CARBON IS COOL

It’s no secret that here at Ibis we’re pretty bullish on carbon. It’s the stuff of diamonds, pencil leads and all of our frames. It is present in all known lifeforms, and it’s the chemical basis of all known life on earth. In the human body carbon is the second most abundant element, beat out by only oxygen.

CARBON IS FRIENDLY

Carbon has the distinction of being among the most friendly of all the elements when it comes to getting along with other elements. You see, carbon has a strong affinity for bonding with other atoms, and as such is known to form over ten million different compounds! In other words, if carbon were on Facebook, it would have more friends than any other element.

CARBON IS STRONG

At atmospheric pressure, carbon has no melting point (in other words, carbon is a badass). To keep yourself strong, we strongly recommend a high (carbon) fiber (bicycle) diet.

CARBON IS A CHAMELEON

OK, we all know that both diamonds and pencil leads are made of carbon (that’s because carbon has a unique properTy known as allotropism, which is the ability of some elements to form different compounds).

In fact, if carbon were a politician, we’d call it a flip flopper. Consider these rather curious properties of carbon:

• Diamond is the hardest material known, whereas graphite is one of the softest materials known.
• Diamond is the ultimate abrasive yet graphite is a very good lubricant.
• Diamond is an excellent electrical insulator but graphite is a conductor of electricity.
• Diamond is the best known naturally occurring thermal conductor, yet certain forms of graphite are used for thermal insulation
• Diamond is highly transparent and shiny, graphite is opaque.

So there’s a whole lot to like about carbon, we think. We’re definitely not neutral on these forms of carbon.

CARBON NEUTRAL

OK, now that we’ve gone into all the reasons why we like carbon and we think carbon is pretty cool, we’re going to do a flip flop. It’s 2011 now, and most intelligent biped opposable-thumbed carbon-based life forms on the planet believe that too much carbon in the atmosphere is not a good thing. We’re in that camp too.

It turns out that UPS has an initiative called UPS Carbon Neutral that lets us purchase carbon offsets for all of our outgoing shipments. Which is what we do. It doesn’t cost you anything, all our prices are staying the same. We figure (like most intelligent biped opposable-thumbed carbon-based life forms on the planet), it’s the right thing to do, so we do it.

The UPS program is verified by a couple heavy hitters in the carbon offsets world, one is The Carbon Neutral Company. You can click on the logo below to learn more about their program

Additionally UPS has hired Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) to keep track of all those emissions over there in the Euro land. You can click on that puppy below to get yourself over to the SGS site and learn all about their verification and intitiatives.

GOOD CARBON:

BAD CARBON:

GOOD CARBON:

Here’s the view that greeted me from my desk this morning when I started work. Click for the full picture.

Red sky in the morning…means get out the rain bike.

Also known as “The Steeps of San Francisco”

For the last 18 years, a group of people have been gathering on a Fall Sunday morning in San Francisco and riding their bikes all over the city and up all the steepest hills they can find. If you Google something similar to 10 steepest streets in SF, you’ll see a few examples. The official steepest street is 31.5% and that’s Filbert up on Russian Hill. Well, by some accounts it’s tied with another 31.5% over in Noe Valley, but since it’s in an area called ‘valley’ I’m going to go to the one that has ‘hill’ in its name. It’s always good to question authority, so just because the Department of Public Works says a street is steepest you don’t necessarily accept that. Indeed, we found steeper streets that what he DPW claims are the steepest. And if you throw in the extra terrain open to you if you’re on a bike, you can shatter all the alleged records.

This year’s ride happened on November 14th. The average high temp in SF on this day is 64º, which is actually quite pleasant. Sunday as we were riding through the Mission, it hit 80º. Another search of the googles showed me this page, and according to that, the highest temp ever recorded on Nov 14th was 76º way back in that earthquake year 1906, so I guess that means our ride was on the hottest day ever for a November 14th. Indeed, most of the way through the ride I was wiping a lot of sweat off the brow.

