Powered by the Satan

Sweet! It is not about whether Bettini is on drugs or not, it is really about who he has in his corner. He clearly is a Satan powered pedaling machine. How can anyone compete with that?


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(update: http://velonews.com/images/int/13429.20908.f.jpg, they seem to have taken this off the original article, crafty, trying to impede satan bettini)

Well you can't really. You just can't.
I expect the UCI to ban satan worship directly as an obvious performance enhancer.

Congrats to the cricket on getting to be all stripey again next year.

Sono Paolo Bettini, We are all Paolo Bettini. You are getting sleeeeeepy...

Musings from the airport

On the road again. Sitting in terminal B at ABQ waiting to board the minijet to SLC and then connecting beyond.

I live about 100 miles and 1:45 from the Albuquerque airport. This is, for the most part, the main way to get out of NM. I drive by both the Los Alamos and Santa Fe airports to get here. Los Alamos no longer has commercial flights and Santa Fe is severely limited. Hopefully that will change soon.

Near as I can tell Albuquerque is no one's hub. It really should be. It has free wireless internet and possibly one of the best local dishes ever available in the airport. I can't vouch for any other foods here, but the Green Chile Chicken stew at Comida Bueno is just sublime. If you ever find your self in ABQ, try to get some. It ranges from slightly spicy to almost brutal, but it is worth it.

Ahhhh. Green chili chicken...

So very wrong in Seattle

I have been out and about and then back again. Hopefully I can get caught up a bit before the next trip.

I just want to say that I love bikes and like more people riding.


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I could not help smiling and laughing a lot though as I was wandering about downtown in seattle this fine Monday AM.


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Clearly a top tube pad is in order...

UCSB public service announcemnet

My brother lives out there in Santa Barbara, well Goleta actually. One of the highlights of visiting him is riding with him on his commute to work and watching all the students on the campus bike path riding no hands while operating their cell phone devices. It cracks me up. Especially if they are wearing ugg boots.

Check out this freshman transportation orientation article from the UCSB daily paper here. It has some sage advice:

“Don’t fucking text while you’re on the bike path, cause I’m sick of it,”


OK kids? Thats a big ixnay on the bike path texting.

Thanks to my brother for the link.

ubikequitous 5

Niels Bohr grew up absorbed in the natural history lessons taught by his biologist father and by various teachers and tutors, yet he was also interested in clocks and he became an accomplished bicycle mechanic.
Mark Fiege The Atomic Scientists, the Sense of Wonder, and the Bomb, Red Orbit,(redorbit.com), 9/6/2007.

Kind of an odd article, a bit forced, but no foolin? Niels Bohr bicycle mechanic?

Some diligence reveals the following:

click for e-source, from the book Cultures of Creativity: The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize.

Sweet! Neils Bohr cyclocross master!

I am so over Einstein on a bicycle, give me Niels Bohr master cyclecraftsman and besuited-crypto-cyclocrosser.



Or give me the curies tearing about the countryside on their safetybikes:

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I reread the excellent graphic novel biography of Niels Bohr:Suspended In Language : Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped, but no explicit mention of bicycles. A few drawings of him riding or pushing a bike, but mostly physics and the rest of his interesting life.

Pro cycling grocery bikes!

Vuelta spoiler below...

I love it when pro cyclists are commuters/errand riders. I think there was an interview with Matt White (?) when he was on Postal and he was commuting around Girona on a way too small 70's folding bike (anyone remember this? Maybe cyclesport in the postal era?). Michael Barrym(T-Mobile) and his wife Dede (womens world cup winner) have the all time nicest city bikes courtesy of Michael's dad, Mike Barry, frame builder at Mariposa Cycles.


Dede's city rider, click for source at Mariposa's website



Michael Barry's porteur, click for source at Mariposa's website


And just this weekend newly minted vuelta stage 14 winner Jason McCartney was quoted as such:
"I'm still looking for a new team in 2008." McCartney said, "so I hope this win will help. I don't want to stop riding a bike. Cycling is my big passion. I even use it to ride to the grocery store."
from velonews, 9/15/07

I hope he does find work. I have fond memories of watching him on an all day attack over Woody, Neel and Wolfpen Gap in the 2004 tour of georgia. Anyhow, add him to the collection of pro cyclist cycle commuters. Anyone else?

fallen posties Damon Kluk and Michael Creed drag the peleton over the KOM Stage 5, 2004 tour de georgia

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Ubikequitous 4

The farm lay strung along a narrow and pitted farm-to-market road, built in the nineteen-seventies, when Harouni still had influence in the Islamabad bureaucracy. Buff or saline-white desert dragged out between fields of sugarcane and cotton, mango orchards and clover and wheat, soaked daily by the tube wells that Nawabdin Electrician tended. Beginning the rounds of Nurpur Harouni on his itinerant mornings, summoned to a broken pump, Nawab and his bicycle bumped along, decorative plastic flowers swaying on wires sprouting from the frame. His tools, notably a three-pound ball-peen hammer, clanked in a greasy leather bag suspended from the handlebars. The farmhands and the manager waited in the cool of the banyans, planted years earlier to shade each of the tube wells. “No tea, no tea,” Nawab insisted, waving away the steaming cup.
Daniyal Mueenuddin, Nawabdin Electrician, New Yorker August 27, 2007

Burro!

