two for tuesday: basketball and bikes take II

well, we are now on the other side of the nba finals. the heat has another ring under its belt. took me a few days to finally be able to write this post. ugh! :)

i'm very proud of the effort that san antonio spurs put forth (fun fact: they will be playing the timberwolves in mexico city this december...road trip anyone?), but they were just one or two free throws too short.

so my advice to pop during the offseason: get your guys on bikes already!! next year i want to be able to google them and find tons of pictures of them on bikes.



heh, i just can't help myself...can ya blame me?

anyway, rainy here in our (weather) offseason. time to bust out the rain gear that remained virtually unused this past winter. also there might be a bart strike. which should be...interesting if it starts today.

weekend ride report: cinderella classic 2013

way too early on saturday i woke up and took bart to the east bay on one of its last destinations: dublin-pleasanton. i was meeting a couple of friends for the short drive from bart to the alameda county fairgrounds where the ride started.



the above shot was taken around 6:30am just before some guy rounded the corner to talk to me. he then determined i must be in law enforcement and walked away from me quickly.

at the fairgrounds it was rather empowering to see all these women of all ages and sizes ready to go on a ride. this event sells out every year at 2500 people, which is an indication that more rides like this are needed elsewhere.



some women were spandex queens ready to go fast. some were ready to have fun with tutus. one woman had one of those fake plastic butts with a diamond encrusted thong over her shorts. (how that was to ride in i don't know....)

some were the enforcers of the rules of the road and constantly shouted at people to PLEASE say on your left when you are passing or SLOWING when you are slowing. nothing wrong with doing those things, but perhaps it was her law enforcement tone. that guy on bart would have certainly changed his mind about me after that.

and more than a fair share of women brought their kids with them. one particular memorable mother had a kid on the back of her bike on a rack supported car seat. she was passing people up hills with that rather heavy load on her back. very impressive. other young girls were on their bikes riding in small packs of moms and kids. adorable and we cheered for them as we saw them.



as you can see, i brought the 1980s sequoia along for the ride. my thought with this bike is that it is going to replace my blue entry-level road bike that i feel i have outgrown. although it has a lot of gears on it, i don't particularly care for the gearing that it has. so i tested out the sequoia. i think it's a strong contender for the replacement. it has less gears than the blue bike, but it is smarter gearing. i push down on the pedals and this bike is ready to GOOOO. vroomvroom. nice.

i was able, for the most part, to keep up with my friend and her modern-day bianchi. for my first ride, i say we did a pretty good job. my little 1980s era avocet bike computer said we were going anywhere from 14-22mph. i'll have to confirm with her garmin. i'll have to figure out how to use the old school one more. or just upgrade, but i like that little thing. it looks identical to the one below.



for the ride itself, it was mostly flat with a few climbs. the 2nd leg was my favorite as far as just pure riding. the third leg included soul crushing winds that were combined with the most climbing. more like marin and SF "speed bumps," but with the wind, i was working more than a little bit. you could tell who was from SF, east bay hills or marin (other than the marin century / marin cyclist jerseys), because they kicked butt in the hills. i have joanie to thank for that since i didn't get a chance to train as much as i wanted to for this ride. she's a good training partner.



overall it was a fun ride. i was pleased with the sequoia's performance. time to take her out more in marin. i would like to do the ride again next year, and hopefully can have some more friends. my friend and i were already planning who we could ask and what our outfits would look like since we were horribly under-costumed for this event. less pink, more black. woot! but of course, whatever the look, they will have to match our bikes!



now that my knee seems to be better...2013 cycling season has begun!

friday fun times: planning bike rides

really. after work, this bike advocacy thing takes up most of my time. whether it's here, or being involved neck deep in planning mass bike rides, or valet parking your bike so you can have a good time at an event, i can't help it. i love it.

