CommonWheels Bike Co-Op

Tonight on the way back from the Roll It Forward bike mines, I stopped by the Commonwheels bike co-op over in Allston to pick up a bike from a BigBikes Mobile Bike Repair client. It was awesome. I got a little turned around on my way in, I was standing in a dark parking lot, calling Chris Ditunno to have her talk me in. Unlike an air traffic controller she was...awake and able to make sense of my garbled coordinates. "Ya, I'm standing in a kind of courtyard next to a...dune buggy with a...deer head on the hood, and I can hear a band." "I can hear a band too" Chris said and two seconds later she walked out the door. 

SingleSpeed-A-Palooza Cyclingdirt Coverage Is Up!

Watch more video of 2011 Single Speed-A-Palooza on cyclingdirt.org

It took me a while but it is done. This video sort of captures the fun, flow, and fucking magic of Stewart State Forest and the SingleSpeed-A-Palooza course.
You'll have to sit through the end credits of the highlight vid if you want to witness perhaps the best karaoke version of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" ever performed.

The rest of the vids, including one of a not-so-magnificent karaoke version of Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O mine are RIGHT FREAKIN HERE DUDE.

Putting The 'Looza' In Single Speed-A-Palooza 2011

When people say they have not been riding their bikes, they are generally full of shit, like Mark "The Shark" McCormack. Back when he was our Shimano rep at IBC, he would come in at some point in the early spring and go on about how he'd only been riding a half hour a day on the trainer and that he was totally out of shape. Then he'd go out that weekend and win Charge Pond or be ripping legs off at Marblehead. He was executing a calculated misinformation campaign in order to catch his rivals off guard. The Shark is a smart man and an immensely successful bicycle racer; I am a stupid man who has stumbled into a good result here and there along the way. I don't have the capacity to pull off calculated misinformation campaigns.The night before Single Speed-A-Palooza, I was telling my drinking mates (Kerry Combs, Matt Myette, Ronnie Steers, and Matt Aumiller) at Irish Eyes that I really hadn't been riding and how I've basically devolved into some kind of

Gravel Grinder Wrap Up Or The Beast With A Million Photos

I'm tired. I mean, my fingers and hands hurt too much to write in any kind of vigorous way. I would never use the word "vigorous" in speech, in that context. The blog-o-verse version of me is such a douche. The new job is the ultimate excuse for getting out of blogging...or anything. It's like having a kid or a dog, but it's not...because people only have a small number of kids or dogs; I have hundreds of kids I have to put on bikes. It is literally like I am raising hundreds of children, so all parents and pet owners can pretty much suck it, because I am a better, cooler, harder working person than all of you motherfuckers put together. Even if you had mutant powers and Nobel Peace Prizes, you still wouldn't have shit on me. 

See, what did I tell you? Blog-o-verse me...such a douche. 

I Rolled It Forward today, I rolled it backward today, I rolled it every which way, and now I am just going to lay down some photos, lots of photos, and talk about them. 

What's My Name And Wookie Bean Bags

See all those bikes there behind my oddly shaped head? Those are what's inside my head these days as well. I've been working with Roll It Forward and Boston's Youth Cycling Program, which are both initiatives of  Mayor Menino's Boston Bikes. I split my time between plowing through the repair of 100s of bikes, ranging in quality from Magnas with rusty, angular chains to classic GTs hooked up with all the sweet upgrades the 90s had to offer. Roll It Forward procures bikes from various places and distributes them to people in need of bicycles through programs like Boston Bicycle School and the Boston Center For Youth And Families.Youth Cycling Program goes to schools and provides kids with bicycle safety training, utilizing a fleet of bikes donated from places like International Bicycle Center, Wheelworks, EMS, and Giant Bicycles. I fix most of the bikes for RIF and manage the fleets for YCP. I get some help from other RIF and YCP employees, and from volunteers, like the ones who are coming down this Saturday from 10-5. Hey, if you want to come down and volunteer, we'd be glad to have the help. You don't even need to know how to work on bikes, I'll teach you. I'm serious here. Contact link on the sidebar. Seriously.

