Trek Soho Coffee Mug Review

I wrote a review of the bike specific coffee mug seen above here.

My Life Aquatic

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On this coldest day so far of 2006 with snow and blinding wind, I decided to shave my protective facial hair. Elena is still laughing 5 hours later.

Fish park

This dealy:


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has been making the blog rounds, found via velorution made by InOut designers. It is meant to take up a car parking space with one for 6 bikes. Nice idea. I think you probably could park 12 bikes or so in one car space if you had good racks, but still good stuff.

Reminds me of this:


Which I took at Rays, one of the waterside fish restaurant in seattle in the Ballard neighborhood.

30th day of bicycles and Big Red

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The big Mao feller in Chengdu. I am on a bike as the photo is taken and there is a pedicab in the background. The best part:

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Popeyes fried chicken sitting underneath the base of the statue.

Take that you capitalist pig dogs.

Forever day of 29th day of Chinese bike of the day

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Here is the bike that I rode around Chengdu for a couple of weeks. It was a relatively new "Forever" bike, one of the larger brands of traditional chinese bikes. Much to my dismay, I only saw one Flying Pigeon bike in Chengdu, I guess they are really regional bike specialists. I did see quite a few pheonix bikes and one other brand starting with a Y which I can't recall.

You can still get new traditional bikes in China, they were hard to find as most bike shops sold crappy Walmart type bikes almost exclusively now, but bigger department stores and some bike shops had them. They seemed to have 26" wheels rather than the 28" size. Although, if you look at Forever's Web site it looks like they offer a wealth of traditional styles still, of the new bikes, I really only saw the 26" type like mine.

It is nice to see that they offer a postman's bike. THe post men in chengdu I saw had beautiful green bikes with gold lettering and the really cool panneirs seen here:

I tried in vain to find some, although I found some cool army surplus shoulder bags, reflective vests and other neat things, no postal bags, or cool green bikes.

Anyhow, the new bikes while looking beautiful, were a bit crapperific compared to the older ones. The cranks, still cottered, looked thinner and more rough finished, almost like they were just cast instead of forged. The pedals looked cheaper, which prooved itself in how many times I had to replace mine in a couple of weeks. The stems wimpier, the headsets chintzier, etc. Still nice looking bikes, but perhaps they will not last a million years like their predecessors.

My bike had a terminally loose headset, either from crappy headset cups, or soft head tube or both, I think this was a common affliction among all chinese bikes, but it still was dissapointing.

I did add the basket, the rear integral lock and a bell. I think all that plus the three pedals cost me less than $20 US, pedals were about 5 yuan, maybe 60 cents or so.

Sam, who blogs at Shenzen Ren has a nice photo of a new bike loaded with all the bells and whistles from another manufacurer in Shenzen:

click for the source post at Shenzen Ren.

Whoo, OK long rambling post today. Should have 2 more ove the weekend and then Done done done and may take a break from daily blogging for a bit to finish a big project.

Some other things from about the net

As I resurfed the whole web today after missing it for a few days for illness, I found some things to share:

A nice history on the michelin man, probably pushing the bounds of fair use, but still nice... stolen but well illustrated by the consistantly excellent Bobke Strut

I love you the Onion, their take on the Barry Bonds steroids "scandal".

Chunk 666 chopper bike stalwarts and ambassadors have a blog. I love the latest post when he describes "ongoing urban interstitial exploration by the CHUNK 666 Corps of Discovery". Since reading a Lewis and Clark biography, I have secretely (until this moment, drat) been referring to MYSELF as a Corps of Discovery as I run, walk, ride and explore about here there and everywhere. Anyway, it always cracks me up, and if you can't crack yourself up, well hell...

If you like nice bikes and you somehow did not notice this happened yet, the North American Handbuilt Bikeshow went down in San Jose last weekend. Multitudes of photos linked to cleverly by Cyclofiend and Twisted Spokes.

Rode my bike today, ate arroz con pollo, rode home, did not vomit. Woo hoooooooooo!

