SIUE Eats Bikes

So maybe it's not Chubb, but it just goes to show that even on "buttery smooth" trails, when you're railing around corners, and twisting through trees, you have to pay attention. And one of the buddies of Thomas from over at Wild Trak found out that maybe a Wal-Mart special isn't such a good investment.

Great Music Brought to you by Bicycle

Check it out, the Ditty Bops have ridden their bikes here from L.A. and they're playing at Mad Art (the old jail in Soulard that's now an art gallery FRIDAY NIGHT, that's July 28th! Opening will be Maid*Rite, the gals who played country at the midwest mountain bike festival in April.

Go to the their blog and read about their adventures getting here by bike and hybrid vehicle, and whatever they had to eat that day. Click around on their really good website and find lots of pictures and stuff. More importantly, you can listen their music and see if it's your cup of tea, kind of retro swing jazz type stuff. Same for Maid*Rite's page too.

Also this weekend, Bad Folk with The Monads on Saturday night at the Schlafly Taproom. The Monads stole the show at the MMBF and Bad Folk is great too, think Split Lip Rayfield and Uncle Wilco or something, but different, rock music played on country instruments. Plus it'll be cheap, small, unpretentious, and have better beer. Both bands are great live. This will be an awesome show. [update: Also on the bill is Angry Panda, and the show goes from 8:00pm to midnight or so.]

What's Floyd Drinkin'???

Read this editoral question from O'grady. It's a riot.

Anybody know what Floyd's drinking? I want some for my next pre-ride preparations!!

How To Steal A Bike in NYC

These guys set out to see how easy it was to steal a bike in NYC. They used several different methods in different parts of the city, all in broad daylight, and no one even bothered to look to see what they were doing. Well, no one except for the guy who tried to help out and show them an easier way. Even the cops making an appearance aren't interested.

A New Jersey for "The Tour"!

I'm going to propose a new jersey for the Tour de France.

The "Team Mullet" Jersey. The only problem? The winner is obvious!

Vladimir Karpets has the best mullet in the pro peloton.





Now we just need to get this jersey off-last year's winner:

Ride Report: Silver Lake

On Sunday, a few of us rode one of the lesser known trails in the area; the Silver Lake Trail in Highland, Illinois- about 35 miles NE of downtown St. Louis.
The trail itself isn't very long. Only 4.5 miles out-and-back, but it includes a lot of fun little features along the way. It's tight and twisty, even more so than the SIUE trails, and there are many wooden bridges, including one that's a good 40 ft. in length, so there are plenty of chances to test your bike-handling skills. It follows the contours of Silver Lake, and then has around a half-mile loop section that puts you within earshot of I-70 before rejoining the main trail.
This probably isn't a trail you'd want to have as a frequent destination, mainly due to the lack of mileage, but if you're looking for a little change of scenery, on a fun trail in a nice setting, do a couple of laps here, head over to the nearby SIUE trails, and you can certainly have an entertaining day. One other thing to note is that while the trail is within Silver Lake park, for some reason, there's no swimming allowed in the lake.

Firecracker 2006

Fun and dirt were had by all. Greensfelder dished out the good times, rocks, and dust. There were a few casualties along the way. Retro Craig busted a spoke right off the bat and then busted his shifters later on. Flats were had, one by one, and then F'ed had the mechanical to beat all this warm summer day. He broke his 1x1. Damn! Thanks to Rob for putting this one together.

Tour de France Mapping Update

The TDF site now has an official link to the Google Earth file of the Tour route.
Now you can also track the race in progress directly in Google Earth, with a live link showing the situation of the race along the route. I'm not so sure how well this will work for tomorrow's Stage 7 Time Trial, but it sounds like fun, anyway. The link and how-to explanation can be found here.
Here's another site which allows you to track the position and vital statistics like heart rate, speed, stress and power of a few selected riders who are using special equipment on their bikes allowing this information to be transmitted. With accompanying blog explanation.

GORC does Whistler!

A small, select group of GORC members hit Whistler, BC Canada for the World Mountain Bike Conference, and some uber-technical riding last week. Here's some teaser pix, we'll get pictures, and maybe some movies onto the website very soon.

One of the early rides we did (Thursday evening) was "A River Runs Through It", this is a fairly well-known trail that features numerous stunt sections. It was a complete blast to ride. In fact you don't so much as ride these trails as you do "session" them. We'd often stop and ride sections of stunts over to take pictures or just to 'clean' them. Here's your's truly on one of the stunts.



Fast forward ahead a few days, and we hit the bike park. Kirb and I rented some monster bikes (Rocky Mountain RMX's 8-inches of travel!!) and tried to go big. Well, we didn't go as big as the bikes are capable of, but we did have some serious fun. Here's a shot of the GORC-Prez himself airing it out over a tabletop jump on "Crank-It Up".



Good times, no injuries. We'll get a new gallery section up soon.