click for source.
New York Times Article on Jason McCartney riding in Beijing
Previous blog post on Pro cyclist grocery bikes featuring McCartney, Michael Barry and Dede Demet Barry.
Showing posts with label chinese bikes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinese bikes. Show all posts
8/14/2008
Best cyclist ever
Jason McCartney, Team CSC Saxobank pro, two time olympian, all around bike lover, is featured in todays NYT on a nice short piece on cycling in Beijing. Check the slide show, this is exactly what I did when I was in China. Ride around on a city bike gawking at other cyclists and taking pictures. There is also a fabulously geeky pic of him and canadian olympian michael barry riding around together on their rented city bikes in beijing. The audio slide show is great. Note the ropey calves, note the low seats, great stuff.
click for source.
New York Times Article on Jason McCartney riding in Beijing
Previous blog post on Pro cyclist grocery bikes featuring McCartney, Michael Barry and Dede Demet Barry.
click for source.
New York Times Article on Jason McCartney riding in Beijing
Previous blog post on Pro cyclist grocery bikes featuring McCartney, Michael Barry and Dede Demet Barry.
3/06/2008
Chinese snow bikes
My cousin Alison is off in nanjing for a year and it snowed an unusual amount this winter. She took some great pics of the storm including this gem:
click for source
See the rest of her Nanjing snow pics here
click for source
See the rest of her Nanjing snow pics here
2/17/2008
The mad lazer pointer skillz
After my trip to Iowa to give my chinese bike talk, I got a nice little package of comic zines from Cody. Elena and I spend an enjoyable lunch eating fried tacos and reading Cody's Awkwardly Put zine. I am very honored to have been immortalized as follows:
Awesome! If you want some contact her and maybe get some comic zine goodness yourself you can email her at :awkwardlyput: at :gmail: dot :com:
Visit her blog too which is updated more than sporadically, guaranteed!
Awesome! If you want some contact her and maybe get some comic zine goodness yourself you can email her at :awkwardlyput: at :gmail: dot :com:
Visit her blog too which is updated more than sporadically, guaranteed!
1/15/2008
Iowa bound
Just in case you are in Iowa and don't know yet, I am the featured speaker at the Iowa Bike coalitions Bike Night on January 19th in Des Moines. I will be giving my (soon to be famous in two states) chinese bicycle talk. Details here. If you are going to be there please say hi.
12/21/2007
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.
click for source...
If you live in england, a commenter pointed out that Flying Pigeons may be imported to England, rumors here mid page or lower....
They also have a blog showing pics of their bikes throughout NYC.
click for source...
If you live in england, a commenter pointed out that Flying Pigeons may be imported to England, rumors here mid page or lower....
9/06/2007
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.
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.
8/21/2007
Chinese Bike Resources
So, hopefully I have a few new readers from the Chinese bike talk. Welcome!
Here are a few things I talked about that you might want to check out.
First, please see my original Chinese bike of the day posts I posted in March 06 and February 06.
Also see the tag chinese bikes, unfortunately that only shows the last 20 or so things I tagged with that title.
If you want to see how they make giant bamboo baskets like these:
surf on over here for in process pics from giant basket making in Vietnam.
Here are some photos of a Flying Pigeon bikes i borrowed for in 2006. Very nice example of the mighty chinese bicycle:
Click for source post
If you want to know more about the giant budda (dafo) in leshan pictured here:
Well it is 73m high and it was started in 714AD and it was meant to ensure safe passage for ships at the confluence of rivers. wikipedia has more. Sorry I completely forgot all the numbers during the talk.
If you are looking for more information on the Yangtze River, three rivers gorge or tiger leaping gorge. I sort of recommend the River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester.
The book has a very interesting history of the river and follows the author Simon Winchester and his stalwart translator as they traverse the river end to end. While large swaths of the book are very interesting, I think the whole book is marred by Winchesters colonialism nostalgia and underlying condescension toward the Chinese. He seems overwhelmingly interested in the history of british in china and not quite as interested in anything else. It left a really poor taste in my mouth that sort of wrecked the rest of the book for me. Others I have talked to did not notice it or were not bothered by it, but it was kind of easy to impress an image of a pith helmeted Winchester being borne on the back by coolies over the otherwise interesting journey. I did enjoy most of Simon Winchesters other books that I have read. All said though, this was the book that inspired me to visit Tiger Leaping gorge and hike it. It is absolutely useless as a guide book as it was written over 10 years ago and things are changing so fast that that a 1 month old Lonely Planet guide to china was woefully out of date, and horrendously inaccurate as far as Tiger Leaping Gorge was concerned. Best advice I can give is get your butt to Lijang and hit the hostels and coffee houses for the up to date dirt.
me at tiger leaping gorge:
Finally there are tons of people who, like me, visit places and take tons of photos of bikes. Rhinos and Lilos has some nice asian bike photos up right now, like thisun from india:
click for source.
