Month: June 2015

Wearables Wednesday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Getting my kicks on ... NM333?
Getting my kicks on … NM333?

Remember the large friendly letters inscribed on the cover of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”

DON’T PANIC.

The Old Guy jersey wheels, they turn.

Voler and I are setting up a Produce On Demand partnership deal in which they will do all the work, you will get all the jerseys, and I — I will get a couple pennies for my trouble, which should be hardly any trouble at all, which is just the way I like it.

coming-soon

At the moment it looks as though we will revive Old Guys Jersey v2.0 first, and then add Original Old Guys to the catalog shortly thereafter. Fabric will be AMP; the cut, club; the zipper, full hidden; and the price, around $77, which includes shipping direct to you (untouched by the baby-soft hands of shovel-leaning Irish-American artistes).

Once everything is ready to rock you’ll see a link to my Voler.com partner page up there at right, under the jersey pix. Click that bad boy, give the nice peoples your credit-card number and delivery information, and you should have fresh kit in your hot little hands about seven working days later.

While all these multicolored Lycra balls were floating merrily in the air I took a short ride down memory lane, better known as Old Route 66 (NM 333), to Tijeras and back. I hadn’t gotten my kicks out that way since I last raced the Watermelon Mountain Classic, maybe 1990 or thereabouts, and a very nice ride it is, too, especially if you’re not headed in the other direction, chasing fast dudes to Duke City after climbing seven switchbacked miles of unimproved dirt Forest Service road between Bernalillo and the Sandia Ski Area.

I thought about continuing past Tijeras through Cedar Crest to the Triangle at Sandia Park, but Mister Boo has been experiencing a bout of intestinal distress, and I wasn’t eager to come home to a house that smelled worse than me. And there was all this damn’ jersey stuff needed doing, too.

So, yeah, my suffering knows no bounds, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. First thing I’m gonna do with the proceeds is get a new shovel to lean on between poop-scoopings.

 

Fashion Friday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Old Guy kit: The original (left) and the second edition.
Old Guy kit: The original (left) and the second edition.

Attention, DogMart shoppers! Today’s yellow-light special is … new Old Guy jerseys.

I just got off the phone with one of the fine folks at Voler and we’re setting the wheels in motion, as it were. The general idea is that rather than do this the old-fashioned way — book a reservation date, set a production schedule, wait seven weeks to ship, etc., et al., and so on and so forth — we set up an on-demand deal that could have kit in your hot little hands in fairly short order.

Best of all, Voler will handle all the heavy lifting of order fulfillment, so you won’t be at the mercy of the notorious Irish work ethic. (“What’s a shovel for then if not to lean upon?”)

The op’ should be not unlike the one Drunkcyclist uses to get its kit to the people. I’m awaiting an email from the gent who makes all these Lycra dogs bark, so when I hear something, so will you. I’ll post an announcement on the DogPage and drop a permanent link into the sidebar at right.

And thanks to everyone who kept pestering me on this. It sounds like a win-win for all concerned, save the poor sods who have to look at us wearing this stuff.

A day in the life

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Descending on Trail 365 near the Embudo Dam.
Descending on Trail 365 near the Embudo Dam.

Every now and then, when I get a check in the mail, as I did yesterday, I wonder what I did to earn it. This thing of mine is not exactly ditch-digging, after all. Mostly it seems quite a bit like play.

But I kept track of yesterday’s chores, for some reason, and so here’s a look at a day in the life of a freelance cycling rumormonger.

• Wrote an 850-word column for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, on the joys of being a one-car, 16-bicycle family.

• Drew and colored a cartoon about motors in the peloton, also for BRAIN.

• Did an hour or so of hills on the Elephant NFE, stopping periodically to shoot some GoPro footage for its video review, which will accompany its Adventure Cyclist print review, which is fighting for space in my skull with ongoing impressions of a Felt V100 and Opus Legato 1.0.

• Pulled the footage off the GoPro, dropped it into iMovie, and did a bit of planning/editing.

• Declined a couple days’ worth of copyediting, my least favorite chore.

• Reinstalled the porteur and low-rider racks on the Elephant, being extra careful to not clamp anything down on any cable housing anywhere.

• Did a little casual research on the Swift Industries and Revelate bags.

Like I said, not exactly ditch-digging. Still, I’ll take the money. And thanks.

Elephant on the trail

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
The Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer, on Trail 365A, slightly southeast and decidedly upward from El Rancho Pendejo.
The Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer, on Trail 365A, slightly southeast and decidedly upward from El Rancho Pendejo.

The Pacific Northwest has come to the Southwest in the guise of an Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer.

This steel bike by Glen Copus out of Spokane, Washington, is intended for dirt roads, commuting and bike-packing. It’s my first 650b model, so I’ve been having fun with that after a steady diet of 29ers and 700c loaded tourers.

The NFE came with a whole raft of PNW goodies on the side: a matching Haulin’ Colin porteur rack (Seattle); a Tubus Duo low-rider rack (Auburn, Washington); an Ozette Randonneuring Bag and Jr. Ranger panniers from Swift Industries (Seattle); a Pika seat bag from Revelate Designs (Anchorage, Alaska, and Springfield, Oregon); and Gevenalle GX shifters (Portland, Oregon).

I don’t get to spend a ton of time with the NFE, so it’s kind of forced its way to the head of the Adventure Cyclist review queue, as elephants will do. At the moment it’s just a bike, stripped of racks and bags, but it will soon become a beast of burden.

Just call me Hannibal. Lemme at them Alps.

The Elephant NFE up against the Wall of Science.
The Elephant NFE up against the Wall of Science.