Tuesday Bike Night, Trafik, and Pan Ector Present: To Live and Ride in LA

Are y’all ready for the ride tomorrow? I know I am. If you haven’t heard yet, we’re going to be premiering the film To Live and Ride in LA. It’s primarily fixed gear, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t come if you don’t care to see another fixed gear movie. Why, you might ask…because they’ve given us some stuff to give away. We’ve decided to have a nice little race after a very short ride. Winners will get some prizes and stuff.

The ride will still meet up at the UNT Language Building at 9PM and depart around 9:30. I’m not sure what route we’ll be taking, but it will be a short one. The race is a circuit race through a neighborhood that is generally low in traffic at night. We’ll probably do four or five laps, so it’s not too long but there will be some climbing involved. There’s no entry fee or anything like that, so if you show up and do well you can walk away with some stuff.

So come out. It’ll be fun!

8/16: What’s This…A Post?

I never remember to update this, but I am this week. Two things.

1: We’re obviously riding this week, like we have been every week. The movie nights have been going well from what I’ve been told (I’ve only managed to be at the first one). We’re going to keep it going this week with The Bootleg Series 2 and 3, so come out and join us. Like always, we meet up at the UNT Language Building every Tuesday night at 9PM. I’m usually always there AT 9. We try to leave by 9:30, but we’ll sometimes hold off for a few minutes.

2: It’s back to school time. There are new kids moving to Denton to pursue their college degrees and kids who move away at the end of every semester returning to this glorious city, and it’d be nice to get them riding bikes. Starting next week we’ll begin every ride by rolling through campus and advertising the ride vocally. Very vocally. It’s an age-old tradition (by ‘age-old’ I mean we’ve been doing it since I started doing the ride when I was a wee sophomore).

Anyways, if you’re an avid rider and come out and ride every week, do your part and talk to kids you don’t know. Tell them about the ride. Encourage them to come. If they make excuses, counter their excuses because so few good excuses exist (there are only a few “valid excuses;” things like “out of town,” “death in the family,” “test at 8am,” and “work”).

-owen

 

7/19/11: Tuesday Bike Movie Night

We’re going to do a relatively short ride tonight, and I’m going to try and lead us out at 9:30 sharp. I still haven’t figured out the exact mechanics of the route, but I have some stuff in mind.

After the ride, if you were as yet unaware, we’re going to watch some bicycle movies. We’ll start with MASH. This was the movie that got a lot of people really excited about riding track bikes / fixed gears. I watched it after meeting and hanging out with several of the guys when they were on a trip to Austin to do a commercial for Mellow Johnny’s and ride with lance Armstrong.

Here are some videos:

MASH SF Trailer

Austin with Lance Armstrong

After MASH we’re going to watch a compilation DVD of several short films from the Bicycle Film Fest in either 2008 or 2009. I can’t remember the year. It’s a great selection of films though.

Same ride as always. 9:00 PM at the UNT Language Building.

Oh…I made a Tuesday Bike Night Twitter account (@dentonbikenight) at the suggestion of Howard from Bike Denton. I’ve never used Twitter before, but I’ll use it during the rides to say where we are occasionally.

-Owen

Tuesday Bike Night Movie Night

Woo woo!

Drew and I recently participated in one of the Denton Wolf Pack’s monthly/wheneverly Booze n’ Cruises’ this weekend. While mingling with several of the new additions to Denton’s cycling community we realized that a lot of people haven’t seen many of the fixed gear / urban cycling videos out there.  It’s something we knew could be easily changed. We’ve been wanting to do something similar for quite awhile.

The ride on Tuesday will go forward as usual. Afterwards, however, we’ll retire to an undisclosed location to watch a few movies. MASH will be the first we show. It’s about an hour long, but we’ll probably put something else on for anyone keen to stay up late. I’m not sure what we’ll do after that, maybe one of the Bootleg Sessions or Council of DOOM. I’m pretty sure one of us has B.I.K.E. too. What this boils down to is this: We’ll probably keep this up for the next few weeks.

So get ready. It should be a good time. If you don’t care about the movie(s), you can still show up to mingle and hang out with your fellow cyclists.

-Owen

6/14: Out ‘ole cemetary way…

Tonight marks the second to last, or penultimate, race of the first Tuesday Night Sprint Series. The location of this sprint is a secret, known to select few, but I’ll tell you now that it will be uphill. I’m stoked to watch you all struggle.

The regular part of the evening; the standard Tuesday Night Ride will be out to Roselawn Cemetary. It’s a good little ride. One of my favorites. So show up at 9 to hang out. We’re going to leave at promptly 9:30 tonight.

-Owen

6/7: Southlakes Park here we come & Round 2 of the TNSS!

