The question?

on
male
unbifurcated
garments

Top 15 favorite responses to women who ask the question:

15) A lady doesn't ask and a gentleman doesn't tell!

14) If you want to get down on your knees, I'll show you!

13) As you can see.. my socks and shoes/boots!
12) The usual.

11) Well, well, well.. you must be the bad girl in your family!

10) I'll bet you didn't know that I wear a kilt.. just to meet women like you.

9) What do you think? Buy me a pint and maybe I'll let you check for yourself!

8) Well, I don't want to brag... but this may be a turning point in your life!

7) Nothing is worn... everything is in perfect working order!

6) Only my wife knows.

5) If I tell you, you're gonna want to see for yourself, just like the last dozen girls!

4) Of course it's true! But, if you want to check, you'll have to show me yours first!

3) If your hands aren't too cold, you can reach up under there and check for yourself!

2) How bad do you want to know?

1) Good girls don't ask.. but bad girls find out for themselves!

Your bike...

misses you.

Evo cycle

another cool design
from the Brits

Safer cyclists?

Crimes of Carelessness

From the "Weird Al" Yankovic - Live! DVD:

Bicycles are also very dangerous - you could break your neck.

If you have to ride a bike, make sure to ride it really, really slowly.

Or better yet, why not turn your bicycle over and peddle it upside down.

It's also a good idea to check for bombs planted by Commie spies.

Make sure you wave hello to pedestrians before you run them over.

Get your tires now

"Rise early,
work hard,
strike oil."
John Paul Getty

While many of my comrades in the velotariat are positively gleeful about rising oil prices, they should remember that we are just as vulnerable to their impact. Oil is used in the manufacture of tubes, tires, and lubricants; not to mention those bright and shiny Lycra outfits. And so it isn't surprising that Michelin NA has announced that US market prices for bike tires will rise 15% come September. As Tyres & Accessories, UK explains:

US market prices for Michelin, BFGoodrich and Uniroyal passenger and light truck replacement tyres, plus those for private and associate brands, will rise by up to 12 per cent as of September 1. Michelin and BFGoodrich brand commercial truck tyres sold in the US replacement market will increase in price by as much as 8 per cent, also effective September 1. This price increase will also apply to Michelin Retread Technologies retreads, the company adds. On the same date motorcycle, scooter and bicycle tyre and tube prices will increase by up to 15 per cent on Michelin brand products sold in Canada, Mexico and the US. All two-wheel products delivered after August 31 will be invoiced at the new price.

Boston traffic taming

2old 2roll?

Susan McLucas doesn't think so. She's been teaching bike riding to adults for the last 20 years. Her Bicycle Riding for Beginners, offered through the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, has nearly doubled since 2006.

Emma Brown, reporting in The Boston Globe on 30 June 08, explains that demand for one-on-one lessons for adults is rising. With prices hovering above $4 per gallon the reputation of Boston's Bike Whisperer has risen accordingly. The 59-year-old chronic smiler, with a reputation for teaching even the most fearful and frustrated adults to balance on two wheels, is

an activist who has protested more than one war and who 11 years ago started the nonprofit Healthy Tomorrow to end the mutilation of women's genitals in Mali. Teaching people to cycle is a sort of activism, too: "It's part of getting rid of cars," she said, "and making bikes rule the world."

Her students, like Michael Lamb, are typically are utter newbies. Despite being nearly four decades older than the usual beginner he took the course to finally learn how to roll. His motives are modest. He wants to ride well enough to join his two young lids on the local bike paths.

Tour de Fat

an update

The wild and wooly New Belgium Brewing Co. bike festival and freak show known as Tour De Fat was in The City of Big Shoulders last week to benefit West Town Bikes!


Over the last eight years, Tour de Fat has captured the imagination of thousands with record-setting parades, eye-popping entertainment, death-defying contests of bike skill and precision, and, of course, New Belgium beer.


