Odds & Ends

I’ve had an unusual flurry of posting lately, so why stop I guess.  Start the new year off right, you know.  With that in mind, I thought I would just post a few bits of things that haven’t made their way onto the blog yet.

First, back in the beginning of December, the wife and I went to a local arts and crafts show and purchased some really awesome cycling themed prints.  It’s a bit geeky, but we’ve given our townhome’s half bath a red and black cycling theme.  After looking ahead at some of the vendors that were going to be at the show, we found an awesome red devil / king of the mountains print by Adam Turman.  We basically made a bee line to his table and picked it up.  Well, we picked it up along with another print of a red bicycle transposed in front of the neighborhoods of Minneapolis.  I really cool print, that doesn’t show well on my picture below so take a look on his website.  Both really pop in our bathroom and look great.  On one hand I feel kind of bad saying they’re in our bathroom, but on the other hand where do you spend more time sitting in one place and have the time to enjoy a nice art print?

I should add that I spent a few moments chatting with Mr. Turman himself as well.  We mostly talked about bikes and about some of his projects with various local bike shops and bike companies.  Very cool guy.

Maybe it was that the wife and I were in a shopping mood (or buying mood) but in perusing the other vendors, we found another print done by Aesthetic Apparatus.  It’s the winter version of an original poster they did called “The Self-Portrait of a Bike Commuter.”  We needed something clever and original in our entryway and this fit the bill perfectly. 

 The Aesthetic Apparatus print is at top with the Adam Turman prints below.

Changing subjects a bit, I somehow stumbled upon a really interesting post about cycle speedway racing on Park Tool’s website.  It’s a type of bicycle racing that I’ve never heard of before, but is apparently quite popular in the UK and the rest of Europe.  As even the author of the article states, it’s odd that it hasn’t caught on in the US as it’s like a cycling version of NASCAR.  The article can be found here, but if you’re not into all the techy cycling stuff just skip down to the video at the bottom.  It’s definitely worth the watch.