I'll talk more about all that later and give updates as things go on in that realm, but we have much more important things to discuss today. 

I Went To Vermont And All I Got Was This Stupid New Name

 Saturday afternoon I was feeling a little lost. I haven't talked a lot about it here, but I basically can't ride a bike to save my life right now. Can't train in any kind of serious way anyway. I'm a mess. So I was driving around, doing work-related things (we'll talk about the new work, i.e.: "my good excuse for not blogging" later this week). I was thinking about how the Ronde De Rosey was the next day, and how, if I rode it, I would destroy my knee for the entire season and how that would suck more than the big suck I am experiencing currently. I thought about how the Gravel Grinder charity ride was going down in Waterbury, VT the next day as well, and how I was really sad that I wouldn't be riding bikes and drinking beer up there. But then I got a call from Gravel Grinder organizer George W. Bike29 and he was like "Aah! Come up and drink beer and hang out, you don't need to ride bikes to have fun!" And I said

Barry Roubaix Highlights Video and Very Pro Sports Reporter-Type Write Up

This is what I spent most of my day doing. Well that, and writing the Barry Roubaix report. If you watch this and read the report it will all make sense. I think.

Watch more video of Barry-Roubaix: The Killer Gravel Road Race on cyclingdirt.org

Barry Roubaix, The Killer Gravel Road Race

 

Got too much video to edit and words to write about the Barry Roubaix race to sit here babbling about myself today. Of everything that happened out in Michigan, probably the most exciting thing was getting to ride on the back of a follow moto for the first time. Eh, the fact that it was 17° out...could've maybe done without that, but it was awesome nonetheless. More on that tomorrow or later in the week, for now I've got some of my favorite videos from the weekend. Oh, and pardon the shakiness of the camera; it took six hours for my core temperature to come back up to normal.

Operation Rescue (The Schwinn Varsity)

No, I'm not talking about the fundamentalist anti-abortion/anti-gay group now known as Operation Save America, what I'm talking about is an operation to rescue my Schwinn Varsity from Boston City Hall, where I abandoned it on Monday after an incident involving a broken brake cable, some inclement weather, and me being a wuss-bag.

Wait a second, shouldn't Operation Rescue And Save America support gayness? More gay people mean fewer abortions. It is very hard for gay people to get pregnant, and if they do manage to get pregnant, they've usually thought about it first, and they've usually passed through some kind of screening process which has deemed them fit to raise a child. Gay couples don't really have "accidents." But that's beside the point (and the point is trying as hard as possible to appear as though it is not associated in any way with it.) Just remember what Operation American Rescuing Savers Who Save Things say:

"The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality, it is holiness!"

That rant is probably not going to help with the not-getting the death threats. 

But, as Results-Rooter (who we will talk more about in a moment) would say: 

"Hey Guys, Bikes!"

Robocop Vs. Terminator Vs. Paul Revere Vs. Jack Black

This is going to be a speed blog, so please excuse typos, left out words, and trains of thought that go off the rails, fall into gorges hundreds of feet below, and burst into flames. I've thrown some images up here...I'm going to talk about them, and then I'm going to get the hell out of there and do lots of stuff. Real cool stuff. 

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor Situation Explained With Poop And Farts

Whoa dude, I got a whole lot of stuff piling up here and no time to post it. This half-assed post has nothing to do with cycling but everything to do with poop and farts, which are really the number two and three subjects we talk about here, so it's not like we're that far off theme. 

Get it, number two subject? It's late. 

I really enjoyed this Youtube video explaining the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor mess as it relates to poop and farts, and I didn't want anyone to miss it. If you are a Big Bikes reader, you deserve to see this. And who knows, maybe if you're like me and you'll actually find it somehow comforting. 