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Sweet graphic design. I am not sure how these little trailers are, but that is one good logo.


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Road Find of the Day, creature pelt!

We are a two biker household. I ride incessantly and Elena is a stalwart fair weather commuter. She has not quite mastered the art of the roadfind as she occasionally tells me of riding by a screwdriver or wrench and NOT picking it up. However she got herself a good one last week. A nice rabbit pelt! All cured and tanned and whatnot, just lying there on the road:


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Of course we gave it to the cats. Here is wink256 modeling his new rabbit stole. So stylish:


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And, in a rare photo, Deepleted Uranium looking slightly crazed while adorned with rabbit:


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one oh nine and three quarters

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August motion update

I am both proud and disappointed in the last few months mileage totals. The lazys have been fierce on the weekends, and I don't think I have done any rides of over 30 miles in the last two months. Despite that, I still have hit about 10 miles a day on average during the last few months. My basic work commute is about 6 miles round trip, but I have been running lots of errands and making lots of long cuts on the way home.

I have continued hitting my ride to work every day streak this year. I think I am well over one full year now, but I can't remember the exact date of the last drive, but it was sometime last summer or early fall. Since the May 06 I have driven to work twice and carpooled once. Pretty good. When I lived in berkeley and did not have a car I got up to berkeley labs from fruitvale and emeryville via bike or public transportation for a year and a half straight.


I have been running a bit more, as I am trying to get in some semblance of shape for cross season. I will try to pump up the milage a bit this month as well as get into a solid two a week running schedule. Maybe. If the lazies do not strike again!

So the totals for august were 22 miles running (a high for this year I think!) and 309 biking. That makes 2072 biking on the year and 99 on running.

The break down is 85 on the track bike, 70 on the road bike. About 50 each on the mtb, breeze and the twenty. And a big 10 miles on the picnica.

We shall see how it comes about this month.

Heading up into the depths of the Cañada Bonita on a labor day mixed terrain road bike ride

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Visit to the Flying Pigeon Factory

Somewhere along the way I discovered this great blog, Shanghai Crash Test Dummy with lots of great photographs of chinese bikes in shanghai. Jonathan Robson, the blogger, has a post about visiting the flying pigeon factory that is pretty neat.


I emailed him if I could borrow some images, and he gave me permission to use them and emailed me a whole bunch of images. I guess we can consider them Moscaline exclusives!

In addition to the blog he has some nice photos here. So here are a bunch of photos I borrowed from him. I think he has been having problems with blogger and the great firewall of china, but it sounds like he may be getting around that by porting himself over to wordpress, presumably soonish at the same web address. Clicking on the photos will take you to his blog, Shanghai Crash Test Dummy. check it out!















All images in this post from Shanghai Crash Test Dummy.












Not too different than pictures at the old chicago schwinn factory.






All images in this post from Shanghai Crash Test Dummy.









They were making Unicef bikes for Africa when he visited.





OK, great stuff, eh? Thanks Jonathan! so go visit: Shanghai Crash Test Dummy.

Bike piles

One of my favorite tags on this blog is the wheeled detritus one. All sorts of marginalized former rolling stuff. I found some good bike piles in santa fe last week.

At least two bikes worth of detritus front of the Santa Fe Library:

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With some stick welded repair on the down tube:

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On DeVargas St, downtown:

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If you like this sort of thing, there is a nice little picture book called Bicycles Locked to Poles by John Glassie. Basically abandoned and half stolen bikes locked to poles. The tragicomedy of the human condition is exposed as you page through the book. Oh the pathos!Or, just as easily, you could recreate these photos yourself if you live in or near any city/big college campuses.


Its no Bicycles Bella Cosa, but it has its own charm, especially to those of us who really appreciate the bicycle in ALL its forms.

Finland and Denmark Bikes

My good pal Laurita is still for the moment out there in Finland blogging about water treatment and occasionally posting great bike pictures. For this lazy post, I will steal a bunch of her pictures of bikes. If you want to learn more about water treatment techniques in developing countries or what it is might be like to live in Finland for a while, please check out her blog at finlandlaurita.blogspot.com. She uses science for unfettered good, and gets to use feces in her research! But without further ado, some photos that I stole from her. Click on any image for the source post.
Some sort of flower festooned crapped out bike in helsinki

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Front loader in copenhagen

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Excellent friend hauling in copenhagen

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A photo of laura at a great bike exhibit in a museum in Finland, check the rest of the post

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