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05 Mar 2010Generator…….AgainAfter telling us “No, I’m sorry we don’t have that info”, we got sent just now individual outputs for the generator race, which is a bit of a hoot. You can see Brett, Erin and I settling into a rhythm, then Brett’s gears start slipping so he gets all agro….you can see me with 3 minutes to go try and up the pace then failling miserably every time…..and Erin decides with 4 minutes to go that he can’t be arsed but with one minute to go can’t decide whether he made the right decision or not….and as for Dan……..I dunno Dan, wtf were you doing! Look at those spikes!
I’m actually quite shocked that of everyone that raced, I was the fifth fastest out of 144 participants, and the only riding I do is a tootle twice a week to go play Badminton! Clearly I don’t suck quite as bad as I think I do, or maybe to put it another way, I maybe should be a track rider. The horror.
Posted by warwick @ 2:16 am comments ?24 Feb 2010Mondo GeneratorsWell I’m happy to announce that after flogging our podgy arses off for a whole 10 minutes, we managed with the help of Ray from AE Smith’s constant yells of encouragement to win the AE Smith Green Cities Generator Race!
It’s actually quite surprising for a non-pro cyclist like myself how hard riding for a measly 10 minutes can be, but as with anything I guess you can make riding for one minute hard if you stick yourself well into the red zone [literally - see my face] and try and stay there.  Yeah, it's all smiles now....  Stick it in a comfy gear and hold on!  Okay, this is starting to hurt.  Two minutes to go! GO HARD!!  Dan - Why on Earth did I sign up for this!?  Brett exiting the Hurt Box  Thanks for the Certificates, but can you just hold off on the photos until we can breathe ?  Our little mascot! I want to thank Brett, Erin and Dan for doing this crazy ride with me, and their bosses too for letting them off early on a school night to come and sit in one place and pedal their arses off - Especially Erin who I don’t think can remember what a bike looks like since he discovered girls, and Dan who was such a delight to sell a bike too I wish all customers were like him. Thanks again fellas! Posted by warwick @ 8:27 am comments ?23 Feb 2010Fast and OrganicFirst batch of tee’s are done and will go out on Friday. More the week after for those of you that were not faster than beer. You’ve got the weekend to improve your skillz.
Posted by warwick @ 2:15 am comments ?17 Feb 2010Green Cities Generator RaceThis Monday at 3.55, Brett, Erin, Dan and myself are going to be at Green Cities 2010 slogging our guts out for 10 minutes on crappy bikes with no clipless pedals to generate as much Megawattage™ as possible without losing our lunch. As a lame bribe for the guys I’ve decided to do a T-Shirt which in some ways has absolutely nothing commemorative about it, but in some roundabout way kinda does. Brett and I were kicking around some ideas via MSN and in my usual scheme of taking too long to do simple things I came up with this -
Of course the four of us get them for free, but I thought I’d offer them up to you mangy lot and see if they appeal. The deal is simple. They’re Australian made and grown organic cotton T’s by Certton, available in Jade and in sizes S [46cm] M [50cm] L [54cm] and XL [58cm]. The measurements are of the garment, measured flat armpit-to-armpit. Get your fave T out, lie it down, measure it up. Couldn’t be simpler. There’s always a downside, and for this because the event is Monday, if you want to be in the first batch you have a whole 48hrs to put your hand up. The advantage of being the early bird is you get early bird pricing [$35] and of course, you have a fine beer drinking t-shirt that no other stiff has and can proudly proclaim that if you are lucky enough to own a Thylacine, then you are clearly Faster than beer. Email us asap if you want in. Posted by warwick @ 8:09 am comments ?03 Feb 2010Great Success!
