CicLAvia is...

Cool CicLAvia video from Streetfilms:

Restoration / Procrastination

I realized that I wrote a post (here) just about two years ago now detailing a restoration/conversion project I was doing on a 1981 Bianchi road bike I found on craigslist. Well I never did follow up with pictures of the completed bike. I just started riding it straight off and loved it so much that posting a blog was the furthest thing from my mind.

Well, as they say, better late than never. (Click the pics if you want to see everything up close and personal-like.)





For those bike geeks out there who give a crank about this kinda stuff, here's a list of some of the upgrades I did to get this guy road/parade worthy:

• fresh powder coat @ Olympic in Santa Ana
• cleaned/repacked original headset and bottom bracket
• replaced all cables and housing
• new old stock Nitto "custom" stem
• Velo Orange Montmartre handlebars
• Soma Urban Pursuit brake levers
• Brooks B-17 saddle mounted to a new seatpost
• MKS Sylvan Touring Pedals (I kept the original Shimano 600 crankset)
• Shimano freewheel and track chain (I kept the original chainring)
• new Campagnolo Veloce brakeset
• semi-aero flip/flop wheelset off a new Bianchi Pista (w/ Bianchi branded hubs)
• Vittoria Rubino Pro celeste tires
• Velo Orange Constructeur rear rack w/ rack-mounted stainless steel bottle holder
• for good measure I also made a custom pannier out of a Manhatan Portage messenger bag (seen here)

Here's another shot of the "new" bike with along w/ the rest of my stable which includes a late 80's Bianchi Sport SX which is currently rocking a Cetma Cargo 5-rail halfrack (not pictured) for running errands around downtown and transporting stuff to the studio and a 2006 Lemond Chambery w/ a Tubus Fly rack I pair w/ Knog Pod panniers for commuting and touring. Now that was a mouthful.

Those crafty Dutch!

Here's an interesting solution by the Dutch for the the age-old right-turn-across-a-bike-lane problem. For you drivers in the States, I'm afraid neck-craning is still the order of the day. Unless, of course, if you live in Portland where they have these.



Speaking of Portland and bikes, this one was just too funny to keep to myself. "Bicycle Rights!"

I (Balloon) L.A.

Last weekend some friends and I decided to hit the streets of Downtown Los Angeles and hand out gold balloons.

A 36 Hour Tour. A 36 Hour Tour.

The other weekend I decided I needed to get away. I needed to get away on my bike. I needed to get away on my bike and try out all this new camping gear I had accumulated around the holidays. But with my limited free time, this need could only really be satisfied by one thing: a 36-hour bike tour down the coast from my front door in Downtown L.A. to the sunny beaches of San Diego and back (by train, of course—I'm not superman/doping.) I decided to break up this whirlwind of pedals, panniers and Cliff Bars with a nice relaxing night of camping under the stars (and within ear-shot of the Ocean) at Doheny State Beach. Here is some of the photographic evidence of my journey, one of the best/rejuvenating/therapeutic/challenging/introspective/cathartic/fun 36 contiguous hours in recent memory:










*Click any of the photos for bigger photos. You know the drill.

New studio = new blog.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently moved my art-making HQ into a brand new studio which I share with two other artists. Since branding in this day and age is the most important thing ever, I've dubbed the new studio MakeSpace Studios and of course designed a logo and even made a new blog.

If you make it over to the blog you'll see pics of the new space as it takes shape, learn a little about the artists working there and see some new art and work in progress. And if you're in the L.A. area, come pay us a visit to see all the making for yourself!

makespacestudios.blogspot.com

Helmet, Schmelmet.

(comic credit: Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery)

So, I was biking to Union Station the other day, having decided to take the train to work, when a motorist pulled up along my right side while I was waiting at a red light. (I usually try to cheat left at red lights in case any cars want to turn right.) So anyway, it was a long red and I could tell this guy was kinda staring me down, but I just assumed he was into my bike. You see, since it was going to be such a short ride, I had taken my "parade" bike—a 1981 Bianchi road bike that I had restored and converted into a fast city-cruising single speed w/ a chrome rack, french porteur-style bars and flipped brake levers. It's kinda eye catching if I do say so myself and I'm used to people gawking a little or asking me about my componentry or handlebar set-up.

