“According to Australian Transport Safety Bureau figures, there were more than a million bikes sold in the 2002-2003 financial year. Annual sales of motor vehicles are yet to crack the million mark, with this year predicted to be a record, but still only 960,000.”
El Emigrante
Fixer vs. Team Discovery
Glenvale Crit
Still not 100% focused.. losing time on corners, not moving up the field early enough. At one stage I jumped onto the wheel of “rickster” as he shot up the right. He gave up though and I did a bit of work, but before I got too carried away I checked over my shoulder. Sure enough, the field was too close for comfort. I sat up. With three laps to go I was making more of an effort to move up the field. With two laps remaining, on the second last corner, a rider put their pedal into the ground and lost it. I missed him, but another rider was thrown off and also lost it, crashing into the gutter. I had already gone wide to avoid the first guy, now I had to slow down and swerve around the second guy. All this carnage meant that the field was split, with the bulk of the riders now 30m+(?) in front of me. I chased hard, passing a bunch of separated riders, in order to get onto the main bunch. I got back on, but I’d wasted too much juice at the wrong time to effectively contest the sprint. Came in a bit ahead of mid-field. Bugger.
Aboc Pics:
Kill Sp@mmers
Some a-hole decided to sp@m my blog comments with some fscked up casino-religo bullsh1t so I’ve had to alter the setup a little to reduce the likelihood of this tool or his script trying the same sh1t again. You Me Outside Now (as ‘Blokes World’ would say).
On a happier note, I saw quite a few of my rellies today for my uncle’s 50th birthday and managed to only miss half of the Aboc sprint training session.
NEWSFLASH – All Is Not Lost
cfsmtb reports a happy ending after all..
http://cfsmtb.blogspot.com/2004/12/may-all-your-christmass-come-at-once.html
Oh.. the humanity!
The perfect jersey for the hippy..
A very singlespeed day..
Dave from “One” mag just popped into the office and dropped off brand spanking new copies of ‘One – Issue 2’ as well as some back issues, stickers and postcards!
LEGEND!!
He also happened to have the ONEmag t-shirts (hot off another press) so I scored a “poo brown” one after scamming some money from El Seano.
Green was also available, but brown will hide the dirt better – I fall down too much. The design is an exploded schematic of Shimano’s first ever thumb shifter with a subtle ONE modification. Oh the irony!! ๐
$175 is what it would cost for GripSport to modify my GT’s dropouts (make ’em horizontal!) and a further $85 to powdercoat the frame.
Given the cost of the original bike, I’ll probably take Jon’s advice and stick with a tensioner of some sort, rather than a frame mod. We shall see..
Lets see if I can get something else singlespeed into my day..
I got my ENO hub
Caught the ‘Tram Previously Known As No. 69’ (now No. 16.. bleh!) down Glenferrie Rd during lunch today. Jumped off outside Malvern Bicycles Plus, the home of Shifter Bikes. Shifter Bikes is run by Dan, the nutter who organised SSWC03 here in Oz.
He wasn’t there today, but my old mate Doug was and he knew exactly what I was in there for (Dan was probably bitching to him about me taking so long to pick up the hub! ๐ ). While I was there he showed me his mean purple commuter, a ’95 carbon Trek singlespeed also running an ENO. Talked about Project X, bikes and other shit. I eventually coughed up the cash, took from him that which was rightfully mine (i.e. I shutup bought the frickin’ hub) and left, wondering which bakery would get my business..
Glick’s(?) the kosher bakery for dessert (yeah I’m backwards) and boring ol’ Brumby’s for a sheppard’s pie.. mmm.. fresh bike parts and fresh bakery goods.. all I needed was beer..
White Industries ENO website: http://www.whiteind.com/eno.htm
White Industries ENO review: http://www.63xc.com/craid/whiteeno.htm