NAHBS Jumps the Shark

Face it... the North American Handmade Bike Show has jumped the shark. This year, the bikes that I've seen so far, seem incredibly blah. It doesn't help when you have the same shitty cycling "news outlets" oohhing and ahhhing over the slightest change in powdercoat color of a bicycle top tube.

"What we did here was make a steel stem, just like people would do in the eighties... BUT THEN we got fucking crazy! We bought a stock, off the shelf stem face plate from Paragon Machine Works, and left it polished so that it wouldn't match the painted stem. And for the icing on the cake!? Well, we dug deep into our collective artisianal minds, and installed a grossly incompatible stem spacer under the top cap"


I'm not sure if you've ever seen a "slick" design... but this sure as fuck isn't that.


I admit that in part, this one partially pisses me off in that I'm currently working on a frame for myself that has a VERY similar design for the seattube, seat clamp and seatstay/toptube junction. However... I really think(hope) mine will look a lot more slick. I mean, one of the best (read: only) benefits of an integrated seatpost, is the very clean look you can achieve... and this one doesn't even come close to looking "clean".


How about this one!? Now, no doubt, I love the attention to detail that every single Vanilla bike proudly shows off. But this one is out of control! I mean, they didn't just stop with putting Di2 on this bike... they went the extra step and painted that shit PINK!

Really, the worst part is that I love the attention that most builders put to their bikes, and the little touches that they do when they build them. I can only hope that people notice the little things that I do, even when I'm just building wheels. I think the real problem comes from the shitty writing of the typical online bike news sites...or I just like to complain.

Wait... what!?

The other night I made it home in time to snap a couple pictures and play with the camera some more. The moon was looking really cool last week. This pic came out fairly cool... unfortunately, I nearly froze to death, and the wind was bad enough that it blurred the shot a bit, even with the camera situated on a tripod.

Our pets live a really tough life and after a full day of sleeping, lounging, eating, and general laziness, they are usually pretty wiped-out by late evening;

Neo occasionally wakes up to be crazy for a bit.

But let's be honest... Jessica isn't the best influence, since she's usually passed out by about 8pm anyway.

Though, I guess to be fair... she does have a reason to be tired these days...

New Year's Eve

After tearing up Denver on New Year's Eve last year, we decided to hang out at home, and have a few people up for a bit more relaxed party. It was a lot of fun, Jesse, Brittainy, Craig and Bonnie all came up to hang out and hit the hot tub on a frigid night. For dinner, we decided everyone would bring a favorite appetizer, and it quickly turned into an out of control feast! The kitchen was crazy-busy!

I had the FryDaddy working overtime making deep-fried pierogis for people;

Bring us more chicken wings Bonnie... and some ketchup too!

There was barely any room on the table for all the delicious food! We had chicken winds with two types of sauce, peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches (with the crust cut off) shrimp scampi, sauges links wrapped in bacon, stuffed mushrooms, deep fried pierogis, bread with dip, a bunch of other stuff, and of course, more than a few delicious alcoholic drinks.

After dinner, it was all of about 3 degrees outside, and the windchill was down to about 30 below! But we decided to brave it, and went out for a dip in the hot tub. I was wishing a few times that I had my snorkle with me, so I could have stayed completely in the water! Brittainy found a warm robe, and decided to play it safe indoors;

Yippee... made it through the New Year, and I think this is what most of the crew looked like by 12:36am

Good Enough for Santa

The awesome wifey spoiled the shit out of me on Jeebus' birthday, with my favorite gift, the Sony NEX-5 that I've been lusting after for a few months now.

It's a totally dope camera so far. I love my Sony DSC-T200 point and shoot for it's absolutely small size and good performance. It's so easy to throw in a pocket and does a good job of taking pictures of all sorts. But I was really itching for a better processor, and a camera that could put a bit more control into. But I didn't want a big-ass DSLR that I wasn't going to take anywhere with me, because of it's big size. Enter the NEX-5. I love the tiny design, minimal buttons that you can even program, the tilty-screen and the ability to shoot HD video and 3D panaromas even. I've only played with it a bit, and mostly experimenting at that, but it's definitely fun. Quick picture of Tayler;

The dogs have been my test-subjects, doing portraits and action shots... though they aren't very predictable. We're dog-sitting my nephew Duncan for the holidays as well;

I took the camera outside to freeze my ass off the other night. The International Space Station was going to be visibly flying overhead, and I figured it was another fun test to try out the camera. This is the light it was able to pull, shooting from my hand, at 5:40pm, so it was nearly night-time out;

And it was even able to capture the space station! If you haven't seen it before, it typically just looks like a very fast, non-flashing airplane sort of light. I took this picture, tracking it by hand;

New Year's should provide some more testing subjects for the camera. And speaking of New Years, I'm finally better prepared this year! I really don't care for champagne, but this year managed to track down a bottle of Infinium to ring in 2011! For once, I'm definitely looking forward to the toast!

In the meantime I'll kill time waiting for the New Year by building my new Lego sets!

Blah, Blah, Winter, Blah

It's been winter... it's cold and stupid. And even worse, cold without even any useable, playable snow. It always seems to be an extreme. Well, maybe I can stay inside and have some hot chocolate made with hemp milk... gotta love Nederland.

I've been up to a whole lot... and at the same time, not a freakin' thing. So I started messing around and have a new project in the plans...

I love when Mrs. T comes over for dinner, like she did the other night;

But I was too drunk from finally cracking open my Odell's aged Woodcut ale... which was freakin' pretty damned tasty!

