I spent some time cycling over the weekend. I wanted to peep the new murals that went up in BK in connection with the Wooster Collective 10 Exhibit. They were all good. This Shepard Fairey piece was my favorite, though. And unfortunately, I snapped my favorite shot of it (with Trixie below) with my phone, and not a real camera. If you want to check out the work in person, Wooster posted a guide to the locations of all of the murals, here. Also, check out this.
Well.. I finally found a helmet that I think that I would actually wear. It is the ‘Mixino’ by Catlike. I love the murdered out flat-black. Yes, I realized that it is a less than practical way to keep one’s head cool on a hot summer day. But, for the moment we are just discussing aesthetics. Anyway, I can’t find anywhere in the US that sells this helmet. I could order from this shop in the UK, but I am a bit nervous about what the final price would be after shipping any everything.
I am actually riding again, btw. Had a lovely trek over the Wburg Bridge on Saturday morning. Thinking about firing up Trixie for commuting again, now that the days are starting to get longer again.
I switched things up a bit this morning. Part of the training program that I’m using calls for hill reps. The only problem with that is there are not any hills nearby. So I decided to utilize the ones in the north end of Central Park. There is a great spot on the west side of the 125th St. Transverse where you can alternate between the hill on the transverse, and the hill on Park Drive West. Since the park is a few miles from where I live, I thought I would ride my bike to the park then run the hills. Riding in rush hour up 8th Ave. was a great way to wake up quickly and also warm up.
I didn’t wear the Nike+ SportWatch during this morning’s workout. One thing that it does not have (that I wish could be incorporated eventually) is a way to denote cycling vs. running on the dashboard. You could def wear the watch cycling, but it would throw all of your running stats off. The Garmin tool does give users the option to distinguish the type of activity that is being logged. For example the workout above I logged as cyclocross (since it was a mix of running and cycling). Even though it wasn’t truly cyclocross, when I run a report on my stats, it will be distinguished from my running, and regular cycling. I did rock the FuelBand though.
After running hills, the ride home was a bit interesting. It took a couple of downhill coasts to get my quads to recover. It also made the ride into work a bit slower than normal, which is fine (because: less sweat).
Friday evening, I recruited my friend Casey to join me on a ride on the west side path around sunset. I brought my cam along and snapped a few shots along the way. The one above, was actually on the return trip. We stopped at the 72nd St. Pier and chilled out for a while with some refreshments. Since the camera was just sitting on the table, I decided to get a long exposure of the old cargo crane (which is in the process of being town down).
The photo below is of the space shuttle Enterprise sitting in her new perch on the deck of the USS Intrepid.
Below: Casey at the GW.
The shot below is actually from the sunset on Thursday night. But I just thought I would throw it in for good measure.
Trixie (my bike) has been in the shop since last Friday, getting shod with some new rims. I was perpetually bending the rear rim (including one pinch flat, where I had to replace the tire) anytime that I would ride over any small deviation in surface smoothness. It was getting kind of ridiculous. So, I finally broke down and ordered a set of high profile (hipster) rims. I picked her up yesterday right after leaving the office and ended up riding everywhere I went yesterday evening (which was kind of a lot of places). First I hit the latest installation at the SoHo Agnés b. That is where I snapped the photo above (on Howard St.). Not really sure why I didn’t just bust out the real cam for that shot, being that it was slung over my back. So, you getz iPhone image. Sorry.
After Agnés, I went to the WV for a Nike release party. Obama was in town yesterday, and his motorcade actually passed right in front of the spot where the event was being held. So, getting around was like a video game of weaving in and out of cars/cops. It was actually kinda fun.
Tomorrow, I’m off to MD, bright and early to shoot some moto-x with Redbull. Sunday morning I’ll be running the Portugal day race in CP. Should be a banger. Have a great weekend.
Despite the rainy forecast, the weather was actually quite lovely over the weekend (never mind that the rain has resumed again today). As a result, I probably put about 50 or 60 miles on the bicycle odometer. I think that my favorite ride of the weekend was Saturday evening, when I rode uptown on the Hudson greenway, almost to the northern edge of the island. I brought my camera with me to snap a few sunset shots from Riverside Park. They came out pretty cool. But, my favorite shot from the evening was the one above. I snapped it near the 70th St. pier on my way back downtown. Isn’t it cute the way that birds stand on one leg (even little songbirds). That shot was with a 50mm, btw. The bird let me get right up near it. I think that the birds here become very accustomed to people being in their space and tend to drop their guard a bit as a result.
Anyway, it was nice to have a mellow weekend before the very busy week that I have lined up, starting today. I’m going to be shooting some stuff this week that I’m kind of excited about, including some tattoo work. Happy Monday.
It is bicycle weather. I’m pretty excited about it. I filled out all of the requisite paperwork this week to park my bike in the building where I work. Parking inside is the best way to avoid this happening again. They issued me the little blue tag in the image below to make it legit. So, Wednesday night I put some air in the tires. It is supposed to rain until Friday. But I am hoping to start pedaling to work starting next Mon.
Speaking of biking, I’m not really a helmet wearer. Ok, I’m not a helmet wearer at all. But, thanks to creative Swedish design, maybe we won’t have to wear a plastic dome to be protected while riding. I came across this amazing piece of Scandinavian innovation today on Cool Hunting.
Here is what it looks like undeployed:
It is basically a hipster’s w*t dream.
–“Dude, I like your scarf.”
“It’s not a scarf”
–“I mean I like your hood”
“It’s not a hood, it’s a Swedish airbag helmet.”
–“Well, I like your yellow suspenders, moustache and flannel, too.”
I also like how they dropped all of the blacks out of that second image. Moving on… This week I also saw the little device below on TWBE. Yeah, that’s right– bluetooth bike speakers. Finally.
Completely unrelated to bikes, this went up on Tuesday.