China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Jiangsu TV Show with Li Ai and Peng Yu

Januar 11th, 2011

Jiangsu TV station invited me to go to Nanjing to perform my bike tricks for a TV show. The hosts of the show were Li Ai (李艾) and Peng Yu (彭宇).

Ines Brunn with Li Ai and Peng Yu

The show was recorded and will be broad casted next month. I am looking forward to watching it. Here is a picture of the talented host Li Ai and me after the show:

Li Ai and Ines after the TV show recording

My friend Berta Tilmantaite from Lithuania who is studying photo journalism came with me to film my tricks for her short film project. You can see some of her work on her vimeo channel. She also took some amazing pictures. I only saw a few of them but as always I love how she captures the atmosphere extremely well.

This following picture is me falling asleep after receiving the show outline in Chinese late at night and then trying to translate and understand what I need to do or say on the TV show which took me till 2am and then having to get up at 5am for the early morning flight to Nanjing. And when we arrived at the TV station studio somehow nobody took care of us so I just fell asleep in the make up room. Even the make up girls on the other side were bored too.

Pre-Show Atmosphere

And this is me after a hectic „there is no time for you to get any food for lunch“ and „get your make up on quickly“ concentrating and trying out what kind of tricks I can do on my bicycle in the TV studio before the show started.

Concentrated Practice

Posted in China, Fixed Gear, Media, Performers | 1 Comment »

First Beijing FG Ride 2011

Januar 10th, 2011

Thanks to Mitchell we organized a fixed gear bike ride on a freezing cold Monday night. I mean it was below zero in teh daytime and of course even more below zero at night. It is the first ride of the year 2011 of the Beijing fixed gear crew. I was thinking that maybe only 5 people would show up. But no! We were in the end 12 people that cycled with us and most of them on nice Natooke bikes.

Tom asked me to point out that Garth only sand papered half of his handlebar and came on our ride with a half black half silver bullhorn. That is barely recognizable due to the dim light on this picture:

Garth with 2 colored handlebar

Brad and Renfei also came along on the ride.

Beijing Fixed Gear Riders

We followed Mitchell’s suggestion to ride to the Beijing 798 art district. As always I chose the path all the way along the canal as it is off the main roads and has less cars.It would be cool if it would be for bikes only though…

Cycling along a canal in Beijing City

It was great to have 12 rider come out on their fixed gear bikes. In Dashanzi 798 we went to a statue of a fat man and took a picture for those who did not ride with us.

Beijing FG Night Ride Crew

Garth then led us on a tour around the closed art galleries till we got surrounded by wolves. I could just move my foot fast enough away.

Wolf biting a fixed gear bike pedal

I uploaded all my pictures onto a web album. Go here to check out more pictures with the wolves.

Also Garth’s saddle seemed to be tasty. But we could get it back without too much damage.

Wolf biting in a fixed gear bike saddle

Dupree helped us get the wolves away from us. Amazing how he knows how to ride such wild and vicious animals.

Dupree riding a wolf

But he did decide to switch back to his bike and go for dinner with us. Good that post bike Steve came to the ride as he knows the area really well and showed a small but tasty restaurant that had Shanxi style noodles served from a gigantic huge pot. Sorry I did not take a picture of it. But I did take a picture of our colorful unique bikes.

Fixed Gear Bikes in Beijing

Natooke Flying Banana Bikes resting after a Ride

After the dinner we took a group photo of the 8 guys and 4 girls that were tough enough to ride on such a cold night.

Fixed Gear Night Bike Ride Crew

Posted in Beijing, China, Cycling, Fixed Gear | 1 Comment »

Natooke Bike with Basket

Januar 10th, 2011

This is a really cool handlebar basket. It is done by Copenhagen parts. Our customer wanted us to build up a beautiful Flying Banana fixed gear bike with this special handlebar from Denmark.

Natooke Bike with Cool Basket

It is one piece handlebar together with basket. He wanted the basket in white but could only get it in silver. Even in silver I think it looks amazing together with the white bicycle.

Handlebar Basket in one Piece

I trust the design to be good. Even though the rim of the basket seems very low. But I assume it rides well. If more people are interested I might import them.

