An Interview with Jaquie Phelan

Did a little ride with the iPod again, some Decemberists, some Radiohead (King of Limbs, how fitting), and some dirt road and easy trails.  Felt so great a did a second loop for about 10 mi. total.  Not mileage for any serious cyclist, but a decent little ride for me.

Anyway, on to another interview.  And this might be the best one of all.


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I love Jacquie Phelan.  Well, the "L" word might be a little strong, but in a way, this effusion of emotion is appropriate.  Phelan has always represented for me (and I think many others) the anti-macho that many of us think mountain biking should be about.

Speaking only for myself here, I didn't get into mountain bikes because I wanted to see who could jump off the biggest cliff,  or who could drown their fear the deepest, hucking their carcass through the air- I would've stuck with BMX if I wanted that.    I wanted to explore the woods and enjoy the ride

For a history lesson, you can go to google (or Jacquie's blog), but what needs to be said is that without her, we'd likely have a lot less of the notion of soulful singletrack, and a lot more of the big-air-macho mentality that threatened to eat mountain biking at the start of this century. She was one of the original old-school racers, yes. But her influence has been so much more than that. Do yourself a favor and do some reading on her blog. Oh, and as a columnist for Bike magazine for many years, she's a freelancer, too. Gotta love that! Enjoy...

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RK: What's Your Favorite Book? Why?
JP: Whew. There is no single favorite book. I've re-read Speak, Memory by Nabokov , 'three-read' it...i love his writing, and I'm nosy about writers, so that's why I name his memoir, though any of his books are masterpieces.

RK: What's your favorite place you've ever traveled?
JP: Dude, if you can't tell by my previous answer, I don't "boil it down" too well. I'm on a Scotland kick this decade, last decade it was Italy all the way, and who knows, maybe I'll be perfectly content here in Fairfax when I 'm ninety (meanwhile a little voice pipes up: "don't forget Sweden! Oh, shit- you've forgotten Portugal")


RK: Do you have a hero? Who?
JP: You mean besides every single bike commuter on the planet? Sorry.... Er, lately it's been Kay Ryan. Her girlfriend of 30 years died, and she actually seems to keep on living. That's heroic.

RK: Do you do things other than MTB? and/or What OTHER sports do you participate in?
JP: I rode across the USA with people I would never have met. And most of whom probably will never meet me again. This was a 58 day commercial for a liquor company. I sold my soul.


RK: Who helped you the most, to get where you are in this sport/industry/craft?
JP: Darryl Skrabak, Charlie Cunningham and about five thousand women who joined WOMBATS (Women's Mountain bike & Tea Society)

RK: Do you have any sort of religious background? What about now?
JP: Church of the rotating Mass. Pisgah-palianism.

RK: Tell us about your favorite bike you've ever owned... is it your current bike?
JP: Yes, my Cunninghams. Note the plural. I have a mtn bike with front suspension (WoManitou) and far-fetched Cloumbus aluminum tubing, a cyclocross bike and a road bike that just completed 4200 miles of rumble-strip infested US highways. All of them are at least ten years old. The latter two are twenty five years old.
But, in case of a wildfire, I'd be grabbing that cyclocross bike cuz it's great on dirt and on the road. We'll have to let the other ones melt into silver puddles.
Yes, wildfire. It's an inevitability here in Marin, where the natural fire cycle has been supressed for over a hundred years.

Ernesto Marenchin: The Speediest Goat. An Interview.

Ernie Marenchin was born the same year as me. Grew up in the same area of Pennsylvania as me. We're also almost the same height... but that's where the similarities end definitively. He weighs almost a whole person less than me. He rides very much harder than me. But, you know, we've both ridden in Moab. So that's something!

It's hard to tell about these things, but I think Ernesto came to most peoples' notice in 2005 when he almost beat Chris Eatough for the 24 Hour World Championship in British Columbia.(I knew of him before that from the Speedgoat blog). He rode his first 24 hour solo race in 2001. That is 8 years he's been doing the ultra-length racing thing now. Think about that a second. That's a lot of miles in his legs. A whole lot. And that's just the races. He's spent lots of time behind the handlebars.

For a whole lot more information, and the most current update on what he's up to, I'm sure Ernesto would want me to point you to: http://sologoat.blogspot.com/


RK: What's Your Favorite Book? Why?

EM: "Lord of the Rings. I was drawn to it after watching a show about the making of the movies and learned Tolkien invented his own language for the elves. But, after reading the books and watching the movies about a dozen times each, I think what draws me back is the story of the impossible. These elves against all this evil & it seems impossible that they will make it. Same thing went through my head when I first thought of doing a 24 hour solo."