The show opened with a costumed bike parade, celebrating the power of the bike. Born in Ft. Collins, Colorado to increase awareness and participation in biking as a sustainable form of transportation, Tour de Fat has grown into a national rite of passage for cycling advocates and bon vivants alike. New Belgium’s philanthropic cycling circus helped 26 non-profit organizations in 2007 and raised more than $245,000.


Tour de Fat also left as small an environmental imprint as possible by composting and recycling waste. The waste diversion rate goal for this year is 95%. All musical acts perform on a solar-powered stage. All decorations are made from recycled materials. Trucks and transport utilize B100 and all vendors operate off the grid.


At the Team Wonderlounge, participants joined Team Wonderbike, New Belgium’s bike commuter advocacy program. Team Wonderbikers pledge to commute by bike, not car, as often as possible. Currently, 11,000 people have pledged not to drive 9 million miles in the next 12 months.

Addicted to bikes?

Joe Kurmaskie
wants to know!

• You know every traffic light sequence in the tri-county area for stop free pedaling.
• Either it's a Brooks saddle or I will stand and pedal the whole way, thank you.
• You own/wear more tights than a children's theater group performing Peter Pan.
• You have eaten pasta directly out of your front bag, while pedaling.
• You have higher quality, up-to-date intel on bike specs, gear and camping equipment than the staff at your local shop, the sales reps in your community and the editors at national magazines.
• You sport a killer set of bodybuilder quads and a pair of angel hair pasta thin arms. That ten year old boy called again. He wants his biceps back.
• You don't hate drivers as much as pity them in their steel cages, surrounded by shock jock rhetoric and their vague anger over how it came to this.
• You think about each hill as a cyclist, even when you are driving in a car.
• You calculate distances between cities by how long it would take by bike. ( 21 bike days from St. Petersburg to St. Louis.)
• You know how many miles you rode last night, last week, last year.
• You don't find it over sharing to tell people you just met how many miles you rode last night, last week, last year.
• You have a Biker's Tan. (bottom 2 /3 of your legs, lower 1/2 your arms, and two little circles on the tops of your hands)
• You get sad when your Biker's Tan fades.
• You have nothing good to say about logging trucks or RVs with living fossils behind the wheel, or anything sporting wide mirrors.
• You have lost feeling in your hands, neck and groin for substantial periods of time, but still you consider it the fair price of doing business on two wheels.
• You have far too many photos of yourself on or around your bicycle next to signs at the top of mountain passes, Welcome To So and So State, National Park entrances, starting lines of bike rides, historic sites, and in front of bicycle shops.

Why ride?

The HAMAS
Wheelmen

Last Thursday, a fragile cease-fire went into effect. Israel agreed to loosen border restrictions with Gaza. HAMAS agreed to dismantle missile launchers used to bombard southern Israel. The picture above, showing the flexible uses for alternative forms of transportation, reminds me of a whole bunch of bike slogans:

Bicycles -
Working For A Better Planet

Cars Kill And Make You Ill

Cycling Soothes My Soul

Explore On Two Wheels

I Spend My Gas Money On Bikes, Beer, Pizza, And Donuts

Keep Driving Cars And We'll Keep Fighting Wars For Oil

Make Love, Not Cars

Make Love, Not Pollution

No Iraqis Bombed To Fuel This Vehicle

No Iraqis Died To Fuel This Bike

No Sovereign State Ever Invaded Another To Seize Their Bicycle Power

No War For Chain Lube

Speed Kills

Vehicle Of The Revolution

When Bicycle Wheels Turn It Must Be Revolution

Davis Bike Church

G-d is in
the dérailleurs

The University of California - Davis has a bike church complete with its own ministers. It's part of the Sustainable Research Area on campus. The purpose is to promote various forms of human-powered transportation including biking.

It offers new and used bikes, parts, and accessories as well as tools and advice on how to fix bikes. The non-profit is operated by volunteers. All donations go to providing the community with more tools and a better workspace.

If you have a bike, bike parts or tools you are no longer using, please consider donating them to The Bike Church: bikeministry at ucdavis dot edu.

The earth rolls today

New Madrid Fault
awakens!

