if you don’t know who MARSHALL "MAJOR" TAYLOR is — now you’re linked.

if you don’t want to read the whole wiki page, the bottom line is that he was a cyclist (a sprinter to be exact), who was regarded as the world’s fastest in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was only the second black person to achieve world championship status in their sport, the first being boxer george dixon.

(side note : opponents of black athletes tried a number of ways to mentally shake taylor — one of which was consistently sticking him in room number 13, or giving him the number 13 as his racer ID. taylor embraced this, however, and began requesting the number. this is why "13" is so prevalent a tattoo on urban cyclists.)

anyway, taylor was known for his "rules of clean living," which he believed made him a winner. and boston graphic designer chris piascik has made simple, text graphics of these rules. they’re pretty awesome…

DON’T FAIL TO LIVE A CLEAN LIFE
DON’T BE A PIE BITER
DON’T BE A BIG BLUFFER
DON’T EAT CHEAP CANDIES
DON’T KEEP LATE HOURS
DON’T TRY TO GYP
DON’T GET A SWELLED HEAD
DON’T USE INTOXICANTS
DON’T FORGET TO PLAY THE GAME FAIR

you can look for further submissions HERE. look for rule 10 or above, as the first 9 are in this post.

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Another astounding sample of wowness from Miguel’s… stainless feather included. Look at that sweep!

http://openbicycle.com/2009/03/20/icarus-proto-bars/

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yesterday was an interesting day. it was full of dread and sadness in many ways that i won’t get into, except to say that i believe that just like newton said, "for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction." and that means that as a rule, when something shitty happens, i look for the good thing in the universe that’s offsetting it. and in yesterday’s case, i CREATED an offset in the form of a great ride on an amazing day.

i usually ride in street clothes and carry a big ole bag on me, but yesterday i wasn’t doing anything that required me to be in street clothes, nor was i going anywhere that required cargo capacity. thus, it was back to my cycling kit — jean shorts over lycra, and my sick SWOBO "ciclistas urbanos" cycling jersey. i did bring a wind vest and arm warmers, just in case, and of course the requisite tool pouch, ipod, and bottle of water. (i should note here that my new leader, the Tumbler, doesn’t have bottle bosses on it, so that bottle of water now goes into my center jersey pocket.)

i took off from the house (red circle at center-right on the map above) only knowing that i kinda wanted to ride through the presidio, and i was considering going over the bridge, so i meandered that direction, taking valencia to market with a quick hop on VN, then down to polk. this is a great way to start a ride because it’s like 5 miles of flat with some very slight grades, and it winds through two vibrant neighborhoods — the mission and the polk gulch/tenderloin area. when i go to the presidio in this direction, i now take pacific west, hopping back and forth to washington and jackson as street grades begin to become unattainable out there near presidio heights. this route gives me some good short climbing blasts, which get my legs ready for the presidio. once you hit masonic, you cut into the presidio and bomb downhill, past lucas, and this is where i cut due west again, and hit a particularly grueling climb, peaking right near the "o" in "presidio" on that map above. this is followed by a quick descent and then another grueling climb, peaking at the hard angle near the arguello entrance on the map above. these two climbs give me a good burn and then let me off with a nice flat and some descents on my way back out to city streets in sea cliff. then i hit land’s end for another good climb, this one actually kinda long, which ends at the palace of the legion of honor. this is cool because there’s a replica of rodin’s "the thinker" in there, and you can ride right up to it and chill. i didn’t chill, but i did circle him thrice and then bolt. from there it’s back out to a few blocks of city streets again, up and down, and then you hit the ocean.

