Today a fan came. He said he watched my TED speech and he is now my fan. Then we took a picture together.
He then asked me to sign on the backside of a picture of a girl and put it back in his wallet.
Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Fan Picture
Freitag, Mai 14th, 2010NyK Gookbye Dinner
Donnerstag, Mai 13th, 2010Today we finished another pink aluminum urban Natooke track bike for a customer. This one for Hao does not look bad either.
Today was the goodbye dinner for Nico & Katiushka before they leave for their 20 day bicycle Tour de Chine. We had it at in the Dim Sum place near the Ditan Park.
As they are going back to New York after their bike ride they distributed their last belongings like this flashy hat/lamp.
Then we went to my shop as Nico still did not have a helmet and I had a huge one that I donated to him. Doesn’t he look really fast with it. And now having a helmet he thinks he can ride bike with one eye closed.
Katiushka had the feeling her bottom bracket was loose so Nico did the final adjustment with love.
And then they were as merry as ever.
As I still cannot smell Julien convinced me to drink some beer. So here a unique and never seen before picture:
Elaine’s Conversion and Other Bikes
Mittwoch, Mai 12th, 2010Yeah, finally! Elaine finished to convert her bicycle to fixed gear.
That was after a lot of trouble. Especially with the bottom bracket. But with Fede’s great idea we did finally manage to get that fixed. And also things like the seat post that had this very special size of 25.6 mm so that the more typical 25.4 mm would just be too small. The frame is an old steel road bike frame made by the American company Ross. Elaine got it from her good friend in New York City that wanted to throw it away. In memory of her friend and husband she is now calling it the „Hot Sash“. And it is beautiful.
Elaine wrote her own impressions here.
Many customers come to my Natooke shop and are overwhelmed by the fact that they can chose their own colors and parts for their own very unique bike. Dong Dong is one of them but I think she is coming closer to finding what she wants. Here is what she is thinking of because it reminds her of a special tree in Beijing that currently has that green color and such pink blossoms:
Today we also finished a bike for Ran. He would have likes a different color frame, but we are out of cheap frames so this pink one was the only option. But I think with the blue and black and white it actually looks more male.
Beijing TV Show about Fixed Gear Bikes
Dienstag, Mai 11th, 2010Elaine came and continued to work on her nice road bike from the USA. Today the main issue for converting it was the bottom bracket. The cartridge style bottom bracket just did not want to fit inside. Elaine was already feeling a bit down at this point:
My cycling friend from Chile is preparing for his 20 day bicycle trip in South China. He came the store today to show me his bike (which he converted from fixed gear back to multispeed road bike) with the paniers for the trip.
And then we had the Beijing TV come, Guo Yan and a cameraman. This time it was 北京电视台生活节目: 生活面对面编导. They wanted to do a feature on fixed gear bikes, what they are about, why people ride them and how to ride.
So some of the Beijing fixed gear group came but had to wait for a while until Guo Yan finished interviewing me.
Then we rode to the Olympic village and the TV lady and cameraman drove there by car. We cyclists arrived so much earlier then them. By the time they came it was already dark and not so good for filming.
Then Guo Yan decided to try out my track bicycle with a huge crowd of Chinese watching.
After that we went for dinner back in the city.
And guess who also came to have food in the same restaurant: Cui Jian. The founder of rock music in China! He is the guy in white hiding on this picture.
Goldsprints at Ditan Folk Music Festival
Sonntag, Mai 9th, 2010Today we packed up all the equipment for the goldsprints bicycle race and loaded it onto our Natooke tricycle.
Jib cycled with us on a unicycle getting even more attention than the foreigner on a tricycle.
It was a beautiful day today to be in the Ditan park of Beijing and set up our stationary bicycle race on my fixed gear bikes. This was already the second day of the annual Folk music festival and Beijing’s best folk rock music bands were playing on this sunny Sunday.
This is already the third time that we are organizing a goldsprints event in Beijing. And this is also the third event in all of China as we STC are the first ones to organize these fun bike races in the kingdom of bicycles. We call it JisuPK which means roughly high speed challenge and gets the Chinese interested.
I have more pictures of today’s goldsprints event here. I was happy to see the Chinese having fun at this despite the fact that it is a bicycle 😉
And it was even better to see Chinese woman race and ride hard and fast. Go girls go!
Tianjin TV „China Right Here“ Show Environmental Topic: Ines Brunn – the „Fairy on Wheels“
Sonntag, Mai 9th, 2010The Tianjin TV documentary about my thoughts to a greener Beijing and blue sky that was broadcasted last year is now online. You can watch the full 30 minute film at this link: 单车天使 Fairy on the Wheels – Ines Brunn 伊泉. It shows my participation in the 2008 Greening the Beige event with my bicycle performance, how I cycle everywhere in all kinds of clothes, and how we started the Beijing fixed gear group. As well as my efforts to promote cycling for a better environment and blue Beijing sky.
