Another Slow Sundayz Ride

Posted on January 28, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Maps, Slow Sunday | 5 Comments

Slow Sundayz ride is best quoted from Novas LJ I think…

“the route of last night’s ride home is mysteriously absent from my memory, i remember snippets like leaving Kat at the Pink Door, calling out directions to Yeyo at King & 6th as he split off in search of dumpsterage at Mecca, but otherwise i could not tell you if climbing the Beacon was any more or less pleasant than usual, because i simply can not recall.

strange to have a blank in the memory, moreso after having been told by a friend several times over the course of an evening that he thinks i’ve a remarkably good memory as i (wonder of all wonders?) generally retain a lot of the information confided me in conversation.

stopped by a few legendary establishments that i had not yet visited today, including Elliot Bay Bicycles, Hattie’s Hat, & the Zoo. the Zoo is far larger than expected, and appears to be a nice comfortable dive bar of joy, and Hattie’s Hat really does serve excellent Bloody Marys, tho I only had sips of some of my compadres.

the thing about turning the city inside out by bicycle is that i now feel as tho i now own every inch, particularly those inches i’ve traversed by night. i hear this again and again from others’ mouths, that to travel a city by night (and by bike) is to own it.”

http://novabird.livejournal.com/316672.html?nc=5

In summary: we (Kat, Nova, myself) went to the Market and got coffee, met Chris Nygard, stopped by Elliot Bay bicycles and ogled some really incredible bikes. That they’re open on Sunday is awesome. From there through Myrtle Edwards Park, we headed over to Ballard through the locks and over to Hatties Hat for beer and bloody marys. Yayo met us there. Afterwards off to Nygards house to drop him off before heading to the Eastlake Zoo. The four of us knocked through 3 pitchers of 1554 in a little over an hour and a half – and from there we said our goodbyes. Thus the reason poor Nova (and I suspect most of us at that point) failed (or would have failed) the gravy test marvelously.

“*the gravy test being when Bel inquires, ‘gravy’? and if one is drunked it is the most hillarious word-choice ever and it dissolves into laughter. if one is sober it is not so. “

The gravy test!

HA!

Onward!

OH HAI OBLIGATORY PICTURE BLOG FOLLOWS:

Cats like hey – where the fuck do you think you’re going?

Don’t you know its cold out?

I’m so not kidding.

And it was – the pond at Cal Anderson froze.

And there were hippies. Hello hippies.

These hippies came equipped to deal with the ice.

Nova showed up and started knitting. I tried to tell her she had it all backwards. She was supposed to knit something warm and THEN come out into the cold. You can see what she thought of my idea.

Here comes Kat

These shots involve me fumbling for my expensive crappy digital camera through bike gloves while I’m riding, and sort-of point and shoot and hope to god I don’t drop the damn thing. We’re cruising through Myrtle Edwards Park which was just friggin beautiful out.

I don’t know who this guy was…

Packing it up and leaving Hatties Hat in Ballard…

To Nygards…

And then the Eastlake Zoo…

This was the Eastlake Zoo before:

And this is the Zoo after 3 pitchers of 1554:

HA. And then this morning this is what we woke up to. Frozen icy crap.

Crazy Seattle winters.

The End.


Tonight – January Critical Mass

Posted on January 25, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Critical Mass, Events, Maps | Leave a Comment

Tonights ride:

It was an alright ride. Turnout was good – I figure there were a hundred riders there or so – damn good considering the time of year really. The ride was sort of meandering. Up 4th, all the way down 2nd, back up 1st ave, up lower Queen Anne hill and cut over into Seattle Center where we ended off at the huge fountain where everyone went down into the bowl. It was pitch black and all you could see were dozens of blinking red tail lights circling the bowl around and around. Very cool.

That was going to be the end of it but everyone felt it was too short (myself included) so someone called out “lets go to Volunteer Park!” and we rolled out again and up Capitol Hill.