I also recommend checking out Finland Laurita and the clever cycles blog for bikes in other parts of the world, among others...
Here are a few things I talked about that you might want to check out.
First, please see my original Chinese bike of the day posts I posted in March 06 and February 06.
Also see the tag chinese bikes, unfortunately that only shows the last 20 or so things I tagged with that title.
If you want to see how they make giant bamboo baskets like these:
surf on over here for in process pics from giant basket making in Vietnam.
Here are some photos of a Flying Pigeon bikes i borrowed for in 2006. Very nice example of the mighty chinese bicycle:
Click for source post
If you want to know more about the giant budda (dafo) in leshan pictured here:
Well it is 73m high and it was started in 714AD and it was meant to ensure safe passage for ships at the confluence of rivers. wikipedia has more. Sorry I completely forgot all the numbers during the talk.
If you are looking for more information on the Yangtze River, three rivers gorge or tiger leaping gorge. I sort of recommend the River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester.
The book has a very interesting history of the river and follows the author Simon Winchester and his stalwart translator as they traverse the river end to end. While large swaths of the book are very interesting, I think the whole book is marred by Winchesters colonialism nostalgia and underlying condescension toward the Chinese. He seems overwhelmingly interested in the history of british in china and not quite as interested in anything else. It left a really poor taste in my mouth that sort of wrecked the rest of the book for me. Others I have talked to did not notice it or were not bothered by it, but it was kind of easy to impress an image of a pith helmeted Winchester being borne on the back by coolies over the otherwise interesting journey. I did enjoy most of Simon Winchesters other books that I have read. All said though, this was the book that inspired me to visit Tiger Leaping gorge and hike it. It is absolutely useless as a guide book as it was written over 10 years ago and things are changing so fast that that a 1 month old Lonely Planet guide to china was woefully out of date, and horrendously inaccurate as far as Tiger Leaping Gorge was concerned. Best advice I can give is get your butt to Lijang and hit the hostels and coffee houses for the up to date dirt.
me at tiger leaping gorge:
Finally there are tons of people who, like me, visit places and take tons of photos of bikes. Rhinos and Lilos has some nice asian bike photos up right now, like thisun from india:
click for source.
I also recommend checking out Finland Laurita and the clever cycles blog for bikes in other parts of the world, among others...
8/20/2007
Chinese bike talk review
So the talk went great. Maybe 40 people or so, maybe half from the mountaineers club and the other half from various bike clubs and friends in town. Lots of good questions. Lots of experienced travelers in the audience. It was really fun. Big thanks to everyone who came out and to the Los Alamos Mountaineers for hosting me.
Me going blah blah blah
click for big
The talk was in the historic fuller lodge, one of the few buildings still standing from before Los Alamos became the lab.
the heads of formerly living creatures decorating the wall
click for big
It was probably one of the hottest evenings of the year. But despite the heat, I blah blahed along for about an hour. I feel pretty good about it. I answered almost all the questions pretty well. I should have a resources post later this week with some links for people who are interested in the things I talked about.
Blah blah blah redux
click for big
So I have a real smooth 1 hour talk about chinese bikes with some photos and info on hiking tiger leaping gorge. If you want me to come on by and give the talk to your group or club, send me and email "tas :at: Tariksaleh :dot: com" and we can talk about it.
Me going blah blah blah
click for big
The talk was in the historic fuller lodge, one of the few buildings still standing from before Los Alamos became the lab.
the heads of formerly living creatures decorating the wall
click for big
It was probably one of the hottest evenings of the year. But despite the heat, I blah blahed along for about an hour. I feel pretty good about it. I answered almost all the questions pretty well. I should have a resources post later this week with some links for people who are interested in the things I talked about.
Blah blah blah redux
click for big
So I have a real smooth 1 hour talk about chinese bikes with some photos and info on hiking tiger leaping gorge. If you want me to come on by and give the talk to your group or club, send me and email "tas :at: Tariksaleh :dot: com" and we can talk about it.
8/12/2007
Chinese bike talk, Los Alamos, 8/15/2007 (by me)
I will be giving my chinese bike talk , this wednesday, 8/15/2007, 7:30 pm, mostly presenting things along the lines of the Chinese bike of the day series I posted in March 06 and February 06.
I will be speaking at the Los Alamos Mountaineers monthly meeting here in Los Alamos at Fuller Lodge. Unbeknownst to me, the Mountaineers seem to be a real, functioning mountaineering club here in Los Alamos. Real mountains scare the crap out of me. I will be happy to stay below 14,000 feet, thank you. But check out their website. Real expeditions and stuff.