And of course the holiday season has kept everyone extremely busy. Especially Leigh who has volunteered to guard the baby Jeebus tree, day and night, in order to make sure no harm comes to her catnip filled gifts!

And of course last week... was it last week? Was the Winter Solstice. So at least that means the days are getting longer now... but I think we have a really really long time until it starts getting warmer. Especially since it hasn't even started snowing yet! But this year had a full-moon winter solstice WITH a full lunar eclipse! It was pretty sweet. The skies were overcast, but cleared up just enough, as the eclipse got rolling. I was fully armed with binoculars, camera and the telescope... freezing my ass off, in 16 degree temps at 2am. But that's okay, it's always worth it. Taken with the iPhone4 through my telescope eyepiece;

Yesterday I trotted over to a local retailer in order to pick up the newly released first season of Archer (From the makers of Frisky Dingo, and one of my favorite shows since Frisky Dingo!), when I came across this highly-modified transport machine. Mostly it's really fucking funny... but part of me really loves that the driver of this machine obviously had a look around his shed, and pieced this together from the bits that he had. And that is pretty freakin' cool. But still, it's goofy.

Until next time... enjoy my favorite video of last week - I'm sure this one will have people going nuts - the KillCam replays were cracking me up! Enjoy!

Ride Like Tommeke...

Ride like Tommeke...minus the coccaine!

I guess it's never too early to start prepping for "classics season". This was a pretty sweet pair of wheels that I built up for a friend of mine, using all the sweetest components that appear to be the choice of the real hard men of the sport.

Only proven stuff here, the Campagnolo Record hubs were zooted-out with the CULT ceramic bearing system.

Super strong, hard to find and very much sought after, Ambrosio Nemesis box section tubular rims.

And ultra-proven Sapim CX-ray spokes and nipples, laced 3-cross all -around of course.

The wheels built up quite well, with super even tension and with minimal hassle. The CULT bearings feel incredibly smooth, it will be interesting to hear how they hold up over time. Unfortunately my scale was screwed up, but it's not like you are overly concerned with weight on a set of wheels like this. They felt very reasonable though. All they need now is a proper gluing job, and I can only hope the owner does the right thing and insists on Vittoria Pave Evo CG rubber!

St. John, The Rest

Our next day in St. John was bound to be epic... The plan was to charter a boat for our little group, that was going to go over to the British Virgin Islands for the day! We met at the dock at 9am, and we were off with our captain, who just happened to bring along 4 cases of beer and two gallons of fresh made Painkillers. The first stop was Tortola to get our passports stamped and "enter" the country. Not a bad little bay to sit in, while our crew handled the paperwork.

Along the way to our first stop we passed Gilligan's Island... no, really. This might look familiar as it was the island filmed for the opening sequence.

We had time to kill before the bar opened, yes, really, so the captain took us to this absolutely amazing little cove, where we could do some snorkling. I am sure the fish were used to getting fed by the boaters that came here, but that just meant that there were that many more fish out! This was some of the clearest water we snorkled in, ranging from about 35 feet deep to very shallow on the steep rock walls. There were also three seperate caves for us to snorkel into, and massive reefs, teeming with life! After about 90 minutes of snorkling there, we were off to Willy Ts, a bar on a "pirate ship" anchored off shore, in another stunning cove.

Like I said, the cove was pretty stunning. Not a bad view while I munched my conch fritters... and the beginning of the alcoholic beverages for the day.

But our next stop, was the one that everyone was REALLY looking forward to... The Soggy Dollar Bar. The only word I could use to sum this place up, would be "Heaven".

The name of the bar comes from the fact that the only way to get to this bar is by boat, so that means you're swimming into shore to get your drinks. But that really, really wasn't a problem. The water here was no doubt, the most insanely perfect shade of blue I have ever seen.

Jesse, Jessica and I did some snorkeling for a bit, though the reef wasn't that interesting. But I wasn't going to miss doing some swimming in this water. Especially since the plan for the rest of the day consisted of sitting on the beach drinking. Jesse and I volunteered anytime people needed us to swim out to the boat to pick up a few more beers.

I only managed to sit on the beach for about half an hour, before deciding it sounded like a much better idea to stand neck-deep in the water while enjoying my drinks. I really really loved the fact that the water was so warm, that you had to keep your drink above the water, in order to prevent it from getting warm too quickly. Right here is the life... relaxing on your sick boat, as the sun starts to drop at Soggy Dollar;

An amazing day out! Though people were getting pretty tired after a full day of sun, swimming, boating...

...and drinking... as one of us were about to get especially "bitten" by the alcohol.

The next morning was another rough one, but I wasn't about to miss another chance to hit the beach. So we were back at Salt Pond Bay, for an epic day of snorkeling, and saw some great sea life as well! Including a solid 40" Mackeral who was not very amused by me swimming up next to him so Jesse could get a good idea of scale! I really have no idea why I came back out of the water this day...

Jeff made a mass of kabobs that night and we all worked hard to drink up the last of our alcohol, you know, to make sure we didn't waste anything. Except for Brittainy... I'm pretty sure she didn't have any drinks that night!

The next day we had one more view from our amazing patio, and then it was time to start the long trip back. I swear it was all I could do to keep from throwing myself over the rail of the ferry and swimming for "freedom".

So my advice? Absolutely, most definitely go. But make sure you only get a one way ticket and by no means plan on coming back. Even if you aren't sure now that you don't want to come back, you'll understand once you get there.