(via Uncooped – A Consumer’s Guide to Bicycle Helmets)
Category: cycling
building a better bike lock
About 99% of bike locks worldwide are CRAP.
And where did you lose those bicycle lock keys? Over the years?
Design site Core77 regularly runs “One Hour Design Challenge” competitions; I would love to see how many of these ideas were thought up and drawn in an hour. The winner in their latest, to design a better bike lock, is very clever. …
130 MPH on bike
One of my favourite things in the world is downhill riding. But this is ridiculous.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
(via Uncooped)
Phoenix one of the Worst Towns in the USA
My hiking week in Arizona did not work out nearly as well as hoped. You cannot get around without a personal vehicle in the SW — when will I learn?
I should have consulted Crow’s book in advance: The Worst Towns in the USA.
Phoenix he describes as the nation’s “sweatiest” city. AmTrak won’t stop here. There are barely enough backpackers to keep one small hostel open.
Phoenix really is a sprawling, one-story megalopolis that takes HOURS to commute.
Yet, despite global warming, people are still moving south and west in the USA:
The highlight of my week in Arizona was biking and trail running in Phoenix.
a sweet ride …
Paranoid much? – uncooped
get your Java fix on a bike
Just because I broke my hand last year riding a bike, carrying a Slurpee, doesn’t mean drinking hot coffee while riding is a bad idea
Morning Rush Coffee Mug & Holder. Take away the spills and thrills of riding with coffee.
Stainless steel mug holder ring mounts to mountain bike or road bars. Stainless steel commuter mug holds up to 16 oz. of coffee or tea. Slide button lid means you can open the cap and take a swig with one hand. Mount is from Cat Eye, so in the evening you can replace it with a Cat Eye HL-500II headlight if you so desire.
(via Uncooped)
Smart Cycle from Fisher-Price
Engadget humorously sends up a “fitness” Christmas present:
if you’re going to make children go through all the trouble of freakin’ exercise to obtain your sinister educational wares, we say you’ve gone too far. The new $100 Fisher-Price Smart Cycle … plugs directly into a television and allows its unwitting pupils to hop aboard the bike, fire away at the pedals, and attempt to steer into items on screen such as letters or numbers in an arcade-style racing game. Mattel even trotted out Richard Simmons to show off the wares
Smart Cycle from Fisher-Price corrupts our youth, must be stopped – Engadget
Trek Soho – hybrid mountain road bike
A friend of mine — who knows a lot about bikes — just ordered this one for commuting around town as I do.
It’s not quite a hybrid, rather closer to a mountain bike.
For serious transportation there are mountain bikes for trailes and road bikes for streets, however in the mixed pathways of a commute in the real world a more versatile bike is needed. Trek bicycles has expanded their line of bikes with their Urban lineup featuring this Trek Soho. Built specifically for city biking …
Trek Soho – ProductWiki, unbiased product reviews and information
My own Kona Blast mountain bike is going great after 18 months. I’ve been pretty good about maintenance.
dangerous NOT to ride your bike
My bike is in the shop for a regular service warranty tune-up.
And I’m at RISK while not sitting on that saddle. That’s what the statistics say:
… bicyling is just about the safest activity you can do.
photo from Biking TorontoCarectomy notes that the chart is based per hour. If we look at the data per mile, cars in the U.S. start looking better. Ten drivers and passengers die per billion miles in a car; this number goes up to 100 for cyclists.
However Grist points out also that riding a bike is actually safer than doing nothing at all.
“Pedalling Health, an Australian study published in 1996, concluded that an hour of biking a day — normal for a regular bike commuter — prevents four times as much heart attack risk as it adds in collision risk. The iconoclastic British transport researcher Mayer Hillman did a study for the British Medical Association in 1992 reportedly showing that for every year of life lost to a bike crash, twenty years of life are gained from stress reduction, greater cardiovascular fitness, and improved mental health. As I’ve noted, the time you spend in moderate exercise is added to your life, with interest.”
when will I bike a long distance trail?
Next summer?
The rails-to-trails adventures sound good. For example, the Kettle Valley Railway:
… an abandoned railway bed that winds through south central British Columbia between Midway and Hope. It is after all a typical railway bed with grades that never exceed 2.2 %. But even the most radical mountain biker will grip the handle bars a little tighter crossing trestles hanging precariously on the sides of Myra Canyon. With countless trestles and tunnels, and environs ranging from cool mountain forests to Canada’s only pocket desert the 600 km route offers an endless diversity of experiences.
source – flickr
If my butt survives Kettle Valley, I might try part of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route:
…The Great Divide Route is 2,500 miles of rough fire roads that cross summits of the Continental Divide 27 times, earning you over 200,000 feet in changed elevation. The entire trail stretches from Canada to Mexico. It will take an ordinary human 3 months to complete. But unlike any other transnational trail in North America you won’t be squeezed by cars as you ride from border to border. It’s a remote trail, in wilderness, with few amenities. Think of it as the Appalachian Trail for bicycles.
Rick McCharles 