The proof of this will be visible on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th June as thousands of cyclists are expected to ride naked through the streets of London, Brighton, Manchester, York and Southampton.
Now in its fourth year, the World Naked Bike Ride takes place in over 50 locations around the world. The ride is an environmental demonstration against oil dependency and is also a celebration of cycling and the human body.
Here’s a (rather popular) video of last year’s London ride:
Riding under the slogan “real rights for bikes”, participants cycle naked to “highlight their vulnerability on city streets and draw attention to the destructive effects of car culture.”
Riders are encouraged to go ““as bare as you dare”.”
The London event is likely to attract more than 1,000 riders, setting a new record for naked protest. Last yearÂ’ over 800 naked or semi-dressed cyclists rode through the streets of the capital for two hours. Debut rides in Brighton, York and Manchester last year were attended by 160, 60 and 30 riders respectively.
Rides in Manchester, York and Southampton will take place the day before the London ride, on the evening of Friday 8th June. The Brighton and Hove ride starts on the morning of Saturday 9th June at 10am.
Nude cyclist Emma Jackson said: “The ride is fun, but has a serious side as well. Unless we change the way we think about transport and start calling on the government to do the same, I’ll be too late. It’s up to each and every one of us to take responsibility, get on our bikes and call for real, practical action on climate change.”
Read the rest of "Cycling in the UK is in rude health"...
If Giro wants a real-life good news story about the protective capabilities of its products, here’s one on a plate.
Thanks to a news story fed to US media outlets by the Associated Press, a ‘helmet-saved-my-life’ story to beat all others is currently appearing in American regional newspapers.
Ryan Lipscomb a graduate student in medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was riding down a bike path in Madison on Friday afternoon when he was hit by a truck at an intersection.
Lipscomb said the truck rolled over his head. There was no witness to this.
Lipscomb told journalists:
“I didn’t see [the truck] coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head. It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head.”
His Giro helmet is shown to be cracked in the picture here but none of the journalists covering the story have asked the obvious question: how could an extremely heavy truck run over a lightweight helmet without crushing it completely. Ditto for the brainbox within.
Check out this children’s TV video on how bicycle helmets are made:
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And here’s another video, from an American news channel, on why bicycle helmet legislation might not be such a good idea…because of risk homeostasis:
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Read the rest of "Helmet said to protect cyclist in truck smash"...
Those who registered on Climb By Bike have now been emailed the links to the KMZ files and can ‘fly’ through all of the 2007 Tour de France stages, including the kick-off prologue in London on July 7th.
Register now and you can get the files, too. So cool!
The Google Earth files are so detailed – and future-facing - you can even see Floyd Landis, smiling, and jumping up and down on the career of Dick Pound.
Read the rest of "Climb By Bike releases KMZ files for TdF"...
The Floyd Landis vs USADA arbitration case starts today in California. Read my BikeBiz.com story for some background. Want to watch the proceedings at the end of each day? Floyd Landis is paying $200 for a daily video feed. Go grab it from Floydlandis.com. The passwords change each day.
In the meantime, check out these two videos. The first is a polished production from the Floyd Fairness Fund. The second is the “offending” stage 17 from last year’s Tour de France. Tour commentator Phil Liggett didn’t think the Landis performance was “super-human”, he and fellow commentator Paul Sherwen berated the following pack for letting Landis get so far ahead on such a hot day.
Read the rest of "Floyd Landis hearing: watch it (nearly) live!"...
Most helmet-cam videos are dull as dishwater, even ones on super-exciting singletrack or doing Freeride ramp jumps. But the one below by ‘Shabboleth’ is a lot of fun.
It’s an entrant into a documentary shorts competition run by Channel 4 of the UK. ‘Shabboleth’ takes us on his daily cycle commute in rural Cornwall, from Truro to Falmouth.
Parts of his route are on busy roads and he talks us through the close shaves he has with HGVs and speeding cars. But he also meanders along plenty of country lanes, all the while entertaining with his comments. The audio is surprisingly good for a helmet-cam.
Here are some ‘rushes’ from the IMAX movie with the production name of Brainpower but which morphed into Wired to Win when it was released to IMAX cinemas last year.
The YouTube footage is just a couple of minutes, there’s nine minutes on the .
The IMAX movie, as you’d expect, is larger than life and truly stunning. But it was distributed much later than first billed. Following the initial shooting in 2003 there had to be an extensive reshooting of scenes to accommodate the removal of Tyler Hamilton from the movie.
