Christmas Fitness Challenge: Load an Olympic bar with half your body weight [50%] (including the weight of the barbell) and do 50 squats, nice and deep. According to the RAAM Freddie (see previous post) if you can do at least 50 reps, you’ve on your way to fit {he’s got other criteria too but it’s [...]

Ok girlie boyz, let’s see how you measure up in a simple fitness test. It’s squat season so you should be in prime condition for this fitness challenge‡. Put half your body weight on an Olympic bar (including the weight of the barbell).  With the bar on your shoulders,  behind your neck, legs shoulder-width apart, [...]

As shit-cool as natural fabrics be and their power to stir the monster of your visceral regard {huh?}, you can’t get around the jack-over practicality of esthetically well designed goods made from synthetics. Sometimes synthetic materials just work too well to ignore.  Natural fabrics {wool, waxed cotton, canvas} helped conquer North America but synthetics took [...]

Missionworkshop’s Waxed Canvas Weatherproof Rucksack ($219.00) Missionworkshop is out on the fringe of ultra-hip cycling goods and makes some jacked-up shit. Even though the straps on this bag are nylon they’re suffering the dangly cinch-strap (DaCS) syndrome† too. Whether you’re anal-retentive or not, you’ll feel those dangly straps flapping all around and it’ll drive you [...]

Bicycle Racing African Style:  Hot Splinters of Glass; le tour d’Afrique and the images of the Giro d’Eritrea of 2009 by Dutch photographer Chris Keulen. This book is about the bicycle racers and the event in the tiny country of  Eritrea , north of Ethiopia, near the horn of Africa. By the contenance on each [...]

Recall the post about our Downtown L.A. Fashionista on Traction near the Wurstküche? Well, Mr. Fashionista, your velo-style inspiration has been jacked wide open.  I stumbled upon his backpack through a link from the very groovy site;  JJJJound.com. As Mr. JJJJound demonstrates the highest in esthetic regard, applying the associative property of style influence [ [...]

Two iconic tools from Campagnolo •Tee-Wrench (8mm hex / 6 mm allen) •Peanut Butter Wrench (15mm) These are classics and belong in every velo-enthusiast’s tool box. There are plenty of other tools that do the same job but they simply can’t match the fetish quality of a tool by Campagnolo.   These will stoke the fire [...]

Imagine a derny ride from Long Beach to Fred Diego; 5 motors, 25 riders {5 riders per derney, motoring all the way – 100 miles / 4 hours}. Derringer makes some pretty cool 49cc mopeds {~$3500.00} With a simple roller bar it would be the derney très chic y muy perfecto! Derringer Store 7954 1/2 [...]

The next best thing to bike-porn is tool-porn [well ... maybe]. Is your tool fetish so pronounced that it lit the fire in your love-furnace for cycling? You know what I’m talking about if you’re well acquainted with the song of the Tool-Porn Siren from your youth, i.e., you had the fantasy of becoming a [...]

These gloves have special capacitive contactwoven® fingertips that allow you to control touchscreens.  Nearly all of the newest touchscreens use this capacitive voodoo [specifically Apple devices]. FYI: The other type of touchscreens are Resistive which are made of two micro thin metallic layers overlaid by a sheet of glass. When you touch the glass, the [...]