Posts

Sheldon Brown: Ride In Peace

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Yesterday, the Grand Wiki of bicycle bells, whistles and everything below the saddle passed away. My humble tribute to Sheldon Brown on the Bike Friday website. I never met the man, but we used his gear inch calculator every day ... Where am I? Currently staying in a 1-coconut town called Ka'a'awa, which means "where the mountains meet the sea" - they sure do. There is a very large and majestic, mossy lump of planet breathing down my neck ... See photos of my Hawaii loiterings with a laptop here

Aloha, but not in my backyard

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Picketing against illegal picket fences ... PHOTO GALLERY | MOVIE CLIP | GALFROMDOWNUNDER IN HAWAII I've just attended my first rally in a long time - the placard waving, chanting and foot-stomping kind. For bicycling? No, for beachcombing! Well actually, we're talking the full monty of ocean worshipping activities, like surfing, swimming, walking, sunbathing, beach-barbecuing, and kiddie favorites like jellyfish-poking and limpet harassing ... The rally was organized by Beach Access Hawaii , Surfrider Foundation and other citizen advocacy groups, collectively incensed at the increasing gall of "rich landowners" who've been surreptitiously gating and blocking off beach access paths for quite some time - and no one is stopping them. Often, the gates are torn down only to be put right back up again, with fake signs saying "Private Access" and "Trespassers will be stoned with coconuts" or words to that effect. Some even hire security guards to

My life is a motion blur ...

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Wow! Since leaving NYC I've been on the go and bleating on everyone else's blog ( Bike Friday's and FastCompany ) but my own! I've been in doing the Bike Friday shuffle in San Francisco, Sacramento, and now Hawaii. I'm off to the annual Bike Friday Arizona Desert Camp in March, then to Australia for the Australian Bike Friday Club gathering . Here's a motion blur update ... Riding with the Honolulu Tradewinds Bike Club out to Waimanalo and back - fast furious! Sorry I couldn't manage a more scenic backdrop than this "unremarkable lump of rock" ... Chance encouter in Kapiolani park with daughter of the Bragg's Liquid Aminos empire and author of 'The Triathlon Endurance Training Book', Patricia Bragg. Dressed in pink, she seemed enamored with my hot-rod pink Pocket Rocket Pro Petite ... Gazillion dollar view from this Lanakai beach shack, where I was invited to a birthday party. The Hawaii Bicycling League Annual Membership Dinner - la

Terrence Carey's Adrenalize: Dance like no-one's watching

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Right: Terrence Carey allows you to hallucinate that you're Catherine Zeta-Jones in "Chicago" for an hour in his 'Adrenalize' class One frustrating aspect of my life as a road warrior is the lack of continuity for things that require it – like classes. Sure, there's the odd drop-in yoga class, and a single guitar lesson might teach you enough of 'Stairway to Heaven' to get you banned from every guitar shop in town; you can loiter around a Trader Joe's cooking demo and fantasize you're at the Iron Chef's bootcamp. But for what I love to dabble in – dance - you generally need continuity. Most exercise classes are humdrum, and most modern dance classes are too complicated, especially if you're not a regular. I want a quick fix that makes this knock-kneed novice feel I'm training for both a big bike race, an MTV clip or Catherine Zeta Jones' tole in "Chicago", all at the same time. And all in 1 hour. I stumbled (trying to

Having Borat moment: my nightmare before Christmas

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In living the life as a professional nomad – a very pleasant term for a homeless person with a laptop and a nice change of clothes - I apparently stumbled over the border of decorum, and fortunately a friend stopped me in my tracks. Let me explain. I get hunger attacks – the kind of sugar low that some small, highly strung women complain of. Sometimes I don't honor the call of the calorie. I suffered dehydration while crossing the Yucatan in Mexico in 2004, not because of lack of water, but lack of sufficient calories to balance my electrolyes. It's called "not looking after yourself." Hey I gotta eat! I arrived at the Berkeley Bowl Market right on closing time, Dec 24. I locked my bike, bolted past the doorman and made a bee-line for the brown rice sushi-to-go just inside the door. The doorman yells, "Miss! Miss! We're closed!" so loudly and emphatically I imagined big men in blue overalls hoisting me by armpits out into the parking lot. I was forced t

NY Noodling: The BODIES Exhibition

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I WASN'T going to rush out and see this exhibition, given the $26 entry and the oversize, see-it-all-anyway technicolor psoters on bus shelters and bus sides. And then there was the controversy about the bodies being of Chinese prisoners exhumed without asking their permission first ... But a surgeon friend, Dr Steve Chang, said it was "excellent - wish we'd had it at med school" and his colleague even offered to accompany me and provide a laparoscopic commentary, so how could I refuse? The exhibition starts out modestly with a display of fairly unremarkable skeletons – we've all seen those in high school anatomy classes. Except these skeletons are shown playing football, doing hi-fives and striking other admittedly PG-rated poses, complete with ridiculous smiles on their faces, and staring eyeballs. On this particular day, a no-holds-barred mitzvah (or what sounded like it) was in full swing upstairs, which ruined the potentially contemplative ambience.

TIKIT ON TRIAL 2 of 3: Getting our front tire in the door of NY's toughest gatekeepers

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... with a little help from our Friday friends NEW YORK CITY-- by Lynette Chiang, Bike Friday Customer Evangelist This story reproduced from the Bike Friday blog The BMW Building: a naked Brompton gets the nod ... will a fully clothed tikit also? About this experiment See all the videos at once Photo Gallery OFFICE BUILDINGS Below is a list of buildings with an insider who has offered to let me put the tikit to the test, and if we proceed, the results. Missing information means the appointment is yet to be confirmed. Please email lynettec@bikefriday.com to supply more information or help with the test by offering your building. See the blue box on page 1 for the test procedure. UPTOWN SUCCESS! BMW Building, 555 W57th @ 11 Ave, NY | View clip Date of trial: Wed Dec 5, 2007, 5pm Insider: DH, Bike Friday Club of NY member, owns 2 folding bikes and a recumbent Type of building: Secure office building Known policy/insider statement: "Th