so as some of you may or may not know, last week, I got doored by a passenger as she was exiting a taxi. thankfully, I wasn’t going very fast, so i only sustained a few bumps and bruises. but my bike wasn’t as resilient.

anyway, here’s my bike with its new fork

here’s becca and I

and these are our bikes :)

I wouldn’t say it’s anything special, but it’s mine. if I could do it all over I’d probably whip up something neat, but going black was safe :)

this is awesome…but i would not ride this.

i like DIY stuff, especially when it’s fairly easy to do and the results are pleasing.

here’s a DIY toe strap doubler that i put together (instructions found here). i had to go to 3 places to get all the ingredients.

home depot:
hole puncher
39th street (lots of fabric/crafts stores):
rivets
rivet tool
james (neighborhood belt guy):
sheet of leather
*i already had a straight edge, blade, and cutting mat

the original instructions called for 12 rivets for each side, but i think the rivets that i bought were just a tad larger than what was pictured so i had to open up CAD and improvise a bit. my estimations were good. here’s how it turned out…

what is it for, you ask…?
a fixed gear bike requires you to pull up on the pedal as well as push down (when stopping). most of the times, a single strap will do you just fine – for example, my road bike has single straps on both pedals. but on a fixed gear, the force you exert to pull up on the pedal is much greater since you’re working to slow down or totally lock your wheels. 2 straps add security, power, and comfort. both my means of propulsion and stopping come from my feet. if, by chance, the strap were to snap or just somehow fail, it’d be bad news for me. think of it this way, imagine trying to walk joey with a kite string…then imagine trying to walk him with with a nice broad nylon leash.

seeeee :)

after looking through the few posts i’ve managed to put up in the short time i’ve been managing this blog, i was surprised to find that i don’t have a single posts about riding bikes. well, here it goes…(i feel this may be a wordy entry)

well, it all started in the beginning of april. i’ve sorta forgotten what made me wanna get a bike all of a sudden, but i somehow made the decision to do so and headed on over to my local bike shop to check out what they had. anyway, long story short, becca and i walked away from the bike shop, each with a bike (we got a bit of a deal for getting 2).

since then i have been riding my bike to and from work and just whenever the heck i feel like riding. i guess you could say that it has gone from being something i had a peak interest in to something i really really enjoy.

here’s the bike i got from the local bike shop – redline r740

this picture is of my bike basically a day after i got it…before the stickers, pedals, lights, saddle bag, brake pads, and dirt. it’s quite an entry level bike, but i think any bike can ride nicely if all the parts are functional and it’s tuned up properly. and plus, i sorta don’t want a bike like that guy i always see who’s got a nice bike just cause he’s got the money to spend on it. i see a lot of those and i’m pretty sure i can smoke ‘em on my entry level bike if i wanted to and make him, his bike and his superhero outfit look stupid.

moving on…

there’s something i almost always do when i gain an interest in something – i’ll spend hours and hours on forums (usually i’ll find one that i like and stick to it) just reading up and learning about whatever it is i’m intersted in – i’ve done it with guitars, effects pedals, cameras, r/c toys, kites…and bicycles are no exception. during all that time spent reading, i’ve poked around the fixed gear thread to see what all the rave was about.

when i was talking to the sales guy at the bike shop (the same day i bought my redline) , i remember he had explained to me what fixed gear was and honestly, the idea wasn’t the least bit appealing to me. but after hearing (reading) what others have said about the simplicity and purity of the fixed gear machine i began to catch on. i would youtube videos of fixed gear riding to gain a bit more insight. the style of riding was both agressive yet graceful, i thought. ok, so here’s another long story shortened. i looked for a good deal on a fixie and picked myself up a mercier kilo tt in black – budget fixie, but it was a rather inexpensive investment for something i wasn’t 100% sure about.

well, here it is as it stands today

there was a bit of getting used to, mainly due to the fixed gear mechanism. if you’re not familiar with the idea here it is in a nutshell – basically, if the rear wheel is moving (whether forwards or backwards), so are the pedals. after getting used to this fact, there was a fundamental technique i had to quickly get down pat. and that was skidding, skid stopping, skip stopping…whatever you wanna call it – i had to learn to stop without brakes. i’ve since gotten that down well enough to be able to ride confidently in traffic. there’s much more to learn, however. after rewatching a lot of youtube vidoes, i realized that my riding style is pretty linear. in the coming weeks i’ll need to pay more attention to the overall control of my bike and try to be less rigid. sorta hard to explain. anyway, the verdict…love it!

here are a few fixed gear videos i’ve been following. enjoy.

and yes, i want to be like them!