Riding Dirty, No Doubt

The only wooden section of the Patullo Bridge was catastrophically damaged in a fire last week. They have officially closed the bridge to all traffic. Now, this should hardly affect most of us who live in the City of Vancouver and ride bikes, as the bridge crosses the Fraser River from New Westminster to Surrey - not to mention it's one of the shittier bridges in town for riding across, with no guard rail and a lot of truck traffic.

But somehow it does affect us in the city: "Bicycle access on SkyTrain is suspended on all lines until further notice due to capacity limitations." What the hell!? Unbeknownst to my defiance, I took the tall bike on its first train ride to Surrey on Monday. I merely rode my bike to the train station and was late enough for class that I decided to take the bike with me.

The next day I went with the bus, as I didn't need to go to work after class. At the Frances St bus stop, I run into none other than Randy Moffat, local (it doesn't really get much more local) BMX ripper. He mentions that he's headed to work, for some reason I assumed further west in Vancouver. We have a quick conversation and I leave him at the front of the bus to watch his bike while I get out of the way of the southbound bus congestion with my courier bag full of drawing gear.

I find a spot on the train, and notice that Randy is also headed east. After a few minutes, I headed up to talk to him again. He's working in Burnaby, and using his bike to get to and from the bus and train. We talk about the current ice-fog epidemic, and then I mention that bikes are banned from the train right now, a fact that Randy was also unaware of. Here's the bike check of Randy's current setup: all black with green spokes, brakeless, super wide bars. Reminds me of another Randy...

Two bikes worthy of discussion, ridin' dirty on the Skytrain. Talking to Randy inspired me to go riding even though it's cold and foggy out. I've come to the conclusion that riding BMX with music, talking to your friends occasionally, is the way to go.

I spent at least an hour at Plaza that afternoon, working on my wall rides and manuals, mostly hitting the far north line. I will soon have wall tail taps within my grasp. This photo of that "beginner" wall ride spot at Plaza courtesy of Chicago race organizer and BMXer Matt Sipple, who was in town last week checking out what we've got to offer, including the green green forest of North Van with myself and his girl Emily.

My instructor had seen the tall on Monday, and on Tuesday mentioned I could bring the bike in as a drawing subject. Hmm, could I possibly bring another bike from the collection instead? Another bike worthy of discussion? I shall report back on this, if it ends up as a photo of one of my bikes in an art class. Could end up riding dirty on the train again soon if they don't lift the ban.

I leave this one with a photo of the day after that first BMX ride in oh-too-long. The girls at the office were not nearly as stoked on this as I was.

Homecoming

The tall bike came home today, towing the BOB trailer with my Marinoni on it. Though it is rideable, the new fork needs some more modification before I'll feel safe riding hard on it. I'm happy with the day's work, though. The fork looks great, and the 27" wheel barely clears the Miele's original fork crown.

Why can't I ride it? I chose to omit the upper headset cup on the bottom frame, as it made the fork build more complicated and made servicing the headset actually impossible. As it turns out, that bearing was doing more than I thought; the squishy feeling is only amplified by the more powerful Miele caliper.

I'll post some detail shots soon; I hope to find a solution to this problem that doesn't involve building another new fork.

Fabrication Time

I drew a diagram of how I'd like to orchestrate the tall bike's new fork setup. I'm just currently deciding between two and three headset cups. Updates to come after the weekend; hopefully there will be a Mielgeot back in the house.

I can't remember what happened to the Kona Project-Two fork that I had, but I'm thinking it would be pretty beefy if the Miele fork gets out of alignment.

Lollercaust

Proj-B's east end went out this evening to take advantage of typecasts in the bike community. Yes, Lyle decided it was time to buy a set of post-winter roadie rollers. Attention Everyone: the days are longer and the weather is nice. Time to sell your rollers and do your training on the road. Then you can buy new, upgraded rollers in the fall!

We headed out, BOB in tow, with the tripod to make sure we captured the first moments of new awesomeness in sharp focus. The trip would be wasted without a stop at Kingsgate for some tall cans of Shaftebury. Remember when those were on sale last summer? $1.79 including deposit. That was rad.


As complete newbies to rollers, we thought it would be a good call to learn right away. After loading up, we headed for China Creek North Park to give it a go. We cracked a beer, and got lolling. Lyle was able to get it going without too much trouble, and was soon rockin' it eastside in the grass:



As we realized that rollers on grass was not ideal - they were sinking in - a '63 Impala rolled by on 13" wires, all but dragging the rear bumper. How appropriate. We then took it to the streets, Great Northern Way style:


Unfortunately, the rollers were set up for a longer wheelbase than the tight-angled KHS and, though I was able to get moving on them, it was easy to get bucked off. Lyle's Bianchi was perfect though, and I lolled off into the sunset.


