Go Clipless

Revolution Cycles and Trek hold Tour de France Party

Revolution Cycles (a major DC area bicycle dealer) has partnered with Trek to hold a 3-day Tour de France party at the Fashion Centre in Pentagon City. According to the press release there will be raffles, clinics, the Lance Armstrong bicycle, and a big screen showing the Tour.

Doctor. Doctor.

It seems that the better I get at riding the more often I fall. I have certainly had my fair share of falls lately as I have been pushing to do more and more technical tasks at higher speeds. This seems to be true for some of my riding buddies as well.

Although, the injuries have been relatively minor (abrasions, sore shoulder, etc.), after my most recent fall I thought I may have broken a rib. (It turns out that I only knocked the wind out of myself for a few seconds).

At any rate, it got me thinking about the possibility of sustaining a serious injury while riding. At the least, I should have a first aid kit in the car.

You can buy ready-made first aid kits, but it probably is cheaper to buy the supplies separately and build the kit from scratch. So I started surfing around and found a few interesting sites regarding mountain bike injuries, treatment, and safety:

• UtahMountainBiking makes the point that it is worth having some basic medical supplies on you during the ride as most injuries are nuisance injuries and if treated immediately allow the ride to continue. They also have a ton of injury and treatment information.
• About.com has some basic information on mountain bike safety.
• You can buy ready made first aid kits from Adventure Medical Kits.
• Vodaphone in the U.K. is starting a campaign educating mobile phone users to store emergency contact information in their phones in an obvious way.

I think I have concluded that it is probably best to buy a ready-made kit as it would be too much to buy boxes of various supplies when only a few are needed.

So am I overreacting? Does everyone else already do this? Have you ever had any serious riding injuries that needed attention right away?

Adjusting brake levers

I'm constantly looking out for tips and tricks to make my mtb'ing experience better. Here's a great tutorial about adjusting your brakes for best position on the bike and to reduce fatigue. I will most certainly be checking out my brake lever setup when I ride today to see if that may reduce some of the hand fatigue I have been feeling lately.

Monster Park Madness

Bike Magazine just released a new video of highlights from Monster Park Madness 2005 held at Snowshoe Mountain, West Virginia.

Also, check out their archive of previous vids.

Share the road

The other day I was looking through some of my old posts with the idea that I may need to follow up and update them. Well...it appears that Liz Schleeper of Bikevoice beat me to it in one instance. Back in January I wrote about a bicycle advocacy license plate design contest held by BikeWalk Virginia. The organization has selected a new design and I must say that I agree with Liz that the plate is rather uninspiring. I didn't like the original design either...and don't ask me what the design should be...I just know that ain't it!

Anyway the new plate is timely considering Gwadzilla's most recent rants (see links below) about inconsiderate drivers. Does he even own a car?

1. Most recent rant
2. Another rant
3. One of the more poetic rants

A sight for a sore...elbow

On Saturday Dr.P, Mad Mikey-V, and I hit Fountainhead for an early morning ride. The three of us live in the same neighborhood and we've decided that we would make it a point to have at least one regular early morning ride each weekend. This way we can be finished by noon and be home to salvage (from the point of view of our spouses) the bulk of the day for the family. The only problem with the early weekend ride (8:00 am) is that it limits the night time activity the night before or bear the consequences as this group is unforgiving.

Tour de France fever heats up

With the start of the Tour just a day away it is clear that cycling fans everywhere are getting ready. A check of the Web stats for this site shows that in the last week or so there have been hundreds of hits from people searching for last year's Lance Armstrong commercial from Nike. The post I made about this commercial last year is clearly the most well read on the site, however, it is only the casual web surfers that read it. Regular visitors may not even be aware of it since it has gone off the main page long ago (although, maybe regular visitors don't care).

I too am getting ready for the Tour as I picked up my new DVR/PVR from my local cable company with this years tour being my catalyst for entering into the world of TV time-shifting. Anyway, here is a link to the post where you can view the commercial in case you missed it.