RK: What's your favorite place you've ever traveled?

EM: "Would have to be Terlingua, Texas - site of the Mas O Menos race which I am sad to hear is not going to happen in 2010. Very small little town in Texas in the middle of nowhere. So silent during the day and crystal clear skies during the night. Kind of nice to soak in all the little things in life that get drowned out by being around the masses."

RK: Do you have a hero? Who?

EM: Don't think I really have a hero, but I have a lot of people that I look up to, riders that I tried to mimic. John Stamstad, Nat Ross, Mark Hendershot, etc.

RK: Do you do things other than MTB? Hobbies we'd never guess?

EM: "No, not really. Used to ski some before I started racing endurance a lot, but now I don't really have too much time and skiing is not the safest hobby out there."

RK: Who helped you the most, to get where you are in this sport/industry/craft?

EM: "Would without a question say my family and wife. My father goes with me to all the big races and takes a lot of the pressures off of trying to figure out transportation, my fuel strategy, etc. And my wife is super cool with me riding the hours I need to ride - the best is when after I come after putting in a long day and she has dinner hot and ready."

"And Speedgoat - I feel like we have both grown over the years together. I am lucky to be riding for a shop that is as fanatical about cycling as I am."

RK: Tell us about your favorite bike you've ever owned... is it your current bike? (Not neccesarily raced, but the personal bike you connected with the most).

EM: "Favorite bike would have to be my first ever "race bike" which was a Panasonic Hot Tubes painted bike and was their highest end road bike with internal rear brake cable routing.

Nearly sold it a few times, but it kills me that I had it painted after the paint was starting to chip in a few places. Looking to get it repainted in authentic Panasonic Team colors at some point.

Also, it has become a pastime of mine to try and find one on ebay in great shape. I missed an auction on ebay a few years back because I had to work a long day - it was my same exact bike. "

A Right Noble Calling: An Interview With Taliah Lempert

Not only is Taliah Lempert the best painter of bicycles I know, she is also the only person I know from Brooklyn. My understanding of the place is pretty skewed, consisting only of the classic book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and the equally classic- but not very American- Brooklyn team that sponsored Roger De Vlaminck in the 1960's, most famously in Leth's "The Hell of the North".


But about Ms. Lempert I know a bit more. Though she started riding bikes on sensible folding bikes and cruisers, her own riding tastes fall a little more to the organic, minimal side of things these days. She's that rare fixed rider that actually races on a velodrome track, but at the same time, she is also a dyed-in-the-wool commuter. And I envy the quality time she's spent with many bikes that I would view as icons, including the "Huffy" that my early cycling hero Andy Hampsten rode to victory in the Giro D'Italia, one of Hans Rey's trials bikes, and the bike featured in the image below, Jacquie Phelan's drop-bar Cunningham known as Otto. Along with other lesser-known but equally interesting bikes that it seems are almost beyond number.


Bikes aside, though, I wanted to find out what other artists inspire Taliah. An impossible question we probably couldn't understand the real answer to, but she was able to say that "Today, it's Lucian Freud, Jim Dine, Diebenkorn, Polly Apfelbaum..." I've included some of their work, but don't claim to have chosen particularly wisely.


If this short glimpse of her artwork intrigues you, I encourage you to check out www.bicyclepaintings.com for much more of Lempert's portraits, and for the contact information to buy or commission your own.




RK: What's Your Favorite Book? Why?
TL: Bike Cult, the Ultimate Guide to Human Powered Vehicles: It’s my favorite book for so many reasons.

RK: What's your favorite place you've ever travelled?
TL: I’m not sure. I have great memories of most of the places I’ve traveled to.
I loved riding my bike in Northern California and Italy and had a great time (long ago) backpacking and working around China. It’s cool to travel around this country too. I like have plenty of time in the studio though, there’s no place like home.

RK: Do you have a hero? Who?
TL: My dad is my hero! (Ed. Note: As the father of a young girl, I was glad to read this!)

RK: Do you do things other than MTB? and/or What OTHER sports do you participate in? (Should've modified the question better! Sorry! But these are the actual questions as I sent them to her)
TL: I'm not actually much of a mountain biker, cause there’s not much off-road opportunity in NYC.
I’m mostly on the road, these days. Other sports? I like painting and making stuff.


RK: Who helped you the most, to get where you are in this sport/industry/craft?
TL: Dave Perry helped and helps me the most, with everything from critiquing my artwork to literally helping me move it to where it needs to go.