Bikeforums.net's Commuting forum was a fun time today, as Lyle and I both posted in their Show Us Your Dashboard thread. No computers, HID lights, or excessive cables and levers here, folks!




... and continuing on the topic of bicycle typecasting, here is a very well-written, albeit slightly dated (Aug '06) article from PingMag, called "Bike Messenger Style." Whether we'd like to admit it or not, even those of us who don't courier have been pegged in at least some part of this piece; it goes into much deeper detail than the average article. Somehow, it has me wanting to build 40-spoke wheels, just for bling factor.

Our friend Leo is shown in one of the photos, apparently from the book Messengers style (thanks Mark). I'm sure he's got some great stories to accompany that. I really want to do a project with Leo: some type of custom bike, maybe another tall bike. Great conversations with him were a big part of my building the Mielgeot. If not for that, I may not have ridden it through the fountains at Queen Elizabeth Park!


That image was shot at Tuesday's Hey Fixie by Damon, who is from Melburn, and will be over here for the next while. He's very excited to get involved with the Vancouver bike scene, with plans to help map bike routes and gain knowledge by becoming immersed in another city's bike culture. Imagine going to Critical Mass in another large city... Damon gets to do that in Vancouver for the first time this month. Eventually I hope to do something similar - possibly the 15th anniversary CM in San Francisco in September. Anyone in for that?

Back to the subject of the PingMag article, another consideration is their mention of the flowing, high speed urban riding that "couriers" are known for. With both Nick and Lyle having had car-bike incidents (on bikes with brakes) in the past couple weeks, I've been pondering is whether car-bike incidents are higher in amount of occurrences, but less dangerous overall when riding a very assertive style in traffic.

We associate such riding with an oft-used label on this blog, and a term we use to describe ourselves, which has an almost-accurate description on wikipedia: hoon. Yes, we share a moniker with a group of Australian street racing, car modifying hoons. Definitely one for the B-Tionary. Primer grey anyone?

The part about "consensual sodomy amongst the tribal adult males" is a bit odd and, considering the well-reported-ness of the rest of the article, seems like it almost might be a joke. Well, Camilo and Skylar, we've yet to see that one through - but that's a topic for a completely different blog.

I know we make some fairly complicated manoeuvers and, though we have run-ins with cars, we often see them coming in advance and have already slowed down to expect it. When riding in a group, we communicate with each other very well, informing of bus signals and the like. So, back to the original question: higher amount of incidence, less catastrophic results? Or am I just making all this up?

In terms of injury, Project-B has a much higher rate of getting hurt riding BMX at the skatepark or falling off a proficiently trackstanded tall bike because someone grabbed the rear triangle to "help out." Who knows, maybe someone will injure themselves trying to learn how to ride backwards on the new rollers or, even worse, riding them on a tall bike.

Tall bike commuting

I've been riding the Mielgeot all over the place since I got it together. It's a rolling fun machine - not just for me, but for anyone who happens to be near.

Its inaugural ride beyond coming home from Pedal Play was Midnight Mass. We did a downtown loop via Cambie Bridge, and I practiced getting into "pole position" (leaning on whatever is available) at stoplights.

Friday morning was drizzly and tired, but that woudn't stop the Mielgeot. I rode to work, noting the dreary-looking zombies on the way to their shitty jobs on a "shitty" day. Brrring-brrring, the Mielgeot is here to remind you that I'm having FUN on the way to work!

Saturday morning, we had a Project-B meeting planned. Riding south on Victoria, I experienced my first tall bike flat. It was a 2.5" long nail, stuck right in the tire! What the crap! I had to walk it 10 blocks to Bon's, and changed the tube as we ate, drank, and were merry.

I observed a tall bike sabbath on Sunday, but couldn't stay off for long. Sunday night, looking at the weather forecast, I decided I would be taking the Mielgeot over the 2nd Narrows to school on Monday morning. As I approached the bridge, my heart was beating furiously. The weather was beautiful. I stopped before committing to the crossing to pull out my camera. Check out my flickr for a few action photos.

The bridge turned out to be less scary than I thought it would be, and the ride up the hill to school was decent in the 40/19 (~57 inch) gear. My friends at school were pretty stoked on the bike, as most people are. One of them asked, "why would you build a bike like this?"... to which I replied "for nothing but that big smile on your face."

Bikes like the Mielgeot will evoke a smile from most, and a lot more from others. I suppose it's just a side benefit that it's ridiculously fun to ride as well.