Tag Archive for counterfeit bike parts

Morning Links: Counterfeit bike parts, new weed-based recovery powder, and a photo link to make you smile

David forwards a warning not to buy bike helmets over the internet, after a Kentucky man was convicted of selling counterfeit high-end helmets on eBay.

I would modify that to say only buy online from a company you, with a good reputation for quality.

And be careful of buying any bike parts online. Because every part than can be faked has been — including entire counterfeit bikes.

But you’re always better off buying anything from your local bike shop. And so are they.

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I usually don’t share press releases for new products, but this one seemed interesting.

Floyd’s of Leadville, the medical marijuana product maker founded by erstwhile Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, is introducing a CBD-based protein recovery powder.

Available in Chocolate and Vanilla, each bag provides 10 servings, with 25mg of CBD, 27 grams of high quality protein, essential amino acids, only 5 grams of sugar and 150 calories.

“In addition to the softgels, tincture, and transdermal cream that we offer, we’re excited to bring to market these great tasting Recovery Protein powders,” states Floyd Landis, Founder and CEO of Floyd’s of Leadville. “It mixes easily with water or milk, and really provides a smooth flow of nutrients to maximize recovery after exercise, and even to start your day off the right way with a protein drink.”

Each 500 gram bag retails for $39.95, and will be available to Retailers and on the Floyd’s website within the next few weeks.

Go to floydsofleadville.com for more information and call 970.445.3209 with any questions!

For the uninitiated — like I was before my doctors put me on the stuff — CBD is the marijuana component that has a calming and soothing effect. And won’t get you high, like THC does.

Personally, I find that CBD helps stop the muscle spasms from my neuropathy, while a combination of CBD and THC is necessary for pain relief.

But that’s just me.

Your experience may completely different.

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Great photo from Peter Flax, who dares you not to smile when you see it.

And I double dog dare you.

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Local

Bike friendly DTLA councilmember Jose Huizar has called for a vote this Friday to install bike lanes on Fifth and Sixth Streets in LA’s Skid Row, in response to a request from local community members.

Streetsblog reports that the long-delayed My Figueroa project is finally nearing completion, with fresh green paint and newly installed bicycle traffic signals.

Just like Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, LAPD bike cops are going electric; they’ll soon be zipping down the streets on specially designed ped-assist ebikes capable of doing 28 mph.

CiclaValley unleashes part one of his CicLAvia Preview for Sunday’s San Fernando Valley open streets event.

The newly revived Long Beach Post talks with a Georgia transplant who found a home with the city’s cycling community.

 

State

Life is cheap in San Luis Obispo, where a distracted driver walks without a single day of jail time for killing a world champion triathlete when she “drifted” off the road and rear-ended the victim’s bike.

 

National

Inhabit considers how to make American cities bike friendly.

Now you can show your support for the man who believes slavery was a choice, with your own specially customized and basically useless Yeezy bicycling shoes with built-in mountain bike cleats.

Seriously? Bicycling reviews the best yoga mats for bicyclists. Which would pretty much be the same as for anyone else, since hardly anyone practices yoga while they’re riding.

The first six months of Seattle’s dockless bikeshare experiment show diverse ridership using the bikes primarily for transportation, rather than recreation. And head injuries haven’t increased, despite a low rate of helmet use in violation of the city’s mandatory helmet law.

Texas bicyclists are calling for safer roads in the oil boomtowns of the Permian Basin.

A Chicago weekly maps out the city’s lowest-stress bicycling routes.

Now that’s more like it. Buses and bikes get priority on a Minneapolis street as lanes are closed for highway construction, and drivers wait in backed-up traffic.

No, Minnesota Department of Public Safety, if the victims were riding bicycles, they weren’t pedestrians.

A Detroit writer does a great job of slicing, dicing and refuting the recent anti-bike “get off my lawn” screed from Crain’s scion Keith Crain, arguing that he’s writing for a dwindling audience of angry old businessmen. And that he wasn’t out of town when the city’s bike plan was adopted, just out of touch.