RK: Tell us about your favorite bike you've ever owned... is it your current bike?
TL: That’s a hard one. I don’t think I have an absolute favorite. There’s things I love about all my bikes.
Maybe the favorite one, is the one that got me into commuting in NYC. It was a big Schwinn Clunker 5.
Schwinn made it in 1978, I think it was their first mountain bike. It was a cantilever frame, with a derailleur and 5 gears, a drum brake, obese tires and heavy duty everything. It was awesome and ridiculous. I loved it. It weighed a ton. I stopped using it so much when I moved up to the third floor and got my first track bike. I sold the Schwinn years ago. Last time I saw it, there was a family of three on board.

Coffee & Cassette: An Interview With Kaiko Shimura

Don't recognize the name? Three words (four if you don't count hyphenation) should clear things up for you. Pedal-Strike. Cassette. Embrocation. Was that a glimmer of recognition I saw in your eye just then? These three seem to be Shimura's main forms of artistic expression right now.

...Oh, and being a lawyer. Yes, that's right, all this isn't enough for this Tokyo-raised, fixed-gear riding, art-making, bike-shop-loving cycling dynamo. There's also law school. At BC.

Oh, and did I mention she makes her own cycling caps? No, I'm not saying she can make a hat. I mean, she is an artist with a sewing machine. She makes cycling caps. The real thing. They sell them in bike shops. Where hip people buy their lockrings and stuff.

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I'd be doing you both a disservice if I didn't send you to her own writing, so please check out these links:

PEDAL-STRIKE BLOG
CASSETTE DESIGN



RK: What's Your Favorite Book? Why?
KS: I have too many! My two current favorites that I'd read over and over again are Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" and Bill Strickland's "Ten Points." Though the former's fiction and the latter non-fiction, both tell the kinds of stories that I think will always be relevant, wherever you are in life.

RK: What's your favorite place you've ever traveled?
KS: Yakushima in southern Japan (it inspired the forest in Princess Mononoke). It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and having lived most of my life in urban environments, it was incredibly surreal to hike through an ancient forest.

Miyajima near Hiroshima is a close second but for entirely different reasons.

RK: Do you have a hero? Who?
KS: Sakamoto Ryoma is an all-time favorite. He was a savvy political negotiator who was able to mediate an alliance between the Choshu and Sakamoto provinces in the 1800s. He also saw the importance of modernization for then-feudal Japan. What can I say, I'm kind of a history geek.
 
RK: Do you do things other than cycling? And/or what other sports do you participate in?
KS: ... another sport I've been obsessed with is horse-back riding. I was never very good at it but I can probably still ride half-decently. I still absolutely love horses, too.

RK: Who helped you the most, to get where you are in this sport/industry/craft?
KS: First, my parents for raising me to be an insane perfectionist and to never settle.

My sister for providing formidable sibling rivalry/competition and always raising the bar.

Mike Spriggs and Jeremy Dunn for believing in my abilities as a writer and (gently) pushing me to write more, ride more, and design more while still retaining my sanity. I couldn't have done half of what I did this summer without those two.

RK: Do you have any sort of religious background? What about now?
KS: I'm technically Shinto and Buddhist but that pretty much just means I go to temples and shrines once a year or so. Nothing too serious.

RK: Tell us about your favorite bike you've ever owned... is it your current bike?
KS: Well, I've owned three in my life and the first one was one I owned about 12 years ago. I can't choose between the Bianchi San Jose (the trusty, reliable, all-around hard-ass commuter) and the Dolan Pre Cursa (pretty, twitchy, light, fast track bike). In terms of aesthetics, it'll have to be the Dolan but the Bianchi has gotten me through a lot.

Always Something Cooking: An Interview With Dave Nice

I first heard about Fixie Dave in an article that Outside Magazine did about the Great Divide Race.  Perhaps you've heard of this endeavor?  You start at the US border with Canada, and you end at the US border with Mexico.  And you race down the spine of the nation- from one side the water goes East, and from the other, West.  The Divide.  Lots of people had their full-suspension, disk-braked bikes pictured.  And then there was Nice.  Rigid fixed gear mountain bike.  As in- if the wheel moves, the pedals are moving.  As in, one gear.

Was this guy nuts?  I liked him already. I could go on about what happened in that race, but if you're interested you can google Dave and the GDR.  The rest is in the questions below.  My Q is the bullet points, Dave's A is in bold.

