low down

i'd like to start by saying that, no, this is not me... just for the record. thanks for checking tho, deon.



on that note, both friday night at the korsakoff and saturday night at canvas finished upright (at least for some of us, no names mentioned huh sander?)

id like to finish by asking when was the last time you got full use out of a paperclip?

pink gav's race report

So, the inaugural Thursday Night Fixie Race was held at the Bremner Builder, just above the Baxter in Rosebank last night.

The race started somewhere around 8:47 after a few beers, the format was 5 minutes on the circuit
plus 1 lap after that, 15 points were awarded for lapping the bunch, 20 points for crossing the finish line 1st, 15 for 2nd and 10 for 3rd.

The race got underway, timed and controlled by Dick (of course) and the action was hot from the start, eventually after a few scraped pedals on the corners and some near misses with parked cars in the dark it came down to the final sprint.

Final results were:

1st in the Handbag category was James “Whipping Boy” Dawson

2nd in the Handbag category was Stevie “I can like to be hard” Burnett.



1st in the fixie cat was Pink Gav

2nd in the fixie cat was Santa Dave

3rd in the fixie cat was Camo Dave



Some smack talk and abuse was exchanged, the beer was drunk then we headed down to Champs on Vic (a fine establishment) where James (the winner of the handbag category) bought some quarts.



All in all a fine evening out!



See you all on Thursday the 22nd of January, for round 2 and a new format.

Later boys and girls (we’ll send out pic’s a bit later, not much lighting was available though).








(handbag = freewheel - james)

72 gear inches

i like this so much i stole it, from someone else who stole it...



and i think i've figured out why off-the-shelf fixies come with a 48-18 ratio. 72 gear inches (exactly). oh and 51 also divisible by 17, deon.

a while ago

a little bike project happened... when it was still sunny in amsterdam. wow that was a while ago :-D

the skinny bridge

so eventually u stop fighting it and just let people take photos of you. often theyre kind enough to send them to you. this was a marvellous place to spend my lunch break...


Grotere kaart weergeven

kinda like this one: "When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race... cycle tracks will abound in Utopia." H.G. Wells. i stole it from here.

htfu

great name for an alleycat (in london)



a bit of a race report here even. if u get a chance, browse the charge site and check out the ti fixie trickster frame, mmm...

fixies and maths

when youre picking your next chainring or cog, its important to know how many skid patches the resulting combination will leave u with... ok im assuming two things here: firstly you dont have all the money in the world and enough time to go with it to keep changing your back tire, and secondly that you use your back tire to stop, not your front rim or something similarly silly. so here is a list of relevant prime numbers

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71

currently i ride a 51-19. jees i thought 51 was a prime number..? noddy badge for anyone who can tell me what it is divisible by (other than 1 and itself). apparently it still gives me 19 skid patches (according to the application on my mate's iphone that is). thats kinda cost effective, no?

found this on an irish forum, so im not the only one talking about it:

"You will never get more skid patches than the number of teeth on your sprocket, (you may get less, depending on the chainring) so more teeth is always better in that regard. You can get up to the max skid patches with a non-prime sprocket, you just have a wider range of possible chainrings with a prime sprocket (and vice versa.) A 47T chainring will give you the most possible skid patches with any rear sprocket, so it could be a very good choice."

why do almost all off the shelf fixies come with a 48-18 then? only 3 skid patches, unless ur an ambi-skidder... i guess they also come with brakes

berlin

almost 4 hours, almost all the checkpoints, berlin rocks. thanks to astrid for having us, and to fish and jur for, well, being fish and jur

5degrees and raining

makes u feel pretty alive. well afterwards. like quite a while afterwards, after the shower and much toast marmite cheese and eggs. like when u get the feeling back in your toes. im finding out that warm dry toes is pretty much the holy grail of being a bike messenger in a wet northern hemisphere winter. speaking of the wet northern hemisphere: u recognise anyone here?

now i gotta go look for an outfit for the berlin halloween alleycat race. apparently its gonna be fast. like crazy fast. but the real winner is the best outfit. so in 24 hrs ill singing karaoke in berlin with crazies from all over europe preparing a good german beer hangover for the next morning's festivities. speaking of germans

didnt watching die fetten jahre sind vorbei make u want to join a radical left wing political movement? or just start your own... whats the most radical leftist organisation you can think of? do u have to be mexican to join the zapatistas? i think we should tell all the stinking rich people that they have too much money and their days of plenty are numbered

msngrng

so i tried to go big corporate (again) and it seems this time they even saw thru my suit and my old boys tie. or maybe i was given away by the glint in my eye that came from riding in the rain for nine hours the day before. ill be honest, i thought of quitting the messenger dream more than 9 times the day before the big interview cos it was cold, frikken cold, and still early days in the european winter. but when i arrived back to the office at the end of the day and saw the looks on the faces of guys from cold countries like finland and um well, the netherlands, it became a little clearer to me what had just happened. this was one of those special days, u dont get many of them in a year. they suck. normally when its that cold, it doesnt rain so much here. on tuesday it was cold and it rained all day long. then there was friday, blue skies and sunshine, no wind, it was good not to be stuck in an office again. oh, and to be paid to ride a bike!



i have new found respect for the cold and the wet. luckily the boss gives us good clothes to wear. now all i need is some shoe covers and i can test my theory that winter is worse when ur indoors...