28th day of Chinese bike of the day

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Another nice custom basketed bike on the Sichuan U campus in Chengdu.

Not too much going on here other than nice boxes. Anyone know what they say? Tomorrow? A Forever bike extravaganza.

Update, 3/09/06 3:45pm:
According to some what poetic anonymous commenter:
"""
The blue baskets and green baskets contain milk bottles. So the words say
First Line: the name of the company: Southwest Milk Products
Second Line: the company slogan: We deliver milk to every home
"""

Excellent! Reappropriation of milk crates is the cyclsts best friend. See:


from my raleigh twenty

Thanks anonymous commenter person! Anyone else can leave comments too, I know some people actually read the blog, so feel free to comment when it strikes you.

Welcome back to the day 27 of chinese bikes

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Sorry for the delay, back eating solid foods, thus back on the Chinese bikewagon.

Above is a nice typical mixtie bike. There were ralleighoid mixties, and the Ubike mixties seen on day 25 and 24, and then these middle ground bikeys, slightly newer style than the raleighoids, but a not as modern as the U bikes and the really crapperific new ones.

Yet still with the rusty chaincase, beat fenders, kickstands, obvious front end collision damage, rod brakes, inelegant lug attachments, baskets, lock etc. etc. etc.

So typical. For a comparison of a modern take, check out Kona's africa bike project. For essentially a north american take on the classic workhorse city bike:

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Looking at this bike, it is nominally the same idea as the chinese bike above. Chainguard, basket, one speed. It is missing fenders and the rear rack, but obviously has braze ons for such. I like this bike as it is made solid of probably not too heavy, but well sturdy enough cromoly tubing, has an american BB (one peice cranks) instead of the cottered cranks of the chinese bikes, and sports a coaster brake instead of rod brakes. Surf around the blog there and see some of the design parameters and look at the issues that these bikes are expected to face in africa. These are designed specifically for NGO's delivering aids drugs in rural africa.

Interesting project. These bikes, I think, have a good chance of being much more useful much longer than the legacy designed bikes churned out by the large factories in india and china, which have been more than adequate for years, but are getting produced crappier and crappier each year.

More on that tomorrow.

Ty ty makes gnar gnar in the crit crit

Uh, I mean look who is racing, a curly locked tyler:

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If you look here you will see that he still believes in tyler. Which is important I guess, because I am pretty sure no one else in that race does. But again, I think the pro guys in the race are pretty realistic about it and don't really care all that much, except possibly Scott Monninger who got dinged for two years on an allegedly tainted supplement case and probably has good reason to be a bit pissed about drug cheats. And lo and behold Monninger attacked repeatedly and won a pretty loaded parking lot crit. Whooo boy...

Well, welcome back on the road to clean racing Tyler. May you loose that tiny gut you are sporting and find a pro team ride and podium in a meaningless late season classic.

Anyone want to conjecture about whether the ever increasing set of people who believe Tyler intersects with the same people who believe Barry Bonds or would if any baseball fans actually knew who Tyler Hamilton was?

Once again, the well off pro athletes are so far ahead of the doping testers that it takes acts of reporting or police investigations to amass circumstantial evidence on them, they rarely fail tests.

See my last rant on this here.

Day skipper

Hmm, some unexpectedly serious yet temporary virus has laid me low. Thus no bloggie. Instead, please read something I wrote last time this happened to me, much more entertaining than getting 4 iv's of saline at the local hospital:

Blood guts and cash money in the high desert

More chinese bikes tommorrow.

Bike rack on the 26th day of chinese bikes

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Here are some attended bike parking near a park in downtown Chengdu. You pay the attendant something like 3.6 cents, get two wooden tags, hang one on your bike and keep the other. If you are smart, you lock your bike anyway and then you come back and trade tags, pick up your bike and away you go. See a tag hanging on a nice reflective grip on the ralleighoid mixtie below:




The parks were neat. Carp ponds and cheap fish food to feed them with, bonsaii trees, walking paths, music pavillions and lots of old men hangin around smoking, playing cards and drinking tea and other drinks. THe old men had good lives it seemed. They would walk to the park with their pet birds in cages and then hang the cages in the trees with the other old men's bird cages. The caged birds would socialize while the old guys talked. Seemed pretty fun.