We meet out on the Marina for coffee and a 9 am ish departure. The guy who puts this very unofficial ride together–let’s call him Gary–has figured out a novel way to make espresso for 50 people. He’s thinking about commercializing ‘The Javanator”, but for now a small group of us will get to enjoy it, using the prototype made with a pressure cooker.

There’s a stainless screen and a filter, you put espresso grind on top, then pour water into it, cap it and pressurize it with a floor pump.

Pressurizing the chamber (me helping)

Soon you have espresso for 50 people

But that’s not what we wanted to share with you today. It’s all about the ride. My steed for the day, a clapped out old Bianchi road bike with miss matched everything, flat bars, fenders and a TRIPLE. The bike du jour seemed to be old hardtail mountain bikes with slicks. None of my hardtails had air in the tires so I opted for my rain bike (which explains the fenders).

Yes, that’s the Golden Gate Bridge back there.

Here we are gathering…

…and then looking at our first hill. Sure doesn’t look like much from this angle.

You get a better sense of it from the top though.

This particular location is Cow Hollow, not exactly the projects. Our first detour was down and up the Broderick sidewalk and a private driveway that’s just like Lombard Street in its twisty excellence. You can’t go on either of these by car. We measured this grade at 35-37%,  a great start to the day. The driveway I think is for the Levi mansion (jeans, not Leipheimer).

Now it’s time to get out of here and find some more steeps. From Cow Hollow to Pacific Heights we go.

Octavia Street

Now it’s time for Russian Hill, and since Filbert is only two blocks away, we do the geeky tourist thing and go down Lombard.

And now, Filbert!

What goes up must come down

Going, going…

almost gone…

Now we continue to wind our way around Russian Hill on our way to North Beach and Coit Tower

me with Bougainvillea

A quick jaunt down Romolo Place and on to Broadway

Then back up again on Kearney, a dead end

Then a cruise through North Beach to find some pastries.

Down to the financial district for our cruise around town, the hilliest way of course.

Over to Potrero Hill, past Anchor Steam Brewing (we didn’t stop) and then down the other crookedest street in the world: Vermont.

And over to the Mission for some gut bombs.

After lunch, we hit Noe Valley and the longer and just as steep climbs there. That burrito tasted good both times!

Why am I sweating in November? From the phone…

Now we’re off to Diamond Heights and Mt. Davidson…

With a bonus of some single track, sorry about the giggly camera.

It’s Sunday, and the Church of Rotating Mass is in session.

Then another climb (!) over to Twin Peaks, and the impossibly beautiful view from there.

Back through the Haight…we think this might have the highest concentration of dreadlocks on white people in the entire world.

getting back in the car, still quite warn at 4:07 PM

Maybe next year we’ll get videos. In the mean time, the car scenes here are sort of what it was like: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1622933785/

This was an ideal day on the bike. 25 or so miles, and I’m told close to 5,000 feet of vertical. Looking forward to next year.

A few weeks ago we shared the link of the dude in Africa doing some incredible flatland moves on an old beater. We’ve shared Lopes’ amazing runs down A-Line and such.
Today we have a mind blowing display of skills on a unicycle. In the product pantheon, unicycles are roughly on par with roller blades and accordions. Except for this one.

NAUCC 2010 from Max Schulze on Vimeo.

Here at Ibis we were a little miffed that Fox announced and hyped the Kashima Coating on their high end forks this year, but then didn’t allow us to sell them on our bikes.

Rather than stew in anger (fish stew), we began a secret project, sort of our own Manhattan Project if you will. Eventually, after a large number of Manhattans we came up with an alternative plan. The first prototype is finished, and we’re very happy with the results. Soon we hope to be able to offer current model year Talas and Float forks with our very own:

SASHIMI COATING

PS, thanks to Mark Weir for the idea. You’re still a dork though.