part of why i do is to meet all different sorts of people who are all into the bike, the rides, the community, or just the solo road thing. but we all share at least one thing in common: the bike. oh, and probably not getting hit while riding one. as long as the last clause is always a danger, those of us who ride will always have a strong bond.

so the latest bike ride planning meeting i went to was amazing. the cusp of something phenominal: clitoral mass in oakland. sounds like the ride is national, and in no small part the idea is owed to those fierce latinas down south, las ovarian psychos.

the real beauty is we're planning this ride BY and FOR a non-male audience, as the name of the ride suggests. females, gender nonconforming, and trans folks all welcome. we have social media savvy, bike ride planning experience, website artists, and more importantly, the desire to put all this fierceness out in the world.

so two of my fellow bike party planners and i have to thank bart for their awesome "trial" where this week, all week, they have been allowing bikes on at all times. phew.



we introduced ourselves and sat back and then we all helped planned. a lot. then we took this picture.

foto credit to kanchan over on fb.

so what's next? ...just wait and see. ride coming up soon! save the date for MAY 25 for oakland's version of clitoral mass.

El bike shop.

In 2003, I had borrowed about 3 bikes in 2 months. Figuring out that it was the fastest way to get to school, run out to get food, get to my two jobs and make it on time back on bart (living in Oakland to save money, saved me NO MONEY at all...) 2 of them came from the same source, one of my good friends that was able to live close enough to school, so he had no use for his 'extra' bikes. So there I went.
While saving up for a bike of my own, I borrowed his bikes, of course they broke down quite a bit so I had agreed to fix them as needed, a type of thank you-return. At the time, I had no idea how to even lower a quick-release seat post.

Well anyhow, in 2003, the mean, fast and furious skinny cool city kids were in full throttle and I was too out of the loop to know which shops were snob-free. Walking down south Van Ness one day, I spotted two guys smoking a cigarette outside this bike shop I had never gone in. They were both about 5'1 and I ask them to borrow their lighter. I no longer smoke, but that was also how I met plenty of interesting random people. They told me they were waiting for their bikes to be finished so they could go to their jobs in fisherman's wharf area. The bike was faster than any nite-owl muni bus by the time their shift ended, they told me. Our small smoky chat, all in Spanish, ended and I went in to check out the place.
"I'll be back tomorrow" I told this man, I didn't have my bike because I had snapped the chain. I had a 35mm camera and I probably looked like a very dorky art student taking pictures of random stuff. He asked me why I was taking pictures, I said I liked bikes. I don;t think he was too happy about that, but didn;t say much about it.

I'll have to dig in my old boxes from art school to dig those out because I'm sure I captured his grumpy energy. After a couple of days, I returned, he fixed the chain and told me that I take better care of the chain by lubbing it up. Fair enough I said.
After that repair, for some reason I just never returned. I enjoyed the fact that the shop didn't carry those trendy bags every cool kid had, I also enjoyed that the place was kinda beat and cluttered and all of its mess, I was perfectly fine with it. I plain and simple, didn;t find him very warm or friendly. It is a fix it and move on, functional place. I ended school a couple of years after that, and the shop was really not in my vicinity to stop back again at all after 2003.
Didn't expect him to make friends with me, but maybe a friendlier approach would have made me return to give him more business or recommend him to my peeps. Or maybe that is not his goal. Who knows.

At any rate. That is my experience with Don Rafa's shop, the only Spanish speaker bike-repair in the mission that I really wanted to like.
I had the writing crazies and thought I'd share the video regardless, as well as a little bit of my bike learning experiences. It wasn't always pretty.
However I enjoy the interviews of not only bikes, but a vast amount of interesting topics from the community and businesses in the mission district posted over at by missionlocal.org – Enjoy



Don Rafa’s Cyclery by missionlocal.org

Depeche Mode

Fast fashion. That is what is starting to happen in more and more places- bikes on trains. The fashionable use their bikes to get to the train to get across the Bay. We need more fashions like this. The kind that stick and make everything better.



Do you have a multimodal commute? What is it like?