The only real problem we had was on Broadway when the driver of the 60 bus started laying on the horn and revving its engine and lurching forward menacingly over and over – she didn’t like that we setup roadguard on her so she didn’t hurt anyone with her bus and she wanted to make it obvious that she was pissed about it. She hit one of the cyclists with with one of her lurches and knocked him off his bike. We started to peel off when other cyclists showed up and suddenly she jumps into the center turn lane of Broadway and screams down the road (this is in front of Dicks) and then tries to cut back in on the right just before John/Olive intersection, clipping half a dozen of us off. I had to push off with my hand to keep from getting hit. Word quickly reached the front of the troupe and half a dozen people sat in front of the bus again, stopping her at the intersection. It was pretty scary there for a moment.

I peeled off after hitting Volunteer park and went and got Pho at Than Bros for dinner, stopped by the King Cobra. This is a brand new bar next to the Comet and it was opening night last night. Someone said this was supposed to be the new Kincoras but getting there it was more like the Kincora + Manray. Its still a hoochie bar but its now staffed/owned by hipsters and rockstars everyone wants to look like Joan Jett and listen to Dragonforce. Didn’t do much for me. Ended up at the Stumbling Monk where we got blotto on some really good Belgian beer and then I biked home.

It was a good night.

Can’t wait till daylight lasts past 5pm. Not many pictures because the ride was at night.


Cool bike for sale

Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak | Leave a Comment

Vintage Nishiki Custom Sport 12 Speed Road Bike – $150

This bike has been cleaned/tuned/lubed.
It has all new tires.
The paint is in quite good condition for it’s age.
It hase a 31″ standover height and 20.5″ frame. It has Shimano 600 derailers. It has new hanle bar wrap. Please call Stan at: 206-459-7517 to come check it out.
Thanks!!!!!!


http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/bik/545138524.html


Shameless Bike Love

Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Mechanical | 4 Comments

Hadn’t posted any pics since I “finished” it, so thought I would. This is Rooster.




http://velospace.org/node/7113


Slow Sundayz Ride

Posted on January 13, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Maps, Slow Sunday | 4 Comments

Today was a great day to ride.

I got up around 1030am, weather was totally awesome. I saddled up and biked up Capitol Hill for breakfast and over to Cal Anderson Park for the Slow Sundayz Ride.

Now let me stop here for a quick second – when I say all casual like “I biked up Capitol Hill” you need to understand something. I live in Eastlake and the only ways up Capitol Hill are a long ass climb up 10th or up the even more murderous -but much shorter- Lakeview hill. I’d like to go on record as saying the Lakeview hill is evil. And today of all days, its beautiful out and I feel good and I decide to take the Lakeview hill knowing that I’ll probably have to walk it. It took me almost 15 minutes afterwards to catch my breath and my heart rate to come under control, but I made it all the way up. Go me.

Anyhow, so I saddled up and biked up Capitol Hill to the B&O Espresso for breakfast and coffee – and then over to Cal Anderson Park to meet several others for the Slow Sundayz ride.

Cool people there – Nova, Kat, Dave, Jeremy. The sun was out and it was perfect. We met around 1pm and hit the road around 1:30pm.

We started out by climbing up Beacon Hill and heading out to Georgetown. Tried to get a drink at the Georgetown Liquor Company (cool bar!) but Jeremy didn’t have his ID on him and they weren’t budging (he’s 25). So we all headed over to the 9lb Hammer for a beer – their 9lb Porter is pretty tasty. Sat around, bullshitted for awhile where Chunter and and a guy named Yeyo joined us. Afterwards we split and headed for Alkai Beach in West Seattle where we picked up this guy Brandon on a killer old school Schwin tandem bike. Definately had class, but I think Yeyowins the award for ossum bikes simply because he had fuzzy dice on them.

Made it out to Alkai for sunset, then over to Spuds for fish and chips, and then back to home. Had a great time and met some excellent people.

Click here to see the whole image gallery


Today was a good day to ride!

On a side note: The Rooster runs great. My hill stamina still sucks, but the bike performs flawlessly. I couldn’t be more pleased with it.


New Sweet Bike Calendar!

Posted on January 12, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Events | Leave a Comment

Thanks to the wonderful work of Google, Sweetbike(.org) now has an Event Calendar. Its extremely cool on many fronts.

