Cool idea. Check out this site that
instructs how to build yourself a bike frame out of bamboo. amboo is sturdy stuff. Whether it is strong enough to
handle your fat fire roaming, well, that another question. Probably not as strong as steel or aluminum, but what they
hey.
(via boing boing)
Ah the travails and joys of mountain biking. This
story captures in a kooky kind of way the way a lot of us
feel who have taken up mountain biking at one point or another. Granted I haven’t done a lot of biking since moving to
New York, but fondly do I think about the days in Seattle when I biked most every day. And so I read with a chuckle
this piece on a guy’s first experience biking. The pain, the struggle, the expense….the bliss. A quick, easy read for a
Sunday afternoon.
Ah, the virtues of Moab. They are far too numerous to list here. If I could be
anywhere right now, I honestly think Moab would be in the top ten places I’d choose. I’d probably go tropical before
anything.
Well today there is a quick and dirty Moab
story in the NYT.
The piece is mostly an environmental article, about how Utah used to be this haven for Uranium mining, but ten
following Three mile Island and other non-nuclear proliferation issues, Moab turned its attention towards tourism. And
good for it. Moab is now a mountain bikers Mecca, and one of the greatest places to ride in the world, let alone the
country.
I had no idea about Moab’s nuclear past, so I found the article fascinating, and I think you will too.
Colorado, the squarest of states (literally) is a mountain biking mecca. take my word for it. I lived there. There
are some of the finest trails and single tracks in the nation. Also some of the finest people.
Gorp has got a fine feature on some of the epic
rides in john Denver country including the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route or GDMBR, a truly muscle-building
2,465-mile pedal that will be one of those trips you tell your kids about. Also mentioned here is the
Colorado Trail and the San Juan Hut System’s
206-mile Telluride-to-Moab tour. So get out, start riding and get in shape to tackle at least one of these rides.
Here’s a killer travel idea. Part Apocalypse Now, part
Motorcycle Diaries, this trip is done by motorcycle down the Ho Chi Minh trail from Hanoi to Saigon on Russian made
Minsk motorcycles. The cycles are the backbone of the
country, everyone rides them.
While cycling, you will visit everything from Ho Chi Minh’s birthplace to the Chinese fishing town of Hoi An, to the
hill retreat of Dalat. A pretty thorough and bona fide Vietnam experience. You ride along the highway, along dirt
roads, through small towns where you stop and have the best Phu you’ve likely ever eaten. I would do this one in a
heartbeat.