Coolest sunrise of my life….

Crazier than that was getting on bikes and riding 38 miles back down to sea level. Rain suits come off about halfway down.

Instead of trails, it’s trials…..except we are nowhere near this good.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o

Besides Race St, work, and some casual social outings (like Monday night pick-up soccer) I don’t have much else going on. Desperate to stay in some sort of shape, I’ve been getting on my bike at least twice a week. Due to the nature of the above schedule I’m pretty much confined to night time rides (the fact that it’s a million degrees out doesn’t hurt either).

I already ride around with a backpack, and I’m thinking a little tripod might be in my future, because finding ledges and things to use as a stabilizer can be difficult, especially when I need a specific angle to try and shoot, say, a new skyscraper.

By that last sentence you’d think I was an actual photographer with something other than my little Point and Shoot. I’m not….

I remember being 15, on my bike, tooling around in the driveway for hours.

Wheelies, endos, bunny hops, hell just practicing track stands….

I’m a bit older now, and I don’t confine myself to the driveway anymore…instead I just pick spots in the city to play around.

Don’t get me wrong, I love going out and socializing, and bars can be fun on a weekend night….

….but I’m just as happy on two wheels.

After running home to change I started my journey by heading back up to OTR before sprinting down Race St to the river.

Over-The-Rhine fascinates me even more than it did 3 years ago when I moved here. Majestic Music Hall sitting right across from boarded up treasures labeled with the plight of the neighborhood.

Moving on….

It’s always a nice cruise down race (or walnut) from OTR to Downtown. Once you cross central parkway the lights time up, almost egging you on to pedal faster and hit the river without stopping. Although sometimes I loop around 5chw4r7z’s so I can get a view of QCS.

Being close to the river feels good. Sure, it’s not the cleanest body of water out there, but I did swim in it and live….so I like cruising down to Friendship Park and the Serpentine Wall. I guess the sun knew it was the reason I was out and about…it certainly caught my eye on the south shore….

When I’m that close I always ride over to NKY and back. Something about crossing state lines make any workout seem that much more badass.

Returning to the other side of the river I always face a dilemma: do I ride back through downtown, or torture myself on some hills in Mt. Adams?

Yeah, the hills normally win.

When it really started to get dark I kept my camera in my pocket and just rode. I put my headphones on to drown out the world and got lost in endless pedal strokes. It felt good to just zone out for a while and wear myself down.

The last rays of sun had set and the sky was growing darker by the minute as I cranked down Reading Rd. Living so close to Neon’s can be a great thing, and that night it seemed appropriate to just show up on my bike as opposed to going home and showering first. I ran into a couple of friends (oh neighborhood bar, how I love thee) and enjoyed a pint (or two) before we all remembered it was a school night.

A little break and a few beers can do great things though, and I wasn’t ready to pack it in yet. I know it’s closed, but frankly I just felt like going to hang on the Serpentine Wall…so I did.

One reason not to hang out there at night (besides the fact you will be asked to leave pretty quickly) are the crazy looking bugs that swarm the light poles.

With creepy bug pictures under my belt (was that really necessary, prolly not) and security in my ear, it was time to pack it in for the night. With a gentle ride up Eggleston I was home, completely content with my summer solstice ride.

A couple of weeks ago Randy posted this article on Urban Cincy about the new Fountain Square garage racks. Per usual, everyone has their opinions about what’s best for the city’s bike culture as you can read in the comments.

I however, don’t commute to downtown (I live here), and I rarely leave my bike locked up for any extended period of time. Normally I’m out riding for fun, and I may stop to poke my head in a store or something of that nature. Centralized bike parking is of little use to me, and most of the time my bike is locked up to any number of singular post-like objects. That’s why I would like to see more of the parking meter ring racks within the city.

You see, instead of forcing people to congregate at one spot to lock their bike up, you can ride closer to your destination and park (generally) with your bike within view. Again, this does little for the commuter who needs to lock his ride up for hours at a time (or take it up to their office). It does help those people who are already out and about and on a whim decide to pull over and stop in somewhere.

