I’m spending 10 days this holiday season kicking around Manhattan. Great to be here for Christmas and the New Year. One of the unexpected treats this year (there always seems to be unexpected treats in New York City) was a New Year’s bike “race” called the Alley Kitten, a slightly tamed down version of the nearly legendary Alley Cat races. If any of you have ever seen the movie “Red Light Go”, primarily filmed during a prior Alley Cat, you’re missing an amazing freakshow in the world of bicycling. http://www.redlightgo.ws/ This is very off the beaten path stuff, even though it’s in the middle of Manhattan.
Down the street from where I’m staying is trackstar bicycles, a tiny bike shop with more attitude than a Madison Ave boutique. http://www.trackstarnyc.com/web2/blog/
they had a flyer in there this week for today’s race. I give it 10/10 in the world of race flyers, see for yourself. Read it, hilarious..

Since it’s first timers and out-of-towners only, and I was both, I was qualified to enter. I was warned that it would start and hour late. It did, but it didn’t matter.
I wanted to make sure I was dressed right, they were predicting snow in New York City today (they were right).

Here how an Alley Cat–or Kitten–works. You sign up for the race ($7.53-things are expensive here in Manhattan) and then are given a manifest. The manifest has checkpoints on it, you need to get them all signed and then turn it in at the finish (which-surprisingly is at a bar!). So you take off in the direction of the first check point. There is no set course, which is exactly the point. You decide the route, whatever it might be, and the wrong way on a one-way street really isn’t so wrong in these events. Particularly in Manhattan. Here are a couple shots of the course, riding up Madison Ave in midtown.
CLICK ON THESE SUCKERS TO CHECK BIG JUICY IMAGES

So you hit the checkpoints and might get asked to do something in order to get your manifest signed. One checkpoint his year required you to do 10 push-ups or take a shot of vodka. Another made you write down your New Year’s resolution. Another made you put your forehead on a baseball bat that is touching the ground and do 5 turns, followed by slamming a Budweiser. As you can see, this is serious racing.

We ended up going from Midtown, up to 70th, down to the bottom of the island and back up to 42nd for the finish and awards ceremony in a bar. Epic fun I have to say. The awards ceremony had many great and funny awards which probably shouldn’t be repeated here. It took place at one of your “less fancy” Manhattan establishments. Some would call it a dive. Others would call it “the only place that would have us”.

Needless to say, there was not a lot of emphasis on who won. Style points were much more important. In fact, the winner or DFL award, got a “Gold 40″ which is a solid gold bottle of some kind of very expensive liquor.

Suffice to say, it was fun, a great way to celebrate the end of 2005.

Walking out of the bar, we were greeted with a dumping snowstorm…PERFECT!

Ciao, and Happy New Year!!!
Scot aka Chuck aka Pimpy Blogstocking

OK, maybe it wasn’t TRIPLE XXX but at least its a bit risque for Christmas doncha think?
This was sent out by Ibis way back in the day, early 90’s, can’t remember which year exactly.

A few minutes ago, I realized it was Christmas eve eve, and I haven’t sent out a single Christmas card, Holiday card, Kwanzaa or Chanukah (Hanukkah) card this year. Not even one for Boxing Day, eh?
Come to think of it, I’ve only sent out one “Christmas” card in my life.
As you can probably see, this was a tough act to follow, probably why I never sent another.
So without oration, here you go, the only Ibis Cycles end of the year card ever sent.

Brings a little tear to my eye…perhaps it was the sulfur.
This was shot in Atlanta Idaho, at the ‘end” of a Western Spirit Cycling hot springs tour disguised as an Ibis company trip. I think we hit about 25 hot springs that week. The spring where we took this picture even had a natural hot waterfall/shower that fed the pool. We brought a few IMBA folk and some media folk along with us. I’m sure they had no idea…

Not only that, but this photo was shot the old fashioned way, with FILM!

We may not have had any nuts roasting on an open fire in this card, but at least they were warm.
So with that, we here at Ibis hope you have a great holiday season, no matter who or what you are worshiping (within reason please).

Look at them Euro-peons. Make bridges out of composites all over the place. Pretty darn cool. Here’s a couple of images of one recently completed in Spain.

Pretty slick stuff.

We like seeing carbon fiber and composite materials showing up in all sorts of cool places like the front fenders of the new Corvette, lots of places on those fancy (again Euro-peon) Lamborghini and Ferrari’s over the last few years.

The swiss are getting into the act too with this nifty bridge for skiers and hikers.

And those wacky Danes have been using this composite bridge since 1997.

Do you know any really cool applications for carbon fiber? Leave me a note in the comments!
Cheers,
Chuck aka Pimpy

Check it out, the good press continues. Wait a minute. Why do we call it “press”? Throwback to an era when all our media eminated from a printing press? Must be. Maybe we should differentiate the online press from the stuff that actually gets printed.
But if we do, what do we call it?
We could call it screen, because we’re all reading it on a screen. But that’s not really what created it, it’s how we read it.
Keyboard? No, could be confused with a musical delivery. I don’t like musicals.
We could call it type, but that would assume that the person creating the keyboard drivel actually knows how to type. I’ve seen those movies featuring newsrooms, and those guys are always “one fingering” it. Not the middle finger either. I’m talking about hunting and pecking, or pecking if you will. So I think we should call these online media emissions “Peckers”, which has a nice ring to it.
So anyway, as I was saying, check out this good Pecker that we recently spotted!

http://bikemag.com/news/newsarchive/120705_ibis/

The love just keeps on coming. Referring to the new Mojo Carbon, even that Grumpy old steel singlespeed hardtail riding throwback Mike Ferrentino said “Grumpy old steel singlespeed hardtail riding throwback that I may be, I’m curious to throw a leg over this puppy”. So there you go, even our favorite maven of tough love, the grimy handshake himself is curious about what we’re doing.
In the end Mike sums it up with a great compliment: “It is a good time to be into bikes. Our choices are myriad. And some of the truly maverick weirdos are back doing what they love to do. ”

–Pimpy Blogstocking

For native Ibisians anywhere and everywhere, here is this season’s fashion must-have: fresh off the press Ibis T-Shirts.
Some of you have been asking for them, and here they are. Most of you haven’t been asking for them but here they are anyway.
As with anything good, supplies are limited. In this case, very limited.
So limited in fact, we’re not even adding them as item numbers to the fancy schmancy ecommerce part of the site. Too much of a pain.
Here’s how we’re going to do it. Look at the colors on the thumbnails below. Look at the sizes available in the colors below. If one (or ten) of the color/size combos strike your fancy, send me an email and I’ll give you instructions on how to paypal some moolah my way, or send a check or bribe me or get creative about getting one of these beautiful pieces of imprinted sportswear into your grimy hands.
They’re $20 bucks a pop. All the usual disclaimers apply–100% cotton American Standard super pimpy quality short sleeve t-shirt.

Here are the colors. Click on an image to see it bigger.

Now, here’s the super duper low tech part. Sizes and colors are listed below. Again, 20 bucks a pop. 5 bucks to ship if you order 1, free shipping for two or more. Europeans, shipping will be a bit more. Talk to me.

Orange with blue logo: Large and XL only
Light Blue with orange logo: Small and Medium only
Dark Blue with sparkly metallic ink (very cool looking-enlarge the above image): Large, XL
Dark Grey with Light Grey Logo: small
Darkish Green with Lightish Green logo: XL

Email chuck@chuckibis.com for orders.

So there you are. Sorry the sizing is a little limited. We’ll have a full size run done before spring.

Things you should know:
Available on a first inquire first served basis
No animals were harmed in the manufacturing of these shirts.
100% vegan