Daily Archives: 05/30/2009

Bike to Work Week?

the-geekFrom the reasoning of the Dawg name to the best comic book authors, from the history of the Hot to a timeline of industrial music, Cory has the trivia, and the opinions to mouth off about it.

I’m writing this on May 15th, Bike to Work and School Day. This is a cool day, where in towns and cities all over the nation people get on their bikes instead of in their cars and ride their bikes to work. It makes for an awesome time, seeing tons of people on bikes all over town, and having a safer than usual ride in to work. This lasts for a day, and everyone drives after that.
Yes, I am jaded.
I’ve always liked this event, but I do question how much good it actually does in the long run. After riding in this morning, I have a slightly more sanguine view of it. As I was cruising down a hill on my way in, I saw a couple of middle school aged girls riding up the hill. One looked like she knew what she was doing, and was getting up the hill at a decent pace. The other girl was suffering like a dog – but with the biggest smile I’ve seen in quite a while. This one girl made the whole day a success for me.
Martin Scorsese has shown that a song can epitomize a particular moment in a film, but real life often doesn’t work that way. Mr. Self Destruct by Nine Inch Nails was playing loudly in my right ear, but if it was a remark on anything, it’s me. She was suffering, but she was winning the fight, and having a damn good time doing it.
She may not ride to school on Monday. She may not ride to school again for quite a while, but she’s going to always remember that she had a blast doing it, and that’s going to pull at her until she does it again, and she will.
So, to everyone that rode to work or school on Bike to Work and School Day, congrats. To those that actually enjoyed themselves, double congrats! And if you’re going to do it again, you’re one of us.

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Bombing Through Bolivia – Part 1

joe_dist1Joe Schwartz ventures to the Altiplano in search of big descents and wicked Andean singletrack

Bolivia has always been on my list of must-go places, so needless to say I was excited to experience this remote, mountainous country. Not even five airports worth of traveling was enough to dull my stoke for this trip.
I finally flew into Bolivia as the sun rose over the city of La Paz, which is crammed in a giant amphitheatre, ringed by snow covered 16,000 foot peaks. Aside from the view, and ridiculously crazy drivers, the first thing I noticed was a severe shortness of breath, as my body tried to cope with the sudden exposure to the thin air at 11,000 feet.
The kind folks at Gravity Bolivia were there to pick me up, bearing gifts of water and altitude pills, two essential ingredients in coping with the high elevations.
We rolled into La Paz, dodging feral dogs and wild taxi drivers, and checked into our accommodations, where I met up with the rest of the internationally diverse crew. The other riders are, from Switzerland, Rene Wildhaber, and from Germany, Rob Jauch. The trip is being documented by the Italian lensman, Marco Toniolo. We are being shown around by Alistair Mathew of Gravity Bolivia (www.gravitybolivia.com ), which is not only an amazingly run guiding outfit based here in La Paz, but also the Kona Bolivia distributor.
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