..approaching terminal velocity

Team awesome. Product Bloggin. Clothing rides. Ice on the bike routes. Stuck in the computor. FIST FITTING. Hand built bike show. Minibike whatever. Bridge battlez. Ratchet trouble.

Gah. Too many tracks to keep straight. Its like Granville island in here. Converging and diverging, just a centimeter above the pavement. Lift the front tire and slide the back. Holy crap. My life is exploding right now. I almost want to steal the Kisby format and throw this shit down in chronological order.

One. Team Awesome. Don't look too awesome at the start, in fact, they look like regular hipsters. However, they're planning on riding from Portland to Florida on their fixed gears. Having done SOME fixed touring, I know its a biatch. I wonder if they're BOBbin, panneirding, or credit card touring. Either way. it looks like an awesome ride.. though I don't know how cycle friendly the south will be to them. Not sure how many of those little toe tags they'll be handing out down there.

Product blogging, I had something in mind for this. I could be talking about a sick new machined part, or hyping up someone else's stuff, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Perhaps it could be about the clothing, and the rides.. Down in LA they have this ride called 'The Wolfpack Hustle', and from what I understand, its the equivalent to our 'Fast Nights'. Just a quick non spandex group hoon through the city at night. Wait.. its NOT JUST A QUICK RIDE. For their one year anniversary, they just did a Century around LA, at night! That's pretty sick!

Now.. they've gone and branched out, teaming up with some clothing manufacturers and made some Wolfpack hustle gear. I really like this idea in theory. They came up with a cool logo and everything.. the only thing I don't like about it is the branding. X-Hustle top tube cozy, reversible to just display the XLARGE brand? Gross. I like riding in cotton as much as the next douche, but all these hot collabs with skatewear brands are gettin under my skin. Mash*Stussy everyone? I thought Stussy died long ago.

Cadence? They're jumping in and making some nice stuff, and it is pretty original for the most part.. and they're doing it without major brand power behind them. I guess I'm alright with that. Its more like Simon's midnight mass patches of last year. Dee Eye to the Y. Their new line is in the thermal department. Arm warmers and toques. Not bad.

Tuesday was not the day to have misplaced my toque. Perhaps if it had some graphic hand screened on it, it would be easier to find. It was sheer ice on the commute. The ride had me counter steering, weight shifting, and generally easing on the pedals in either the forward or reverse direction. What was normally a routine ride was suddenly technical and challenging.

I made it through off camber left corners, wavy intersections, and neighbourhoods where people were holding onto their cars while trying to scrape the ice off. Coming down the hill I gently dragged the brake while fishtailing every half crank rotation, and managed to bring the bike to a stop before the stop line at Marine.

Feeling like hot shit I pretty much opened it up for the final flat towards work. Along the very last stretch of North Fraser Way I said 'Hi' to Sergiy, who just stepped off the bus and was about to cross the street.. then I leaned into the left hand corner to get into our parking lot.. forgetting that I was still going over 30km/h on ice.

At that moment I performed what can only be described as a break dancing ninja turtle slide alongside my bike as I sailed past the entrance to the parking lot, along the centre of the road. I quickly stumbled to my feet, collected my orientation, and dragged my Bianchi off the road like a rag doll.

Sergiy was laughing, and so was I. Its not often I get to do something so spectacular in front of people who will appreciate it.

That being said, I'm hoping for more bad weather. Enough to scare off the rest of the commuters (There are significantly more these days it seems). Enough to drive the bicycle dance groups underground. Enough to stop everyone but me and Mander from riding in the Bridge battle (THIS SATURDAY!) Enough that I can justify buying studded tires? Enough that I gear down my bike and put 45mm fenders on it? Enough that even I don't want to ride? Yeah.

And what will I do if I'm not riding? I guess I'll be sitting on the computer, stuck in this modeling program again, trying to figure out how to do a certain type of circular cut. Its really been bugging me lately, and has impeded my progress, but whenever I sit down to work on it, I don't seem to have the mental capacity to figure it out. I end up looking for solutions on the internets, then looking at bike stuff. (Like FIST FITTING! ...to be hated on at a later date)

I need to be able to attack this stuff first thing in the morning... and I won't be able to do that until Dec 17th or so.. when I accidentally get up at 5am and get dressed to ride to my non existent job. I'm honestly scared I'll do that. I'll probably make it all the way to the door of the building before realizing I don't have a key card anymore.

One of the reasons I am so keen to learn this program is to get some of the ideas in my head, onto 'paper' .. in time for the NAHBS. I plan on attending, networking, and generally whoring myself out. I have this vision of the perfect trip to Oregon in February..

I ride to Bellingham on the Bianchi, hop on the train.. I get off in Portland and meet up with friends. We go to the show. I then spend the next week there, couch surfing and visiting bike builder's shops. Then it happens. The Zoobombers kickoff their Minibike Winter Olympics and all hell breaks loose. I'm not looking to top my last years experience, as I doubt I could. I'm more looking to expand upon it, and immerse myself in it deeper. I'm hoping that my love will drive down to meet me and spend the MBW weekend there.. and perhaps we could hit Anvil beach in Astoria on the way back. Can things really work out that perfectly?

I want to come back into Vancouver mid February a new person. With new passion and zazz. This is the start of something really big. Both my head and my heart are exploding right now. ..approaching terminal velocity.

Okay.. Did I cover everything?

Oh.. the ratchet troubles.. This is killing me. I have rebuilt my BMX's skipping ratchet for the second time now, and if my newest solution (a dab of grease UNDER each pawl) doesn't work, I'm going to have to contract someone to make me a new C clip to my dimensions.. either that or go to Princess Auto and caliper up some springs until I find one with the dimensions I need. Or just kill myself. Or buy a new driver and sprocket and go micro (last resort).

I hope to find out Friday, when a bunch of us hoon up Critical mass on twennies=] Video courtesy of The Source)


EDIT:
It seems I was beaten to the punch in the product blogging world.
BSNYC does it better, and I left this in the editron for almost 24 hours.