community

This afternoon in the workshop I got a call from Joel, the drummer from Afrolicious and Pleasure Maker (Thursdays at the Elbo Room). I met Joel when we were on the 2-Mile Challenge tour together. He said,

"Sorry I couldn't make it to your gig last week, I was working."

"Doing what?"

"Moving."

"Moving? Like for cash?

"Yeah."

"How much they paying you?"

"18 an hour."

Birds in hand
Originally uploaded by rudeboyrobbo

Southwest Cycling News' Bob Farr, a.k.a. RudeBoyRobbo, shot some beautiful images of a ride in Austin in memory of Sheldon Brown.

One of our Flickr friends, Murray Neil, a New Zealand bike culture head and Xtracycle rider, combines his love of photography, kites, and biking in his crystal clear aerial shots. He fabricated his own kite-based aerial photography rig and uses the photographs to document, among other things, which bike lanes he finds effective and which intersections still need work. In the photo above, Neil can be seen as a tiny dark blue figure in the sand to the left of the bridge on the far side of the river. You can even see the faint line of the kite's string. Even cooler, the red and white object halfway across the bridge is his friend Ted, who had seen his kite line and biked over to say "hi."

Unlike airplane based aerial photography, Neil's is quiet, cheap, beautiful, and non-polluting. Now that's community.

i am a lucky, lucky girl...
Originally uploaded by lola.rola

After posting the series of her wrecked Surly on Flickr, 50 or so other bike heads piped up with moral support and gratitude for her luck at emerging with only a 'bruised ass'.

She reports that "no part is salvageable".

Been pushing really hard lately at the workshop and left tonight after 10. I'm entertaining tomorrow at Specialized's holiday party. We'll be doing a cruiser ride with employees and apparently lots of cool kids. I wanted to finish up as many Down Low Glow shipments as I could tonight so I don't have it hanging over me this weekend.

My dad caught this one early this morning. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/nyregion/29bikes.html

"The bikes roar, but the booming sound has nothing to do with engines — because there are no engines. They are ordinary bicycles, not motorcycles, although these contraptions look and sound more like rolling D.J. booths. They are outfitted with elaborate stereo systems installed by the youths."

We bid adieu... on Flickr
Originally uploaded by Rock The Bike

Mike's been a member of our West Berkeley workshop community since 2001. His devotion to bicycle advocacy and mechanics, and high quality worksmanship has been a great example to the rest of us.

Innovate or Die.
Originally uploaded by Rock The Bike

Dante is on the cutting edge of research into human powered amplification. We set him up with a bench in our workshop, and he's putting the finishing touches on the Ginger Ninja's touring rig as I write these words. Dante helped Rock The Bike develop an offering for an Xtracycle-based DC motor mount for human powered music systems. Now he's working day and night on a 4-bike human power setup for the Ninjas. No one's had a chance to hear it in action yet, but it'll probably be 5 times louder than the setup we used for the Bicycle Music Festival.

It's amazing how the project just totally flows through our community. First Blender man Nate got the bug, then me, then Kipchoge and Dante. With each handoff, we get more experience. Dante is now the most knowledgable guy in our community when it comes to human power. It's a rad collaborative atmosphere, knowing that we're producing powerful tools for sending out the bike vibe, the peace vibe, and the party vibe, through bikes and music.