Candy Cranks

I had a Burnout Syndrome… I finally got up myself to write about my bike journey to Europe. Sorry,this is kind of old stuff and already passed a few months but I still want to post & share this now otherwise I never will. Europe just melted my heart too bad XD I got a burnout…

I love traveling with my bicycle. I took my coffee bike and went to Leeds and Budapest in May. This was my 1st time being to Europe and there were some big reasons I went there.

♥Reason 1: Meeting my best friend Monika in Leeds. It’s been years to see her; I first met her in Kyoto, Japan and became best friend through the bicycle.

Here are some photos I developed of my trip to Leeds. I was there for only 3 days but had a good time to ride around the city with some friends. Thanks to Monika + Marek and fixed gear leeds crew!

♥Reason 2: Meeting Linda - Candy Cranks author from Budapest. Wowww! Candy Cranks is the great tool to make cool bike friends all over the globe!! I’d never met Linda but we are now really good friends!! Viva Candy Cranks!!

Thanks a lot to Linda to make my trip so much fun, helped me out, put me up and showe me an awesome time!! Hungarian people are so nice and kind. I love Budapest!! (and Gosser Lemon beer!)

♥Reason 3: ECMC (European Cycle Messenger Championships) in Budapest. I am not a messenger but I like to hangout with them and watching the messenger race. They are pretty tough and hardcore cyclist. I love their life style and crazy parties.

Hi cheeeeez! (Japanese photo peace sign, yaaay! :D)

I spread Love Wheels Nagoya Calendars. ♥Thank you♥

Bicycle Fashion Show.

Bike Polo Final.

♥Reason 4: CharRie’s Café (my bike café).
I brought my original coffee beans and all my coffee bike stuff in huge freight baggage backpack from Japan. (It was super heavy to bring them all! :() I was a bit nervous to doing my coffee bike at ECMC for 3 days by myself because I had no friend, only a few Japanese around this event. I knew only Linda and Sinya (organizer of ECMC) and I wasn’t sure if European would love my Japanese coffee… but I had a confidence to make people to love my coffee so Linda was in love♥ yay!

… was sexy ; ) ♥Thanks everyone!

Many people stopped by my bike café, having my coffee and happy talks…♥ It inspired me a lot!! I didn’t charge for my coffee but everyone tipped me good. Thank you!

♥Reason 5: Cheering my messenger friend Izuru from Naogya. He came with his wife and 2 years old son. It was their late honeymoon as they said. Sweet♥

♥Reason 6: Sightseeing in Budapest. We had a group riding all day long. Riding and hanging out the city by bicycle is the best way to see, feel and smell the local. Too many beautiful castles in Budapest!! I felt like I was in Disneyland!

LANGOS tastes sooo good! (especially when you get drunk at midnight like mexican burrito)

Needless to say, traveling with a bike and meeting some bike friends across the ocean are always great. Even if we don’t see each other, we can still have a good friendship through the bicycle. Bicycle unites people all over the world.

It took a lot of courage for me to do my coffee bike in my 1st time being in Europe and 1st time doing my coffee bike out of Japan. The bigger try is, the more worth it has.

Thanks for sharing this.
More pics HERE.

Like almost all over the world at the moment, it is raining a lot in Switzerland… and yes, the weather forecast for the last weekend said “raining all day” !!!

Nevertheless me and some of my bike friends decided to go to Davos and doing a special bike tour using as much mountain railways and riding as much single trails as we could. Called the bahnentour.ch “railways tour” !!

7.00 am saturday morning. The Weather was great - sun and a very blue heaven, there was no sign of rain. We took the first railway “Parsenn” to the Weissfluhjoch. On the top of Weissfluhjoch we had a cool down hill and after that we had to deal with some difference in altitude all by our self until our next goal - the Chörbschhorn which is 2650 meter over sea! The air was getting really thin and it got very steep. I had to push me and my bike with all my strengh on the top of that Mountain:

Beeing on the top of that Mountain - enjoying the Scenery and this beautiful wheater, was totally awesome. And there was this very long down hill a head of us - we were really excided!

It was a very long down hill until we reached the next valley where we took the railway to Rinerhorn a mountain on the opposite of Chörbschhorn. After a short up hill we took the next down hill and so on… the whole day.

more pix on flickr

Portes du Soleil is one of my favorite bike location. The Bike Park is huge.. full of trails, jumps and drops. As every year me and a couple of my bike friends went to Châtel for one week. We do always rent the same Chalet “House” near to the Bike Park. This time was just as great as every year. Of course I took some pictures and made a video - enjoy:

more pictures on my website: kAIRin.ch
by the way… I spent also one week in Seignosse/Hossegor, France doing some surf… here is the video: vimeo.com/13411489 (I just love my GoPro Camera)

I have about an 8 mile bike ride to work, I usually take a street called Kedzie which has a shared bike lane then get up on the North Shore Channel Trail. It’s an okay ride and I thought I would share some pictures.

