London Singlespeed Society

Winston writes asking for a shameless plug, and here it is:

Rollapaluza XI – Kingspin – is taking place on Friday 8th August at the (rather excellent) Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, WC1.  £7.50 entry with DJs, a bar until 3am, cut price bowling, food and underground stewarded bike parking.  Better polish up those Deep Vs and proofide that Swallow Classic lest the stewards should look upon your ride in shame.

For those actually interested in the racing, qualification is between 7-9pm with individual knockout and team rounds continuing until 1am.  There are £2000 worth of prizes to be won including goodies from Swrve, Madison and Condor.

For those who have no idea what this is all about, it’s basically like going on a bike machine in the gym, but while competing against a bunch of couriers zoned out on adrenalin, angry commuters and gurning roadies with faces transformed into rictus grins of fear and aggression with lots of drinking, shouting, cheering and loud music going on around you.  The riders sprint for what would be 500m at speeds of over 50mph so each round is quickly over.  Photos and videos of past events are available on the Rollapaluza website.

Tickets for Kingspin can be purchased online or bought on the door.

This video on creating a mobile phone activated stun gun was posted as a follow up to the anti-theft Instructable. It works by attaching the stun gun battery connectors to the phone’s vibrate function thus triggering the shock by calling the phone.

The inventor (titter ye not, he’s only naked from the waist up) proposes waiting until your bike is stolen before giving the thief a little more than he bargained for (presumably first waiting for him to get stuck at traffic lights and put his foot down for maximum effect).  

I’d take it a little further and try to hook it up to something with a motion sensor – an iPhone or the like should do the trick, that way you can shock the perp automatically and get it to text you when the bike stops moving.

Of course, anyone nudging your bike while it’s locked up would get shocked too, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

Instructables have an article up on how to keep your bike from being stolen.

I am a particular fan of steps 9 and 10:

Step 9 – Trying to make your bike unridable

Fixed gear riders advocate fixed gear bicycles as a method of this, that they are somehow more secure because they are harder to ride. They are forgetting that due to the unbearable popularity of fixed gear bikes, they have become incredibly attractive targets for theft. 

The accompanying picture is of a Bianchi Douchebag Pista with chopped flat bars. The author says:

I love the reflectors on the pedals, by the way.  Nice, really nice.

Step 10 advocates ratting your bike to make it look ugly.

even major bike manufacturers have taken to making intensionally ugly bicycles. Please, a bicycle should be a thing of beauty, make the madness stop. 

The accompanying picture?  A particularly nasty specimen of the Langster, London Edition.

Pretty spot on if you ask me.

So while finding distractions from Actually Setting Up A Business, I’ve discovered Yehuda Moon, an online cartoon about a couple of guys who run a small bike shop in the middle of a small town in the U.S. – some amusing stuff from both sides of the counter:

Worth a look.