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Touring Climbs and Descents [24 Apr 2012|11:21pm] shadesogrey I'm in the process of planning my travels/bike touring for this year and my route will include Cayoosh pass in British Columbia which has a climb of 1060m in 14km and a grade of up to 15%. This is almost twice as steep and also higher than I've done on previous tours. Has anyone ever done anything like this on a loaded touring bike? Anyone here ridden the BC HWY 99/Duffey Lake Road? How was it? I was describing to someone the experience of climbing for 2 hours at turtle speed then descending for 10 minutes in excess of 80km/h. I still feel crazy and exhilarated describing it. Sitting on a fully loaded touring bike at 82.3km/h (according to GPS) it doesn't feel like a bicycle anymore - a barely controlled torpedo maybe. (51mph for the metrically ignorant folk) Question - what is the fastest speed you've ever attained on your bicycle? And... has anyone ever crashed or had a failure at something close to this speed? 5 less cars| we are traffic

Bus driver and motorist prevent driver's escape after hit-and-run on a cyclist [07 Apr 2012|01:04am] caelumgrey 8 less cars| we are traffic

[15 Feb 2012|11:10pm] randomdreams Dude doing trials riding and a backflip on a vintage women's frame bicycle (and stopping to bend it back into shape.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W-rAv43UFnA 4 less cars| we are traffic

Moving, suggestions please. [02 Feb 2012|08:46pm] tequiladawn Ok, 'rats. I'm moving, from my lovely, flat, Wichita Kansas to the lovely, rolling, hills of Omaha Nebraska. The new roomies are currently non-bikers, although one seems pretty excited about getting a secondhand bike and helping me (and herself) learn the city from a two wheel perspective. I'm gunna need a new shop for parts and repairs, and likely a new bike. I currently use a fixed speed cruiser (yeah, I'm slow, but the scenery's better that way), but I'm thinking I'll need gears for previously mentioned hills, and a longer, more time constrained commute. Are any of you Omaha locals? Suggestions on shops to use or avoid? Any other suggestions for places to check out, or fun facts I should know about (such as Omaha requires bike helmets, whereas Wichita doesn't). we are traffic

Spain and Portugal [28 Jan 2012|09:59pm] randomdreams manintheboat and I went to Spain and Portugal. I took pictures. There were other things there than bikes... but not much that was important. So here's what I saw. Bike with a child carrier that was being used instead of a seat. Bike with completely fake shocks. Barcelona city bikes, available for free to residents of the city. Check out the different-sized wheels. I hate the idea because I'd have to carry two tubes. There was a chocolate museum, and it was filled with giant chocolate sculptures -- which seems like a waste of good chocolate. But I liked this one. Compare to previous picture. Orbeas are made in Spain. They've been there for decades. So everywhere you turn there are cheap heavy old steel bikes... that are Orbeas. I'm used to only seeing glistening brand-new carbon fiber racing bikes, so I can't get over Orbeas with kickstands. We found this in Granada. Much of the detail is made of bike parts and bike chains. Lisbon is somewhat scary. But they know how to do bike paths: here's one of many stations along a bikepath at the harbor, complete with water fountain and bike pump. 6 less cars| we are traffic

Bike Parts For Sale So I Can Buy More Bike Parts [22 Jan 2012|07:22pm] robbykills [ mood | cold ] Hey bikepirates, I haven't been on here in a minute, but I came on to try and sell you stuff like a classy gent. I owe the LBS $600 for a road bike I've been slowly building up with Campy parts, so to avoid paying them out of my paycheck I got some stuff I wanna sell and want it to go to a good home. If this isn't allowed these days feel free to tell me to take a hike. NOS Shimano Ultegra FC-6603 crankset. 172.5 triple. Arms only, No chainrings. One of those new fangled outboard bearing dealies. $110 NOS Mavic CXP 30 32h Tubular Rim $75 NOS Mavic Reflex 32h Tubular Rim $75 NOS 3T Mutant Stem. Yellow. 110mm. Threadless 1 1/8" $50 Campagnolo Centaur square taper BB. 70x111 Italian Thread. Mounted this on my bike for a grand total of 10 minutes the other day before I tried to put the cranks on and realized like I accidentally ordered the wrong spindle length. I'm an idiot. In box. I will even teflon tape it for you if you want. $80 OBO ($110 brand new) NOS Crank Bros. Candy C Pedals. Sort of a gray-green color. Brand new with brand new hardware $35 I only have a crappy phone camera but I can probably finagle some pictures if anyone wants any. Also open to haggle. Hit me up here or robby.delawarrior@gmail.com Safe riding! we are traffic

SkyWalker TallBike [17 Dec 2011|09:49am] tpulley [ mood | cheerful ] This is one of the best tallbike builds I've seen, and the project build page is very well done and full of details. 12 less cars| we are traffic

[11 Dec 2011|02:31pm] shootpplnotdope This might sound like a stupid question but what to do when a chain starts skipping all the time? Just replace the chain? 7 less cars| we are traffic

Support Your Pirate-y Framebuilder [02 Nov 2011|08:46am] fontosaurus Hey all -- I'm in a bit of a bind lately on the money front. House, kid, car -- I'd call it the "thirtysomething plight", but right now, we're all kinda up against it. And the thing is, I need to buy some framebuilding equipment. So I've pulled together a t-shirt design based on the new (and finalized) Pallas Athena headbadge, and I'm taking pre-orders on my site. The design is a limited edition and won't be available after the 11th of November. You get your choice of dark grey or army green shirt from American Apparel. (For women's fit, just mention it in the notes field.) If I could sell 100 shirts, that would be great. If I could sell a thousand, holy crap, Pallas Athena would be rockin'. Help me sell a thousand of them? If you can't afford to buy a shirt, could you help spread the word via Twitter or Facebook? Thanks! 4 less cars| we are traffic

Car free! [02 Oct 2011|09:33pm] ribbin Good evening, Bike Pirates! Yesterday, I sold my pickup truck. The only vehicles I now own are my bicycle and an old skateboard behind my friend's couch. Tonight I buzzed around town and it was glorious. A bit terrifying, since my town's streets are horribly maintained, there's little light and people drive like idiots, but glorious nonetheless. I got a Clipper card (scanable pass that gets you on all the Bay Area's various transit systems, including BART, TransBay, AC Transit and I think even CalTrain), and I'm going to start commuting on bike and bus every day starting tomorrow morning. I've done it sporadically over the summer, but this is for serious. I'm, honestly, incredibly excited about this. I haven't been voluntarily car free in about 5 1/2 years, barring a short bit where I'd sold my old car and was looking for waiting a few weeks for student loans to come through to buy the truck I just sold. Granted, it's going to be a bit of a paint to get everywhere on public transit and a bike, especially when the weather gets bad, but I'm also really looking forward to getting to know my quads again. So for all you pirates, I have this question: What are some good cycling pants for the winter? The Bay tends to be wet and cool, but not cold (under ~40 degrees F), so I'm looking at mountain bike shorts and knickers. Something I can ride to the bar in, commute in, pop in to the office before I got change, hit a party in, etc. I'm looking at these, or something similar- maybe in nylon, maybe with reflective piping, hopefully a bit closer to $50 than $90 (if I'm picking up a couple of sets, it gets pricy fast). Ideas? 22 less cars| we are traffic

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