Shared bike lane means both sides of the lane aren’t marked off and you have to trust the cars. It’s not too bad.

^How its marked.

Then you get to the trail. This is the river it goes by - it’s super disgusting though. Most of the rivers that run through Chicago are man made so something just isn’t right about them, very polluted.

Once I get to the trail I usually take off my helmet so that I cool off before I get to work, I don’t like walking in all red and sweaty. The trail goes through the Chicago Park districts then it crosses into the suburbs Lincolnwood, then Skokie.

When the trail hits Lincolnwood and Skokie it’s known as the sculpture park also due to the sculptures that line the path. It’s a nice path and brings me right by work

I had great bike days in Lac Blanc (France) this weekend. Lac Blanc is a one hours drive from the border of Switzerland and a 2.15 hours drive from my home. Since it’s raining like for“ever”… it was… kind of… muddy… very slippery! Especially on the wooden drops and roots. …You’ll see me (in red) almost slip out on the first drop in the vid:-)

Enjoy the movie:

(via kAIRin.ch)

On May 2nd and 3rd, we had the Love Wheels Nagoya Calendar Girls Ride to Kyoto city from Nagoya. It’s only 45 minutes on the Bullet train, but we rode 180km for 15 hours in one day. We got started pretty early 5:00am, expected to get into trouble in case. We’ve got road bike, MTB, single-speed, city-bike and I was the only one got on a fixed gear bike!:D We all girls were not experts in long distance ride and had no idea what awaited us…

We got a special guest to join this ride, Jess from Candy Cranks author in Tokyo! We were getting pumped at Japanese bar for the long distance ride next day.

Started 5:00am. We got 8 girls, 2 body gurards and 3 Circles crew (supported us until their bike shop opens at noon.)

Thanks Kinu (Miss April) and KAz (Miss February) for organizing the Kyoto ride!

KAz made this cog with acrylic resin for everyone as a good-luck charm for the riding.

Crossing the Kiso River.

Going up the hills.

eeeeeeep! hurts my ***** so bad!! Circles crew adjusted my saddle lower.

Got flat…  Miss April just learned how to repair the tire at Circles yesterday, so she DID IT!!

Accident again… Miss February tried hard to fix it.

Hurts my foot…

Got lost… (searching the route on the i-phone & map)

Jess on the GPS.

26 km more to Kyoto city…

Arrived guest house at 9:00pm

Kampaaaaaai★ This is the greatest time at the long ride:)

I am so HAPPY that we all made it 180 km riding with no injury!! One of the girls were almost retired. There were so many dramas we made. It was great to see the Love Wheel Nagoya Calendar Girls are patient and tough.

This is the longest riding in one day.  I am glad that I made it with my fixed gear so I feel like I can go anywhere I want from now on, but I still have sore my legs now…

More pics HERE

Spring is coming, the sun shines a little bit longer in the eve… that’s the time where I can do one or two after work rides next to my house:

by kAIRin.ch

FSCX (Free Style Cyclo Xross) is held in March sponsored by Circles in Nagoya. I feel like spring has come here.

We’re getting more girl riders challenging the race this year, yaaay!:D These girls are not real racers, thats amazing to see them getting sloppy, riding on ditches, steep slopes, deep mud and carring their bike with pretty muddy faces. It was pouring rain the night before race, some places got very muddy and slippy, we all could expect some funny things would happen in this race.

Go girls!

Skip Skip Skip♪

Woohooo!

Go! SURLY Big Dummy!!! (photo from 2009 FSCX)

Ohhhhh… Poor HUNTER.

*Crankee’s BBQ SURLY*

*CharRie’s Bike Café*

awwwwwww～!

Muddy Muddy…

SAL knows what we want. This is how the cyclo-cross race goes. Nothing like the good clean fun of free style cyclo-cross.

I had a great time. It was one of the greatest event in Nagoya. We’re now planning for next girls project coming up in May.  See ya.

More pics HERE.

May 22nd 2010 - 10h00 AM - Merlion Park.
More info, HERE.

Are we going to snowboarding or biking this weekend? That was the decision we wanted to make for last saturday. Some of our bike friends went skiing and snowboarding and some of us went biking. At Gurten in Bern (our Capital City):

My both Intense are not ready to ride, so I chose to take the Santa Cruz – VP-Free and Domi of course he took his V-10!!

My both Intense, left behind in the cellar…

Excited!!

Well, ok… the first half of the trail was very icy in the morning, but it got better in the afternoon.. or should I say it melted to mudd:-)

..guess which bike wasn’t on the trail yet:-)

It was a very cool riding day. It took a while to get all bikes and clothes cleaned….
..but it was worth it!! We made also some filming… maybe you’ll see more stuff later on my blog