Halloween Hellstorm!

There's an alleycat race brewin' this coming Hallow's Eve! Registration will begin at Crab Park at 5pm, and racing should be underway by 6. Ten bucks to enter...bring your hammerin' legs!

Gastown Sprints: October Edition

Your favourite roller races are back for another round. Oct 7th at the usual spot, get there at 8pm to register.

Flow: An Art Exhibition About North Shore Mountain Biking

Right now, up until August 2nd, there's an exhibition on at Presentation House Gallery revolving around mountain biking on the North Shore. Not only have they called in some fantastic photographers to show their goods, but they've also built some serious terrain...inside the gallery! The best part is, all the terrain is fully ride-able! It look like a great show, and I'll definitely be heading up there to check it out myself.

There's a ton of photos of the construction of the indoor terrain features on this here blog. Super cool stuff!

One Week Until Gastown Sprints 2!

Seven days from now, on the 8th of July, it will be time to duke it out on the rollers again. The Gastown Sprints organizers have informed us that all the technical difficulties have been worked out, and that races will begin on time this time around.

Races will begin at 9:30pm, so be there by 9 if you want to race. As always, Gastown Sprints will take place at Pub 340. Be there!

Burrard Bridge Bikes Lanes: Open For Business July 13th

The city has announced a date for the opening of the Burrard bridge trial bike lanes. After choosing the design of these bike lanes several weeks ago, the city has put the chosen plan into action. As of July 13th, bike lanes will be in full affect.

I encourage everyone to make use of these lanes if you do any north-south commuting over False Creek. Even if you would usually take Cambie bridge, make the slight detour for the three weeks of the trial period. The city will be monitoring bike traffic closely during this period, and it would benefit all of us if the numbers they count are high.

Thanks in advance,
-DXII

A Dispatch From This Weekend's "eatART" Festivities

This past weekend, alternative energy activists eatART threw a big ol' party on the Vancouver Art Gallery's lawn. DXII was lucky enough to have a friend on-site for the event. Guest contributor and journalist extraordinaire Melissa Baril has shot a run-down our way. Without further ado, here it is!

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One thing I’ve noticed since moving to Vancouver just under two years ago is that where you find cycling events, you usually find hippies. This time, the “one less car” set pedaled stationary bikes attached to generators to demo an alternative energy source at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Sunday.

The event was organized by eatART, a group that makes really neat industrial art to promote energy awareness. Check out their giant solar-powered tricycle, which made an appearance on Sunday, and is apparently wheeled around Burning Man every year. What a trip.

Arranged across the VAG lawn, each of the energy-generating cycles’ back wheels was hooked up to a battery, which powered a couple of laptops, the water cooler, and the sound system (donated by the good folks at OCB), which in turn powered a pretty happening party.

From 7 o’c’ock in the a.m., teams of 4 took turns pedaling ghetto-rigged stationary bicycles to try to beat all the other teams’, not times, but kilowatt hour generation.

Pedaling with the fightin’ 36ers was alternative energy-producing heavyweight, and “eatART Powers the VAG” organizer, Adrian Sinclair, along with yours truly. Naturally, we came in… second? To the 37ers?! Man, they sure one-upped us. But to quote my teammate Tom Wynn, “Let's get something straight: the ONLY reason the 37ers did better than the 36ers was because, when we handed the bikes over to them, the wheels were still spinning so fast, it was like going down an hour-long hill.” Too true.

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Event photos can be found here. Thanks go to Melissa B for her journalistic endeavors, and photo credits belong to Leigh Christie.

Gastown Sprints: The Evidence

Travis has kindly posted up some of his pictures from the festivities. The full Flickr album can be found here. Here's a few of my favourites:





Naked dudes galore!

-DXII

Gastown Sprints!

So for those who haven't heard, some guys and gals have started up a racing series called Gastown Sprints. Once a month, they'll be running roller races inside Pub 340. The inaugural race was this very night!

Upon arriving, I was greeted by one of the most impressive examples of bike parking I've ever seen. Bikes were locked to every post, tree, parking meter and fence within a block of 340; the closest poles had bikes piled five deep, and up to three high. Taking this as a sign of a good turnout, I was not disappointed when I got inside.

The official racer tally was fifty-two. With all the spectators on top of this, there must have been well over a hundred people in attendance. Racing got started shortly before 10pm, and the first few heats were plagued by technical difficulties. Of the four bikes hooked up to the rollers, one was broken for a couple heats, and one worked intermittently. After three or four heats, however, all the kinks were worked out of the system, and the real racing began.

Everyone ran in groups of four, but how you did against the other three people in your heat was irrelevant to your placing, because qualification was based entirely on your 500m time. Top qualifiers came in under the 23 second mark (I ran a 23.83, netting myself the 5th spot).

Once everyone ran their qualifying heat, it was time for head-to-head, sudden death tournament racing! The top 8 qualifiers were paired up and pitted against each other, until only one remained. This one happened to be underage dynamo Travis aka. HustleJr, who walked away with some prize money and some champion status.

All in all it was a successful evening. I had a blast, and I think almost everyone else did, too. Thanks to all the dudes and ladies who threw this, with particular thanks to Moses, who seems to be the mastermind of the operation. Thanks also to Pub 340 for letting us fill their establishment with sweaty cyclists.

The next Gastown Sprint will be on July 8th. Same time same place. Be there!

ps: If anyone has pictures from tonight, send them to districtxii at gmail dot com. I will post them up for everyone's ogling pleasure.

-DXII

Bomont Bridge Session, from Vincent Allard

This guy always has cool videos of the MTB action in Montreal. This one is hot off the press, and is no exception to the rule.



Check out the rest of his stuff here.

Burrard Bridge Bike Lane Proposal: The Verdict

A decision has been reached on the burrard bridge bike lane issue. Of the three options available, city council has chosen the mediocre one. Only one lane will be closed to motorists; the west curbside lane will be southbound bike-only, the east sidewalk will be northbound bike-only, and the west sidewalk with have two-way pedestrian travel.

As cyclists, this works out decently for us. Not as well as the first option, which has two full lanes being closed to motorists, but not as terribly as the second option, which would have us biking amongst pedestrians when heading north.