Apparently, when a man whose head is literally covered in racist tattoos crashes into an Asian bike deliveryman in New York, it’s just another accident.

 

International

A Costa Rican website looks at the time-honored tradition of bicycling in the country’s Guanacaste province.

Red Bull lists eight international cities that are “incredible” for active commuting. San Francisco made the list; needless to say, Los Angeles didn’t.

Canadian Cycling Magazine explains why bicycling leads to lifelong friendships.

Cycling Weekly explains how you, too, can have monster legs.

Road.cc offers advice on how to safely pass a horse, after a group of overly aggressive triathletes didn’t over the weekend.

Montreal motorists are rising up to complain about the mayor’s decision to block cut-through traffic over the city’s eponymous mountain to create a more livable, human park space.

A Toronto columnist says Vision Zero isn’t working, so it needs a little rebranding — like calling it Zero Vision, or a Vision 2089 commitment to have just 2,089 traffic deaths in the city in 2089.

Another Toronto columnist says the city’s streets will be safer once they are slower. Any chance we could get him to move to LA and write that for the Times?

We already know Katy Perry is one of us, so keep your eyes open for a woman on a bike shooting lasers out of her bra as she stops in the UK.

A pair of British cycling champs — and new mothers — offer advice on bicycling during pregnancy.

A British coroner has ruled that record-setting endurance cyclist Lee Fancourt took his own life after texting a friend to say goodbye. Fancourt, who set the record for the fastest crossing of Europe, was found in his own car surrounded by cocaine and drug paraphernalia this past January.

A Portuguese soccer fan biked nearly 3,200 miles in 45 days to see his team play at the World Cup.

The founder of an Indian bikeshare company explains how dockless bikeshare is reshaping the country’s urban areas.

A Chinese website says Shanghai can do a lot more to be bicycle friendly; the city will host the second annual Tour de France Shanghai this fall.

Yes, you really can buy a hi-tech ebike for around $261; you just have to move to China first.

 

Competitive Cycling

Outside says a new novel captures truths about the Tour de France, doping, and cyclists’ obsessive nature.

 

Finally…

Riding 135 mph on a 3D printed bike. No need to stop pedaling just because you run out of solid ground.

And that feeling when you want to ban bikes entirely, and blame commies on the city council for bouncing you from the bike lane committee.

No, seriously.

 

Morning Links: Drunk hit-and-run driver encourages safer cycling, and an in-depth look at counterfeit bikes

Nothing like encouraging responsibility on the roads.

An English driver was so concerned about the safety of others, she started a petition calling for all bicyclists to be required to wear a helmet and fluorescent clothing, mentioning in passing that she’d been involved in a collision with a cyclist who died.

Of course, she failed to mention that she was drunk at the time. Or that she fled the scene, leaving her critically injured victim lying alone in the street.

But sure, let’s blame the victims.

Maybe a better petition would require drivers to put fluorescent lights on their cars to warn us if they’ve been drinking, since we can’t seem to keep drunks off the roads.

Or get them to take responsibility for their own actions.

Link courtesy of Matthew Hardy.

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Brit bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid takes an in-depth look at the problem of counterfeit bikes and parts, with chapters including:

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Caught on video: Italian cyclist Fabio Felline pulls an endo just seconds after the start of Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race, suffering a broken nose and fractured skull; Enrico Gasparotto took the victory in the Dutch race.

Motor doping may be more common than we might think, as the European press use a heat detector to discover what appears to be seven hidden motors in two different races.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A 100-year old man crossed the finish line in this year’s Tour de Yorkshire on an assisted bicycle, 63 years after he founded a British bike club.

And Wolfpack Hustles’ annual Short Line Crit is less than three weeks away.

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Local

Van Nuys MeetingA Tuesday meeting in Pacoima will discuss a bike and pedestrian friendly makeover of Van Nuys Blvd in a bid to improve safety on one of the city’s more dangerous streets.