Of course the real value of this post is that I took the time (time that I should have used to work on the Thom Parsons Cyclowhat? Project) to take a few screen captures of the key moments in the video for you to share with your friends an relatives. I'm pretty sure your grandmother would be elated if you posted one to her Facebook page.

Utter Thomination Of Otis AFB And The Rock

Somehow, throughout the course of my longer-than-I-care-to-think-about life, no one had ever struck upon the magnificently clever artifice of replacing the "dom" part of a word with "Thom." That was until this past Saturday when I went for another ride at Otis Air Force Base with a posse of fit racer types who nearly rode me to death like I was a pony at a birthday party for clinically obese octuplets. I was completely shelled and Results Rooter, taking pity on me, decided to take us down a technical trail so I wouldn't get so horribly dropped. He said "We're gonna do that techy trail again so Thom can dominate it." And, come to think of it, I guess it was me who said "Nah dude, I'm gonna Thominate it." Wow, I thought, no one's ever gone there...what are the possibilities? All we could come up with in the following minutes were "Thominatrix" and "Thom Deluise." But the second one doesn't really count. I can't even think of any now...oh wait: athomination. Different switcheroo, same idea. Come on, whaddayagot? Let's hear it.

A Colombian Necktie For Facebook

Remember yesterday when said I was all show and no tell but it turned out I was full of shit...lots of shit. Well today I really am all show no tell. I'm basically going to babble about a couple videos and then fuck off. I have a couple very stressful deadlines to meet, real crazy stuff. One deadline involves a super secret project I'm working on with CycloWhat?

Came across the above video over on Tomi's blog yesterday. As visually striking, fun, and hilarious as it is,

All Show No Tell

It seems that yesterday's incredibly well-viewed video post was not all that much of a puzzler.  Dicky was able to make short work of the question: Whose blog is Ultra Endure Guy really reading from? Dicky is very small and like all very small animals, not very smart. You ever meet a smart tree shrew? A marmoset? How about a smart bumblebee bat? Didn't think so. I rest my case. Next time (ya right!) I will have to try harder and avoid stating the name of the victim's website in the closing seconds of the video. (But it was just too fun to say Cycle-hyphen-Smaaht-dot-cawm.) Adam Myerson did not make a peep about the post anywhere throughout the vast expanse of his social media empire yesterday, which means he is either a.) Thoroughly unamused b.) Totally fucking pissed c.) Unaware of it d.) Trying not to give it any attention for fear that it will spread faster than herpes at a boarding school for the arts.

He can't be madder at me than he is at the dude who made this:

Ultra Endure Guy II- Hey PEZ Cycling Look At You! (You Sexist Douche Bags)

Finally, the long awaited sequel to the immensely popular and well-viewed Ultra Endure Guy Navigating The Mystery video. As always (always? like the past...one times we've done this) the first person to guess whose blog UEG is really reading gets to choose the next blog he reads. (Did I ever even mention that the last blog UEG read was Willow Koerber's? Did I?) If you're looking to read something today...not that I'm saying you shouldn't watch the video, because it's pretty sweet, but if you're say, at work and can't watch a video with sound, then you could check out the post about the hipster traps in NYC I did over on BikeRumor. It might be the best-viewed post I've done over there, and what's encouraging about that is that it is almost entirely made up. No drooling over useless gadgetry, no "hey look at this $20,000 carbon bike!" Just a bunch of crazy-make-em-uppers and weirdness.

Like That Time Tom Cruise Finally Admitted That He's Gay

 

Alright, so there's maybe gonna be a little period of undirected babbling before I get down to the very serious business of producing proper Big Bikes type posts I'm afraid. Right, because Big Bikes usually has so much direction. That's what you come down here for: direction. There's a lot going on...lots of changes. You may have noticed the disappearance of a couple logos on the sidebar, and if you check back sometime soon, you may see the appearance of a couple new logos. It's gonna be huge, like that time Tom Cruise finally admitted that he's gay.

Local Warming

This isn't a real Big Bikes post, I'm just half-assedly setting the pick in hopes that I can break out of this paralyzing case of blogger's block I've been suffering from for the past couple months and actually do something over here.