I will be speaking at the Los Alamos Mountaineers monthly meeting here in Los Alamos at Fuller Lodge. Unbeknownst to me, the Mountaineers seem to be a real, functioning mountaineering club here in Los Alamos. Real mountains scare the crap out of me. I will be happy to stay below 14,000 feet, thank you. But check out their website. Real expeditions and stuff.
11/13/2006
More chinese cargo trikes
I am not sure how I missed these great shots of cargo trikes from beijing on fixed gear fever.
Click pic for source.
Photographer is Daniel Spehr
Note the hugely sagging chain. It was pretty typical of all the cargo bikes I saw in China. My theory is that they come with retrodirect drive and then quickly break that under actual use and convert the chain to single speed normal direct without actually shortening the chain any. Also note the nice head tube truss.
Click pic for source.
Photographer is Daniel Spehr
Note the hugely sagging chain. It was pretty typical of all the cargo bikes I saw in China. My theory is that they come with retrodirect drive and then quickly break that under actual use and convert the chain to single speed normal direct without actually shortening the chain any. Also note the nice head tube truss.
11/10/2006
Making giant bamboo baskets
One of my favorite thing from my adventures in china were the giant wicker or bamboo baskets that the vendors and others had as such:
click for big
Paul Woloshansky, a fellow cyclist and well travelled bike tourer saw my little write up on Bicycle Fixation and sent me these spectacular photos of men in North Vietnam making giant bamboo baskets for moped panniers. Paul also has some nice work bike photos on cyclofiend, including this well loaded basket seller bike. Paul can be reached at "bikwalla at telus dot net". Thanks for the photos Paul.
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Excellent, eh? If any all of youse dear readers have relevant excellent travel pics I would be glad to post them if they pass my highly subjective and variable standards of excellence. See more of my Chinese bike of the day posts here and here, or try the chinese bike label for all posts related.
click for big
Paul Woloshansky, a fellow cyclist and well travelled bike tourer saw my little write up on Bicycle Fixation and sent me these spectacular photos of men in North Vietnam making giant bamboo baskets for moped panniers. Paul also has some nice work bike photos on cyclofiend, including this well loaded basket seller bike. Paul can be reached at "bikwalla at telus dot net". Thanks for the photos Paul.
click for big
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Excellent, eh? If any all of youse dear readers have relevant excellent travel pics I would be glad to post them if they pass my highly subjective and variable standards of excellence. See more of my Chinese bike of the day posts here and here, or try the chinese bike label for all posts related.
10/29/2006
Bicycle Fixations
I wrote a little guest article/photo essay over at Bicycle Fixations, surf on over and check out Challenges in Chengdu and the rest of solid bicycle stuff on this site and knickers.
8/24/2006
Doing the Pigeon
As part of the show and tell for my bike talk I borrowed Craig Degenhardt's (owner of the retrodirect trike nice flying pigeon bike. It was much more styling than my forever bike.
Here is me riding the flying pigeon down in the 'querque:
click for big
Nice slack HT, nice big roadster wheels.
It had a nice head tube and a really cool "hood ornament" and nice boxlining on the fenders:
click for big
The bike was amazingly branded with nice little flying pigeon logos everywhere, like this one stamped on the crown:
click for big
Styling chaincase with the standard gold lettering:
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Nice details on the back of the fender:
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Finally a decent full bike shot:
click for big
I was disappointed in Cheng Du that there were virtually no Flying Pigeon bikes around, I only saw one or two. The forevers and others were pretty nice, but not quite as stylish as this one. The bikes seemed to be pretty regional with different brands in different areas.
Anyhoo, I was pleased to be able to borrow, ride and photograph the most stately and classic of the classic Chinese bikes. Thanks again Craig.
Here is me riding the flying pigeon down in the 'querque:
click for big
Nice slack HT, nice big roadster wheels.
It had a nice head tube and a really cool "hood ornament" and nice boxlining on the fenders:
click for big
The bike was amazingly branded with nice little flying pigeon logos everywhere, like this one stamped on the crown:
click for big
Styling chaincase with the standard gold lettering:
click for big
Nice details on the back of the fender:
click for big
Finally a decent full bike shot:
click for big
I was disappointed in Cheng Du that there were virtually no Flying Pigeon bikes around, I only saw one or two. The forevers and others were pretty nice, but not quite as stylish as this one. The bikes seemed to be pretty regional with different brands in different areas.
Anyhoo, I was pleased to be able to borrow, ride and photograph the most stately and classic of the classic Chinese bikes. Thanks again Craig.
