News / BMX

I think I will send the goverment an updated bicycle drawing. This guy is looking a little outdated (and appears to be outfitted with the latest Oval-Tech gearing from 1988). Maybe a sweet time trail bike would be cooler.

Today I am having a fun time dealing with some rather dry legal schmeagle bicycle crap.

All bicycles sold in the USA must adhere to the CPSC rules. This is why when you by a complete bike it must have a chain guard and reflectors. In all honesty I am very glad there is some sort of safety regulations for this kind of thing, but I’m finding some of the specifications to be quite comical.

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That’s right, I’m totally blogging about getting blogged about.

ESPN interview here. Thanks Mr Tunney.

Getting on a big jet liner and leaving wonderful ole’ Austin for some snow and a dirty old warehouse in Cleveland. But, thats ok because I’m going to one of the wonders of the cycling world, Ray’s MTB park. They are having their annual grand re-opening for the year Nov 5-7. I won’t be able to ride too much, but I’ll be around and helping serve free food on saturday. Should be a good time and lots of amazing fun bike riding.

After the Cleveland opening, the next weekend actually, I will be heading over to Milwaukee to attend the grand opening of the brand new Ray’s there.

I haven’t even seen pictures of this park yet so I’m really excited to see it. Same drill as Cleveland… free food on saturday, and general celebration of opening the park. Milwaukee locals have to be stoked to get a Ray’s!

I have a definite love hate relationship with Las Vegas and Interbike. First of all I pretty much think that Vegas is the worst place on earth, but I also kind of love it. As soon as you begin herding off the plane with all the obese and moo-ing midwestern tourists you know you are in a bad place. Waiting 45 minutes in line to check in at the hotel while people are chain smoking around you, and then buying a bottle of water for $8 is no way to start a visit to a new city. On the other hand though, the people watching is amazing!! Every time I start to get bummed or on some decay of civilization high-horse I see some old lady laughing her ass off at a slot machine, or some newly-wed couple having a lovey-dovey moment waiting for the elevator. I don’t know… suffice to say Vegas is not my place but I understand that people from all over the world save their money to go to sin-city on vacation and have a great time. If they’re happy then screw it… I’ll be happy for them.

Well… blah blah blah… Vegas… its worth the experience.

I also got to see about a million and half friends who I never get to see enough of. That was very good. Spending a little time in the BMX section is like a highschool reunion or something. You can’t turn around without running into someone you haven’t seen in 10 years. Good times even if it can be a little overwhelming and I think at one point my mouth went numb from talking too much.

Got to show the Fairdale road bike prototypes at the Full Factory booth and that was pretty cool (eventually you bike shops will be able to buy the bikes from them). The Fairdale bikes are so new and we are still working things out so it may have been a tad premature. We still don’t know what they will cost or when they will be available (spring?). Working hard on the other models now and hoping to get them in to test soon. The response to the bikes was awesome though. I really appreciate all the great feedback we received.

Every year I promise myself I will walk around Interbike with a camera and find the most outrageous and kooky stuff because I really think some of it is amazingly comical. But, like every year I never get around to it and forgot my camera. Found a few little gems though.

This is a Cinderella shapped shoe that clamps on to your handlebars to hold your barbie doll. Pretty sweet. I’m a huge fan of the grammar though… I find a lot of comedy in bad translations.

You really need to read the description to understand this product, but apparently this is big in the brooklyn BMX scene. I haven’t seen Edwin Delarosa in a while, I have to assume he is riding this around and loving the “bouncing ability”

I’m a big fan of Knog’s lights and also their general weirdness. I don’t know how they can sell stuff to uptight bikes shops with this kind of advertising, but I love that they do.

Of course they are advertising cable locks. By the way, I think maybe we should start a collection to get them off that 1995 freestyle bike and on to something a little more modern.

My little press release about the bikes coming out got spread around a lot with pretty positive response. The one from Ride BMX above really made me laugh though. Somehow Fat Toonie managed to spell my name wrong 4 times (and two different ways) and also to spell Fairdale wrong. I’ve only been writing and contributing to Ride BMX for 18 years! Ha ha… considering though that Phat Toni put up a post about road bikes on a BMX website I am nothing but grateful.

The first Fairdale bike samples have arrived! I’m so happy and excited to see this project starting to come into reality.

After a while of working at Odyssey’s design office here in Austin, TX, I have been given the opportunity to turn Fairdale into an actual brand.

It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and years and I think even my hardcore BMX-only friends will be able to relate to some of the motivation behind it.

Fairdale is the brand for all my friends who ask me what kind of bike they should get just for riding around town. In the past, I always struggled to find a good answer for them. So many bikes are too focused on racing, extremeness, trends, are dorky looking or just bogged down with too much flakey technology. On the other hand, BMX, with its simple functionality, has taught me that the technology of a bike rarely increases the fun of riding it.

It has been my experience that the simplicity of a bicycle is actually the magic of it. Who wants a bicycle that is too complicated to maintain without the help of a mechanic, or too “raced” out to be comfortable for a leisurely after dinner cruise? And how many people really need a carbon fiber space ship bike just to have a fun day pedaling or to get to school on? Fairdale is my opportunity to design bikes based on my 30+ years of experience and my love for simple and reliable bikes. As a bonus, I also get to work with the Odyssey design and engineering team, whose capabilities have been proven for a long time now.