I'm getting ready to fly down to Orlando for a global youth summit. So I'm checking my email and the apartment begins to shake. No big deal, I think, I live along a truck route. Then WBEZ, our local NPR affiliate, announced that the authorities here The Windy City and as far south as Springfield got hundreds of calls reporting an earthquake.

And now the USGS reports it had a magnitude of 5.4! Oddly enough, it's the 102nd Anniversary of the devastating San Francisco Earthquake...

Foldy bikes

form beyond
function

I've been thinking about getting a foldy since I started using METRA to get out to the suburbs for work projects. Although its Bikes on Trains Program permits regular bikes, there are a number of restrictions:

[It] is designed to enable cyclists to bring their standard-form bicycles on board trains during weekday off-peak hours and on weekends. Three bicycles are allowed in the priority seating area in each accessible diesel rail car; two in each electric railcar.

Also, whether bikes are allowed on or not is up to the discretion of each conductor despite the program. So it would be easier to have a foldy in a bag that is simply considered baggage.


My research has turned up two elegant, lightweight models. The more traditional of the two, The A Bike, is the creation of Daka Design in Hong Kong.

[It] breaks new ground in the areas of weight, folded size and design. Weighing in at just 5.5 kg, this ultra-portable folding bicycle is the lightest in its class. By utilizing quick release clamps, fold and unfold only takes 10 seconds...

It can be easily carried on public transportation network, and its compact size allows for easy storage. The A-bike can attain normal speeds without having to pedal any faster than with an average large wheel bike...

The second, by Thomas J. Owen in the UK, is The One. It's

a comfortable stylish bicycle that not only offers all the benefits of cycling (like cheap travel and exercise) but with its revolutionary power assist system the user can cruise around with ease. When folded, ‘One’ turns into a smooth, light and compact case free of all dirty and protruding parts.

‘One’ can be easily carried, stowed and stored. ‘One’ is truly a bike for eco and money minded individuals alike. Its stylish design strips it from the folding bike stigma and makes it a bike for the 21st century.

Celebrity roll

just
for show

The Queen of Scots

my early spring
diversion

I got this '53 Lady's Rudge through eBay back in January. She sat in my basement until this weekend. The weather was warm enough to get to work on restoring her and with the Jane Train out of town I actually had the time. I've christened her The Queen of Scots.

I've always wanted a Rudge with the funky hand on the chainwheel. Not surprisingly, I jumped at the chance even though it's a lady's bike. And I'm going to ride her at the upcoming 3speed Tour. But how does one dress for a lady's ride?


In a kilt! I figure at least some indomitable Highlanders rolled about the heath. Why wouldn't they then display their clan's pride as well as their mechanical prowess? Also, I did my undergrad degree at America's premier Presbyterian school where our mascot is The Fighting Scot.

Unfortunately, I find my alma mater's tartan; from the Clan McCleod, rather off-putting. So I chose this sport tartan based on the Clan Muir. Besides, I am The Accidental Environmentalist. Why not wear the tartan of John Muir's clan?


But why Queen of Scots? Well ... Mary, on the right, travels nearly everywhere with my überboss 300+ days a year. Though a Scot, she's not Catholic. But this Wee Free makes everything happen for her and the rest of us. So I think, all in all, it's a fitting name.

Stupidist bike lane in America?

from Slate V Editor
Andy Bowers

Sexing up your ride

w/happy feet

Here's one way to sex-up your ride. It might even be useful in those heavy snow areas like here in The Windy City.


Or if you're not very krafty, then you can get these Windride Bicycle Clips from The Conran Shop:

This clever and stylish pair of bicycle clips with its 'wing' design by Gijs Bakker is designed to be worn when one's pants are in danger of being caught by a bike chain, etc. The bicycle clips are made from reflective PVC material.

Gijs Bakker was born in 1942 and studied industrial design and jewellery in Amsterdam and Stockholm. As a designer, he worked for companies such as: Polaroid, Hema, van Kempen en Begeer and Artifort. Gijs Bakker has been a teacher at the prestigious Design Academy of Eindhoven for over 20 years and in 1993, he created with Renny Ramakers the famous collective Droog Design, where he is still the co-operational and artistic director.

