But what I really like about UBI is their companionable easy-going style. (One shop rule: no open-toed shoes! Ever dropped a shop-sized pedal wrench on your toe?) Especially as expressed in their very user-friendly spoke calculator, to which I shall forevermore direct newbie wheelbuilders asking for advice.

Tallbikers, meet your match... and then some

Getting ansty for the Giro? Here's a nifty story today about Didi "El Diablo" Senft, the fellow who's best known as the red devil that runs along torturing riders in the pro peloton.


But as this article makes clear, Didi's more than just a German with a sense of humor (which is exceptional enough, sure.) He's sort of a one-man industry, dedicated not only to devilishness, but also to building crazy clown bikes -- like this one, officially the world's biggest bicycle as determined by those English purveyors of Irish stout, Guinness.


Yesterday, Didi unveiled a new creation, a 12-meter long bicycle shaped like an electric guitar.

All I can say is this: What did that John 3:16 guy ever do for the world besides buy up its reserves of rainbow wigs?

Gratuitous TDF flashback juxtaposed with Gilligan's Island

You know, we're in the business of entertaining you. Show business!

So even on a slow day, we can always take out our suitcase of courage, look back on moments like this, and offer them up as lukewarm replays for your slacking pleasure.

When a stock 29er is not going to cut it

The world's tallest man, Leonid Stadnyk, just got a new bike. The 8'5" Ukrainian has been reluctant to have those creepy Guinness people come around with their measuring tape and their beer, but now he's finally given in.




Stadnyk's story is sort of sad -- he's been poor as a church mouse and unable to find shoes to fit his 17-inch long feet. He had a bike previously, but his 400-pound frame apparently turned the thing into spare parts.

It's hard to know what his new ride is -- just about anything is going to look like a kids bike with 100mm cranks with him in the saddle -- but it's highly customized with apehangers and beefy tires. Judging by the sensible rear rack and mixte design, we're guessing a Rivendell Bombadil + Glorious mashup? Certainly not a Giant. (Gah!)

Interesting to compare Stadnyk with the biggest man in the pro peloton. Thor Hushovd is two and half feet shorter, and 230 pounds lighter,and unless he lives in a hyperbaric dollhouse, he can't change his lightbulbs sitting down.

Esoteric Cycling Argument #117c: Indexed shifting vs. friction shifting

I hadn't really checked my calendar, so I wasn't aware that it was once again the season for all the retro-grumps to start complaining about electronic shifting -- and the inevitable reminder that the 100-Years War against indexed shifting is still in progress.

And Shimano invented indexed shifting specifically to make you buy a group, including their shift levers (and freewheel).

Of course, I agree with the general sentiment. Electronic shifting is, on the face of it, one of those ridiculous "innovations" that will only do one thing well: Separate the overpaid and gullible from their money. Still, to carry the argument all the way back to indexed shifting gets tiresome. I personally am a fan of friction shifting (er--actually, no shifting it all is fine by me).



But to suggest that indexed shifting was merely a conspiracy to sell more parts is kind of silly, since it really does eliminate the need for (the beautiful but obscure art of) finessing your downtube or barend shifters. Incidentally, it also makes STI- and rapid-rise-type shifting possible, and you'll have a hard time prying the cold dead fingers of certain cyclists from these devices.

Even the übergrump himself, Grant Peterson, is a fan of rapid rise.

Still, I have to say... the whole kerfuffle reminds me of something... can't quite put my finger on it...

Freecoasting for beginners: The ingenious pump track

Ever since reading an article in Dirt Rag years ago about building a pumptrack, I've been casting covetous glances at my neighbor's Bobcat.

This morning, I discovered a nifty video from the BikeSkills guys -- who, incidentally, have a whole line of instructional viddies featuring not some Joe Blowhard but real pro riders like Brian Lopes, Tara Llanes, and others -- covering everything from rock gardens to track stands.

Anyone know how to hotwire a Bobcat?

The bike shop saved my life...

...of quiet desperation.