Daenish Design Handlebar

Bruce from Beijing Radio came to the shop today and interviewed me regarding bikes and cycling in Beijing. He will make 2 or 3 features out of it. Next Monday Jan 17th there will be an interactive radio show about cycling safety from 2-3pm and again from 6-7pm. Go to th Radio Beijing website and listen along.

Posted in Beijing, China, Fixed Gear, Natooke | 1 Comment »

Natooke Fixie and Chinese Twitter

Januar 9th, 2011

Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home today. But Dupree helped me take a picture of the one bike that was picked up today. She has selected cool Wellgo pedals changing the color from light blue in artificial light to purple matching her tires when outdoors.

Fixed Gear Bike from Natooke

This evening I went for a nice relaxing foot massage with my friend Bijan. We chatted forever after the massage. It was nice to see him after such a long time.

Dupree has been so good posting something on our Natooke Chinese twitter site so that he received the 100 days batch (award) for posting 100 days in a row! If you are signed up please follow our tweets!

Posted in Beijing, China, Fixed Gear, Natooke | 1 Comment »

A Day in the Store

Januar 8th, 2011

Today was a nice day in the store. It was nice to have Dupree and Master Liu as well as Fred now working at Natooke. We had quite a few things to do with some minor annoying things that took much longer than expected.

One customer brought us a handlebar he had bought in Europe and wants installed on his bike. It is a basket integrated in a handlebar. I love what is written on the box explaining what you could for example fit inside that basket. Here a picture of it.

What you can fit in a Handlebar-basket

Fred helped us work on 2 bikes. We all stayed quite long and Dupree suggested to all have dinner together to celebrate my return. Of course I accepted. And I was happy we went to a Beijing style hotpot restaurant on Ghost street. We ordered thin lamb meat and different thin lamb meat and another kind of thinlamb meat some other dishes of lamb meat. 🙂 That was a cool Natooke dinner!

Beijing Style Hotpot

Posted in Beijing, Natooke | 1 Comment »

Trick Bike of Mitchell

Januar 7th, 2011

It is nice to have such a sunny day despite the cold. But the shop was quite chilly so I decided to turn on the air conditioning even though t is such an electricity sucker. At least now I do not have frozen fingers while typing.

Mitchell had dropped off his Natooke fixed gear bike yesterday wanting to have the crank changed, the thin classy pedals with steel cages and leather double strap changed to nylon platform pedals with a wide trickster strap with velcro. He also wanted to change his tires from the 700x23c to the Vittoria Randonneur Cross tire 700x28c. These changes give his bike a whole new look.

New Trickster Fixie

Mitchell and his Natooke Fixed Gear Bike

I also like the choice of spoke cards. One is from our fixed gear revolution II event August 2010, one is from my friend Arnon that I brought back from Israel, and another is from my friend Tomity-san from Japan that Tomity-san gave me last year. 🙂

Cool spoke cards in Fixie Wheel

Posted in Beijing, Fixed Gear, Natooke | Comments Closed

Natooke Bikes and Scam

Januar 6th, 2011

I am happy to be back in my bike shop in Beijing. Dupree had a hard time taking care of the shop alone, especially because he caught a cold. He is still not feeling totally well yet. He had to do 2 TV interviews and talk about our shop and fixed gear bikes in China. One was the Hebei TV station, the otehr was the Liaoning TV station that brought a lot of famous people to the shop and filmed him while he was building up the a bike for a customer. I am looking forward to seeing those TV shows.

He took some pictures of the bikes he built up during my vacation. I like this Flying Banana with the purple Oury grips matching the platform pedals and the light green KMC chain matching the fixed gear hubs and the cool Taiwanese Duro tires:

Cool Flying Banana Fixed Gear Bike

Cool green and purple color combinations

And this is a more classic dark colored aluminum fixed gear bike that a customer built up together with Dupree.

Natooke aluminum Fixie

Classic Style Dark Fixed Gear Bike

And here is a nice one of my friend Lao Zhou who can ride a unicycle and now wants to learn some tricks on a fixed gear bike.

