WR discovered an amazing new product the other day, called "slipstreamz." (sorry, their homepage is down, or i’d post a link here.) slipstreamz are one of those "why didn’t EYE think of that?" products. there’s two different versions of them. one is a basic little flap that diverts wind around your ears. so no more rushing noise as you ride, just the important stuff — horns, hissing flats, and the deaths. the other, upgraded version, is the one that he and i both got, which is the same wind deflector, except with an earbud connection point inside, allowing you to not only avoid the wind noise, but also to listen to your music without wind — high on the list of complaints of every cyclist.

so i’ve installed mine, and as such, i’ll start this review, but this will be ongoing because a) my "old-school" helmet is constructed in such a way that the slipstreamz functionality is compromised (eg, riders with modern helmets will have different thoughts), and b) WR hasn’t installed his yet, and likely won’t before returning from vacation.

ok, so as you can see above, the little wind-buffer attaches to your helmet’s strap, and nestles into that little triangle there. that, in and of itself, is awesome. it’s essentially non-existent from a profile perspective. you’ll also notice, though, that the visible earbud there is in the slipstreamz, NOT in your ear. this has it’s ups and downs. the downside, obviously, is that the whole reason little bitty earbuds even WORK is that they’re right up against your eardrum. but additionally, because it’s outside your ear, this precludes you from using sound-isolation buds, which don’t work at ALL unless they’re inside your ear. (of course, if you have sound-isolation buds, you don’t NEED wind noise buffers, cause the wind noise is already blocked, but that’s a different review.) the upside, though, is that you hear your music secondarily to road hazards such as flying yellow death machines. this is good.

now, the helmet differences are where the real meat of this review will be. my helmet, as you can see, has it’s strap OUTSIDE the internal padding of the helmet. this means that the straps of my helmet sit a half-inch away from the side of my face. on a modern helmet, the straps come down INSIDE the internal padding, putting them flush against your cheek. this automatically compromises the functionality on my helmet, cause with a half-inch gap, the wind blows right through and that whole wind noise thing is out the window. however. i will say this — i rode home with them last night, and even without the wind noise being blocked, and with the earbuds outside my ear canal, i could still hear my music just fine, and now i have a lot more outside information coming in, too.

the sound quality is pretty degraded on my helmet, but i’m interested in hearing how it shakes out on a modern helmet, because as i said, on my helmet, the earbuds are sitting a half-inch away. on a modern helmet, even though they’re not in the ear canal, they’re touching the outside of your ear, and that’s pretty friggin close, and it SHOULD work out just fine.

"installing" these is a fucking nightmare. the first 2 steps are easy enough (getting the earbud into the slipstreamz and attaching them to your helmet’s strap), but then there’s this janky, ghetto-ass little strand of elastic that you have to loop through your helmet itself, and it’s "adjustment" point is nothing more than a small button, like you’d find at the collar of a shirt. so after 10 minutes of trying to thread that button with this elastic bit, i had to find an alternate solution. i unwound one single strand from a brake cable WR had laying around and bent it in half. then i inserted the BEND through the buttonhole so i had a loop of wire showing. then i inserted the elastic bit through THAT loop and pulled the wire back through. boom. done. it worked like those needle-threader things that come in every hotel’s sewing kit in the world.

my bottom line, i’d say, is that this product KICKS ASS. i love it even on my helmet, where 90% of it’s functionality is compromised. it still works SO well, that i can only imagine it’s heaven on a modern helmet. and soon enough, i’ll know, because i’ve been wanting to upgrade helmets for a while now.

also, there’s something really geekily rewarding about putting on a wired helmet. it feels very near-future or something.

oldschool lungHelmet … 7/10 CLANKS! performs admirably even on a product it’s not designed for, and so much so, that it’s worth keeping around for upgraded helmetry. also, CHEAP. like $13 cheap or something. that’s insane.

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she said she’d do it. and she DID.

gold in the three-day sprint event.

