Happy Birthday to Me


Thank you Internet for having a picture of everything anyone could ever imagine.

Today is The Bicycle Story’s first birthday. Technically the site went live in late October 2010, but it was a year ago today that the site really launched with its very first interview, “Stevil Kinevil: Bikes, Booze, and the Art of Heckling”.

Since then, it has chugged along, sometimes with very consistent content and others, not so much at all. But hey, it’s impressive a one year old can write anything at all, let alone do so without ever pooping its pants, right?

The Bicycle Story is still very much a side project for me and will still take a back seat to the full-time job when it needs to. That said, I will still be bringing you interviews with cycling’s most interesting adventurers, advocates, industry folks, racers, dirt bags, and more. I also have some ideas for some good projects that could branch The Bicycle Story off in some relevant, but new and exciting directions. Hopefully those make the transition from ideas-I-had-while-laying-in-bed-unable-to-sleep to fruition before too long.

Cheers to all the readers, commenters, interviewees, and friends that helped make The Bicycle Story’s first year on earth so great. Here’s to many more!

Brian Vernor’s Trans-Andes Challenge

Photographer and Filmmaker (and previous Bicycle Story interviewee) Brian Vernor just released the mini-documentary he made about the Trans-Andes Challenge, a 250-mile stage race across Chile’s Patagonia region. The film was part of the 2011 Bicycle Film Festival, but now that the festival has completed its run of showings across the US, Vernor is releasing his doc in-full online.

Vernor is known for incorporating a surf-film aesthetic into his work and that holds true for this as well in the way he shows the landscapes, the people and places on the region, and the life and culture of the racers between stages.

Trans Andes Challenge, The Film from Team Jamis on Vimeo.

 

Bina Bilenky: Framebuilding Shows and The Family Business


Bina and Stephen Bilenky. Photo from Embrocation Magazine.

Bina Bilenky is a busy woman. She helps run the family business (Bina is the daughter of noted framebuilder Stephen Bilenky), writes a column for Embrocation Magazine, is the co-founder and organizer of the Philly Bike Expo, founder and organizer of the Heartland Velo Show, and helps organize the San Diego Custom Bike Show. We talked about her experience growing up with an important framebuilder for a father, her work at Bilenky, and her notable attraction to bike shows.

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The 1982 Great American Bicycle Race


The original racers. (Photo from AP via Rough Riders blog)

In 1982, John Marino gave start to one of the hardest, longest, Ultra-endurance races in the world. It has come to be called the Race Across America, but its first incarnation was The Great American Bicycle Race. The 2,968 mile route went from the Santa Monica Pier in LA to the Empire State Building in New York. Only four racers participated: John Marino, John Howard, Michael Shermer, and Lon Haldeman (the race winner).

RAAM has since grown in size and popularity with around 200 solo racers and many more two- and four-person team racers, but it is still a relatively-obscure, niche cycling event. Its modern semi-obscurity is part of the reason it’s so amazing that ABC’s Wide World of Sports was there to cover the very first race. And the Internet being what it is, some kind soul has uploaded the coverage of the race to Youtube in 10 parts.

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Publishing From The Road: Bicycle Traveler Magazine

Dutch writer and bicycle tourist Grace Johnson launched a new online magazine this month called Bicycle Traveler. The free (and advertisement-free) digital publication is, as you’d imagine, focused on stories and photography about bicycle touring.

The content in Issue #1 is a bit of a mixed bag. Several of the articles appear to be excerpts from bicycle touring blogs and they read that way. But, the feature article more than makes up for it. It’s about Eric and Jack Attwell, two South African brothers who rode the length of Africa then all the way to London in the 1930s. It is well written and provides a fascinating snapshot of both 1930s bike touring and Africa itself.

I’m looking forward to future issues of the magazine. It’s a respectable and ambitious project, made all that more ambitious by the fact that Johnson and her husband Paul Jeurissen are in the midst of their own world-wide bike tour. The two of them sold their house in the Netherlands in 2010 and set off on the road.

Go check out the Bicycle Traveler site, download the first issue, and explore the magazine for yourself.