what a great day of riding! nadia, morgan, andreas, and myself headed out on saturday for a slow-bike-ride to the crossroads market for some fresh local produce and locally made bread. it was an incredibly beautiful day and we did our best to soak up as much of it as we could. we stopped on stephen avenue for some street meat (from the hurtin'-est hotdog cart i think i've seen), stopped at some old building ruins to check them out, of course we stopped at the market and our last stop was at bernard callebaut for some incredible soft serve, white chocolate ice cream - OMG! - de-lish! after the ice cream it was time to make the run back home for dinner - which included bbq beef tenderloin, foil-packed veggies from the market and corn-on-the-cob grilled on the bbq - OMG! - de-lish! after dinner we finished off the day with a quick shot of absinthe and headed to the movie-in-the-park with the kids to check out "wall-e" under the stars. good times!

autumn arrives tomorrow and cyclocross season with it. i have decided to give 'cross racing a go again this fall and will have some reports in the next few weeks. till then, happy trails!

yahoo's purple bikes

townies+gps+flickr = a pretty cool project. check it here...

http://startwearingpurple.yahoo.com/?purplepedals#/pedals

reducing my impact - increasing my fun!




from the very first time i saw an xtracycle i have been intrigued by its simple design and happy vibe. i have been doing my best to use a bicycle to do my shopping and running various errands throughout the summer but have been stymied a few times by loads that were too big for my zip-tied-milk-crate or too cumbersome for my backpack. after extensive searching to try and purchase one (none are apparently in western canada) i stumbled across an unlikely source - singletrack cycle in calgary. in fact, it was pretty much the only thing stu had left after selling off his entire inventory and shutting his doors for good last month. it probably goes without saying that i got a wicked deal on it - and to top it off - i purchased one of his professional park repair stands for next to nothing! ya! (i have been waiting to get my grubs on one of these for the better part of 20yrs!) i intend to break in the new(ish) cargo machine on saturday when we will be attending the movie in the park (see post below)and hopefully if the weather stays good we'll use it to go to the farmers market and load up on local eats on sunday. fun! fun!

HOLY FU*$&IN SHIT!!!


Bicycle Film Festival TOKYO '08 PART 1 from Eli Tokyo Jitensha-Jin on Vimeo.

are you in calgary saturday nite? any plans? see you there? i'll be there with the boy and we are going to ride bikes over - sounds like a great nite of activities and film. come out and celebrate the fall equinox in one of calgary's coolest little parks.

the new season is just around the corner - and this guy is stoked to get back out there and watch some of the rowdy-est action available in calgary. i attended a couple matches last season and both times was impressed with the turnout of fans and the insane flat-track action. check out their site and plan on attending a match - good times are guaranteed!

1st annual ramsay bowl bike polo tourney

my photos can be found here and my videos can be found here .

the tournament seemed to be a great success with some incredible action, many broken bike parts, and a super fun time. there was even a live band banging out some super cool rhythms and beats while we played. our team lost our first game bad (5-0) against the super-good grass game guys. our second game started much better as we quickly established a 2-0 lead and were feeling pretty good about making it past the team we were playing - when - agast! - trevor's bike broke - and suddenly it was three on two. then - agast! - tommy's mallet broke in two, making it 3 on me. tommy quickly grabbed another mallet (trev still on the sidelines trying to get his bike working) and just as quickly - agast! - he broke that one too! while all this is happening our lead is slipping away and we ended up losing 5-4. the loss was a little disappointing for me (uber-competitive guy) but super good times were had by our team nonetheless. all the losses have done is stoke the polo fire in my gut and i cant wait to get out and play again.

interesting, timely, and somewhat related articles from adbusters and FFWD that are worth a quick read.

seems that bicycles, bicycle riders and their related communities are starting to penetrate into the realm of the very mainstream - especially with the glode and mail, the ny times, the cbc, etc posting bicycle related stories on almost a weekly basis.

are we are witnessing the next renaissance of the bicycle?

ready for the 'tourney!
after having my look polo bike banged around a little too much for my liking on wednesday night i decided to try using a machine that would be a little more durable - c'est voila! - the 29er is now rockin the polo setup...




...some details - barrel adjustable, 2-sp rear derailleur with a standard mtb triple setup up front, rear hydro brake, thumbshifter for the front derailleur and disc to protect the front wheel. also here is a shot of our team t-shirt for the 'tourney.

its gonna be a good time!

expocycle report part 2

all the pictures can be found here


the first day of the show is traditionally pretty busy and this year was no exception. overall, the impression i am getting from the convention is that the bike industry is doing pretty well these days - especially when factoring in what high gas prices have done for bicycle sales! i was able to sneek away from my booth a few time during the day and snapped these pics of stuff that caught my eye...

easily the most beautiful machine spotted so far has been the naked city bike that shimano was showing with the alfine grouppo. shimano had sam whittingham custom design this bike around the group and the result is an incredible work of functional art. chek the pictures posted and be sure to notice the details - unbelievable!