8/14/2006
Chinese tricycle retrodirect thingy
Most of the trikes I had the opportunity to inspect in China had some serious mechanical problems like this clapped out trike. Lots of them had no longer functioning brakes, and weird long droopy chains. There was obviously more going on with some of them than single speeds, but I was unable to crawl around under them long enough to figure it out.
When I went down to albuquerque to pick up the Flying Pigeon from Craig Degenhardt I got a chance to ride and inspect his chinese trike:
click for big
It sports a nice two gear system mostly called retrodirect gearing. Two independent single speed freewheels are mounted on the rear wheel (or drive shaft in this case). The chain runs from the front chainring around one of the freewheels, around an idler, then backwards around the second freewheel and then back to the chainring. The effect is that you engage one freewheel when pedalling forward (while the other rotates backwards) and get one gear ratio. When you pedal backwards you engage the second freewheel (while the first one rotates backwards) and get a second gear ratio. Despite the fact that you are pedalling backwards, the bike still goes forwar, see? See some clean photos of a hirondelle retrodirect here with a different description if mine is too muddled.
Here is the whole drivetrain:
click for big
The forward drive is the larger gear, the reverse pedalling drive is the smaller gear. The idler is at the bottom of the photo for reversing the chain over the second freewheel. The spring seen to the left of the freewheels are for disengaging the gears, which is accomplished by the orange tipped lever on the non drive side.
closer on the back bits:
click for big
The pulley looking thing behind the freewheel is the brake drum.
Brake is operated by hand or foot via the lever here:
click for big
The brake lever is attached to a rod going back to a leather strap which tightens down on the drum to slow the bike:
click for big
Ah! It is all so clear now!
The reverse low gear is really really low, but the chain friction is really really high, so by pedalling backwards you can lump the trike up steep little hills or get it going while it is loaded.
Anyhow neat bike. Clear as mud?
When I went down to albuquerque to pick up the Flying Pigeon from Craig Degenhardt I got a chance to ride and inspect his chinese trike:
click for big
It sports a nice two gear system mostly called retrodirect gearing. Two independent single speed freewheels are mounted on the rear wheel (or drive shaft in this case). The chain runs from the front chainring around one of the freewheels, around an idler, then backwards around the second freewheel and then back to the chainring. The effect is that you engage one freewheel when pedalling forward (while the other rotates backwards) and get one gear ratio. When you pedal backwards you engage the second freewheel (while the first one rotates backwards) and get a second gear ratio. Despite the fact that you are pedalling backwards, the bike still goes forwar, see? See some clean photos of a hirondelle retrodirect here with a different description if mine is too muddled.
Here is the whole drivetrain:
click for big
The forward drive is the larger gear, the reverse pedalling drive is the smaller gear. The idler is at the bottom of the photo for reversing the chain over the second freewheel. The spring seen to the left of the freewheels are for disengaging the gears, which is accomplished by the orange tipped lever on the non drive side.
closer on the back bits:
click for big
The pulley looking thing behind the freewheel is the brake drum.
Brake is operated by hand or foot via the lever here:
click for big
The brake lever is attached to a rod going back to a leather strap which tightens down on the drum to slow the bike:
click for big
Ah! It is all so clear now!
The reverse low gear is really really low, but the chain friction is really really high, so by pedalling backwards you can lump the trike up steep little hills or get it going while it is loaded.
Anyhow neat bike. Clear as mud?
8/06/2006
Talk talk talk
The talk went well, maybe 30 attendees, about 50-50 regulars and bike people I guess. I think I talked for about an hour and got about 10 minutes of questioning out of it. I even got a free coffee from it. I was hoping for a few more bike people, but given how small the travel bug is, I am pretty sure any more people would have been too many. I would be glad to give the talk again if there are interested organizations.
I handed out cards that elena made for me, so if there are any new readers from the talk, Thanks for coming.
I wanted to thanks Craig Degenhardt from Albuquerque for lending me a really nice flying pigeon so I could have a bike for people to look at. See craig below with his nice pigeon and chinese trike he got back from China. He is also recovering from a gruesome bike induced upper arm fracture and is sporting some custom Ti internal hardware now. I will photograph the bikes a bit more carefully over the next day or two for bonus chinese bikes of the day.
Click for big...
I handed out cards that elena made for me, so if there are any new readers from the talk, Thanks for coming.
I wanted to thanks Craig Degenhardt from Albuquerque for lending me a really nice flying pigeon so I could have a bike for people to look at. See craig below with his nice pigeon and chinese trike he got back from China. He is also recovering from a gruesome bike induced upper arm fracture and is sporting some custom Ti internal hardware now. I will photograph the bikes a bit more carefully over the next day or two for bonus chinese bikes of the day.
Click for big...
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