Platform 3
Ed Wong – cycling enthusiast and patron of the arts
Filed under cycling …
Stéphane is no longer a complete cycling noob
He’s got new clipless pedals and shoes, plus we finally removed the pie plate from his back wheel.
Next step, lycra shorts and/or a metric century.
A decent bicycle lock AKA Bike thieves, I hate those guys!
This morning, I discovered that someone had targeted one of my bicycles in the racks behind my block of flats. The photo is of the remnants of the cable that I had through the front wheel, attached to an Abus Manhattan U-lock (D-lock). Another of my bikes was locked to the U-locked bike with an Abus Steel-O-Flex 900 and there is no sign of the lock…presumably cut. The bike, which is a fixed wheel bike wasn’t taken, although they could have, therefore, I think they were targetting my other bike and might not have realised that the U-lock was there as well as the cable lock.
The U-lock was through the back wheel and the seat stays, near the brake…so it was “filled” and quite hard to attack. I think however that the thief wasn’t equipped with a tool capable of cutting the shackle on a decent U-lock…hence my bike was saved.
Here is a video of a braided cable lock, similar to the one I had, being cut like a knife through butter…
Bike thieves…I hate those guys!
Here is an article on locks and how to deter thieves…slightly depressing that almost any lock is no defence against a determined ne’er do well but good that you can protect it in some way. Suffice to say, my bikes are living inside from now on.
The courier always bites twice
I came across this recently via the Sydney Bicycle Messenger Association’s site.
The image above is a link to video on blip.tv that was posted by someone from the Calgary BMA. It’s good to see that something is going on in Calgary in the courier “community”.
There are also some pix on that site which were taken by Rachelle, the first courier that I ever spoke to in Calgary. She was taking a break outside the convenience store on the corner of 9th Avenue and 9th St SW, at the base of the building that I was living in. I needed to earn some cash, so I quizzed her about the courier companies in town. A week later, I was no longer Ed, I was #34, Elite Fleet’s latest rookie AKA “hump”.
Later on, it turned out that she was friends with my new found friend, Jonny “The Reverend” Love. He’s in one of Rachelle’s photos and so are also several other familiar faces from the time I was there.
As for the video…it’s certainly…um, creative. A courier zombie movie, has that ever been done before?
Memento messenger
Hat tip to Messenger of Doom for alerting me to this short film about an absent minded Sydney bike courier…”Short confessions of an absent minded messenger”
Muppet of the month
Cab and messenger bike written off in Sydney
If Bill accepts entries that are not from London, I think I’ve spotted a candidate for Moving Target Zine’s semi-regular Muppet of the Month. M’lud, may I present the evidence for the prosecution via this Youtube video…
Flash, a courier in Sydney was thankfully not harmed when a taxi pulled a u-turn, got wiped out by a bus and totalled Flash’s bike which was locked to a pole.
Hat tip to the Sydney Bicycle Messenger Association site.
“I bent my Wookiee”
Well, Ralph Wiggum did as you can hear here:
In my case, I broke my Campagnolo C-Record (AKA Record Pista AKA Sherrif’s Star) track hub, on the drive side. I waited for a break in traffic (trackstanding naturellement) and was pulling out of my work onto the main road and I heard a ping which I though was a spoke. So I pulled up on the side of the road…my tyre rubbing on my frame and discovered that Sheldon Brown wasn’t making it up!
Edit – Some equally cromulent points are made by “11.4″ about 3/4 of the way through this thread on Bike Forums.
I’ve had them since the end of 2003, so I’ve had good use out of them and the failure wasn’t so catastrophic that it resulted in physical injury and I now will have the pleasure of rectifying the situation (building a new wheel, perhaps) but it still is a bit of a bummer. I also got them for a extremely good price. The bearings also are still as smooth as the first day I got them.
I was on my way to meet some friends and colleagues at the pub, so I called for a lift and commiserated with an Amstel, as you can see below.
Here’s a picture of the pristine and untarnished works of art in happier times…
How to become a better cyclist
I may be propagating an apocryphal story here but apparently Eddy Merckx (edit – or perhaps Fausto Coppi) was once asked for his top 3 cycling training tips. His reply:
“Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike”
It’s true. You can read as many cycling magazines as you want, participate in internet fora, read a book on 1,000 tips on becoming a better cyclist,buy expensive clothing or equipment, watch the Tour de France DVD box set until your eyes bleed, and play Pro Cycling Manager on your PC until your mouse finger seizes but in the end it’s a bit like a magazine about internet social networking. None of it is a substitute for MoR/KoR (Miles on Road/Kilometres on Road).
So “suck it up rookie” as my dispatcher used to say. Stop reading this blog and Cyclingnews.com and get out there!
Sheldon Brown RIP
Many people who have an interest in maintaining or building bicycles will have come across Sheldon Brown’s website. I have certainly referred to it many times obscure bike maintenance questions or to point people towards some sound, comprehensive and expert advice on how to perform a particular bit of maintenance. I have recklessly ignored his advice about Campagnolo Record track hubs though…
I was saddened to hear the other day that Sheldon passed away last weekend. According to his Wikipedia entry, it was from a heart attack.
Coining a phrase? “Exenger”
Fakenger bag and Bill’s millions by pocketmonsterd. Used under a Creative Commons Licence
Before I created this post claiming to coin the term exenger (to refer to ex-cycle messengers) last May, I checked Google for any prior mentions of the “word”. Apart from some results such as some German, Star Trek fan-fiction about the USS Exenger, misspellings of the word “exchanger” and expired domain name pages for exenger.com…there didn’t seem to be any results that related to cycle messengers/couriers. I’m not claiming that I am the first dude to ever think of this portmanteau…but I think I was the first to put it online.
Anyhow, I decided to do a the same search again and lo and behold, now the first four results are courier related. How about that?
The first 2 results are from the London Fixed-gear and Single-speed site…some say the definitive fakenger website or at least right up there with the London Bicycle Fakenger Association.
Results 3 and 4 are from Bill Chidley’s Moving Target zine…a favourite blog that I recommend.
In fact, Bill has used the term exenger twice since my post according to the Moving Target blog search for “exenger”. Furthermore executing a Moving Target forum search for “exenger”, yields another 4 mentions.
Googling for ‘exenger AND courier’ or ‘exenger AND messenger’ yields results on rollapaluza.com the London roller race organizers, fyxomatosis.com (my fellow high school alumnus, Andy White’s site) and most authoratively the Messenger Mailing List archive of the International Federation of Bicycle Messenger Assosciations (the organisation responsible for the Cycle Messenger World Championships in which I competed in 2004). To the best of my knowledge, all results have been since my exenger post on 3 May 2007.
Anyhow, little things amuse little minds but it tickles me no end that this seems to have happened. Maybe it will get in the Oxford English Dictionary one day??? More like the UrbanDictionary.com
Perhaps I should buy the exenger.com domain? Erm, maybe not.
Enough time wasted on this post…I’m off to cycle Mt Mattress.