This sort of thing is what custom bikes are all about. Geoff got in contact with us initially back in April wanting a custom Ti frame. In between bouts of being a goody-goody working for some NGO making sure the bad guys don’t bork things up, we exchanged lengthy emails about bike fit, what he was riding now and what issues he was having. I was horrified that at 6ft 6ins, he was riding a stock carbon frame and in his words -
It was difficult because he was trying to fit on a bike barely big enough for me at 6ft 3ins! Initially he was going to get fitted up by Steve Hogg, but the timing didn’t work out, so to coincide with his global galavanting, I managed to track down a fitter in DC who was recommended to me by a ‘pro bike fitting’ organisation who shall remain nameless because, to put it mildly, they’re utterly useless. The fitting I got back was that ‘old school’ method of fitting big guys - the one where the biggest downtube you can get is 660mm so you make the head tube angle 74 degrees, keep the chainstays as long as someone 5ft 9ins so they can pop wheelies when climbing, you know, just for fun. There were alarm bells going off bigtime, and I couldn’t with a clear conscience make a bike to the specs’ I was given, they were that wrong. So in a tip of the hat to the good parts of globalisation [the part where our bike fitters crap all over those in the US], I got Geoff to send in a shed-load of measurements and gave them to Chris @ Bike Coach to interpret them. Between what I thought was right and what the numbers told Chris, we came up with a frame that frankly breaks all the old rules. Check out some of the numbers -
Now, even the most confident bike designer [unless you're Leonard Zinn perhaps] has got to have some trepidation in doing a bike like this. The vast majority of bikes are fairly averagely sized, and not being a ‘Specialist’ other than the fact that I’m not a little guy myself - and with the inertia of ‘tradition’ - bikes like that are always going to be exciting to do. I’ll just let Geoff sum it up -
Thanks for your faith and patronage, Geoff! Posted by warwick @ 8:27 am 2 comments31 Dec 2009NEWSFLASH! Chainrings are sharp!Okay, as a testament to the kind of ‘end of year’ time I’m having, I wrote a post about my recent stack, only to have it not save. So lucky you, you get a paraphrased version -
Only a true professional can be that smart and that stupid all at the same time. Happy New Year!
Posted by warwick @ 3:46 am 3 comments16 Nov 2009A brief ride report.Okay, so I put in a first initial quick ride in on the new steed this afternoon. Nothing too strenuous, mostly because I’m not capable of anything strenuous, but it’s just really to get most things dialled or close to dialled so it involves riding around with more tools than any normal person should have to carry, most of which never get used. So, here’s my thoughts, in point form so as not to bore the attention span challenged.
So, all in all, I’m a pretty happy chappy. Okay, so my Glutes feel like they’ve been kicked hard my Magda Szubanski, but I’ll get over that. As I sit here typing this, I’m glancing over at the bike hanging on the wall, thinking “Wow, you’re a bit of alright, I wonder when I can squeeze in another ride”, and that my friends, is what it’s all about.
Posted by warwick @ 10:31 am 3 comments15 Nov 2009Brown is the new pink.Okay, here’s my new ride - a bog standard ‘10 Arete in stock geometry “Large-Regular”. This is probably my first ‘proper’ new bike in 3-4 years as I’ve been pretty busy raising a kid and generally being a too much of a slobby, sleep-derived zombie to do much riding. The inspiration for this build is twofold. I wanted to have a slight retro look to the build because the ‘10 Aretes have constant diameter seat and chainstays, so I went with a straight gloss powdercoat in a very Yeti ‘inspired’ Turquoise, like they used to use on the old FRO’s and Ultimates circa 1990. Because I’m a non-traditionalist and also not colourblind, I didn’t combine it with yellow like Bianchi did in their infinite wisdom one season, but with brown - in the form of grips, cables, and some rather blingy Industry Nine wheels. I think it needs more brown probably in the form of a saddle, but at this stage we’ll call it a ‘work in progress’. There’s probably not much more to say that the pictures can’t do for me, so check them out…..and yes I know I know, the brakes still need to have their hoses chopped.
Posted by warwick @ 11:15 pm comments ?03 Nov 2009Your Wheels will never be this pretty.I have decided that these are the coolest wheels ever. Normally I have a shockingly bad wheel and crank fetish, but being a ‘Champagne taste on a Beer budget’ kinda guy, I rarely indulge, but this time I decided to go the full monty. Not to everyones’ taste especially in a market where most customers have only just figured out that red goes well with white and black, but what would you expect from me, eh? Pictures of the matching bike when I finally pull my finger out of my butt and find more than 15 minutes to myself. And try to remember how to bleed brakes.
Posted by warwick @ 4:44 am 6 comments29 Sep 2009iPhone and iPhone Touch users? Contact us using ‘Ping!’In keeping with the fact that Thylacine Cycles is the most contactable, and has THE best Customer Service of any custom bike company, I’ve added ‘Ping!’ to my iPhone. Ping! is essentially just like any other instant messager / SMS, except it’s just for iPhone and iPod Touch users, AND it’s free to download and use, AND it’s free Internationally. Multi-platform messaging programs for the iPhone are very buggy at the moment, so this is a good interim measure as well as a good way for us iPhone users to be exclusive and elitist. Plus reduce my SMS bill. So if you have any questions about custom bike frames, or just want to hassle me - and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch - I can be reached anytime with the UserID - ‘thylacinecycles’. Posted by warwick @ 10:51 pm 1 comment
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