• Why fixed?  Single speed I get.  Rigid, I understand.  But off-road fixed- why?

I really enjoy the connected feeling I have with the ground. I have to focus and it becomes almost a sort [of] meditation. 

• Tell us about your cooking credentials.  just how serious a chef ARE you?

Cooked on and off at a few places growing up.  Went to cooking school of the rockies in 2000 and spent a month or so in France cooking and have worked in a few other places on and off since then.... Too stressful for me now and I prefer to cook for friends and family and be more creative.   Pitched an idea to Food TV in 2005 for a camping/travel / adventure cooking show.   Never heard back.

• Top 3 favorite bikes you've ever owned.  Include at least one you no longer have.

Ti GROUND UP built by Eric Barr is current fav, Followed closely by my steel SIREN John Henry..... hummmm...-  then a Tie between SURLY Crosscheck and VASSAGO Jabberwocky.   Currently only own 2 bikes...

• As of today, 37 days until you ride the GDR, this time from South to North.  Why hasn't it worked before, and why is it going to this time?  :)

It hasn't worked for me before, due to freak injuries, getting sick, and having gear stolen  (outside of my control?). 

[In]  2009 I started south and got to my folks' place (their land in Colorado, the route goes right through it) well in 2009 i was solo TT'ing it and I recently had a friend named Anthony Sloan, that I felt was a very kindred spirit, die in his sleep.  And then I was guiding a ride on Little Creek Mesa near Hurricane, UT and had one of the guys I was riding with get separated from the rest of the group and we found Joe unconscious a few hours later- and then he stopped breathing and his best friend and I performed CPR for over an hour till SAR [Search & Rescue] showed up... He was pronounced dead by the Flight For Life medic... It was a lot to mentally deal with being alone on the bike,  so when riding by my folks place, the bike just steered itself to a warm bed and Mom and Grandma cooked meals.  As it was, I got very close to getting 1400 miles done in 12 days..

Feel much more mentally prepared than I've felt the previous attempts.   Outside of that I've trained better, and have my gear/setup more dialed.

Dave's pink Siren.

• I've often written about mens' relationship with pink, and was personally pleased when my daughter brought a little father's day questionaire home from preschool about me, saying that her dad's favorite color was pink.  I know at least one of your bikes is pink (the Siren)-- care to tackle the whole men and singlespeeds and pink thing?  Your thoughts?

Purely to provoke a reaction? ;)  Because you can't be slow riding a pink bike? I dunno its a color and i like it =)

• Back to GDR- how do you train for something so long?  Is it even possible?  Is it just a matter of making sure you're prepared, and the fitness coming along as the "race" happens?  How much is physical endurance even a part of this?  Or is it all mental?

Ummm get this one a lot.... Ride A lot ;P

I think it was one of the Brit finishers who said his way of knowing he was ready for the divide was to do back to back gravel hundies [100 mile rides] on the weekend and have a spring in his step at work Monday... I think that's a good way of telling other then I say camp out all those nights as well...

Not owning a car helps tons, i think, as well...

• I know you have endless time to think on the GDR- what are you thinking about while you're out there?

I think a better question is what do I NOT think about?

• What do you NOT think about, then?  

I try not to think about food or how much it hurts.

•  Why South to North   (the traditional race is from Canada to Mexico)?

More light , less snow, and less crowd at the start.... also I like the desert start 

• Finally, do you ever get 'rider's block'?  

Not really sometimes iI don't wanna go all day but rarely do i ever not wanna be on a bike

 

 

Nontrager!

Check THIS out.  It's a bike at the Museum of Mountain Bike Art & Technology.  But more than a bike, it's a great story of small neighbor framebuilders working together as corporate buyouts were going on. Kinda one of those art triumphs over commerce things.

It should be added to the above that Keith Bontrager has always said that he was nothing but happy about being bought out by Trek, by having the financial burden off of himself, and also about the kinds of power working with Trek brings.  If I may paraphrase, he said that putting wheels under Lance Armstrong in the Tour De France is not a little thing.  (he helped design Lance's race wheels...)  So appreciate the above link, but certainly don't feel sorry for Bontrager the man or the brand, or feel like Trek is some corporate giant stepping on the little guy.  I think it's pretty small-minded to hate on Trek.  They do good things and have been generous on a personal level to me, and on a large level to good organizations like IMBA.

Collected Cellphone Images That Need To Get Off My Phone!

My kind of Ferrous Wheels.  From a secret trail I'm not at liberty to divulge...

Seen at Richardson's...

found in the shop...