I’ve added every regular event in the Seattle area that I know about. As they show up I’ll add more.


Winter Riding

Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Maps | Leave a Comment

Since the beginning of the year I’ve ridden to work every day. I gotta say it feels good to get back into it. The Rooster is performing flawlessly, I’ve had no problems (beyond a flat tire story I don’t EVEN want to get into).

The only thing I can say about winter riding is – its hard to climb out of a warm dry fartsack to go and ride in the cold (and usually wet) Seattle winter morning traffic. Admittedly my ride isn’t that long at 3 miles, but its all downtown start and stop traffic – non-stop short distance sprinting. Its not as if you can settle into a good rhythm or anything. You get up and for the next 10-20 minutes you’re doing short hard sprints all the way to work. Bleary eyed Seattle-ites in half-fogged windshield morning car traffic means you can’t slack either. I mean lets face facts – the laws of man don’t stand a chance against the laws of physics. And all the auto/health/life/home/ insurance in the world is little comfort in the face of knowing that theres almost no such thing as a minor wreck for a cyclist when automobiles are involved. Big bright blinking lights and a willingness to be vocal helps, but is no substitute for attentive riding.

Other isms related to winter riding aren’t really winter riding things of course. Theres the standard sneaking by security to get my bike upstairs (no I’m not locking it up on the rack outside kthx). Or having to do the whole change clothes thing without a shower at work. Its a hassle but not the end of the world. I carry a lot of clothes and deodorant in my messenger bag these days.

Where it gets awesome is the ride home. By the end of the day I’m ready for a good hard ride. I might come to regret saying this later but I’ll take after work traffic over morning traffic. In fact I’ve decided my ride home is too short and starting Monday I’m going to start on a route that extends my ride home from 3 miles to 10 miles. We’ll see how well I fare, but I’m excited.

Other things like the cold and the rain are survivable. A good thick waterproof windbreaker, fenders , some gloves and an ear warmer/balaclava go a long way. The more I do this the more I remember why I like it. Maybe eventually I’ll start doing .83 rides once I can get my endurance past something embarrassing.

Onward


Branford Bike

Posted on January 4, 2008
Filed Under Bike Kwak, Reviews | Leave a Comment

Lemme introduce you to one of Seattles hidden bike shops, Branford Bike.com.
LINK TO MAPI almost bicycled right by it, and I was looking for it. Its that small. Its on the back side of a Pagliaccis Pizza on the corner. Its storefront is tiny but has a lot of high end bikes in there. Inside they’ve got a rather comprehensive rack full of Park tools for sale, and the standard accouterments of grip tape and brake pads and the like. I didn’t spend a lot of time in there but at first glance this seems to be a boutique shop. Limited selection, really nice stuff, only the best in here. Brooks. Campy. Park. Lotta carbon fiber. They’re 99% Campy in that shop. In fact I bet if I took a closer look all the Park tools they have for sale, they’d be Park tools for Campy.

Anyhow, for the past two weeks I’ve been sorta casting about for a Brooks Saddle. Those in the know swear by them. They say first month – total hell. After that – the best thing they ever put on their bike, hands down.

Problem is Brooks are scarce in the US because the dollar is worth nothing in Europe and these saddles are made in Britain. All the shops in the US selling Brooks have them on indefinite “backorder” until the dollar comes back in value, and the shops with existing stock are charging overly inflated rates for what they have left.

Intro Branford Bike.

I actually found branfordbike.com by going to the Brooks website in desperation to find someone in the US who still had existing stock but weren’t going to charge me an arm and a leg. Lo and behold Branford Bike had a plain jane B.17 in honey and I ordered it from them online. Then I noticed the address – they’re less than two blocks from my house!

HA.

I emailed them, asked to skip the shipping, they said sure, and today I swung by and picked it up. Met the two owners, nice guys but I couldn’t stay and look around – had to get to work.

Its a beautiful saddle, but it looks funky on my bike – which is presently geared up in fenders for the rain and looking dorky to begin with.

My writing sucks tonight.

Note to Ed: If you’re going to write a review of a bike shop you should spend more than 5 minutes in the shop picking up a saddle before running off to work.

Ed: Noted.