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there’s a lot of cycling blogs and discussion groups out there. even here, our own TEAM LOPE topic, which you’re now reading, ladels on the two-wheeled goodness. and unfortunately, one thing they all contain is a lot of industry expertise and haughty cyclist pandering that often comes off as intimidating to newbies or other non-aggressive cyclists.

that’s why i’m linking here to SWEET GEORGIA BROWN, a blog by a very natural-speaking, everyday female rider who believes that it ain’t about the bike you’re riding, nor your knowledge (or lack thereof) of all the piecesparts, brands, and techniques. she bought her vintage bike "praline supreme" off of craigslist, has it upgraded and maintained mostly at her LBS (bikesnob for "local bike shop"), and runs a chainguard, a basket, and mad reflectors.

i REALLY like reading her blog (admittedly, i only discovered it today) because she seems all-too-aware of the fact that with cycling experiencing a massive boom right now, anyone trying to break in to the community is going to be met with some resentment and condescention, and she seems to be offering herself and her blog up as an alternative to all the garbage that we blather on about, here and on other cycling blogs, where we’re mostly just trying to sound smarter than you. haha!! not really, but you get my point.

i’ve added a SGB quote into my forum signature because i think she deserves props, and i encourage you all to go hit her blog and give her some love. she’s trying to hold it down not only for low-impact cyclists, but also for cyclists trying to get by in car-centric communities like her own — a small georgia town.

keep up the good work, SGB! some of us hardcore cyclists aren’t jackasses and we admire you!

POWER TO THE PEDAL!

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personally, i’m not a fan of THIS, but it’s a helmet, and that’s a pretty good thing, so whatever.

the deal is that these helmets can have different style "hat" covers put over them so you don’t look like such a dork. except for where you now just look like you’re wearing a hat that’s like 33 sizes too big.

but hey.
who am i to judge?

(i’m motherfuckin IRONLUNG, that’s who!)

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THIS is fucking insane, and i love it. a brooklyn-to-brooklyn apartment move. by bicycle.

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you know, one of the things that sucks about bikes (besides "all that pedalling crap," eh, sight?) is that they have a million and three specialized tools that you have to own in order to build, maintain, or mod them. it’s expensive, and often times leaves you hanging till you get or borrow the right tool.

i ran into an issue today, where i was installing a newer, higher-quality rear cog on loos3y, and there’s a piece that holds it on called a lockring, which i don’t have a wrench for. in the past, i’ve solved this problem with a little tappity-tap-tapping with a punch and a hammer, but that wasn’t working today because all the parts are higher-quality and thus, measured to within fractions of millimeters. you HAVE to have the tools. WR has one i could borrow, but i love a challenge, and remembered that i had an old bottom bracket wrench that i’d purchased erroneously one day way back and had kept around "just in case." that is this…

i played around with it to see if i could fiddle it to work on the lockring, which, as noted, is not the job it’s made for. i quickly realized that it wouldn’t work as is, but that if it didn’t have any of those teeth around the inside edge, and instead ONLY had the two outermost teeth, it might just work. so i grabbed a pbr tallboy and a dremel and put on "dodgeball" and sat there for an hour grinding in the living room, to come up with this…

tried it out, and it worked PERFECTLY.

this is truly a whole new world for me. not only am i modding things, but now i’m modding the tools with which things get modded. it’s so wierdly circular. hahaha!!!

fohwahd!

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here’s all the olympic cycling events for allay’all…

BMX

MOUNTAIN BIKING

ROAD CYCLING

TRACK RACING

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yeah, that’s right.

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A short photo essay on Oakland’s ‘scraper bike’ thing. I’d have loved to see the journalist out there nervously taking photos of these guys. HA. Anyway, a positive example in a tough neighborhood, and I’m all for their ghetto bike customization ways.

And, ‘Lil P’ summed up, in a quote about his own Scraper Bike, the Sunkist, my own motto for my new bike:

"When i ride, it look like the sun!"

http://www.californiareport.org/slidesh … aperbikes/

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We walked by this one last night, and I thought to myself, self, those are interesting handlebars. Then wifebot(tm) actually mentioned she thought it looked cool, which was probably the first publicly stated pro-fixie aesthetic comment I’ve heard from her, so I jumped at the chance to backtrack and take a photo, for science. I really want to do a white bike in one way or another, as does the One Lung, however, I’m not sure I’d do it this way. That said it was striking. Having recently taught her about same, she inquired if this was a ‘Ghost Bike’… which it wasn’t. But I was proud.

Those bars look striking, but functionally, without the upcurve of even the most modest bullhorn I feel like you could lose your grip up top. Also, one of the reasons I like the brand of this stem, should be obvious. So should the other. I almost got one for Toro a few years ago.

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