Both types of bike parking help the city economically. Parking for commuters encourages alternative transportation for workers in the city (boosting payroll tax revenue by keeping those workers in the city) while the racks I would like to see more of cater towards the food/shopping crowd (boosting sales tax revenue and supporting local businesses).

The important thing when discussing bicycle and bike parking theory is that we all do things a little differently, with different ends in mine. I’m not going to say that Fountain Square racks are dumb or useless because they certainly serve a purpose, just not mine. It can be difficult to remember all of the different ways people use their bikes in the city, and consequently it can be hard to plan for. From what I’ve seen Cincinnati has actually done a pretty good job at including a variety of people from different facets of the biking community as they form new policies and install new and improved infrastructure.

Once again we met in front of Park+Vine at 12:30 on a bright Saturday afternoon. This year Reser had some shirts (rolled as bike tires) sitting on the check in table, and I had a little fun waiting for everyone to check in and pump up.

The OTR/Gateway Summer Celebration was taking place right up the block, and had I not been working on Race St I would have run the 5k and partied a bit before our food trek. Instead I caught a glimpse of the action as ~50 of us pulled away from P+V.

We cruised up Vine St through the heart of OTR (and past the park that will be my new backyard) on our way to Take The Cake in Northside. I’ve heard so many great things about TtC that I was a bit embarrassed I had never been there before.

My garage is on the other side of the park

The cruise to Northside was a good 5 miler, enough to work up a sweat, only to have it cooled by TtC’s awesome Gazpacho. Which then heated you back up with its spicy kick!

I may have purchased a brownie as well...

Not an official stop, but right next door was Cluxton Alley Coffee roasters. I’m not a coffee guy, but I poked my head in with a few other people to check it out.

Back on our rides we pedaled the longest single length of our journey, a 10 mile and at times not-so-flat (hey it’s Cincy) route over to Pleasant Ridge to Loving Cafe. The only repeat so far in the B+D series, they changed up from the veggie rolls and peanuts sauce we got last time (which was awesome) and went with fresh fruit and a salad, accompanied by two phenomenal homemade dressings.

With only six miles left to cover two stops, we took a short cruise over to Lucky John Slow Food where we filed through a buffet of pasta and vegan pizza awesomeness.

Seeking shade

After a nice boost of energy from all those carbs most people cruised (and some of us hauled ass) through Eden Park into Mt. Adams to The Rookwood. They served up some awesome chocolate on chocolate dessert and some “Yellow Bicycles” which were something, something, St. Germain and Proseco.

Each Bike+Dine has been a different experience for me, so I can’t say any one was better than the other. They have all been a blast though, and I can’t wait for the fall 2010 ride.

Turning+Sneezing....now that's talent

A little help from the popo in walnut hills

Cheers!

I was out riding without music, which leaves my head a little clearer to think about stuff (namely, how the hell am I going to rebuild the interior of a house!!!). It was a good time for reflection…which I then started taking literally.

I cruised up into OTR from downtown, figuring the sun was right to get some shots of the detail on my new place.

Right up the street is Rookwood Pottery, who was hosting the first tapping of Christian Moerlein IPA.

At the end of Race St lies a pretty cool church, with an iconic hand pointed towards the sky.

I then rode back down to the riverfront to meet up with the Thursday Night Slow Ride, a member of which informed me they would be at The Banks in 5 minutes. I beat them there, and snapped some photos of Roebling Bridge during the painting.

This was right below the stairway from the bridge down to the street.

The Banks.

I found the group, and we actually rode through the painting tarps on the suspension bridge. It’s not the first time I’ve ridden across the bridge during construction.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-jtmdzBxI

We then cruised from Covington to Newport, and then back to Fountain Square. Oh yeah, and we found the Girls Gone Wild bus down by the Levee.

I know it’s a shitty picture, but it’s true. Life. Happens. Here. At least my life.

