Joshua Trees is so weird

They is I says.

Here is Elena looking at the biggest joshua tree in the whole world. Or at least close to it. Allegedly 40 feet high and 300 plus years old. It was a pretty cool place to visit:


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The teddy bear cholla garden was also spectacularly odd


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We are back from a california trip that put us in Santa Barbara, LA and Palm Springs over the course of six days. Blogging shall resume semiregularly, with bicycle content, I swear!


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Practicing for later

Got some new spectacles and I am not quite sold on them yet. Perhaps a mustache would help?







Stay tuned for developments. Speaking of mustaches, please see this spectacular blog, Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

And some favorites in the spectacle and mustache department here and here.

Bicycle crashing

Give the people what they want I always say. I get about 10 hits a day since cross nats looking for video of Ryan Trebon crashing at Nats. I think most people find my mefarm v treefarm video lacking a bit. So here you go, a video of Ryan "treefarm" Trebon getting clotheslined by a rider who looses it and crosses the tape:



He is OK already and in europe getting ready to fight the belgian overlords in races leading up to worlds. Pretty nasty.

Speaking of nasty, check out this track race where 13 of 17 racers bite it on the track. I could watch this over and over again. Everyone was OK more or less. Junior Race in australia:



Note they interview three separate aussie pros in the nightly news broadcast. Awesome.

Plant poles OUTSIDE skiis please

Hmmm maybe new poles for christmas this year?

Otherwise a great day skiing up here on the Los Alamos XC ski trails. 2" of fresh powder on groomed trails in the woods and a great job by ken on the meadow grooming.

More pics from the day here

Flying Pigeons in NYC

Thanks to Marrock and several other commenters for pointing out you can now get Flying Pigeons Bikes in the US. Specifically NY at flying pigeon NYC. They sell em for $350 for basic black versions and up for some wacky colors. Both single and double top tube mens bikes and a women's bike as well. They will ship in the US for about $75.

They also have a blog showing pics of their bikes throughout NYC.


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If you live in england, a commenter pointed out that Flying Pigeons may be imported to England, rumors here mid page or lower....

The foreign chair

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Wink256 inspects the new chair. Laboriously wrapped in indonesia using twine and small lengths of cardboard, the was shipped around the world and not unwrapped until we got it. I was hoping to find a dessicated lizard or a batwing or some other artifact of the original country tucked in the packaging, but no luck.

Watermelon hauling

In the giant carrefour (french walmart) in Denpasar in Bali. The mighty watermelon hauling machine. The fruits in bali were pretty crazy. Dragon fruit, snakeskin fruit and rambutan were quite odd, I had never seen any of them fresh before. Great stuff.

Snake skin fruit and Rambutans in the market in Denpasar:


Weird rubbery snakeskin fruit:


Rambutan, like a spikey lichee, jellylicious

Tropical Chopper

Innocent balinese children corrupted by the seductive power of the chopper.
I blame megulon-5 for this.


Damn you megulon-5, damn you!

First real snow ride of 2007-2008

All that pesky rain has finally turned to snow. A steady snow all day dropped 4" in town and untold millions at higher elevation. A slightly muddy morning commute gave way to a full on blinding blizzard evening commute. So good!



Speaking of snow sports, if you like cross country skiing, we have a pretty active club in Los Alamos with some great groomed trails. I have encouraged the club to start blogging as a way to easily distribute ski conditions, race reports and the like. I think it is finally getting going. See the world of los alamos cross country skiing at the South West Nordic Ski Club Blog. Go team!

Bday trench jockey

We have had a couple of big storms roll up out of the south bringing lots of moisture. The hoped for cold fronts from the north never materialized resulting in a couple of inches rain and very little snow. The first rainstorm melted 6" of snow on top of the 1" of rain and helped funnel water into the basement. The second strom friday night had me out in the wee hours of my birthday digging trenches by flashlight to keep the water away from the house. We need some guttering I think. But the trenches worked pretty well.

In the teeth of the storm with two little trenches in the background.

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egads, it works!

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the ancient rake (1 dollar at a garage sale) that I dug the trenches with after snapping the head off of the hoe

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Well earned birthday breakfast of a bacon-green breakfast burrito, with a cup of espresso and another burrito waiting in reserve. Yum!

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It appears that the cold front has come in and maybe some more snow on the way.

Canggu Beach Biking

The resort we stayed at in Bali was right on cangu beach. It was not really a swimmable beach with shore rocks and coral, but there was a nice reef break about a quarter mile off shore. There also was a school right on the beach, so there were children of all ages on the beach; fooling around, swimming, taking their lunch breaks and after school sports training. These kids were doing an admirable job riding on the soft beach with their bikes:




Me on some rocks at the beach:

Ice biking bali style!

Outside the huge market in Denpasar, Bali was this bike just sitting there with a huge block of ice on the rack. I am not sure if it was for delivery or if it was there to take shavings off of so you could get some ice to pack your goods in. No one was around. Complete lack of brakes indicates that it was probably just an ice stand, but I have seen stranger things...

Also seen was this nice moped mounted coffee hut. I saw a bunch of bikes with little boxes on the back like this, but I was not quite fast enough with the camera for bicycle ones. Note the sheer volume of mopeds. The streets were overrun.

Wheeled rice bags

Amongst the mopeds I spotted this feller wheeling his bags on his bike. Probably rice. As you might be able to tell from the background, there are rice paddies everywhere in Bali, and often they are for sale, so people can build vacation villas. For once, this is mostly not the Americans fault. It is just too damn far. Thank you Australians!

Good cats bad cats

Oh such good little sunseekers!

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Bad cats, get in your cages!

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This is where my cross race report was supposed to go, but a few hours of trail work on saturday morning, plus a number of hours cleaning up a flood in the bike dungeon saturday night made driving to ABQ not so appealing. Dammit. We got 1" of rain on friday night to saturday morning instead of the generous snowfall advertised by the mendacious weatherfolk. This revealed weaknesses in our home design. No cross racing, so you get kitties instead.

Bali Biking

I think I have exhausted the bikes from singapore part of the trip, now on to bali.



Bali was once a dutch colony, hence there were a fair number of these old dutch bikes floating around here and there. I think this is pretty similar to this dutch bike I saw in italy. Bali is almost completely given over to mopeds, but there were some intrepid cyclists, mostly older people and kids. Again the cheap walmart crappy mountainbike was the main bike, but there were a few gems which I will share with you over the next few weeks.