Then right before the light changed, he called out to me from his open car window and told me that I should wear a helmet. Expecting a compliment on my bike restoration skills, I was dumbfounded and more than a little peeved at this unsolicited and pretty moronic bit of advice. He went on to tell me that it was really dangerous around here (by which I guess he meant Downtown L.A. where I've lived and biked for over five years without incident) and that I should be really careful. As I became increasingly upset, all I managed to retort before he zoomed off was a derisive "Huh!" And he was gone.

As I rode through the intersection my head became flooded with all the things I should have said to this guy such as how I was only out for a leisurely mile an a half ride and I barely broke 10 miles per hour this whole trip, or that If I were to get hit by a car a helmet would do little—or more likely nothing—to keep me from getting hurt or killed, or that there's no way a helmet would prevent, and might even encourage someone to mug me or beat me up in this uber-dangerou part of town that he seemed to think we were traveling through. But the thing I really wanted to say (besides telling him that yes, it is dangerous out here, then slashing his tire) was that as a motorist, he was statistically more likely to get into an accident resulting in a head injury than I was as a bicyclist and that maybe he's the one that should be wearing a helmet...jerk!

But of course, I said and did none of those things and the D.B. probably drove off thinking that he'd done me some huge favor by enlightening me as to the value of wearing a foam hat while playing on my bike. Damn, he probably thought that he saved my life!

I know that this opens up the huge, ongoing helmet vs. no helmet debate that has been raging on in the cycling community for some time now, and I don't really want to get into all that. (But if you want to, there was an interesting discussion over at ecovelo not too long ago that might be worth the visit.) My personal practice is that when I'm tooling around the city (i.e. starting and stopping a lot, never going very fast at all, getting off and on my "beater" bike to go into stores or get food, etc.) I don't wear a helmet. If I did, I'd have to constantly take it on and off, walk into public places with helmet hair and have to tote the damn thing around with me all day. Some may say that this isn't the most logical way to make a safety decision, but it works for me and I've never bumped my bare head on anything in 8+ years of helmet-less urban riding. I think it is much more important to learn how to bike safely on city streets than to strap on a dorky placebo that gives the illusion of safety, then feel at liberty to ride like a fool.

Plus there was this British study that showed motorists were less careful around cyclists wearing helmets (giving them a tighter berth while passing) because they seemed less vulnerable than those riding without helmets. This resulted in helmeted researchers getting into more accidents with cars than the non-helmet-wearing ones. The way I see it, not getting into an accident is far safer than wearing a helmet any day of the week.

That being said, I do wear a helmet when I'm on my "fast" bike. In no way do I feel as if this makes me any safer from cars and I still ride very cautiously in traffic. However, on this bike I can hit much greater speeds and I'm often cycling for fitness or distance, not running errands. This means riding clipped into my pedals and often down in the drops for long stretches of road at a fast pace without stopping (like on a bike path or trail.) Or maybe hitting 40+ mph on a descent. With this kind of riding, my chances of falling off my bike due to a road hazard or mechanical failure such as a blowout or dropped chain goes way up, and I think this is the kind of accident when a bike helmet might actually be able to do some good. Of course, in all the time I've ridden with a helmet on, I have yet to find myself in a situation where I'm forced to use it for it's intended purpose (knock on wood.) And of course, the vanity issue inevitably becomes moot in this scenario since, when I'm on my "fast" bike, I'm often already wearing dorky biking clothes so strapping on a helmet is not really gonna do much damage to my already-cramped style.

Speaking of style cramping, in this very interesting presentation by Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copenhagen Cycle Chic at the recent TEDx conference in Denmark, he reveals an interesting statistic about how cycling numbers in Denmark went down while the country launched an aggressive pro-bike helmet campaign. During the same time, bike ridership was spiking dramatically upwards in most other urban areas around the globe. This alludes to the fact that most people who ride bikes for transportation (i.e. commuting to work, running errands, etc.) just don't like wearing helmets—it cramps their style. And if you force them to wear one while they ride, like with mandatory helmet laws, they'll simply stop riding their bikes altogether and often get back into their cars—which is the exact opposite direction we want to be heading in. He also debunks much of the widely-perceived "safety" that a bike helmet is supposed to provide cyclists.



But this entirely-too-long-winded blog post is really all just to say: whether you wear a helmet or not, bike drive or take public transit, please keep your stupid opinions of what you think I should be wearing on my head to your damn self, dude in the car next to me. Sheesh!