I had a lot of fun touring shops and taking different bikes out so I could cruise with her on test rides. As a former bike shop employee myself I reveled in the glory days of a life much simpler, when all I worried about was math homework and whether or not the next customer in the shop would be a total pain in the ass (ok, so I don’t miss the world of retail).

The next day we met up to go for her inaugural ride around Oakley and Hyde Park. After our cruise I showed her some basic maintenance tips, and I tried to provide a brief overview of how bikes work.

“It’s as simple as gears, breaks, wheels, and a frame”, I said, casually pointing to parts on the bike. Going into a little more detail I could see the look on her face turn to an expression of, “yeah, this might be simple to you, but I have no clue what you’re talking about”.

We parted ways soon after, and I laughed on my way home thinking about the first time I tried to build a bike. It seemed so daunting, like the puzzle pieces were endless. Within a matter of weeks however, everything seemed so easy, there were only a handful of items on the bike, the most complicated of which were controlled by springs and cables, nothing more. The most technologically advanced thing that existed for a bike was the cyclocomputer, and from the mechanics end there was still very little to do other than set the magnet and receiver and run the cable up to the handlebar.

By and large bikes are still very simple methods of transportation, making them easy to work on for anyone who is even mildly mechanically inclined. With the inception of the electric bike things began to get a bit more complicated (not to mention heavy) but even an electric motor is still a relatively simple device.

Well folks, I’m afraid to say, those days may soon be behind us, at least if the folks at Crack n’ fail Cannondale have anything to say about the situation. They have introduced the Simon, a new electronically controlled and 500-times-a-second adjusting front suspension fork. Although I’m not sure I can even call this a fork, as this is a derivation of the Lefty shock, which defies the “fork” description because it only extends down one side of the front wheel.

Suspending the front end of your bike with this piece of equipment means gone are the days of being able to tear down and rebuild your own fork. The trade off is, of course, being treated to a ride that (you would be led to believe) is unparalleled by any other fork on the market. While I can’t speak to that today, we’ll see soon enough when it comes on the market in a few years.

Frankly, I’m excited for the progression of the industry into supercaresque territory. Just as crazy-advanced (and expensive) technology appears on F1 cars and Ferraris before it makes it to your Mazda 3, so it goes with bicycles (v-brakes, disc brakes, etc). I hope it leads to products helping customers through the act of the product helping itself. A confusing statement, but let me explain.

Let’s take the bike my friend bought herself on Saturday. It has a front fork with a lockout switch and an adjustable preload dial. Will she ever use either of those features? Likely not. Would they come in handy and benefit her ride if she did? Likely so…they exist for a reason. But when she is chugging up a hill, I doubt she’ll be thinking about locking the fork out to stop losing energy to “the bob”. Even if she does, I know she won’t be evaluating her route before hand to determine how much preload (and consequent stiffness) she needs for the upcoming trek.

But a fork that does all of that for you, that’s the sort of thing that helps you help yourself by helping itself.

And anything that makes my life easier and my ride better is a winner in my book.

Hat tip to Monugs, who showed me this Popular Science article about the Simon.

Bockfest was roaring the whole time, aided by the phenomenal weather we had. Which means one of two things as far as your Monday is concerned, either A) You, like me, had such a good time all weekend, that it’s hard to be anything other than happy today or B) you had a great time, but that simply adds to the depression you’re feeling now that you’re back on the grind.

I enjoyed Bockfest a lot, and I’ll post about it more tomorrow, but the highlight of the weekend for me was the 11 mile bike ride I went on Sunday, hitting Downtown, OTR, Newport, Mt. Adams, and Eden Park, all the while snapping pictures.

My first stop was The Banks/QCS to get a few photos of the ongoing construction.

Next I rode over to Newport to stop in Reser bikes for a little air (and because I love saying I went riding in a couple states).

Then it was back to the Ohio side to tackle Mt. Adams and Eden Park

Music Hall and the heart of OTR as seen from the Ida St. Bridge

Then it was back downtown for a few more QCS shots.

