Saturday, October 04, 2014

how to get unlimited free publicity, and make sure drivers look out for bicyclists... just mistakenly design your suit to appear flesh toned across the crotch


Photo from http://1clicknews.com/colombian-womens-cycling-team-refuse-to-stop-wearing-flesh-coloured-kit/

The Colombian women’s cycling team (IDRD-Bogota Humana-San Mateo-Solgar riders) are not ‘ashamed’ of their new flesh-coloured uniform despite being criticized by the International Cycling Union. The team, who sport a uniform which appears flesh-coloured between the stomach and thigh area, have defended their new kit at a press conference in Bogota, Italy.

Brian Cookson, the president of the International Cycling Union, called the uniforms 'unacceptable by any standard of decency'. He's obviously an idiotic prude who isn't familiar with what words mean. The words of his I refer to are "decency" and "standard".

Colombia's national cycling program, "Ultimo Kilometro," was indignant at the controversy, posting side-by-side photos of the female riders in the now infamous uniforms and one of a male team wearing uniforms made almost entirely of the same flesh-colored fabric.

the flesh color isn't anything other than a symbol of the teams sponsor, a vitamin and supplement company with a gold colored label


From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2760647/As-woman-I-wouldnt-ashamed-kind-design-Colombian-womens-cycling-team-refuse-stop-wearing-bizarre-flesh-coloured-kit.html#v-3785230578001

 the only indecency is in the mind of the puritanical idiots that have a problem with tan colored spandex. The same people have no trouble with mens being the same color. Double standard? yes.


and here is a very clear sexist double standard, the mens and womens spandex of the same sponsor, the Footon Servetto Fuji 2010 squad


 or tightly profiling to the limit of immodesty, and indicating who is and isn't circumcised.. but the prude victorian jackasses didn't raise an eyebrow at anything, until trying to shame the womens team.


these two images from http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/team-kit-blimey/page/2

So, Brian Cookson, International Cycling Union president, go soak your head, until you learn decency, and equal treatment for women, you friggen snob

For a good interview with the suit designer of the Colombian team: http://www.cyclinginquisition.com/2014/09/an-interview-with-angie-tatiana-rojas.html

Could cycling get any better for the planet? Yes, making the bike from wood, and recycled aluminum from cans, or old bikes!


Bikes are inherently pretty good for the environment: If everyone in the U.S. living within five miles of work started commuting by bike only one day a week, it would save as much pollution as taking a million cars off the road for a year.

 A new design concept from Dan Gestoso Rivers tries to make bike production more sustainable by swapping out a standard metal frame for wood and using components made from recycled soda cans.

Like Ikea furniture--and like a somewhat similar project called the Sandwichbike--the wooden bike is designed to fit in a small box, and a buyer could put the whole thing together using an Allen wrench.

Gestoso says the bike will be as strong as a typical aluminum frame, but it's clear that it's better in some areas, like the energy used to manufacture the frame.

The design uses sustainably grown wood everywhere possible, and the remaining metal pieces will be made from recycled aluminum or, potentially, metal recycled from discarded bikes.


Found on http://www.fastcoexist.com/3027716/this-bike-is-made-from-wood-and-recycled-soda-cans

Next level food truck: pizza parlor inside a 35 foot storage truck


the game is getting harder to win at friends... next, semi truck trailers... like the brats grill from Johnsonville http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-mighty-big-grill-johnsonville-brat.html

images of Burning Man vehicles, by Scott London, who has incredible photo galleries of the past ten Burning Man events, vehicles, topless women, and the rest

close, but no roll over






found on https://www.facebook.com/ridetech from the Goodguys Lone Star Nationals

another clever idea for stop lights, that really works best for drag racing from light to light

Hayne's just published a Top Fuel Dragster book... that's pretty cool

Friday, October 03, 2014

Dodge car show, with Motley Crue concert... Nov 1st, Dallas bar called the Gas Monkey. Car show at 4pm, concert at 9pm. Registration is online now til Oct 20th. Dodge show cars only


http://www.dodgerocksgasmonkey.com/

I'll be damned if I can figure out how this can't be a friggin great time




It's great to find a random use of a musclecar in a tv show



wow, this freeze frame is a sure clue that this is a stock suspension, and just how useless factory suspension was in 1970... the back is locked up by the brakes and the front is folded under off the tread, and not changing the direction very well with all the understeer

Found on the show Castle, 2nd season

From Algeria to Mozambique by eight 10 Hp Citroen half tracks in 1924-25


One day, French President Gaston Doumergue mentioned to André Citroën and Georges-Marie Haardt that a regular rail link between the North African French colonies and Madagascar, a French territory isolated in the Indian Ocean, would be advantageous to France.

André Citroën organized the "Black Cruise", to survey rail routes, and no doubt, to publicise his automobile company. After 10 months of preparation, 8 Citroën half-tracks left the southern terminus of the Algerian Railway on 28 of October 1924. It appears that the half-tracks were based on Model "B" Citroëns.

