Fuck Gas

If you’re in the area (Louisville) and looking for a new spot to do some cyclocross or light mountain bike riding there’s some new lines being laid down at George Rogers Park off Poplar Level Road. Start/finish spot runs along McKinley Avenune next to lots of grass parking, please park your cars on the park property and not someone’s front yard. Course is marked in orange paint, just follow the directions of the arrows and you should continue to find more along the way. Minus normal obstacles, which will be soon to follow, it’s got everything you could want. Tech sections, wild fast downhills, monster climbs, off camber fun and what may be the highlite of the course so far, the Cattle Shute. The Cattle Shute is concrete draignage ditch that you need all the damn speed you can muster to make it out of safely. This is a deciscion maker section as you can follor along side it and stick to the grass.

All in all, I think this would be a great location for just about any MTB or cross event regardless of our layout or not. The park space is huge and options are endless. Check it out and let us know what you think. Rememeber we’re not professional course designers, just trying to have some fun.

One Mom, Two Kids, No Car is Ali’s blog detailing her self imposed challenge to go car-free in a town south of Ontario. Ali, in her own words “is a single mom of two, a university student, not super fit and kind of lazy and disorganize…” Her original plan was to give it a shot through July, but I’m guessing that went well enough for her to extend through August. With September coming up, so is school and this is where she expects chaos to ensue. Hopefully she can manage and keep up the good work. Check out her blog and give her some support. Thanks to the Xtracycle twitter for the heads up.

Ditch the Van Bike Tour - Chapter 1 from marty benson on Vimeo.

So I just couldn’t help myself. Cricket Press posted this video yesterday of Ben Sollee’s Ditch the Van Tour and got me even more stoked than I was before. You can keep up with how the crew are doing through DitchTheVan.tumblr.com and I’m going to assume over at Marty Benson’s Vimeo page as well. As far as the September 30th event here in Louisville, you can call the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts box office at 502-584-7777 and they’ll mail them to your house for free. Get on it!

You can check Ben’s additional tour dates at BenSollee.com

Ben Sollee has been touring around the country on his Xtracycle for a bit now. I’m pretty sure the above pic is outdated however, I think he’s riding around on a Big Dummy these days. Either way, he’ll be here in Louisville Thursday, September 30 for IdeaFest. The event is free, but tickets are required. Ben will speak and do a performance regarding the idea of sustainability in music touring….community-based approach to performing, and how the physical limitations of the bicycle transcend social and economic boundaries. If you’re a fan of the cello, bicycle touring or hippie green shit, go check it out, I’m putting my money on awesome.

Mission Workshop let these pics of their new SPD shoe, the Rondel loose on Twitter today. I love what these guys are doing. Just wish I could afford some of it.

New cyclocross grounds have been discovered. Plans are being hatched and blood will be shed. I haven’t run this by anyone involved, but I’m coining the term Guerilla Cross because one, I like it and two, it makes sense if your’e at all familiar with Guerilla Marketing. As in:

Guerrilla marketing involves… any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

There are a few of us in the ranks as of now so if you’re interested in joining up and helping out that would be great. Like I mentioned previouosly, not sure what, if anything will come of all this other than a new playground a bit further inside the city. There’s certainly nothing wrong with going out and enjoying what there is of RRCC at the moment or the future course at Eva Bandman, just thinking along the lines of the more the merrier. As well, with the sort of group we’re looking at getting together for this adventure this will certainly not be your run-of-the-mill course. Stay tuned for updates and if I can get my grubby little hands on a camera I’ll throw some photos up as things progress.

Now, don’t forget, it’s Friday. Go drink some beers and ride.

Tis the season to be preparing for cow bells, mud and beers… perhaps with some annoying vuvuzelas thrown is for good measure. Work has apparently resumed at the new permanent home of Cyclocross at Eva Bandman park here in Louisville and the season’s first Wednesday night practice session went down last night at the now defunct River Road Country Club, fuck you Louisville dog owners.

In light of all these happenings, I will roll out shortly to a near by park for a sort of gorilla cross recognisance mission. Not sure if there will be any sort of event regarding these endeavors, but who knows. Could be a lot of fun. Either way, it’s just a way for me to have a good place to play on the cross bike without having to travel so far to do so. If anyone else would interested in doing fairly out of the ordinary cross races this year get in touch and let’s see what we can come up with. Something I’d love to see is a teeter-totter obstacle…

More stupid shit we put ourselves through is the enjoyment of the Hardcourt Bike Polo. More often than not however, we don’t. This is something we’ve been attempting to slightly alleviate as of late to little avail. Either way, we’re attempting a gathering of the game this coming Sunday, August 22 at say, 7pm to be safe. Not so hot out at that time and it gives everyone plenty of time to forget that we’re meeting up for this throughout the day. If you’re interested in playing, quietly watching or better yet, heckling, make your way to the Shelby Park tennis courts Sunday evening. Beginners encouraged to attend as we never take it seriously in the first place. Except for that time that I was apparently throwing things after our loss in Lexington at this years Bluegrass State Games. If this was actually the case, I can’t begin to imagine I was serious in any way, and if I was, you should know this now, I may have be intoxicated. I know, hard to imagine, but we here in Louisville like the beers with the polo. Bourbon, we like that too. If you don’t have a mallet, no worries, we should have plenty. Worried about your bike getting banged up? Stop being such a pussy. If you’re that serious, you can borrow mine.

All in all, this is a further attempt at landing ourselves a regular, non-grimey parking garage spot to play at. I think if we make this a regualr occurance and show that we can co-exist on a tennis court with the non-existant tennis players at this park it will help our chances of doing just that. Hope to see you there, rain or shine. If you’re on the Facebook, add yourself to the event page.

I’m seriously hoping this is just some sort of Friday the 13th prank by The Brooklyn Paper, but if it’s not, people need to start hiding in the shadows at night and whoop this dude’s ass.  Supposedly, this kook is fed up with bicycles being locked up around Williamsburg and has started gluing locks with Krazy Glue. I really just can’t imagine this is a true story, but I wouldn’t be surprised either way. I love people because they’re so fucking crazy, but I really hate how crazy some of these motherfuckers are. Thanks to Zach for the info. Read the full story here.

D.C. marked contraflow bike lanes along two blocks of New Hampshire Avenue a few days ago. I would assume bike lane advocates can’t even be stoked on this one. This is completely counter productive in working towards any kind of bikes are traffic mindset which, in my opinion, is the only logical thing that is going to make the streets any safer. As well, check out the diagram below and Greater Greater Washington for an overview of the debacle.

And I’m coo-coo for cocoa puffs! I’ll just leave it at that. Happy Wednesday.