The remnants of a great season of ice skating

I hope you were able to go out an enjoy the great weather like I did!

ridn dwntwn if ur in.

When it’s 40 degrees and overcast on a January weekend in Ohio, it’s “nice weather”. I jumped at the chance to cruise downtown and northern Kentucky on my bike, half riding, half hopping around on various elevations of pavement. A few hours outside was just what I needed to follow a meal I gormandized (I like new words). What I didn’t consider however, was what I was going to do in regards to not taking the elevator while still getting my bike back into my apartment.

That thought struck me as I headed back home and rode the uphill along Eggleston Ave. I was really cranking, and just as I thought about how tired my legs were getting, I remembered I still had a hike ahead of me.

I’ve been known to run/walk briskly up steps with my bike. Last summer I would ride up Reading Rd from Central Pkwy and turn up towards Gilbert. I would run up the steps next to Channel 9 with my bike on my shoulders and hop back on at the top in Mt. Adams/Eden Park.

At the tail end of this ride however, I wasn’t feeling the need to drag my bike up 6 stories. Instead I put it in the elevator and ran up the steps. I actually made it upstairs right as the doors were closing–forget the fact that my chest was heaving as I searched for air. Frankly it was still better than lugging that thing up with me.

As I sat in my apartment catching my breath, I wondered whether or not that counted as cheating in my year without elevators quest. I came up with two reasons why it’s not.

1. I’m not out to rid my life of elevators (I’m still taking them down). I’m doing this whole thing for fitness (and to see if I can). The goal is to walk up every time I have to ascend to my apartment, so in that regard, mission accomplished.

2. As an extension of the previous thought, I’m not doing this to save energy/the environment. Yes, taking an elevator takes energy, and yes, I am saving the planet one trip at a time when I walk. However that is merely a side benefit, I’m doing this for ME. So I don’t feel one iota of guilt about using the elevator (and consequent energy) to get my bike up to the sixth floor. The guy who did the year without a car said that at times he would ride his bike to go purchase something large, and have a friend with a car actually transport the purchase. If that’s not cheating than I am definitely in the clear.

But I did get a nice taste of what the summer will be like when I ride 3-5 times a week.

]]> http://www.theboilover.com/2010/01/elevatorless-challenge-the-bike/feed/ 0 http://www.theboilover.com/2010/01/a-folding-bike-i-would-ride/ http://www.theboilover.com/2010/01/a-folding-bike-i-would-ride/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:30:03 +0000 theboilover http://www.theboilover.com/?p=573 I love to ride, and my primary bike of choice is a mountain bike, even if I’m riding in the city. I like the freedom to hop over curbs/potholes/debris etc. Secretly however, I’ve always wanted a folding bike because I thought it would be nice to ride to work, as well as other places where space can be a commodity. Most folding bikes (in my opinion) look stupid, and I feel like with their little 20″ wheels you’re putting in more effort than you need to on a ride of any significant distance. Here’s where this beast comes in. It looks badass, and it has full 26″ wheels.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9_XEgGQBkQ

Come on, it folds up smaller than the wheels! The way that front wheel folds down does kind of remind me of some nasty leg injuries I’ve seen (think Joe Theismann), but it’s still sweet.

Here’s an example of one that looks a bit too odd and has small ass wheels. This might still work for my 5 block commute to work, but not much more than that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0qx95hxyuQ

The thing is, a folding bike is still way down on my overall wish list--it’s just a novelty thing for me right now. I think that is true of most people, and it will be a while before we see this:

42 Bromptons

Image via

Nonetheless it was fun.

Ok that’s likely it for the video posts this week, I hope to get back to actual writing tomorrow.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNXT1vXyBh4

That said, I ain’t got shit on these chicks. Leave it to the Germans….

