Why I'm Not Here

I'm over HERE. Ah, not really even. I'm mostly out in the world and not at my computer. Of course you can always find me on the Twitters. 

The New Ride: Niner One 9 "Green Machine"

I'm suffering from a bad case of black lung from the Boston Bike Mines, but I wanted to share this: I got a new bike from JRA Cycles. And apparently posting photos of your new bike on the Facebooks is about as exciting as posting pictures of your new kid. The outpouring of enthusiasm was as staggering as...me, after three Irish Car Bombs at The Cellar. 

There is no need for me to play the naming game, like some guy who I shall only refer to as George Wisell. My friend Erich busted out "Green Machine" immediately, and it stuck. What better name for a bike ridden by a douche bag who writes a blog named after a Kyuss song?

More on this later. Probably not sooner.

Rainbow/Unicorn Bikes And Kool-Aid Pickles

Today's post will be short on words, but with photos of a bike like this, who needs words? 

New England Bicycle Expo The Final Chapter: Igleheart vs. Geekhouse vs. Budd Bike Works vs. Silky Cycles...In Space

This is the third and final installment in the New England Bicycle Expo series here on the Big Bikes. I probably could have nursed it for a couple more days, but I have a feeling that more stuff is going to come pouring in....more really awesome stuff. It might be that it's just a feeling. 

The big dog heavy hitter at NEBEs was Christopher Igleheart. He loves it when I call him that...big dog heavy hitter. His flagship at the show was a big ass randonee bike for a guy who's riding Paris Brest Paris. Or, as I say,

New England Bicycle Expo Part Two: Royal H., Icarus Frames, Folk Engineered, And Honey Badger

Ever heard of Folk Engineered Custom Handmade Bicycles? Well screw you know it all, I hadn't. That is until I attended the New England Bicycle Expo. While most frame builders came to the expo from across the street, the kids from Folk Engineered came all the way from

New England Bicycle Expo Part One: Belle Helmets, NFG Cycles, and 2nd Suit

The New England Bicycle Expo went down this past Saturday at The Armory in Somerville, Mass. I was there tabling for Roll It Forward...and every other program and initiative of Boston Bikes. It looked like something like this:

Friday Fizzle Out

It's Friday morning, I'm up an hour before I should be, and I'm sitting here drinking a coffee I probably shouldn't be. It has soy milk in it and it's been sitting out since 8:30 AM...yesterday. But I microwaved it, so that'll kill any bacteria or mold, or whatever stuff that was in it that could have killed me or given me explosive diarrhea. I figure insomnia is nature's way of telling me I should go blog about something. Of course what I should really be doing is working on SECRET PROJECT #2 for CycloWhat?

The Dog Shit on My Homework: A POO Story (Re-Published)

Yesterday I lamented, on the Twittter, that there is too much of talk of cyclocross (in fucking May) and way too little talk of poop on my Twitter feed. It got me thinkin'...when I run into Big Bikes readers out in the real world, they tell me "Ya, your blog pretty much sucked before the Kimbo Slice post, and it has definitely sucked every day since the Kimbo Slice post. I keep coming back in hopes that you'll maybe, just maybe, do something close to that good, but all I am met with is disappointment." Which is awkward. Then they tell me that, next to the Kimbo post, "The Dog Shit On My Homework: A Poo Story," a tale of how I fell in dog poop on my way to class, is the best thing they've seen on the Big Bikes blog here. Yet somehow it does not show up in the top ten most-viewed posts list over on the sidebar there, and that stupid post called "Straight Outta Brompton" does (I'm not even gonna link to it because the post already gets more traffic than it should just because of the fact that it has made the top ten list.) 

I have re-published "The Dog Shit On My Homework: A Poo Story" below in hopes that it will rise up the ranks of best viewed Big Bikes post and grace the top ten list on the sidebar. Being on that list is like being born rich — chances are you're gonna stay that way. 

So here it is BAM!

The Dog Shit on My Homework: A POO Story

Fool Of Chains/Buy My Trek Fisher Collection Sawyer

It's late and that crappy title was all I could come up with. Well, the "Fool Of Chains" part...that part's stupid and, as you'll see, wicked literal. The insomnia's back I figured I'd get out of bed, drink some herbal sleepy tea or some shit, watch some Lost and babble at you guys for a bit. Lost has uh...lost me. Once the show went into flash forward instead of backward mode things just got too depressing. I like real magic and lack of metaphor. You know that movie The Quest, starring the kid from E.T., where it turns out that the dinosaur in the rock quarry is really a steam shovel or something? I HATED that shit. It was the worst. All I know is that, if I get to the end of the series and realize that the final two seasons were as worthless as valve caps, I am gonna be pissed. I mean, if I'd known that the first two seasons of The Sopranos were the only ones worth watching, I could have added days to my life. But that's not important right now and I doubt it ever will be.

Of course, if level of importance determined what got printed on Big Bikes well...

No, There Are Limits

The sad truth of the matter is...the more I have going on, the less I write. I have done much of my finest literary work when there has been absolutely nothing going on in my life. And now here I am with so much to show and tell and what do you get? Radio silence. So I'm going to do the lay down a bunch of photos and then talk about them thing here, it will get us

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.