Red Trick Fixie for Lao Zhou

Fixed Gear Bicycle for Playing Around

And Dupree told me about a scam around our Natooke bike shop!!! He said a guy came in with a cheap fixed gear bike and wanted him to change something on it. The guy said this is a Natooke bike. Dupree said he is 100% sure that we never had such a shitty frame and those cheap parts. The guy said he did not personally buy it in the shop but his friend recommended to contact some guy via the Chinese instant messaging system QQ. That guy supposedly can get the good Natooke bikes at 2000.-RMB. So the guy that walked into our shop actually thought he was buying a Natooke bike and saving a lot of money. The guy doing the scam had handed over the bike near the Lama Temple to the guy buying it claiming that he just got it from the Natooke shop! This is outrageous! There is a Chinese guy selling shitty fixed gear bikes and claiming they are from Natooke!!! If someone claims he is selling you a bike from Natooke feel free to contact us and ask us if t is actually a bike from us. Our shop number is 010-8402 6925. DO NOT BE TRICKED BY SUCH A SCAM!

On the positive side that means that people trust us for good quality. And we are getting famous. Let’s see what the next scam will be or how many other people will be fooled by this gangster.

Posted in Beijing, China, Cycling, Fixed Gear, Natooke | 1 Comment »

Natooke Store listed on PCPOP

Januar 6th, 2011

My plane had just barely landed when I received a call from TimeOut. An editor from TimeOut wanted a short interview about our fixed gear bike club. She said it will be published in the February edition.

Today we found that we are listed on a website called PCPOP. They must have come to our shop in September 2010 looking at the pictures they uploaded. Here is the link to the full article. They wrote very detailed in Chinese about our store in Beijing and took nice pictures. Here are some:

Natooke Store from the Entrance

Bicycle and Juggling Shop Natooke

Fixed Gear Bicycle Shop in China

The best Bike Shop in China

Media in the Entrance of the Natooke shop

Posted in Beijing, China, Fixed Gear, Media, Natooke | 1 Comment »

Munich Airport

Januar 5th, 2011

I am on my way back to Beijing. Unfortunately I had a very stupid flight connection and had a 12 hour stopover in Munich. Here is a picture of the airport around sunrise.

Munich Airport around sunrise

Posted in Germany | 1 Comment »

Family Day on Weissensee

Januar 4th, 2011

This morning I got up early even though we did not go skiing. I saw that there were some clouds. When my mother got up she said it looks like the sun is hardly out and I told her that it is slightly cloudy. When we turned on the radio they mentioned the today will be a partial eclipse of the sun. And then finally someone said it is almost over. I rushed to the window and saw the last bits of it. Really nice! If I would have known earlier then we probably could have seen the 80% coverage that had been visible in southern Austria. Well the next full eclipse of the sun visible in Austria will be in 80 years.

The past few days have been very cold which has made very beautiful ice roses grow. I have not seen so many of these. They look almost like a coral reefs made out of ice.

Ice Crystals forming a Reef

We took a walk down to the bigger village. Here is a picture of my mother with the Gailtal valley in the background.

The Gailtal and my Mother

The family went together for a nice local meal at a restaurant a few villages away. They forgot to give me a side dish salad so then we got a wheat beer for free. And I had to realize that coke is more expensive than really good beer. We then drove to the Weissensee, a big lake of Carinthia that is frozen in winter.

Family Picture at the Weissensee

It is very romantic there. They have sleighs pulled by horses running around on the frozen lake. They are really on to lake!

Horse Sleighs on Weissensee in Austria

We heard that we can just rent ice skates at the sport shop on the northern coast of the lake. But as my mother gave me her ice skates we only needed to rent skates for Julien.When we entered the sport store we saw a huge empty shelf and the lady said she has only 1 last pair for rent but they are size 39. She said we could take a seat with teh others and wait for ice skates to be returned. As the sunwas about to set soon behind the mountain ridges we did not want to wait. So Julien and my parents walked on and around the lake.

Walking on the frozen Lake

While I went for a quick spin on ice skates on the 4.2km long loop. That was really nice.

Ines Brunn ice skating on the Weissensee

The rest of the evening was packing suitcases and having a nice last dinner. It was such a great relaxing holiday. And it was so nice to spend so much time with my parents. Looking forward to them coming to Beijing in April this year!

Posted in Austria, Outdoors | 1 Comment »