What kind of argument is that ?
- The wearing of helmets by cyclists visibly implies that cycling is less safe than it is
- Wearing of helmets indicates to motorists that you're more competent and thus it's okay to drive closer to you
Wow, those are two of the most off the wall, crazy notions for arguments against helmets I've ever heard. These were voiced as the opinion (clearly identified as her personal opinions) by a Yvonne Bambrick of the Toronto Cyclists Union this morning on CBC's Metromorning. They might be your opinions, but said on CBC's Metromorning, they send a strong message. This opinions are absolutely nuts.
As a New Zealander of my age generation we all had 'the helmet lady' come to our schools when were around 12-13. She showed us lovely things like the catheter's her son has to use, feeding tubes, etc to show what happens when your brain rattles in your head from hitting the deck. That scared the lights out of us as kids, and (for the most part) we all wear helmets ever since having our school assemblies with the helmet lady.
Society requires us to wear seatbelts in cars on the road, we should be required to wear helmets.
You fall off your bike and hit your head, it gets injured. Helmets reduce head injuries. Head injuries are preventable. Thats plain and simple logic.
[Update] Just today there was an article that Rebecca Oaten's (The Helmet Lady) son passed away, more here .. . http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4031829/Aarons-tragedy-spurred-Helmet-Ladys-c...
Trek Broadsider - post apocalyptic hotness
Got yelled at, again. Utter douchebag behaviour
I am getting really really <use your imagination> with <likewise> people driving round who have nothing better to do than yell from their passing cars things like "get off the road" or such like. I am amazed at the statistical odds of being yelled at by passing cars. Every 3 out of 4 times I'm on the road some awesome piece of man kind decides to yell out of a vehicle. The faster they're going the louder it is and the less warning you have, the more your heart jumps out of it's chest.
Split second - Photo of the week !
Photo attribution:http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/fullscreen.html?dataPath=/photogallery/regions/calgary/gallery_3715/xml/gallery_3715.xml&startImage=0
Imagine if everything in the world were this intense
Trail review: Bayview / Stouffville
Yesterday I headed out a slightly unplanned afternoon ride with some newly found riding mates. After beating up the Don, Reg suggested this trail out near Bayview and Stouffville, he kindly put his Garmin on and unknowingly created some user generated content for this blog post :)
Easy enough to find, head down Stouffville road, to just east of Bayview, look for a #940 sign on the North side of the road and you can ride in from the road side. No parking though, you have to park further east (short 100-200m ride). The trails are all unmarked - hey I was spoilt with a bike park - but there's a lot of them in a small space. Lots of foliage covered tracks, probably not a lot of traffic, leads to some fast/soft riding. Mainly XC stuff, although we did come across some stunts, but predominantly natural based. A lot of old wooden structures have been ripped out, some of the natural stuff has some fairly rotten logs, so check them before doing anything crazy. A creek bed full of sand runs through the South West segment, try to avoid it, hard going in sand. The North East segment is quite possibly the most fun.
Highlight: One super long flowy downhill segment, not steep, but just enough to get some speed on and really open up the bike
Lowlight: Getting swarmed by mosquitos
50MBit 1080p video out of the GH1
Seriously this is well impressive. The era of hacking anything that has firmware is friking awesome. One clever cookie by the name of Tester13 has unlocked a little bandwidth on the Panasonic GH1 4/3rds Camera, and managed to go from 17MBit to 50MBit!
http://www.eoshd.com/content/250-50Mbit-1080p-MJPEG-on-the-Panasonic-GH1
http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/11/3rd-party-firmware-transforms-wimpy-gh1-int...
It's a sad day for mountain bikes
9 years ago, after many years without a bike, I splashed out and spent a ridiculous amount on full suspension bike, this KHS FXT Pro. Hydraulic disk brakes. Alloy frame. Awesome suspension design. XT components. I rediscovered mountain biking.
Me and she went places. All across New Zealands North Island and South Island; Woodhill, Whakarewarewa, Urban Streets, Rameka Track, and finally I shipped her across the oceans to Toronto Canada. She's done double duty off road and on road. I've replaced chains, granny gears, gear clusters, brake pads, numerous tyres, more tubes than hot dinners, seat, stem, front fork internals. It was always a case of wearing out rather than breaking in the middle of a ride.
I've had some serious downhill runs, including one particularly memorable run with the brakes actually smoking, a few jumps (I'm not a jumper), and more chest pounding, leg burning, wanting to throw up, hill climbs than I care to remember.
I even competed with it (once).
She's gotten me to work and back well over two hundred times in two countries. Commuting on one of these beasts is something else. Equipped with a pair of hookworms, the disc brakes and massive contact patches meant stopping was pretty much instant (my road bike is scary by comparison)
Alas, this morning, getting her out from the shed in a state of disrepair, kinda like an old english car. I decided to go fix her for a ride. Cleaning the chain, and rear cassette for more than half an hour I turned attention to the brakes. Hmm.. those lines don't look to hot, front brakes work, back breaks have nothing. Went to bled them, crack off comes the bleed nipple ruining the caliper. Last time I went into the bike store I think they were laughing at me for wanting a replacement rear shock... Old girl this a little emotional, but it's time to RIP. For sale. Best offer...
