btac update #1

the best dessert i have ever had was found at holders on mcgill - vanilla creme brulee accompanied by unibroue's ephemerre apple beer. i posted about this place last febuary and it was just as i reported then. good food, not too expensive, nice presentation. yuummmm.

my favroite btac passtime is to stroll around the neighbourhoods beside the st.laurent strip - also referred to as the plateau. feels like home. the picture is looking at mount royal from from s.laurent and st.jacques. if ou look close you can see the familiar cross up on top of the mountain.

BTAC

canada's annual bicycle trade show starts on sunday and i am here in montreal getting ready to savour the flavour. we build our (thule) booth tomorrow, get drunk in the evening, get up, have a sales meeting, get drunk, get up, pitch product, get drunk, get up, pitch product, get drunk, get up, pitch product, tear down the booth, get drunk, get up, get on a plane, go home.

in between the getting up and getting drunk i will try and post some goodies for you bike geeks out there. i cannot promise that i will show you the same stuff you will read about in the bike mags - what i can promise is that i will try not to get so drunk that i forget about this post.

ninja cycling

one of my most favorite types of rides is the night ride - without lights. on this particular day i had set out in the late afternoon to attend an important meeting with jim and jess at the 'ship and a little dinner before polo with the grass-game boys. it was a very nice day in southern alberta, feeling quite a lot like a mid-summers day and i didnt plan on the light going away so quickly after polo - so there i was, on my way home, in the dark, with not a reflective bit on me. upon realizing i was too vulnerable on the roads i quickly made my way to the bow river pathway and started heading west. riding without lights is a little unnerving at first as it takes a little while for the night vision to kick in - but once it has - riding through the night air sans batteries is really fun and hyper-real.

you need to ride "light" as its hard to see all the little surface imperfections and you need to "hear forward" to try and be ready for those you may meet (i almost hit a couple jogging, they didnt have lights either). other than that, just relax, embrace your inner ninja and enjoy the quiet evening, the whirrr of your machine, the very real feeling of flying that only comes from riding at night.

gig in the park 2008 - pics are here.

what a good time! i have heard nadia talk about this party for about a year now and it did not disappoint. it was really nice to have (what felt like) the entire area to ourselves and the weather played nice although it was looking really threatening the first day we got there. thankfully the rains stayed away and the weekend was perfect. making our time even more perfect was the "covered wagon" - which was sheila's (nadia sister) name for the trailer that sheila and kelly pulled out there for all of us to sleep in. this thing was great - circa 1977. i am glad we had it as the mornings were very chilly while we were all cozy inside. the gig itself was great too with 5 guys up on the custom-flatbed-trailer-cum-stage belting out tunes into the night while the rest of us got on with the most important part of camping - getting hammered by the fire! good times! what else did we do? - - - oh ya, built a sweat lodge on the beach, burned more driftwood than is explainable, potluck dinners, frisbee, consuming that cube of pilsner, eating beef and pork tenderloin, bison burgers too - yum! we'll be back for the next one, scheduled for the september long weekend in 2010 - see you there too!

proud dad over here
i have been waiting for this day since andreas first swung his little leg over his first toptube - and finally! - its here. andreas can ride a two-wheeler! i posted some pictures a few weeks ago of 'dre learning to coast on the 12" bike and yesterday i asked him if he thought he could ride the bike if i put the cranks and chain back on. he says to me in his matter-of-fact-way, "you know dad, i think i can ride it. lets do it". the results are below...

now the real fun begins. i cant wait to show him around and start riding around rosscarrock together - its gonna be so much fun!

polo bike - done. some specs...2 speed, 53/39X18 free, mavic front shifter, front derailleur, crank, bb, hs, rear caliper, rear derailler, rear wheel. i am still considering setting up the ZAP system on it too but right now that kinda seems a little bit excessive.

...Velib - cool idea that is catching on!

This was in the Globe and Mail today.