Candy Cranks

early stage of our camp build with the headless unicorn bike

A month ago I did a little post about the bike I was planning to take to Burning Man and the heap of bikes in a dust lot in Reno that I picked it out of. I never did get to ride that red Specialized because the friends who took it up to the event early sent me a text saying that it had a totally busted tire and to just grab another one from the lot. So I did. They gave Big Red away. There’s a lot of gift giving going on at Burning Man. So, I picked out another bike, a beautiful silver cruiser. I didn’t have much luck with bike number two either. It turned out that under Silver Lightning’s sparkly coat was a bright lime green finish, meaning that she was a “yellow bike”, a shared community bike, and I got busted by the crusty yellow bike police. While the loss of this second bike nearly broke my heart, I knew that she had community duties fulfill.

The thing that people say about absolutely NEEDING to have a bike at Burning Man is totally true. Black Rock City, the town that exists for just one week of the year in the Black Rock Desert, is a big place and a bike comes in handy for getting around to all the many things you want to see and do, plus when everyone else has a bike and you don’t it just sucks. It was a great pleasure to just cruise around in the open desert at night all lit up on a bike, avoiding pedestrians, other cyclists, and art cars, and trying not to get lost from my friends. I learned that when going to the massive parties in the club districts at either end of the city, it is imperative that you leave your lights and EL wire on and blinking or you will spend a good chunk of time looking for your ride.

So, on that sad sad morning when Silver Lightning left me, what did I do? After a few moments of feeling sorry for myself, I remembered that Susan, the lovely lady from Reno who had let me pick my first two bikes out of that pile had had the smarts to pack an extra bike in her RV, just in case. At the time back in Reno, I thought she was crazy, but I was blessing her that day out in the desert. I just walked over to her camp and picked up the spare bike and took the opportunity to borrow her kids trailer and hauled some water back to my camp. Bike problem solved and hydration provided! I even inherited some EL wire to light up that last bike, I’ll call her Lucky. So, I rode Lucky through the potholes and fluffy patches of dust for the rest of the week. I cruised around with new friends to the perimeter fence and airport, to various bars, parties, and burns. I checked out art and participated in Critical Tits, the largest group ride at Burning Man with around 5,000 riders, women only, tops off.

Third try's a charm. Me and Lucky hauling some water.

out by the perimeter fence with little planes landing and taking off just behind it

Me and some camp mates all set for Critical Tits with the Man behind us

Dude taking pics of all the tits. Expectedly, still sadly there were many like him.

looks like some sort of Critical Pink is about to happen...I was just passing by in the wrong colour

It was such an amazing week that was filled to overflowing. If you haven’t been to Burning Man and you have friends who have and they don’t stop talking about it, just forgive them a little. There’s just so much going on and it’s tough to describe. I was so into experiencing it that I didn’t take many photos. There were tons of crazy bikes lit up in crazy ways, some super tall, others with antlers, or unicorn heads and ponytails. I did however document the parking lot at the casino hotel I went to after the event. There were cars with crazy dusty bikes all over.

Good ole Lucky served me well and is now is storage in Reno. Hopefully I’ll get to ride her again, perhaps even next year.

Its the first goldsprints event in Singapore and i am proud to be one of the organizers for the event. Here’s some pictures of the event which took place a month ago.

A few years ago whilst traveling through Nepal, Tarn and I were lucky enough to meet Tangi. A lovely French guy who had previously ridden professionally for Commencal. He lives in Pokhara during the summer months taking tourists out on rides, the riding in Nepal is amazing and breathtakingly beautiful.

In this video Tangi journeys from Kathmandu to the high Himalayas in the Solukhumbu region of Nepal. Here he climbs (for 2 days!!) and rides the virgin peak of Pikey discovering exciting trails, snow capped vista’s, and some sort of inner peace. A once in a life time trip to discover some of Nepal’s hidden secrets.

Me and the rest of the Tales From The Crit commitee are organizing the first ever goldsprints in Singapore. I am excited about this. Lotsa work done to put everything together and i hope that it will be smooth sailing.

Here are the photos I took when I wasn’t riding during the Red Bull Ride + Style in San Francisco. You can find more on my Flickr. I also just want to take this time to give a huge thanks to Red Bull and Aaron for putting on this event. It was awesome, and I had so much fun! I especially want to say thanks to Emma for being so supportive of me and my riding. You are the absolute best, and I seriously appreciate everything you’ve done for me!
[Read more →]

Here are the results from this past weekend’s Red Bull Ride + Style in San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza. The competition was intense, and every one was really killing it. Congrats to every one who placed! You all seriously deserved it. Photos by Keith Gallagher.

Freestyle Results:
1st – Matt Reyes
2nd – Josh Boothby
3rd – Tyler Johnson

Race Results:
1st Jason Clary
2nd Kell Mckenzie
[Read more →]

This past weekend’s Red Bull Ride + Style was even more awesome than it was promised to be. The closed course crit races were intense, and the freestyle course saw a lot of bangers. Here are a few pictures Keith took during the event. You can find more here. [Read more →]

I apologize this is not fresh post about Nagoya but I’d still like to share this with you here. I currently live in Berlin now (moved in 5 days before Japan got tsunami) This was my last event I organized in Nagoya before I left Japan.

Our first annual Nagoya Tweed Ride was held on February 19. We are not sure but it seems like any other city in all of Japan don’t do Tweed Run. We always like to do different things and need to feel different kinds of cycling culture from the world. So we decided that we needed a Tweed Run but not just as a part of fashion show bike run, we also wanted to understand the English cycling tradition with the London Tweed Run respect.

I worried how many people would be interested in, we didn’t have enough announcement and it was hard to find 19th century tweed clothing here in Nagoya. I was surprised and impressed that we had turn out of over 50 participates dressed up in their tweed outfits. We took place at night and had about 2 hours group riding in Nagoya city. We could appeal some cars in traffics that cars occupied road now but the road was originally made for a bicycle first not for a car so we dressed up back in century and rode for respecting people at that time.

There was also a Best Mustache Contest at the after party but not everyone could have real facial hair, you know we are Japanese. GOOD TIMES, GOOD EXPERIENCE.

Thank you for sharing.

More photos HERE.

This Saturday, March 26th brings the fourth annual Red Hook Criterium, and I couldn’t be more excited to finally see it! The race takes place in the mainly-deserted, post-industrial neighborhood (read: horribly neglected streets) of Red Hook, Brooklyn, and unlike most [alleycat] races in the city, it begins at 11:00PM. A little bit about the Crit, from their website:

Track bikes are mandatory and the field consists of elite level roadies, bike messengers, and urban cyclists. The race distance is 20 laps around a .75 mile circuit which features several hairpin turns, a technical chicane, a cobblestone stretch, and a sprint finish.

According to the Red Hook Crit Twitter, they’ve expanded the registration to include 85 riders so far, with 7 open spots for registration still available. Cyclists from all over the world are slated to compete, and the prize list is impressive to say the very least. Fingers crossed for a few female competitors!

Cinelli’s blog featured an in-depth interview with David Trimble (founder and organizer of the race) back in February. If you’re at all curious about the event–or can’t make it on Saturday–I’d suggest popping over there for a quick read. In my own (admittedly limited) race experience, it looks like an extremely unique event, and I can’t wait to watch.

There’s also a group ride down to Red Hook prior to the race, being organized by Mike Spriggs of Gage+DeSoto (who also happen to be exclusively carrying this sweet Red Hook Crit t-shirt). For more details on the group ride, check out Gage+DeSoto’s entry here.

I’ll be there cheering along and taking tons of photos, if you come out and spot me on the Lurker, feel free to say hello!