This kid is pumped and so am I. Let’s face it: summer rules. There’s nothing quite like riding bikes in the Texas heat, developing awesome salt stains from riding with a bag, and never showering because, let’s be honest, it’s pointless to shower when you ride a bike as your main means of transportation in a Texas summer.

So give up on showering. Give up on sleeping. Embrace brutal rides in the middle of the day and relaxing cool rides late at night.

To me, the Tuesday Ride is at the perfect time in the summer: the sun has just set, so it’s still too hot, but it’s not nearly as hot as it was at 4PM. This will be my fifth summer doing Tuesday Rides, and I don’t wanna stop anytime soon.

Come join us tonight at the UNT Language Building around 9PM for our weekly ride. We leave somewhere between 9:30-9:45, so you have time to show up and mingle with others. I highly encourage it. Making friends in the community is pretty damn important.

We’re going to head to South Lakes Park tonight, hang there for awhile, and then head to the still secret sprint location for the Tuesday Night Sprint Series.

Come out, ride!

-Owen

Wanna chip in and help TWO non-profits?

As some of you may know, I work at the Friends of the Family Thrift Store. Friends of the Family is a non-profit organization right here in Denton County that helps victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and sexual assault. Our thrift store is donation based and 100% non-profit. We get a bunch of donations in at our store. From time to time stuff comes in that we know we can’t sell for what it is worth to our average customers.

This morning when we got to the store someone had left several bicycle frames and components in front of the store over night. I didn’t know about it until later, but I assumed it would all be junk. I was wrong. When I looked at the stuff I first noticed that there were three aluminum frames (one with carbon seat stays) and two steel frames (Schwinn Prelude and a mtb). The components were decent too: Sugino 72 54t ring, old Brooks saddle, carbon aero seatpost, carbon threadless stem, carbon aero bars, LOOK and TIME pedals/cleats, Shimano 105 cranks, and lots of other stuff.

Anyways. There is no way we can sell that stuff for what it is worth in our store. I don’t expect to be able to what that stuff is worth, but I’ve come up with a way to try.

All I’m asking is for you to chip in a small amount of money to donate to my store that would straight to our organization. All of the employees are payed from grants, so every drop of the donation goes to financing the services we offer our clients. $5-$10 goes a long way if enough people chip in. I don’t have any idea of how much I’ll be able to raise for this, but whatever we can raise will be great. It will all go to FoF and the components / frames will go to Querencia.

I want my organization to get something for all of this stuff, but there isn’t any way I’m going to sell a Sugino 75 ring for $2.

If you can, please consider chipping in. If 20 people chip in $10 that would be great.

Vist Friends of the Family and Querencia to check out what the organizations do, and then get in touch with me to contribute.

-Owen

Tornadoes you say?

Well unfortunately the weather put a damper on the ride last night. Five of us showed up, sat around while it poured, and finally decided to ride anyways. We got poured on, but short rain rides can be fun.

The bigger deal is the cancellation of the first night of the Sprint Series. It’s OK though. I already have a plan: next week will have a double sprint. We’ll do a very short ride and end up at the Coliseum where we’ll do the first sprints very quickly. After that we’ll ride around, very leisurely, to the next sprint location and finish the night off with some sprints. After that we’ll ride some more to a location at which we can partake in par-tay.

Tuesday Night Sprint Series!

Tuesday night marks the start of the first Tuesday Night Sprint Series. From this week, May 24, until Tuesday, June 21 every regularly scheduled Tuesday Night Ride will be followed by sprint races. Each week will be handled differently, depending on how many people choose to race that week. The sprints we’ve been doing sporadically for the past two months or so have generally started with two heats of 4-8 riders and winded down from there to a final heat of 2-3.

Every week 105 points will be given. 40 for first place, 30 for second, and 20 for third. The fourth, fifth, and sixth place racers will get 5 points each. You can probably guess how it works from there: whoever has the most points after the race on June 21st wins. However, to be eligible to race in the final race a racer must have a minimum of 20 points.

Every course will be announced at the start of the Tuesday Ride, and every ride will end at the sprint location. After the sprints, we’ll retire somewhere to party.

Crooked Crust and the Bicycle Path have offered to give us some prizes for the lucky winners, and I’ll probably buy some goodies out of my pocket.

Tell everyone you know. I’ve been telling everyone about this for awhile, I just suck about getting online and making it known.

See you Tuesday! Come ready to race, even if you think you’ll lose. It doesn’t matter if you do. It’s all about the fun. All bicycles are welcome.

-Owen

(Race 1 is at the Coliseum, I’ll say it now.)

5/17: Summer 101

It’s summer for all you college kids. That means it’s time to stop having excuses for not riding.

We’re gunna go do a variation of the airport route and then a special event after.
-Owen