the ocean is where you can really see what a perfect day it was for a ride…

it was here that i checked my text messages, having now passed my opportunity for a shot across the bridge (unless i wanted to backtrack), and lo and behold, a friend in daly city had texted to see if i wanted to come down and watch some football. in fact, i did want to go watch some football (mainly just wanting to stay away from the house), so i quickly checked the mapping function on my phone and plotted a course from where i was at. now, daly city is in the next county south (san mateo county), but just BARELY so, and is in fact VERY accessible by bicycle from the city. my route was to take the great highway (which was fucking GORGEOUS) down to sloat, swing around the zoo and drop onto lake merced boulevard, which i took all the way…

shortly past that sign, i twisted left on john daly boulevard, which i climbed up to junipero serra, and then a short hop over to my destination (red square at the southernmost point of my route on the map above).

i kicked it here for the next few hours, not out of exhaustion or anything like that, but just because now i was hangin out with friends, having a beer, eating, watching the game. i stayed till after dark, which was probably not very safe when you consider that i’d not brought a headlight with me. my red blinkies are built into my bar-ends, so that’s covered, but my forwards-facing white blinder, which is what cars hopefully see in their rearview when turning, was still at home. but i had no choice and struck out towards the daly city end of alemany boulevard. a little bobbing and weaving put me right there, which was pretty safe with lots of streetlamps and a wide bike lane. took this up to where i cut over near glen park BART, climbing up to san jose avenue, and then bombing home. this last 5 miles of the day, which took no time at all, combined with the morning’s 17.5 miles, put me up at a 22.5 mile day. shorter than a ride to mill valley and back, but still a good haul, fixed, with lots of climbing.

i’m SUPER pleased that the day shook out like this, and hope to make this a regular route!

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Man, I’d be stoked if I could do ANY of these tricks. Especially in 1913.

http://www.factioncycling.com/shirts/tricky-1.html

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I saw this on Open Bicycle’s launch party photo post. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Is that… a feather… embossed onto the frame? Is that the coolest lugging from here to gardenia? Yes on both counts. Wow. We look at hundreds of bike concepts a month, I’d wager. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. In R3 colors too!

http://cargocollective.com/icarusframes … stom-Track

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This just in. Our man Lung is a monster with his new Leader and bigger gearing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a_Z-ywT … r_embedded

Also, this is some viral BS for whatever, but who cares. I just liked that he threw the water bottle.

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I’ve been delayed and waylaid by a sickity-sick sickness this weekend, but it didn’t stop me from being drawn to Ghostal like it’s some sort of giant space whatsis… like a black hole. But a white… well, anyway.

I admit the process is slower when sick. You don’t think as clearly, and you don’t have the enrgies for proper eye-spying of all your properties and monies when your bikeBasement is in disarray and tools and parts and small gifts are not in their right place. So searching for this or that takes thrice as long. But I was not deterred.

Yesterday I got the front wheel done. It started as one of those immensely frustrating tyre mounts I feel like I’m the only one to experience: where the tube won’t inflate, and thetube pops out of the tyre as you work your way across, and everything seems like a Three Stooges skit. However, as suspected, the tube was defective and I replaced it, and then things went fine. It’s SLOWER to work with all white, I have to say. The bike as whole, and especially the tyre and rim. There’s 1000 little blemishes and smudges every which where already, but that’s to be expected. And I know it’s going to look ash grey as soon as those tyres hit asphalt. But I’m just trying to keep it clean until first photos, then all bets are off, because this is a bike meant for riding, not displayin. In the Team Lope manner!

This afternoon, I had the sickit sick fidgets, and decided to hit the bike once more. The rear wheel came together in a flash, and the drivetrain was only delayed by the aforementioned searches (the cog and lockring were ready, but the lockring wrench was AWOL and the chain breaker same.) After a little methodical searching, I was under way.

I present to you Ghostal, pre-fitment:

It’s not DONE, because I haven’t committed to the steerer tube cut, as I want to get on it and see what’s what first. But after that, chop chop and star nut and we’re done!
Also, a few finishing touches once the bike is road worthy. But that’s later. But she’s ready to roll at the moment, which is, as Scotty said, ‘excitin!’

So pleased, am I. VERY.