At the time Hamilton was embroiled in a drugs hearing, which he sadly later lost. Had he embarked on the same course of action as Floyd Landis - request for an open hearing, wiki-style posting of all hearing evidence on his website so experts could crawl all over it - the outcome may have been different. Well, perhaps not the outcome because Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of "Best Tour de France footage ever filmed?"...
In the style of the Freeriders from the Qashqai Challenge vids below, here’s a (virtual) high five to all the new visitors to Quickrelease.tv.
There’s been a surge of newcomers since Thursday last week. First of all there were 1400+ visitors sent here to read the penile saddle testing article. Thanks, then, to Ed Pavelka and the weekly email newsletter of Roadbikerider.com. And the surge became a flood on Sunday and Monday thanks to the videos of the .
Want to watch more bike vids? There are loaded up to YouTube. It’s a mixed bag, from Freeride to bicycle advocacy, and from through to audio/pix about the ongoing Floyd Landis case.
And if you like what you see, why not get the hi-res vids sent to your Mac or PC via iTunes? YouTube is OK but the resolution isn’t always brilliant. The is loaded with the most recent vids and all will play in hi-res on your video iPod or syncronised to your plasma screen via Apple TV.
Here’s the Quickrelease.tv video from the Nissan Qashqai Urban Challenge Freeride Event held on 4-5th May in Newcastle upon Tyne. The YouTube vid is lo-res, stream the hi-res vodcast version from to your video iPod.
The two-day event was won by Darren ‘Bearclaw’ Berrecloth of Canada. He won 8000 Euros in the process and will be buying a boat with his winnings.
Twenty five invited riders took part in the event - including Kyle Strait, Andreu Lacondeguy, Gee Atherton (who knew he could 360?) and Christopher Hatton - and there were an estimated 10,000 spectators thronging Times Square, the central piazza at the Centre for Life.
Check out the video for Hatton’s attempted 360-tailwhip off of the drop, and his run down the ramp, nearly wiping me out…
Berrecloth won by spinning off the start ramp, tailwhipping the step-up and doing a 360 off the satellite dish straight into a 360-table off the final ramp, close to the double-helix statue.
1. Darren Berrecloth
2. Paul Basagoitia
3. Kyle Strait
4. Ben Boyko
5. Christopher Hatton
6. Grant Fielder
7. Amir Kabbani
8. Greg Watts
9. Gee Atherton
10.Andreu Lacondeguy
11.Brandon Semenuk
12.Lance McDermott
Read the rest of "Bearclaw to buy boat with Qashqai cash"...
Here’s a quick bit of footage from today’s Urban Freeride event in Newcastle upon Tyne. I’ll cut together a longer piece for Monday. The YouTube vid is lo-res, sign up and subscribe to get the hi-res version for video iPods and Apple TVs .
The Nissan Quashqai microsite will have some great footage online soon. The company is paying big bucks for an outdoor broadcast company to video what Nissan is billing as “first international Pan-European Urban Freeride Competition with the largest prize fund to date.”
However, there’s some bad news. US rider was taken to hospital today after falling from a ladder bridge. He injured his back, and fellow star riders Darren Berrecloth and Cam McCaul went with Aaron to hospital. The 28-year old compressed his spine and chipped his L1 vertebrae.
Berrecloth told Quickrelease.tv: “Newcastle General hospital has one of the best spine surgeons in the country so Aaron lucked out in that respect.”
UPDATE (Weds, 9th May):Statement from Cannondale:
After a freak accident during the first stop of the QashQui event in Newcastle, England. Aaron was riding a ladder bridge, when his rear tire slipped off and he fell 8 feet down landing on his tailbone. The impact caused a compression of his L1 vertebrae. After several X-Rays doctors to not foresee ANY permanent damage and expect Aaron to make a complete recovery within 6 months.
We spoke to Aaron this morning from his hospital bed where he had high spirits while resting comfortably. When asked about the crash Aaron stated it was a total freak accident. “I was riding a wide bridge and my rear wheel just slipped off. Luckily the way I landed there will be no long term effects and doctors are expecting a 100% recovery.”
Aaron went on to praise all of his sponsors for their continued support at a very difficult time. “I have the best sponsors in the world, their support gives me peace of mind and encouragement to continue to do what I love so much.
Everyone at Cannondale wishes Aaron a speedy and healthy recovery!