 The expedition was again led by the general manager from Citroën, Georges-Marie Haardt, and each half-track carried three men. A motion picture producer and a camera operator, an artist, a medical doctor who also took care of taxidermy, scientists, nine factory driver/mechanics, and other staff (some military) were on the expedition. http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-history/ot-crawler-tractors-196276/index13.html

Georges-Marie Haardt authored a book about the second African trip (The Black Journey: Across Central Africa with the Citroën Expedition) and a National Geographic Magazine article in the June 1926 issue




So, it is a very long story, started by 1910 in St. Petersburg, where the Kégresse track was invented, continued in the twenties and thirties in Africa and Asia with the great Citroën expeditions, opening car routes across Sahara and on the Silk Road, immortalized in the two movies that were rediscovered by Jack Goelman in the fifties, then by the two German directors that created the documentary for ARTE in 2006, and finally published on youTube by the passionate Zagrebians from the Citroën Klub.








some info and the videos from http://updateslive.blogspot.com/2010/11/la-croisiere-noire-1926.html

in 1923-25 the Renault company was also trying to get publicity and accomplishments http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/05/1923-1925-renault-10cv-type-mh-6x6.html








above from http://www.citroen.co.nz/citroen-universe/history/adventure/

To bring attention to his half-track vehicles launched in 1922, André Citroën organised a trans-Saharan expedition from 1922 to 1923. This success was followed by the Croisière Noire expedition, which crossed the African continent from north to south, travelling from Colomb-Béchar to Cape Town, between 1924 and 1925.

Citroën subsequently supplied Admiral Byrd with three half-track vehicles for his Antartic expedition (1933 – 1935). It also supplied five vehicles for the Croisière Blanche expedition organised from July to October 1934 in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.  http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/failed-1934-expedition-acorss-canada-in.html

for a good over view of cross country pioneering motorists in Africa, see http://www.londoncapetownrally.com/history.html or http://www.andrewdenning.org/driving-into-darkness.html

The Croisière Jaune expedition crossed Asia, from Beirut to Beijing, between 1931 and 1932.



Unlike the previous two expeditions, which had seen Citroën's half-tracks cross the Sahara Desert and Central Africa, the Central Asian crossing would be attempted by two separate groups: one travelling west-east from Beirut in the Lebanon; the other east-west from Peking in China, the plan being to meet at Kashgar on the ancient Silk Road. Lightweight four-cylinder autochenilles would be used by the former (six P17s and one P14); seven heavier six-cylinder P21s by the latter.

 Known popularly as the 'Croisière Jaune', this was the third such venture undertaken by Citroën using autochenille half-tracks, which had been developed following its acquisition of the sole rights to an ingenious form of caterpillar-tracked drive system invented by engineer Adolphe Kegresse (chenille = caterpillar).

The enterprise was dogged by misfortunes from the start, commencing when the planned route through the southern USSR had to abandoned because of the prevailing political situation, forcing a diversion through Afghanistan and into Northern India (now Pakistan). This new route took the expedition through the Karakoram Mountains (part of the Himalayas), a region with terrain so severe even a handcart would have been considered useless, let alone a motor vehicle.

Led by Georges-Marie Haardt, leader of Citroën's two previous croisières, the west-east group faced some of the toughest challenges imaginable, even being forced to completely dismantle its vehicles and load their components onto pack horses on one occasion in order to traverse a landslide. On 4th August 1931 the reassembled autochenilles rolled into Gilgit where Haardt learned that the expedition's China group was way off course, detained at Urumchi by a local warlord, Marshal King. He had no option but to abandon the original mission and travel onwards to Urumchi on horseback to try and secure the release of his colleagues.

Haardt and the China group eventually arrived back in Peking on 2nd February 1932, 315 days after the departure from Beirut, having travelled some 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles).

Of the two autochenilles that had made it to Gilgit, Pakistan, one (the 'Silver Crescent') remains on display there while the other (Haardt's 'Golden Scarab') was taken back to France and is currently displayed in the Musée Automobile de la Sarthe at Le Mans.

http://www.soldbyauctions.com/homes/advert_details/JSxTKFcsI0RgCmAK/

good reason not to safari across Africa. Sleeping leopards


 In 1914 this Belgian F.A.B. of Reinelt and Evanepoel set out from Cape Town for Cairo... with an 80-gallon fuel drum. They turned back after just 37 miles on hearing that a rival crew parked under a tree, disturbed a sleeping leopard, that promptly killed and ate the driver

Found on http://www.africarecordrun.com/history.html

I present, with great pleasure, the Factoria Circular and the Rodafonio


their facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/factoria.circular?fref=ts






thanks to Steve! Who somehow investigates the unknown (instead of finishing his book by the deadline!)

Their website is http://factoriacircular.wordpress.com/

truth in bumper sticker sayings