Vintage Bike Days

Back in the day, buddies Marc and Brian and I would regularly ride our motorcycles up to Mid Ohio each July for the Vintage Bike Days. We would check out the swap meet, the bike demos, and the racing that looked pretty fast until it was compared to the Indy races a few weeks later. These days, we're all grown up and pretty much motorcycle-free, much to our quiet desperation, but we still enjoy our bicycles. Well, at least Marc and I do.

But back to the vintage theme. I regularly trawl my local Craigslist, and in the last week I've come across two deals that were too good to pass up. The first was a vintage Specialized Stumpjumper, backward seatpost and all, for just $119:

This Post is for Greyson

My nephew wants to be a car engineer, bless his heart, so I thought he might enjoy some of these pictures I took from my last trip to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in Virginia. I was there for a workshop on their new child seat usability rating system, which was a pretty interesting topic if you're both a car guy and a dad.

If your name isn't Greyson, might as well skip this one.

One of IIHS's newest tests is a small overlap test. This simulates a car hitting a narrow object, like a light pole. Because the object often misses the main structure of the car, it can do terrific damage to a car. Here's a Chevy Equinox that did pretty well:

And here's a Mazda CX-9 that did poorly:

Velo Orange Camargue: One Year Review

I've had my Camargue almost exactly a year now--I remember it well when I bought it: we were on our summer shutdown vacation and I was awake before the rest of the family in our hotel room. As I was flipping through my iPhone in bed, I saw the Camargue was now available. I quickly made for the bathroom where I could turn on the light without disturbing anyone, and ordered it there off the tiny screen on my phone.

It's a lot bigger in real life:

YASH: Twin Six

Some time ago, I pronounced that my next bike would be steel and 29+. Since then, I've picked up a Mukluk that can fit 29+, sold off four frames in the May Purge, and lately I've picked up this steel Twin Six frame off ebay:

It's simply Yet Another Steel Hardtail, not 29+ capable, so my prior idea of steel and 29+ apparently didn't have to be the same bike.

Of course, by now you may be asking, what is Twin Six? They're primarily a clothing marketer, but they are branching out into frames. This frame was apparently a prototype made by Waterford in Wisconsin. Since it was made by the folks who also make Gunnars, I was ready to deal with a slipping seat post and chipping paint. I ended up having issues with both of those areas, but not quite in the way I expected.