Yesterday I met up with a big group of folks to ride Otis Air Force Base down on the Cape. I cannot remember the last time I got so shelled on a group ride. 

I upgraded to the new Blogger editor, and while it is kinda buggy and weird (cursors disappear, text gets linked for no apparent reason) it does have a few sweet features. My favorites being the photo uploader that allows you to upload as many photos as you want all at once. You used to have to upload five at a time. This still beat Wordpress. With Wordpress you have to upload one photo at a time and it is not a streamlined process. This sucks when I have to say, do a BikeRumor post that requires a bunch of photos. Another sweet feature is the insert jumpbreak function. Now I can be all AHTBM and do a "read more" type thingy. Sorta like this:

The rest of the sequence of Will Crissman riding the most insane stunt at Otis AFB after the break. Does he crash because his cell phone went off in his pocket just as he was at the most deadly point? Do rabid coyotes burst forth from the bushes and eat him alive, soft bits first? I don't know, you'll just have to jump past the break to find out.

Hold It Now

Damn, can't remember the last time I didn't update the blawg for 18 days...maybe never. What can I say, I've been scrambling: trying to survive, painting, working on a bunch of bikes with the whole mobile bike repair thing, trying to get a "real" job, not-blogging, well no here-blogging, I have been blogging on the BikeRumor...big time.

I basically came over here today to announce that I'm going into 8 days of total radio silence, but 18 days without a peep...shit, like anyone would have noticed. Eh, I'd rather not come down here every day just to make excuses. I'll be back when I'm ready, hopefully that'll be soon.

Thanks to The Original Big Ring for reminding me that Big Bikes exists (that's his awesome sticker above). And thanks to Shanna at Endless Bikes for her continued support (and the huge socks that I can't wait to rock). She even threw a bag of Mountain Air Roasting beans in the box.

Oh, during radio silence there will be daily Race To NAHBS! interviews scheduled to go up on BikeRumor, so check those out. The interview with Mickey from Spooky Bikes will be up Monday AM...it's a good one. Craig Gaulzetti might be the only guy in the same league. If you haven't read his interview...wow, you should check it out.

So ya, 8 days of radio silence, which may be followed by a yet to be determined period of further radio silence...or not, we'll see.

Flyin' Bryan Philbrook Builds "Thom's Sawyer"

Thom's Sawyer Built By Bryan Of International Bicycle from BigBikesShow on Vimeo.

 As previously stated, I don't even like Rush, but setting this video of Bryan building "Thom's Sawyer" to "Tom Sawyer" was unavoidable. I didn't bite 21st Avenue Bikes "air compressor to the face" schtick, but I did develop my own using Bryan's beard as a prop. 

And please share the living hell out of this thing so I can get paid to make more.

Oh, and I spoke with Ultra Endure Guy, he'll be paying Big Bikes a visit Thursday or Friday. He also said something about a future project that may involve Chelada.

Gary Fisher Collection Sawyer: It's Light, It's Racist, And It Has A Split Dropout So You Can Clean Your Chain

 

My new bike is named after a Rush song…and I don't even like Rush. Alright, the Rush song is named after a book by Mark Twain, but who thinks of Twain before they think of Rush when they hear "Tom Sawyer?" It's sad. Sad like the fact that a half-assed blog about bikes and, and…who knows, shows up before its namesake in a Google search. But, nonetheless, I'm going to go with "Thom's Sawyer" as the name for the new, big, gray beast. It just fits. I walked into the shop on Friday, pulled the thing out of the box, and Erich Leas started singing "Tom Sawyer," and that was that. Boom! Bike named. I knew I was getting the bike for weeks…months even, but this connection had never occurred to me: a.) because I'm dimwitted and b.) because I don't think about myself in the third person, so it was "my Sawyer;" not "Thom's Sawyer." And ya, the H thing threw me. Rush's Tom Sawyer doesn't have a
silent H.