A six minute view Trans American bike route

The possibilities of ultralight touring are affecting me in strange ways since I finished putting together my new frame bag system.



I can only describe it as an itch that I haven't been able to scratch due a nasty cold made all that much worse by the fact that it's snowing heavily out today and I soooo love to ride in the snow.

In fact there's a little voice in my head saying, "to hell with it you're almost over it anyway, it's time to go out and play!" I shall not be able to resist this voice much longer and I suspect I will find myself on deserted back roads riding my Surly Cross Check in gently falling snow by the moonlight (or LED) sometime this evening.

Is it so wrong that I was watching this video by Bret Taylor composited from photos taken every five minutes of his entire TransAm ride (via Bike Bits) and all I can think is "look at how beautiful those roads are... you could definitely ride that entire route with some 25mm skinnies, a composite frame and ten pounds of base gear".



A million thanks to Bret. I can think of absolutely no better or faster way to get a complete overview of the road conditions along the entire TransAm route then Bret's video. Scratch that... without Brett's video there's absolutely no other way to get a sense of road conditions.

Other then Bret's video there's only instinctual "map sense" based off of years of reading maps, planning and riding routes in different areas of the country and perhaps google maps.

I can't imagine how long it'd take to overview the entire route in Google's "street view", even if the entire route were entirely covered by street view. Google Earth is cool for a terrain overview but not road conditions. The only thing that can give you a sense of road conditions is to see the actual road.

4000 miles of road condensed to just over six minutes and set to some good music. Good stuff.

Trailer for Anima D'Acciaio (Soul of Steel)

Anima D'Acciaio Trailer Ver5.1 from Cinecycle on Vimeo.

I was immediately drawn to this trailer because of the great connection it makes between a long tradition of frame building and today's modern fixie culture.

Via Urban Velo:
Anima D’Acciaio (Soul of Steel) is a film by Daniel Leeb of Cinecycle Productions. You can see the whole film this summer at the Bicycle Film Festival."

The Bicycle Film Festival is in Detroit July 31 to August 1st.

ANIMA D'ACCIAIO
(SOUL OF STEEL)
LANGUAGE: ITALIAN (SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH)
A film by Daniel Leeb of Cinecycle Productions

A Portrait of the legendary Italian Frame Builder Giovanni Pelizzoli aka "Ciocc" . Ciocc shares his wisdom and life story while handbuilding a revolutionary new frame for urban fixed gear cycling. Ciocc demonstrates that the tradition and craft of framebuilding's Golden age can be re-born and push the technical frontier of Cycling's future. . also Feaures Ed "Wonka" La Forte and Antonio Colombo with an original soundtrack composed by Amedeo & Simone Pace of BlondeRedhead.

Touring the Allegheny Passage

Some pics from my trip last week from DC to Pittsburg along the Allegheny Trail.



Via: Touring the Great Allegheny Passage - a set on Flickr

Cycling Home From Siberia

Some days in the life of a Siberian cyclist... a dazzling rush through some random encounters from Rob Lilwall on Vimeo.

From CyclingHomeFromSiberia.com:

My book about the journey “Cycling Home From Siberia” will be published by Hodder and Stoughton later in 2009.

[..]

In September 2004 I began this journey by flying with my bicycle as far away from home as I could think of: to the Far Eastern side of Siberia. My intention was to cycle back to England via the most interesting route I could find. As it turned out, I took a detour to Australia and was on the road for over three years, cycling 30,000 miles through 28 countries...

Great video. Can't wait for the book. (And perhaps a DVD?) What really strikes me about this journey though is not that the guy is s superb videographer (though he is), but when you look at his route (pic below), it's unlike any other route I've ever seen. I've seen routes from more then a dozen multi-continent bike adventures and I've never seen anything remotely resembling this. Rob's route really reflects that he truly divorced himself from all the modern expectations and geographical goal setting, a near impossible task, and just followed his nose. More so then any other adventurer I've seen in the past decade it is as if he just climbed on a bike one day and started riding.


(click for full size)

Update: I also found this to be a superb interview.


Small Talk Interview in Nanjing from Rob Lilwall on Vimeo.

Via: The Epicurean Cyclist