一个德国女孩，一段绿色环保的旅程。伊泉，这位世界一流通信测试仪表公司驻亚太区的经理，已在北京骑行4年的她，无论是街头、巷尾，还是剧场、舞台。风驰电掣的身影，交错转动的车轮。这个人们眼中异样的女孩，脚踏着车轮，追逐着梦想—永恒绿色的主题。她和她的自行车就犹如一个符号，述说着新旧的故事，也承载着不断的希望。
Unrelated but interesting: Bobby Spokes made a comment on a South China Morning Post newspaper letter claiming that bikes are in the way of Porsche and Ferrari drivers in Hong Kong. He wrote: „You can throw a bit of science in. Cycling can take a quarter off a person’s perceived age and a third off the emotional and metabolic age. …“. I did not know that. And I could not find any scientific evidence yet. But that is probably why everybody thinks I am so young. You should cycle more too 🙂 I also found an article in China daily about cycling in Beijing.
Fixed Gear Bike and BBQ Party
Samstag, Mai 8th, 2010Today I finished a fixed gear bike for Tang Zheng. It was the very last orange frame I had in the Natooke shop.
In the evening there was a barbecue party at a friend’s palce who has a nice rooftop apartment with a beautiful view of all of the Beijing central business district (CBD). But what did it do? It started raining and we went inside where most people joined in a jam session. This is a picture taken by Maika.
New Look of White Beauty Bike
Samstag, Mai 8th, 2010And here is a picture of the white beauty Flying Banana fixed gear bicycle with a riser bar and temporary saddle. Isn’t it really beautiful?
STC Friday Light Ride
Freitag, Mai 7th, 2010We usually have a bike ride on the last Friday of the month. But because last week was not possible. Shannon and I organized the monthly STC ride on this Friday night. It is called Friday Light Ride because it A, is an easy ride for any person on whatever kind of bike and B, we encourage people to use lights which makes the group stand out from any other cyclist or electric bike person.
The weather tonight was perfect for an evening bicycle ride through the city. We met up at the drum and bell tower with the other cyclists.
Then we rode towards the West and along the shore of the West lake and then towards the South to the Financial district.
Most people said they did not know about the Financial street called Jinrong Jie. It has extended in the past years with more and more glass/metal high rises. It is a nice place to ride along during the evening. Then we headed down the Chang’an Jie. And took some pictures.
We had quite a big group and except for one flat tire we all had a great ride.We organize these Friday Light Rides to show people how easy it is to get around town even at the 7pm rush hour time. We hope that more people chose the bike rather than taking a car or taxi.
We then went to a small courtyard restaurant called Hao Di in Huangchenggenbei hutong having barbecued things like lamb skewers, chicken wings, mushrooms, seafood and others. It was great fun for those cyclists who came to have dinner with us.
After the dinner a smaller group went to have ice cream, mainly the foreigners. The Chinese find it funny that foreigners like to have something sweet after dinner. And then I went to meet some friends in Nanluoguxiang hutong in the Salud bar where we got discounted drinks. What a perfect day (it had started with the 5:30 am 130 km bike ride).
Early Morning Miaofengshan Road Bike Ride
Freitag, Mai 7th, 2010Shannon Ricky and I said we meet for an early morning road bike ride all the way up North-West to Miaofeng Mountain. We had a 5:30 am meeting point just at the famous Beijing Hotel. I had luck because I found an electric bike rider that was riding at 30 km/h that I could draft behind all the way to the meeting point. Shortly before our meeting point I noticed a road cyclist standing on the sidewalk. My first thought was “great to see Chinese people in lycra this early on a weekday”. My second thought was “was that maybe Shannon? Maybe he does not know where the Beijing Hotel is”. And then by the time I thought my 3rd thought I was almost at the meeting point. Shannon came after a while and was unhappy that I passed him without stopping to help with his flat tire. Both me and Ricky gave him our pumps. Mine is the kind where you need to turn the inside of the head around if you switch from American to French valves. Well it is probably not the best thing to do early in the morning standing right over a sewage grid. Well the obvious happened, I dropped the pump head and it nicely rolled into the slits and dropped into the sewage water.
After a long flat ride as a peloton I suddenly hit a rock a got a pinch flat. Now that my pump had no head anymore and Ricky’s wasn’t working Shannon helped me pump up the new inner tube. But with his pump he broke my inner tube valve. So I took off the new now broken tube and patched the original inner tube and put it back. Then it was not far to the foot of the Miaofengshan where we split up so that each of us could try to beat their own best time. I was already feeling quite tired so I only did the 13km uphill ride from the gate to the village.
Shannon and Richy continued the additional 6 km continuous uphill to the temple at the top. It was quite windy on the mountain and I was happy when they both came back.
As we approached Beijing city the traffic started getting worse and worse. And what I find annoying is all the cars parked and driving in the bike lane. Like here, this picture shows a pure bike lane, but it has people parked on the left and right side plus cars riding in the center. Where should the cyclists ride their bike?
Or here in this picture the white line on the left divides the car lane from the bike lane. But the cars are all jammed up and standing in the bicycle path. No cyclist can ride through this mess. So it was even worse that after today’s 130km bike ride that Shannon insisted that we try out the route for tonight’s STC ride and we had to squeeze ourselves through the city traffic jams.
