Its Friday which means its time to get out of your boring work week attitude and have an awesome weekend.

Hopefully this video helps a bit. (Did you see the cable part?)

I like this Ben Howard guy.

Bike Helmet Camera

Simon posted a link to his video on RoadSafeLondon, a Metropolitan Police website set up for road users to report bad driving. The coach driver was fined £150 and given three points on his licence.

Here are some Amazon Pay Roger links:

• Bike helmet camera
  
• Bike handlebar mount for bike helmet camera
• Helmet mount for bike helmet camera

(Full Disclosure, if you click one of these links and then buy something Roger gets some change from Amazon.)

Hide your children and if you are a parent stop judging!

Radical Bastard Challenge numero 2 is coming up in just a few weeks. Are you ready for this?

For the uninitiated, lazy, lame, or responsible who have more important things to keep up with the Radical Bastard Challenge is an event that I am pretty sure the authorities don’t need to know too much about:

The Radical Bastard Challenge is a bike/hike endurance challenge in the North Phoenix Mountain Park. If you are not up for all five (5) phases, that’s ok. Pick & choose your phases, or volunteer at the bike-check point. Although all levels of radicalbastard’s are welcome… the full challenge is pretty tough. Make sure you are ready for it. (From the Radical Bastard website)

Its not something for the light hearted or weak. If you have a decent mountain bike and can ride 20 miles in a day I suggest showing up on Nov 13th. Check out more at their Radical Bastard Facebook Page to RSVP. I signed up and think its gonna be pretty fun.

As a test I did the second half of the first leg of mountain biking after work today. From my house its a 7.5 mile warm up ride, then the trail begins and its a doozy. I walked a bit of the downhill cause it’s hard and it was dark. Memo to self, wear head lamp for mountain biking, handlebar lights dont necessarily show you where you want to go all the time. For the toughest section of the race on bikes anyway I put this at a 7 and recommend you practice it a bit and don’t feel bad about walking 40% of it(although I will give you shit).

I took a picture of North Phoenix from the back of Squaw:

Here is a map of my ride tonight starting and ending near my home. Total mileage 17.8 and it took 1 hour 40 minutes to complete.

Its good to get back on the dirt!

by aloshbennett

So Cateye has a new product called Cateye Commute. Its a cyclometer that helps you measure your ‘Greenness’ and stuff and it sounds pretty cool. You can read the Wired review of the Cateye Commuter here. I am more interested in the social network that they built to go along with this device – WorldCommute.com.

The basic concept is not new, there are a number of excercise and carbon offset tracking websites out there. However this one seems to combine them both and acts like a Nike+ for bikes. Unfortunately it is not going anywhere.

There are a few basic reasons for this:

• Publicity
• Networking

Publicity – External and Internal

No one is talking about this site. How do I know this? Yahoo is currently showing 7,000 backlinks. That is sad. Whats worse is that the top result on Yahoo’s list is cateye.com. In voodoo SEO terms this means the strongest link Cateye is getting for their Social Network is from Cateye. Nice outreach. For a topic this hot there is no reason they shouldn’t have government and educational sites linking to them as a way to take resposibility for your energy use. Send Obama a computer and get him to blog about it on the Whitehouse blog or something…

How commited is Cateye to this project? From looking at the Cateye website and its lack of a mention or link to worldcommute.com I would say not very.  Currently a search for “site:cateye.com world commute” gives a total of 7 results, on a site with over 1400 pages. The product page for the Cateye Commuter has no link to worldcommute.com. (As a side note there is no link to a Youtube video of how to install the Cateye Commute Cyclometer, or how to use it.)

Networking – As in Social

Cateye knows about Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, but for some reason it doesn’t want to connect its own Social Network to them. This is perplexing to say the least. Considering the Privacy issues that they bring up during signup, I really don’t want to give you my birthdate, it makes sense to take advantage of the info that people have already given to their existing networks. Also its a pain in the ass to send an individual invite to each of my friends to get them to join me at WorldCommute.com. With all the latest stuff going on at Facebook and connecting sites together this is a major mistake.

Is there a way to sync the info from the Cateye Commute to my computer for upload to worldcommute.com? I assume no as there is no mention of this on the product page. This is a big miss as well considering the rise in various tracking methods on iPhones and Blackberries like Nike+ and AllSport GPS.

Conclusion

Cateye is taking a good direction here in terms of broadening their audience and message but in the end no one is going to use worldcommute.com as it is currently setup. There are 105 groups on the site but each one that I scanned over had less than 5 members. Cateye can make this a success if it can link their Cateye Commute Cyclometer to the site and connect worldcommute.com to the rest of the internet better. If you are running the show at Cateye I would love to talk further on this and help make it a success in exchange for some cash.

Oh boy this looks crazy and fun and crazy, who is game?

PMBC – Phoenix Metro Bicycle Club: Answer to the Challenge.

Well this Flip comes in handy so I don’t have to bore myself with writing as much. Now I can just bore you by talking, hahahah…

Here are some photos of the Moab Slickrock Trail ride. I will montage more later.

What an excellent morning for a ride. Low 80′s and clear skies. Didn’t wanna get out again after yesterdays pain locker but knew it was the best thing to do to get the legs stretched out. Besides I just feel better after a morning ride.

So I took it real easy and did 12 miles in 45 minutes heading down Alma School to Germann and back up Dobson. Nice and easy all the way.

Happy Tuesday!

One constant addiction I have held onto since being a child has been riding my bike. I still remember the first time my dad let go of the handle bars and I was flying, no training wheels, just me, my bike, and after 10 or 20 feet the ditch. Since then I have the same experience anytime I hop on a bike and push off the ground and fly. The same stupid grin comes over my face and a giggle lops itself out of my chest. I generally start off too quickly because I am addicted to acceleration and speed.

Today I got the chance to get back to being a child again and went riding with about 60 other grown kids known as the Phoenix Metro Bike Club. They ride every saturday and on Memorial Day and Labor Day they also get together and take over the Phoenix streets. Today we did the Mummy Mountain Loop and since it was my first ride over 20 miles in a few months I totally got my butt kicked. This course is about 40 miles long and gets a nice sampling of Tempe, Phoenix, and Scottsdale with tons of scenery and climbs for burning both legs and lungs.

In the end I wound up covering 56 Miles in 3 hours of riding time. Got home and spent the rest of the day taking it very easy.

All in all it was a great ride and I am looking forward to the one next Saturday when we head over to South Mountain and see what that communist playground is all about. Till then remember that Training time is Chamois time…

its been a while since I went out on a ride with the Phoenix Metro Bike Club. Tomorrow will be a fun ride starting from Kiwanis Park and making our way north into Phoenix, and Scottsdale around and through Mummy Mountain. I am looking forward to seeing the crew and enjoying some wind break in the middle of the pack.

If you ride 20 miles on your own enjoyably then you should come!

Some might think it dumb to bike in a monsoon, some would go further to say that said biker with a video camera in hand is even stupider. Well I got the shot BABY!

Taken while riding home from the studio, thinking some remix will come soon.