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One of the things I’ve long envied about Lung’s work situation has been that since he lives and works in San Francisco, he can bike commute pretty much every day if he wants. I used to be able to do this, some six years and change ago, when I worked downtown, and made the most of it, though back then, social occasions and other relationship-related stuff would happen after work here and there and I’d ride whatever other days that I could. Given the relatively short distance of that commute, I would sprint it and get the most out of it I could. After that, however, these recent years I’ve been commuting into Mill Valley from SF, which has been AWESOME. What a great way to get saddle time in throughout the week, riding through the city, the Presidio, over the bridge, and into Marin. Solid! Except, funny thing, attrition sets in. Stacking a full workday onto that ride meant that if I did it more than three days a week in the best case scenario, I’d be too exhausted to really enjoy it. As it was, the ride in would be great, the day would drag and I’d be tired from lack of sleep and whatever, and then sort of dread climbing out of Sausalito to get home. This commute was merely part of any usual weekend distance ride, but suddenly, when you have to do it just to drag your tired ass home in order to make dinner and such, it feels a little more like a chore on certain days. Particularly late summer when the wind and wet on the bridge and the climb to it were pretty brutal. But still, even though it could be a mixed-bag, it was still an awesome ride, and a great opportunity to get on the bike for two hours each ride day.

Then I moved to Mill Valley.

Suddenly my long ride opportunities disappeared. We have a baby at home, so i don’t have the luxury of before- or after-work climbs up Tam. I’m on duty all the time. So now my riding is limited to work commuting and the occasional lunch ride. I lost those miles, that saddle time, and the journey I loved. HOWEVER, loss and gain can go hand in hand. While I lost some ride time, what I gained was a return to the bike commuting schedule I used to have, where I can ride, like Lung, as many days of the week I want to, and this has been a boon. Where 6 years ago I had one bike and one bike only in my possession (the Bianchi Veloce dubbed Toro, was the ride at the time) now I have upwards of 7 of my own in various stages of rideability. So while I have been changing out bikes every few days on my longer commutes in months and years past, it’s always been a strategic decision: which bike to take? What’s the weather going to be like, what’s my cargo, how tired am I? I’m happy to say that over the last 18 months I got very comfortable riding even my big-gear fixed-gear on that commute. But I still had to think about it.

Now, I have a wonderful embarrassment of riches in the bikeBasement, as you may have seen in other posts: I have a series of hooks in a beam so that all the bikes can hang like, as Lung put it, a sweet bike wardrobe closet. So in the new digs, I go down there in the morning with the luxury of not knowing which bike I’m even going to take on any particular day. I’m using the same pedal system on each bike, so I can just drop down there in my shoes and pluck a bike off the rack and ride it, whatever strikes my fancy for the day. It’s great. As wee Z gets a little older and has a schedule that will allow me some longer rides, i’ll get the exercise back in, but in the meantime, at LEAST I get to start each day the right way: on two wheels!

Currently, only four bikes are rideable: wrongBike, Villain, roadLook and redBike. The fifth, Fix-e, is currently partially decommissioned as I sold Lung her wheels. Nothing’s more pathetic than a bike with no wheels. So that carcass hangs on a hook like that scene in Good Fellas with Jimmy Two-Time, waiting for another ressurection. The sixth, Ye Blacke Death, is way early in the project, and has a ways to go. The seventh, Ghostal, is very near road-ready, just waiting for a few final hours in the bikeBasement to finish up the wheels.

Good stuff!

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A few weeks back, on one of my redBike commute trips into work, I was riding around town, all upright and smiling and fingerbang-pointing to random people in that everyone-loves-money kind of way, when I came across redBike’s friend, redFriend.

Someone’s got impeccably good taste, I says!

What i liked about it was that I felt like I had accidentally time traveled. It’s like futureThom put a Brooks saddle and a baby seat on the redBike and went on a rideabout.

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Spotted in Mill Valley.
See, I quite like the bike, despite that internal geared hub having 5 speeds too many… but man, they don’t keep up with the dangers of street bucketing out here, do they?

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