(Editor’s Note: This is an article submitted by Malte Wiedenmann, seasoned mechanic and long distance adventurer, currently (and since some time) managing repairs at Fahrrad Cohrt in Hamburg, a must-to destination for bike lovers of all stripes, and one of our fine Dealers of Excellence. Malte was kind enough to share some words and pictures regarding one of his life’s great loves.)
“Back in 87 or 88, the Mountain-Bike-Boom was on and somewhere in Taiwan a sturdy frame was welded. The main triangle consisted of 4130 CrMo-steel. Equipped with the complete (somewhat heavy but reliable) Shimano Exage 450 Mountain groupset, I purchased a bike in Whakatane/New-Zealand labelled as the Healing “Wild Thing”.
(Healing used to be one of two major bicycle-companies in New Zealand. The company has gone by now, leaving only a few traces on the net.)
We briefly touched last month on the MY BIKE exhibition in Paris. Hosted by the Cohens at their design emporium Merci, the show was planned with serious bicycle historians and style conscious urban commuters in mind. Fortunately, plenty of both camps made it to the opening night in January, and plenty more have continued to fetch up at the door, hopeful of a glimpse at the future of cycling and cyclewear, as well as its past.
Eyes open, and be sure to pling that bell before you blast through that junction.
Responsivity to traffic lights by road users in continental Europe famously operates on the following North to South sliding scale – Directive, Suggestion, Christmas Decoration. So it was with interest at Boultbee Towers that we recently learned of plans to permit cyclists in Paris to “griller les feux” as they see fit.
Talking to Zimbabwe’s Seán Conway, one gets the impression of dealing with a man who has a lot of irons in the fire. This makes him no different from the rest of the riders signed up to take a shot at the Guinness world record for fastest circumnavigation of the earth in 2012. But with incidental things likes overseeing solar power projects for schools in Africa, endurance canoeing marathons, swimming the Channel, and even booking transfer flights to keep him occupied, you could almost forget the small matter of an entire planet which will very soon need to be lapped by bike. As quickly as possible. But not Seán.
Besides raising money for Solar Aid, why are you doing this?
Scenes from the hard road, with new Guinness record holder Alan Bate.
Those intrepid souls gunning for a place in the record books when they leave London by bike on February 18th as part of the World Cycle Racing Grand Tour have just had their job made that little bit harder.
We mentioned on the Brooks Blog earlier this week that a rumour was doing the rounds of a soon to be ratified finishing time of somewhere in the region of a hundred days for one complete circumnavigation of the earth.
And bear in mind that the previous best had been set by Vin Cox, and stood at 163 days.
Long Distance Touring by unicycle makes numb hands a thing of the past.
As readers of the Brooks blog must be only too well aware, in about a month now London will be the starting point for perhaps the most ambitious and dramatic cycling event the world has yet seen.
It’s true to say that most individuals attempting to break the world record for Fastest Circumnavigation of the Earth by Bicycle this year will hit the start button of their stopwatches on February 18th somewhere in the English capital.
Both Brooks and PEDALeD will be represented at the MYBIKE exhibition in Paris.
No major world city has remained untouched by the resurgence of bicycling as a means of undertaking one’s urban commute, or simply getting around. And by any scale of measurement, we can probably all agree that Paris is a major world city.
It was with this in mind that we took a look last week at one of our Parisian Brooks Supreme Dealers Of Excellence, and today take a look today at MY BIKE, an upcoming exhibition taking place in Paris. It will showcase some should-haves for the bicycliste looking to cut a smart yet practical dash both on and off two wheels.
The sun, the moon… the stars are attached to seatposts inside.
It is tempting nowadays for bike shop owners to narrow their range of machines to a specific style of bicycle. There are lots of reasons for this. As a “specialist” for one particular bike or cycling-related line of products, the stockist is almost guaranteed a (perhaps small, yet) fiercely loyal constituency of people prepared to spend money at his premises, often on items surplus to their immediate requirements. Which is a nice constituency to be selling to in 2012.
But the Reboux Brothers, Sebastian and Julien, in their Brooks be-rivetted emporium Les Vélos Parisiens in the French capital’s 7th arrondissement do things differently. They sell everything. Or at least, it can certainly seem that way.
Niels Albert, left, reckons Sven Nys was probably the better man on the day. Or does he?
“Sven was the strongest today. That’s how it works in a race. The best would win today on a course like this and that was Sven today.”
Seemingly innocuous, but on closer inspection potentially loaded with HIDDEN MEANING, wouldn’t you say? It all depends on the stress given to specific words, or the judicious placement of a comma or full stop.
The quote in question comes from the gracious mouth of Niels Albert, “First Runner Up” and defending champion at last weekend’s Belgian National Cyclocross Championship. Second is going to hurt at the best of times, but at the BNCXC, that most Cyclocross of Cyclocross events, the pain must have been close to unbearable.
