Mrrrowww

In the random links department, this photo, from the Globe and Mail, cannot be missed.

If it wasn't taken by a professional photographer who might sic Lee Lau on me, it would be my new profile photo for sure...

Sarah's New Ride?

Ah, the wonders of Craigslist.

Sarah made the mistake of casually, innocently, and unthinkingly, mentioning that it might be nice to own a bike without fancy pedals that you could ride with ordinary shoes. Of course, I immediately thought - bing! I can buy another bike! For Sarah, of course.

So, when this Raleigh appeared on Craigslist, of course it was Sarah's new perfect just ride it casually around town bicycle.

It's a Raleigh Superbe, which, judging from the information on Sheldon Brown's site was made in or around 1974. Everything on the bike still seems to be in great condition, with the exception of the (non-maintainable) flat pedals. As a bonus, both the dynohub and the Sturmey-Archer 3 speed rear hub still work perfectly. An amazing bike, super fun to ride with nice, new, cushy tires.

Sarah briefly test rode her new bike when I intercepted her on her commute yesterday. I was riding the Raleigh, so we swapped bikes for a little while. Her comments? Holy cow is this heavy. It's wobbling all over the place. I don't like this! Stop! Stop! I want my bike back!

The best $100 I ever spent. I think she's in love. 8-)

Trip to Hornby Island

Sarah and I visited Doug and Rachelle on Hornby Island on the long weekend. It was a wonderful trip, and we had a ton of fun. Along the way, I figured out that I had forgotten to pack all my spare clothes and toiletries, and so we got to drive the 19A to the Denman ferry and made lots of stops at the communities along the way. A little slower, but way more fun.

Dinner on Friday night on the beach was followed by a tour of the island on Saturday on our bikes. Rachelle had a stand at the farmer's market
and seemed to be constantly bombarded with customers.

We also saw some lesser known Hornby attractions: this prehistoric beast has been extinct for quite some time, but is still impressive nonetheless!

My thanks to Doug and Rachelle for their amazing hospitality. I put a few extra photos in an album on Picasa.

Bike Theft - Know your enemy

Well, with unemployment comes surfing - often of the aimless, wandering, kind.

But surfing can turn up lots of interesting things as well - this is a BBC video showing methods that bike thieves use to destroy locks. The audio is so garbled so as to virtually inaudible (at least on my computer), but the whole thing is subtitled, so it works out fairly well.

Worth a peek.

Link to video