Tag: Hinterbike 2010

Top Fuelishness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit but your shit is stuff? — George Carlin

A cycling journalist is a person who can hold two completely contradictory notions at the same time without his or her head exploding.

For example, bike racing is simultaneously beautiful and ravaged by dope (think Lindsay Lohan, if you can bear it). And a $2,679.99 Fisher Transport+ cargo bike “isn’t remotely cheap” while a $7,659.99 Trek Top Fuel mountain bike apparently is eminently affordable.

I wouldn’t buy either bike, myself. I have an old titanium hardtail that suits my mountain-biking needs, and for shopping expeditions I can always ride the Soma Double Cross with panniers fore and aft ($519.98 frame and fork; build kit, racks and panniers not included).

The biggest quarrel I have with both the Transport+ and the Top Fuel involves not their pricing but their extreme specialization. You probably shouldn’t ride the former on a nifty bit of single-track or the latter to the Safeway. But I can handle both on the Double Cross. Five minutes with a couple hex keys and a combo wrench and I can have my choice of a loaded tourer, sport tourer, rigid 700c mountain bike or cyclo-cross bike.

And that’s no shit. Stuff. Whatever.

$45,000 bike (funeral not included)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Well, he went down down down
And the devil said where you been
He went down down down
He was screamin’ down around the bend
Down down down
This boy went solid down
He was always cheatin’ and he always told lies
He was always cheatin’ and he always told lies
Down down down
This boy went solid down
He went down — “Down, Down, Down,” Tom Waits

Every circus needs a sideshow, and every sideshow needs a freak.

Here’s Interbike’s.

Imagine riding that bad boy at speed along America’s crumbling infrastructure with nothing between you and Allah but a little Lycra. And then go clean yourself up and change your underwear.

Meanwhile, after a month of waiting, Ritchey finally sent me a new fork for the road bike. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this one appears to be defective too. I’m awaiting a final evaluation from the wizards at Old Town, who have logged more time wrenching on these things than I have riding them, but fearing the worst I rang up my old buddy Brent Steelman at Steelman Cycles, and he has graciously agreed to build me a steel road fork with his very own hands.

In the meantime, if you’re riding a Ritchey Comp road fork I’d advise that you have your local shop check the sucker for evil spirits before launching your next Il Falco attack on the local alpine descent. Consider the potential for lower rebirth. You could come back as an Irish-American rumormonger of the cycling persuasion.

The O’Grady Theory of Affordability

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Well, baby, what I couldn’t do
With plenty of money and you. — “With Plenty of Money and You,” Count Basie

There’s an old gag about the typical bicycle racer being the kind of guy whose car is worth less than the bike on its roof rack. But y’know, that ain’t all that high a bar to hop anymore.

Check out what one of my colleagues considers to be “performance bikes at prices for real people.” * A $3,000 frameset? A $7,000 ready-to-ride bike? If these are down-to-earth prices, I’m clearly living somewhere around the planet’s core, because the only way I could afford either of those items is if I did my shopping with the old S&W hand cannon instead of a Visa card.

You know what you can get for a hair over $3,000? A 2009 Honda Rebel. That’s right — a fucking motorcycle. Don’t gotta pedal it or nothin’.

Know what you can get for $7,000? A complete, ready-to-ride custom Steelman road bike with an Ultegra build kit — plus a spare frameset in case anything unpleasant happens to the first one.

And for $10,000? You can have my 2005 Subaru Forester. It’s got a Thule roof rack, too, so you can slap a couple $7,000 road bikes up there and fit the profile of the typical bike racer.

In the damp and steamy dreams of the cycling press, anyway.

* The headline has since been changed to something a little more sensible. So we’ve got that going for us.

All quiet on the western front

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Eggs and sausage and a side of toast

Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy

Chili in a bowl with burgers and fries

What kind of pies? — “Eggs and Sausage,” Tom Waits

Going to Interbike as a “cycling journalist” is a lot like deliberately overeating. Everything that goes in must eventually come back out, one way or another. Then it’s stand back, boys, she’s gonna go a gusher.

Outdoor Demo is but an appetizer, a trifle. It’s too hot to think, and people are either fresh from getting settled into their hotel rooms and routines and/or discovering with dismay which key piece of pro equipment they forgot to fetch with them from Podunk (MiFi, digital recorder, camera, Visa card). So they nibble around the edges out there in the desert outside Boulder City, ride a bike or two or three, gulp a beer in the VIP tent, take a deep breath.

Tomorrow the show opens for real at the Sands Convention Center. I recommend wearing Wellingtons, a slicker and a welder’s mask.

• Late update: Meanwhile, Lennard Zinn waxes rhapsodic over a $2,600 wheelset. Well, he’s waxing something, anyway. Jesus.

Hinterbike 2010: Last waltz in Sin City

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

It makes no difference who I meet

They’re just a face in the crowd

On a dead-end street. — “It Makes No Difference,” The Band

Sounds like day three of the Interbike trade show, doesn’t it? A convention center full of thousand-yard stares from zombies who are getting too much Scotch and not enough brains.

But cheer up, y’all — it’s only Day One of Outdoor Demo West, and the recession is over! I don’t know about you, but I rushed right out and bought me a Honda Element, a Canon EOS Rebel T2i EF-S and a second home in Santa Fe. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that our long national nightmare is over.

OK, so I rushed right out and bought some potatoes for the green chile stew I’ll be making this evening. Also a sixer of Bohemia. And I picked up an extra day of work posting news (remotely) from Vegas about stuff I can’t afford and don’t need anyway.

But I did persuade one of my colleagues who is actually at Interbike to spend some time focusing on affordable goodies. There should be plenty now that we’re all shittin’ in the tall cotton again, right? Right.