Vehicular Hawaii

Went off to Hawaii for a bit for some belated anniversary fun with Elena. Saw some bikes and other vehicles and other stuff. For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos with italicized commentary.

Fastest Rack in the west

Curbside Board Check, Waikiki

Fat bike fever crosses over to the segway set.

Sweet lockbox on a trike parked on the streets of Waikiki

Coach had some frame bags, hilariously awesome

Wicked Skidouts

All sorts of good aspect ratios

Totally got the upgrade

Cool airport vehicles

Walmart Thruster Fixies are everywhere, this one with the requisite backwards fork

Superfantastic robot time on the volcano

V-Dub badonkadonk

Vaya con Dios said Elena as I paddled into the heavy surf

Old Light

Five years, five long years, she said

These guys pretty much ran Kauai

rest of the pics

Beautiful Mountain Views

Amid unfortunate city detritus, Salt Lake City, 6/1/10

A few more pictures from a short trip Salt Lake City 6.10

Rolling and rolling

Some ditchside rolling in the livermore valley.

All the france photos

OK, I finally got all the photos from the france trip up online, some 250 photos mostly of bikes and the like. So if you want to see the hordes surf on over to:
Paris Bikes
Dijon Bikes
and then, if you are hungry or thirsty, you might like:
French Eats
all the photos under the umbrella:
France trip

Anyhoo, here are some appetizers of my somewhat obsessive streetside bike photography:







Lots of good 650b stuff seen all over.

Back

I went and returned and utterly failed to rent the Velib bikes.



but I figured out the similar system in Dijon. woo. Much more to follow

Baby got the bends

Sunday afternoon, ~8000 feet



Monday afternoon, ~zero feet


Oh yeah!

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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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!

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!

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.

Paper wrapped trishaw

I finally tagged and descripted all the honey moon photos on flickr, go here if you are bored

Some sort of art bike sitting in the lobby of our hotel in singapore. I have read about the trishaws in singapore, but never saw one in action, or at least a non icecream hawker trishaw. This was was pretty interesting.



Interesting rear hub and gear ratio, I suspect that is a really big drum brake, or maybe a 1950's rohloff prototype:


Nice fork crown amidst the paper art crap:

Phoenix Airport Carpet Redux

I went to LA last week and instead of having some time to go running on the beach or biking around with friends as planned I got trapped in 12 hours of airport hell on the way out and in existential airport hell on the way back.

The only high point of the trip was an unexpected visit to my favorite carpet in the whole world in Phoenix. I blogged this before, but this time I noticed, thanks to the setting sun, that the carpet is exquisitely textured.


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Here is what it looks like from above:

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no biking!

Nice carved and painted no biking sign there in the botannical gardens in singapore. I am thinking it really is a "no artistic cycling sign" as you know those circus freaks are the enemy of the very order the government in Singapore is attempting to impose.

Ice cream sammich hawkers

Day three of singapore/bali bike of the day.

They had these great ice cream hawker bikes all over Orchard Road in Singapore.







I had to try some so I picked this guy:




Red bean icecream cut from a big block with a knife, then wrapped in a piece of white bread that is dyed with green and pink food coloring. oooof. I could not even begin to finish it it was so gross. Should have chosen (likely artificial) durian flavor.



It seemed possible that all the other people who were in line in front of me got theirs in a little crepe or waffle thingy, but he kept shouting bread at me, and I was helpless but to agree. I felt cheated, but it was pretty low grade ice cream, and frankly ice cream in a crepe is not as bloggable so I am over it.

Dry Riser Breaching Inlet

Singapore/Bali Bike of the day 2
I am not sure what a dry riser breaching inlet is, but this was a pretty cool modern hauler. One speed,fenders, chain case, what appears to be a bolt on front rack and then some sort of metal box on the rear rack.
Orchard Road, Singapore