Projekt-C is Go.

Much shit has been flung. Many nights of blind drinking. A few lost bikes. Camaraderie. There are a lot of stories to tell, though we can only get to so many. I'm happy to announce that Camilo has finally put his parody blog live.



Some more photos of the man himself from our Washington Tour, which we have yet to fully sort through and put up a good writeup. Maybe the ProjC blog can help. Glad to have you around, Project-C.

Riding Dirty No Doubt

BC MVA Sec 183.8: "A cycle operated on a highway must be equipped with a brake that will enable the person operating the cycle to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level and clean pavement."

Mandtour

Yesterday I met up with Proj-B known associate MANDER (aka Andrex Megacorp) and handed him the keys to my Spicer. The idea was simple. Show him the ENTIRE island of Manhattan in one day.

A few days previous I sat down in front of google maps and thought of all the rad stuff in Manhattan I've found so far.. Then I got to work making an actual route of it. Then I even went as far as making a cue sheet, because I knew I would forget things or get us spun around without it.

I didn't tell Mander where we were headed at any time. Just things like:
-East on 44th, LEFT on 6th
-Right on 46th
-Right on Park
STOP

I'm pretty sure he got a huge kick out of it. Not just the surprise of each new location, but the riding in between them.

I heard him let out screams of glee as he dove my bike in between trucks and cabs in mid town lane splits. YEAHHHHHHHHH! Occasionally when the road opened up he would stand and sprint, dusting me on the Mt Shasta Backwoods WMDTB (equipped with slicks for the day).

Honestly, I don't think I've seen anyone more stoked to ride a bike in a long time. It was like he was 5 and just learned to ride.. but in traffic, FAST. I guess walking around this city for 4 days will make you a bit crazy.

I don't have any pix, but hopefully Mander will post them up soon. I'll bet there are a shit tonne of poorly framed arm's length riding shots on his camera. Here's the final MAP though.

Edit: This is one excited Mander:

RIP Bianchi

Don't be a mander kids, look out for cracks in the areas around your spoke nipples.

Part of Team Kommutard just took one for the team. Here's Andrew's story about the failure of a Sun Assault rim on the front of his Marinoni commuter fixie. We look forward to hearing about any replies from Sun's warranty department.

OK, this one happened this morning, coming west along the Adanac bikeway. i had just passed a roadie commuter going up a hill and was heading down the next dip, picking up speed for the Renfrew hill. Suddendly my front wheel got mushy and i went over the bars. As you can see from these pictures, my rim (Sun Assault, 1 year old, ~9000 kms) cracked. Then the commuter i had just passed rolled right by me without saying a word...maybe he thought i had stopped for a rest :( The casualties: my wheel, my fender, my nitto noodles, possibly my tire, and to some extent, me. I lost some flesh under my chin, got some road rash and hurt my back a bit. Luckily I wasn't hurt worse---it probably helped that the front end crumpled under me, lowering my center of gravity and getting me to slide across the road instead of slam into it. Oh well, that rim sucked anyway, the braking surface is way too small. Don't be a mander kids, look out for cracks in the areas around your spoke nipples.

Here's some cracking around a nipple a little ways off from the break.

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.

THE GRAND WIZARD MERLIN COMMANDS YUO TO ATTEND

OH SNAP!

I was just riding along...

No really, I was. I was trying to sprint across Clark Dr. in a gap against the flashing green light. Apparently the tensile strength of my chain is greater than the torque strength of a 5 year old tubular chromoly BMX crank.

Component failures like this are terrible, because they happen only when you are exerting maximum force on your machine. Its very hard for the human body to react quickly when conditions (such as having a crank under your foot) suddenly change.
I reacted only after my groin area had hit the seat post and I was still being dragged into the intersection by the momentum of my 42 lb bike.

I will continue to react by upgrading the cranks to some free ones from Ride On, and putting a bigger chainring on the bike. Obviously a bigger chainring will not help me put any LESS torque on the cranks, but it WILL help me find the next weak link in my drivetrain.