Bikes by the millisecond

from Poodwaddle

This nifty world clock of constantly updated global statistics includes worldwide bike production - lower right hand courner.

SOURCES
These stats may be verified at the listed websites:

World Population
US Census Bureau

Population growth rate
CIA World Factbook

Prison Population
UK Homeoffice

Divorces (US Only)
Wikipedia

US Illegal Immigration
Wikipedia

Abortions
Wikipedia

Mothers dying during botched abortions
World Health Organization

HIV infection
Avert

Cancer incidence
UICC

Earth Temp
Wikipedia

Species Extinct
National Wildlife Federation

Oil Production
CIA World Factbook

Cars produced
Mation Master

Bicycle Production
Earth Policy

Computer production
Top Secret [?]

Death stats
World Health Organization

Ultimate bike security?

not if the bike-jacker
is 8 ft tall!

Romanian photographer, Ovidiu Cincheza, was born on 21.04.1982. His first camera was his father's EXA 1a. At that point he didn't realized exactly what he was doing. Much later he took the thing much seriously. The direction in which Cincheza went also doesn't have much to do with photography. He has a BA in Computer Science and an MS in automotive embedded systems.

China's pigeons fly

in the USA

But what about in China? Over at Bicycling Magazine, Dan Koeppel wonders if the days are numbered for China'a venerable steed. Not everything is hopeless though...

The past year was a good year--maybe the first good year in a long time--for the Pigeon. In June, 200,000 Beijing residents pledged to reduce car usage and walk or pedal to work. A police crackdown put thefts on the decline. China's deputy minister of construction ordered cities that had eliminated bike lanes to �restore them. Shanghai slightly loosened the bicycle ban.

But the best news came on September 28, 2006, a few days before the country's national holidays. A young couple got married in Beijing, and in a giddy moment that made nationwide headlines, abandoned the traditional limousine to ride a Flying Pigeon to the reception. The bride, in her wedding gown, arranged herself sidesaddle on the bike's rear rack while the groom pedaled.

"This is the way we like it," the bride told the China Daily. "I will never regret this."

Got wood?

build a bike!

We never did this in woodshop %) Marco Facciola, a 16 year old high school student, decided to take the traditional curriculum in a whole new direction: a wooden bike. He notes that his choice of materials isn't all that original. In WWII Holland, rubber and steel were scarce. So his grandfather, Case Vandersluis, built wooden wheels for his bike. What is original is that Marco decided to construct his entire bike out of wood, even the drive train.

The first challenge that Marco successfully tackled was building a chain that wouldn't break. I wonder if he's ever heard of Eric Sloane? If he has, he shouldn't have worried so much. Sloane, who was known as Mr. Americana, penned some 50 books and numerous newspaper columns all celebrating good ole' Yankee ingenuity. My absolute fav is A Reverence for Wood. With it, Sloane reminds his modern readers that the first European settlers in America developed

...[a] special knowledge of which wood is suited to which task, the ready identification of native trees, the reverence for wood, the instinctive knowledge that wood can warm the soul as well as the body --

Well before our modern obsession with sustainability and even before the Back to the Land Movement of the early 70s, wood was the ultimate renewable resource. Sloane shows that in many ways it was stronger and more flexible than iron. The wooden teeth of giant mill cogs wore more evenly and ultimately lasted longer. As a result, wood drove our early industrial revolution.

I'm sure that Eric Sloane, who died in 1985, would've been fascinated by Marco's project. It reflects not only ingenuity but self-reliance and frugality. Sloane believed that these are the ultimate American virtues, for as he describes in A Declaration of Self-Dependence,

My Nation was born with a declaration of independence, but to be free, I must also practice an individual independence.

...As frugality is part of the family economy, so must thrift be important to national revenue. The practice if thrift is insurance against greed, which had no part in the original American philosophy.