25th day of chinese bikes of the days, U bike

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Green U bike. See the raleighoid fork? See the cable brakes, see that the back wheel is locked? See the nice chainguard? See the tiny bike wheel in the upper left corner of the picture? It is hard NOT to have a bike in the photo sometimes...

This bike has a really nice padded seat for the pal/sweetie. "girls" bikes are used ubiquitously by either sex. I am pretty sure that there was once a stigma against them, as there was a paucity of old rod braked raleighoid "girl" bikes, but almost all newer bikes have step through frames. Guys ride with girls on their racks, girls ride girls, but rarely do girls ride guys on their racks (mind out of gutters please). Girls giving guys a ride on the rack created cat-calls and jokes.

No one really wanted to give a 190 pound westerner a ride on their rack. Dammit.

Click here for a really big photo if you want to soak in the nuances of a pretty average bike in china.

Note the really crapperific rear brake cable routing. This is why I conjecture rod brakes have such longevity in places like china. The cable brakes pictured here likely barely work or perhaps not at all. If the cable breaks, it needs a bike specific replacement cable. In a rod brake, the corner bicycle repairman can just use a spoke, or other rod/wire thingy to make your broken brakw work.

I think that rod brakes, on average, work better throughout their lifetime than cable brakes in a low maintance situation like most bikes endure in china. Sure the braking is never great, but averaged across the life of the bike, they provide more stopping power. Cable brakes give you great stopping power for a while, and then none. Rod brakes offer crap throughout the life of the bike, but it is there on a daily basis. At less than 10 MPH average speed, you really don't need all that much stopping power.

Getting toward the end of my photo stash, might have another week in me. Maybe two. Anyone got any contributions to flesh out my waning collection of photos? Chinese bikes photos gladly taken, as well as asia, africa, etc. etc. etc. Email tas at tariksaleh dot com.

Anyone have a classic chinese bike (forever, pheonix, or flying pigeon or the like) bike here in the US? Want to let me borrow it for a bit, sell it to me cheap? Drop me an email. A rod braked raleigh might suffice. Especially if you are within a reasonable drive of Northern NM (colorado, arizona, Utah)...

Day 24 typical Chinese bikes

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Here are some typical "racks" of bikes on campus in Chengdu. There actually are no racks as all bikes have kickstands, but there are specific parking areas. The bikes up front in the photo are the semi-modern "U" frame bikes. They usually have cable brakes instead of the rod-linkage brakes, but still have chainguards, fenders, racks and kickstands.

All bikes have integral locks, usually on the chainstays and some people have cheap cable locks as well. Bike theft is a huge problem in the cities, the locks are not all that effective, except as a deterrent to the non-motivated theif.

I will post some more rack pics over the weekend and then into a couple typical riders next week.

Day 23 chinese bicycle vendor


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No one wears helmets biking around china, but some people do wear helmets while riding their battery operated mopeds. These helmets remind me of the head fairing TT helmets that they used in the tour prior to UCI mandating useful head coverings. Of course the helmets are sold by bicycle, by a person not wearing a helmet.

Excellent.

Lots of the pictures, especially those taken from behind were photographed while I was riding as well. Pretty fun, although occasionally I was not up to getting the shot framed and focused before hitting the shutter, hence the blurry photos.

Day 22 the recycling chinese bikes


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This guy rode around Sichuan university recycling pretty much anything that was not obviously belonging to someone else. There was massive construction happening, tearing down old buildings, saving the bricks and building new ones. In the chaos, the pickings were good.

Hmm, can't find the other pictures, but there were guys on cargo trikes and regular bikes packed high with salvaged and found recycling goods all over chengdu. You can see another one in the streetscene here.