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b36Yi-Pb1wM

via

Being a nice, slow, 6 mile cruise that finishes with beer, the Tweed Ride is a perfect precursor to Sunday’s Mini-Marathon (it’s a 15k, not even a half marathon) which starts and finishes at the Mason High School. Like most races, it benefits a charity (in this case the Epilepsy Foundation), and the course looks pretty flat, so it should be a nice easy cruise (that is, if you can ever consider moving 9.3 miles with your feet easy). Unlike the last two races I’ve run, there won’t be any costumes (although it would be hilarious if someone showed up as a strobe light), and it will be nice to get back into the groove of regular racing without dragging my camera with me on the course.

More information can be found here.

As my hometown of Washington DC begins a bike sharing program, I wonder about the feasibility of a similar endeavor here in Cincinnati. I could see Columbus, and their flat landscape, as a place where such a program would thrive. Would Cincinnati’s topography be enough of a hinderance to starting our own potential bike program? Should we look into a Segway sharing program so people can float around downtown with ease?

Via

The Green Dog is in Neyer’s new development at Columbia Pkwy and Delta Ave. The chef (whose name I regretfully forget) came and spoke to us about being a sustainable business, and how that theory was used in everything from construction of their space on through to the foods they prepare. Much (all?) of their ingredients are locally sourced. The food was phenomenal, and I can’t wait to drag my boss there for lunch.

Turkey BLT and Hummus/Red Pepper Sliders at Green Dog Cafe

We got back on our bikes and traveled across town to the Five Star Foodies commissary. It’s located near the corner of central pkwy and ludlow, but you can find their food at Bigg’s as well as a number of local eateries such as the Coffee Emporium. We tried a seitan slider and some delicious Thai soup. They also quenched our thirst with some very flavorful hibiscus juice.

We were running a bit behind schedule (damn you flat tires!) so we took the quick route over to Northside for a stop at The Hideway. If you are looking for a great black bean burger then this is your place. It went really well with the tomato bisque soup. I’ve always enjoyed their creamer potatoes as well, though I recommend brushing off some of the salt they are coated in.

After filling our bellies with food we traveled back to OTR to begin the libation portion of the afternoon. We stopped at Grammer’s where I was able to drink one of my favorite beers of all time, The Maharaja from Avery Brewing Co.

Thanks to everyone who braved the (slightly) cold temps to enjoy a great day of bikes, bites, and beer!

Thumbs up for a great ride!

Checkin' out Campy Washington

Hangin' at the Hideaway

The Queen City Bike+Dine is coming up again on Saturday, October 10th. Like last time, the trip will feature some tasty local food and a smooth cruise around town. Granted we will be lacking the beautiful midsummer day we had for the last QCD, but it will be a nice fall ride instead.

Meet at Park+Vine a little before noon to get squared away. Cost is roughly $30 if I remember from last time. A few pictures of the food are up on the slideshow to the right. I’m still getting used to this whole flickr thing and how to get the photos to look decent when being pulled on this stream.

I didn’t think much of it until the week of the race, when I combined some running and biking workouts to make sure I would be ready for Sunday’s event. Thursday was the race walkthrough to show us where the transition area would be, and exactly where we would be swimming. Even though I watched my sister prepare and participate in her triathlon, I was still nervous about this being my first, and I was glad to hear the course walkthrough.

Stretching while looking out over the upcoming swim course

For me, the event was about two things. One, it was a testament to my efforts to get in shape, which has paid off enough for me to at least attempt this sort of event. And two, it was a great way for me to help to support an event centered on Cincy’s Urban Core, and a way for me to embrace the downtown lifestyle. For example, Saturday, the day before the race when we picked up our race numbers etc., most people got in their cars and drove down to Sawyer Point to check in. Instead, I hopped on my bike and cruised down to the park in 10 minutes. Likewise, I was probably one of, if not the only person to ride their bike to and from the actual event. After the race I took a shower and walked up to Tucker’s for a post race feast (“Ghetto” Huevos are the best, try ‘em). It was a great day, and one that made me proud to be a downtown resident.

And I beat my goal of doing the whole thing in 1:20. So I’m doing something right.