China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Do you want to find a cool fixed gear bike? Or do you want to have something beautiful put together just for you? This is the place you have to go:

Velo Culture Bike Shop
in Birds Rock, 5717 La Jolla Blvd. Phone: +1-858-454-0398
http://www.myspace.com/veloculture

They have a lot of frames and fixed gear bikes.

It is a cool shop with super people: They are fixed gear experts and can get you about anything you want.

And they are fun to hang out with. So also friends drop by and spend time in the shop or on the backyard bike trick area (needs to be paved) playing around on different bikes.

But be careful: If you go to the shop you might end up there for a few hour so go there early enough 🙂 Or you might end up buying a bike…

Some more pictures are on: flickr

It is so cool that there is such a fixed gear bike scene in San Diego. Every Thursday is the E.Vill Doers get together and ride. If you have a fixed gear bike just come to the parking lot on 8th Street and Market Street at 7pm. Check it out on www.sdfixed.com

As I was in town I joined tonight. I did not yet have a track bike, just my trick bike so they did not ride very far nor fast. We played around with the bikes. Many people wanted to try my trick bike and as an exchange I tried out their tack bikes. It was a very fun evening. I took quite a few pictures which I uploaded to flickr

At the ocean front we did some balancing (nobody fell in):

And just some riding around:

Some guys did cool skids (that is what you call the technique of stopping a fixed gear bike with your legs only. Most fixed gear bikes do not have a hand brake) but I failed to shoot nice pics. Here is one picture of a skid:

…and some last crazy tricks before we went to the Neighborhoor:

The best Christmas surprise was an email I received with the title „sponsorship“. I moved it to the spam folder because I did not want some blue pills or some extra inches free of charge. Luckily that person had also filled out the contact form on my homepage with the same title „sponsorship“. I was surprised: A person called Allyson Vought was asking if I would be interested in getting a track bike frame sponsored. Of course! I had only been searching for about 8 months and wanted nothing more badly then a fixed gear track bike. Of course I would be interested to get a frame free of charge!

So I started communicating with Allyson to find out that she is not only the importer of high end bikes from companies like Koga-Miyata and Corima but moreover a extremely amazing woman. She is over 50 and still rides track bike races in the velodrome. And not just a bit, she is really good and really fast. She is an idol showing that you can still achieve outstanding records and push the limits when most people just sit down and say with a sigh „…oh I am too old for that“. I want to stay physically fit till I die. That is my goal.

Allyson Vought is also an artist and does a lot of Walt Disney related artwork. And she used to fly formations and do many other interesting things. But here is a picture of the Corima track bike frame that she gave to me free of charge. I still can’t believe it. Thank you so much Ally!