One of the best things about bicycling is the people you meet. CiclaValley encounters a Korean couple taking a break in LA on their 10-year journey around the world.

A writer for the Gazettes takes a free adult cycling class as part of the efforts of Danny Gamboa and Empact Communities to make Long Beach safer for cyclists.

Lawndale will host its first, albeit very brief, open streets event from 8 am to 10 am this Saturday, followed by a kids ride from 10 am to 12:30 pm.

 

State

A San Diego man receives a life sentence for fatally shooting a bike-riding 46-year old father of six for no apparent reason last year.

Now that the Chargers plan to abandoned their stadium in Mission Valley one way or another, a San Diego city council candidate calls for building a bike path along the river.

San Bernardino police are looking for a driver who allegedly intentionally ran down a cyclist, circling around him before reversing and pinning him to a wall.

A Fresno letter writer says parents should be charged with child abuse for allowing their teenage children to ride their bikes on a busy street. I think he means child endangerment, which is still an absurdly myopic windshield perspective.

Bicycling is booming by the Bay, with an 8.5% increase in San Francisco bike trips in the last year, and an increase of 184% since 2006.

A Monterey CHP officer calls on drivers to share the road with cyclists during this past weekend’s Sea Otter Classic. But mistakenly says bike riders can be cited for impeding traffic for riding too slowly or failing to move over so cars can pass; the latter only applies on two lane roadways when five or more vehicles are following behind and unable to pass. Unfortunately, the CHP frequently misinterprets this law, as well as the requirement that cyclists ride as far right as practicable. Which puts cyclists at risk of underserved tickets, and retaliation from angry drivers who’ve been misinformed about the law.

A Sacramento artist finds new life for old bike chains, turning them into dog sculptures. Meanwhile, both major candidates for mayor of Sacramento pledge to make the city a vibrant place people can safely navigate without a car.

 

National

NACTO’s new Transit Street Design Guide offers a blueprint for how to incorporate transit and protected bikeways on city streets. Let’s hope LA officials read it.

Wired says putting down temporary bike lanes is the best first step to eventually getting permanent protected lanes in place.

Utah could see a future with free transit, along with a bike superhighway on the I-15 corridor.

The Purple One is one of us, as Prince rides his bike just one day after his plane made an emergency landing in Illinois so he could be hospitalized with flu-like symptoms.

Boston boosts funding for their Vision Zero program, budgeting more than $12 million over the next three years.

Federal authorities question whether Baton Rouge LA officials misspent $2.2 million, including $400,000 used to build a bike path along the Mississippi River.

 

International

Caught on video 2: A road raging British driver repeatedly brake checks and swerves at a cyclist, apparently incensed that the bike rider had filtered past a line of cars at a red light.

Seriously? The Guardian says don’t wear your bike shorts in public, especially not in front of children. So presumably, you’ll need to throw on a pair of pants or a skirt before you dismount.

The grammatically challenged Telegraph asks what cycling tribe are you? Because evidently, it’s not possible to just ride a bike without being some sort of stereotype. Or to get that whole singular/plural thing right.

Apparently, life is cheap in Britain, where an 80-year old British man gets a suspended prison sentence and lifetime driving ban for killing a cyclist. Not that it will likely keep him off the road, since he was already driving without a license — and his glasses — after failing previous eye tests.

In the US, drivers are allowed to turn right on most red lights; in Denmark, bike riders just got approval to do the same at 33 intersections.

The United Arab Emirates considers locking dangerous drivers up for 24 hours; that’s in addition to a fine, 12 points on their license, and having their cars impounded for 30 days. Nice to see someone take traffic crime seriously, anyway.

A New Zealand railroad tunnel is repurposed as the Southern Hemisphere’s longest bicycle tunnel after lying dormant for over 60 years.

 

Finally…

Now that’s what I call a scary mug shot. Apparently, James Joyce’s Ulysses was about bicycling.

And it turns out there’s science behind spitting instead of swallowing.

Sports drinks, of course.

Why, what did you think I meant?