John Maxwell, the owner of Allen's, is the only proprietor of a bar and grill in the Dominion who went to Oxford University. Who went to it, and who dropped out the day after he enrolled. He dropped out because he was buying a bicycle when a certified Oxford don blithered into the shop pushing a bicycle.

"This bicycle doesn't work,'' the don complained.

The merchant examined it carefully.

"And I only just bought it. Now I'm going to have to buy another one.''

"No, no, no,'' said the merchant. "It's just the chain.''

"There's a chain?'' The don stepped back, astonished.

"It's come off.''

"It's come off?''

"Not to worry,'' said the merchant, putting it back on. "It will work fine now.''

"Really?'' The don goggled. "You think so?''

And Maxwell, seeing in that moment, and in that don, the life he might end up leading, and the man he might become, walked directly out of the shop, went to his rooms, packed his bags, and caught the next flight back across the Atlantic.

Nifty excerpt from a good old-fashioned newspaper columnist working the street of Toronto. Not like today's punk newspapermen sitting on their duffs at the Internet, but like real gumshoes. Sitting on their duffs at the bar.



Thing is, anyone who's worked at a bike shop can assure you that you don't have to be an Oxford don to be an idiot. Plenty of people are just born that way.

How to pack a handlebar bag!

Darren Alff, the professional bike tour guy, has provided a helpful little program on how to pack your touring bags, which might have been helpful last Friday, the night before Hurl's Slick 50.

Not sure how you get to be a professional bike tour guy, but it must be tiring, since Darren has to lay down during the intro.

Don't forget: Something for self-defense!

Power Link: Your guide to what's driving the wheels of cycling culcha today 3/17

Big Jonny is stuck in the Drunk Cyclist archives ... Fritz takes a peek at a new Cannondale clown bike, maybe its clowniest bike ever ... Fatty argues with his bike, loses ... Skinny little Davide Rebellin wins Paris-Nice , still pronounces his name like a weirdo ... Carlton muses on Blue Peter presenter (?) Konnie Hug and her five-story-high bike ...

The 7-Pound Bike: Appetizer or Entree?

By now you've heard about Gunter Mai and his 7-pound roadbike with its $15,000 wheelset.






So the question that's really burning in my mind is this: Clearly, Mai is best-of-class in the category of "weight weenie." But logically speaking, is he a big weight weenie. Like, say, a Kielbasa?



Or is he a miniscule weenie. Like, say, a Vienna Sausage, or a breakfast link?

The real pioneers of cycling are on community access TV

So you know the Mashed Potato and the Funky Chicken. Do you know "the Bicycle"?

The natural follow-up question: Do you even want to know the Bicycle? Everybody say "Pedal!"

Also this: Only on community access do you see a family-pack of paper towels on the floor next to the host's easy chair.

Upturned barends: Ghetto stylie for Matures?

See, I think it's amazing that Pat and Cat Carroll quit their jobs and rode their bikes around the planet.


But frankly I can't understand how folks who spend that much time on their bikes have never learned that there are dozens of better handlebar options than the dangerous and ugly upturned-barends approach.

For starters, there's the lovely Nitto Dove Bar with quillbolt stem. Raise that sucker till you're standing tall as a fencepost!

Then, of course, there's this approach.

How the nice young man saves money on new hubs.

But of course, saving your hubs is about saving your neck, right.

Want to see what a pro BMXer runs on the street? Here's a Brian Kachinsky show and tell. Nice kid, even if he is a Packers fan.

Me? I run Vikings colors, substituting the training wheels for the hub guards.

Richard Burke, the founder of Trek, dies

Dick Burke founded Trek Bicycles in Waterloo, Wisconsin in 1976. For someone who claimed he wasn't much of a cyclist, he sure knew how to build a brand. He died last night in Milwaukee after complications following heart surgery.

My brother had one of these puppies -- roughly a 1980 touring model with Campy Record and (I distinctly remember) dry graphite chain lube, which I got a great kick out of putting down the back of his pants.


I stupidly waived my hand-me-down rights.

Probably what best explains the success of Trek is the high quality frame builders Burke employed through the early years. Tesch, Medici, and even American-made Masi's were all created by alumni of Trek's brazing brigade.