The first samples to arrive are a couple sizes for what will be our single-speed road bike. It’s a classic steel frame design that incorporates room for a tires that are wider than what you would find on the average road bike. It also has mounts for both fenders and front/ rear cargo racks. It works well with drop bars and riser bars and although production is still a ways off, we are thinking that we may offer the bike with both configurations. Made from reliable, trustworthy and affordable double butted chromoly steel, the frame and fork are light and durable. The components are spec’d with what we would ride if we built them ourselves (because we did) and every effort has been made to keep the bikes affordable and easy to maintain. Simple things like flat protected tires and common sized, proven parts can make such a difference in how much time you can actually spend riding your bike instead of fixing it.

We also have a few other models planned:
-A mixed-style 700c cruiser with a more relaxed riding position, fenders, and rack standard.
-A simple 26 inch wheeled single speed all around ultra affordable-adaptable bike.
-My personal bike; a 29 inch BMX cruiser, perfect for a chilling ride around town or on a trail with the occasional curb hop thrown in.
-Whatever else we feel like doing. Austin is such a bicycle city that we have endless inspiration.

Also, for my skateboarding friends, I just completed the prototyping of a cool pannier rack that will hold a skateboard for easy transportation. I realize the irony that my BMX friends will see in me making a big-wheeled bike with a skateboard on it! Ha ha. I love it!

We’ll keep you updated on these things… won’t be available for a good while yet, but we are working on them!

Oh yeah, we’ll have some new soft goods out very soon. Mostly keeping with the silly graphics on our online zine here, but some will be more clean and classic like the bike’s graphics too.

Note: We’ll spec our single speed road bikes with freewheels and brakes to make them easy to ride and good for getting places, but you can flop the hub and run it fixed if you like.

I never really much understood labor day or any of the other kind of lesser holidays. Those ones where the bank and a lot of business’s are closed but no one really celebrates them outside of getting a day off work. That is until now when I have (for the first time) a 5 day a week “real” job.

I had a few jobs back in Michigan but never anything too serious. I rented canoes and cross country skis when I was a kid, worked as a dishwasher at a diner, worked a K-mart. I even worked at Albe’s for a bit as a gorilla of a mechanic (wrestling and smashing early 90’s BMX bikes into shape). I moved out to Standard in Davenport Iowa for a bit and worked as a short order cook in a strip club and then finally made the move to Austin. In Austin I got a job in a health food store making smoothies. That was a pretty fun job.

Not long after the smoothie job got going I quit to take a open position riding in Sprocket Jockey shows for Hoffman. Poor Dave Mirra was in the hospital with a ruptured spleen and they needed a fill in. Someone could write a book on doing BMX shows at state and country fairs… what a wild ex-convict haven of interesting and sketchy people. I also got to learn to ride vert some. Can’t tell you how horrified I was rolling up late for my first show and being told to do an abubaca for the first time ever on a vert ramp in a show! ha ha…

After doing all the shows I could take I luckily started making enough money off bikes to not have to work. I had some golden years where all I did was get by, travel and ride bikes. Not bad at all. After a while I got kind of bored of being such a slacker and helped start T1. All of a sudden I had a job I couldn’t ever get out of my mind. Drove me a little crazy… I guess thats the danger of taking a business so personally… kind of get pretty wrapped up in it. In the end I walked away from the company because it was so mired in personal issues.

Now I’m working at Odyssey and Fairdale and its super fun. After being hurt and off BMX for so long I am really grateful to have such a good job and to be doing such fun things for work.

Even so, I appreciate (for the first time) a good long holiday weekend! Hope you had a good one too!

I went shopping at the Asian market up in north Austin over the weekend. I really like the supermarket… one of the least organized shopping experiences you could ever have. Seems like things are just sort of thrown on to various shelves with no thought for any kind of order or sense. For instance, right above the eggs I found a package of this:

I bought it, but there’s no way I am eating that. Maybe if you end up at my house and are really drunk I will try to get you to eat it. The whole idea of this product just sounds foul!

The best part is the back of the package. I love the little chics praying for your carnivorous soul.

Someone sent me this picture from the New York Daily Times and I thought it was really cool. It came from this website. I like to pretend that this guy was an asshole driver who hates cyclists and woke up to his worst nightmare; an army of bikes riding all over and around his house so he could never leave.

As long as I am crossing the line and borrowing content from other websites I might as well go all out right? I found this on the Crupi site. I really think this is awesome! BMX racing at its best! Some kind of weird clipped in style tuck flying by blurred lights totally at the top of the Speed Chain! I wanna’ be at the top of the speed chain.

Here’s my best attempt at climbing the speed chain pyramid from the internet. Look at that pan blur! I like to imagine I’m going like a million miles and hour!!! This is from several years ago at a Backyard Jam where they had a long jump contest. I remember that things seemed to be going well as the distance advanced with each jump… I would pedal as fast as I could and smoothly reach the landing. Well,  that is until the distance finally got too big and I cased so hard that nails literally blew out of the landing…  and I almost threw up.

I also got a friendly little interview in the latest Slammed magazine. Nice to see some independent BMX media out on paper.

Speaking of paper…

There are still a very few Fairdale zine’s available and hats. Please buy one so I can make a new one! 68 pages of Fairdale art and doodles and R-word-edness. Buy it on the Odyssey store here. I think that Empire has a few of them too, but as I can not find them in the store you will have to ask them.

To tell you the truth I don’t really understand Twitter still, but there is a Fairdale twitter if you are into that kind of thing. Also, we have a lonely, generally neglected and poorly trafficked Fairdale facebook page too.

I’m not really sure what the current status of this is, but hopefully it will all work out.

Its another cool project happening at the school where I filmed part of my Electronical video part.

TAJ MIHELICH FROM ODYSSEYBMX.COM

I don’t know what I would do with this thing, but I want it!! Disc brakes, fat tires…. looks so fun… for something…

I have to assume this is Sean Burns signature 20″ carbon fiber road bike model.