Bottles And Chains – Page 49 – Hellbound And Pedalling

Mt Wellington Challenge, on a fixie/s.s

Organised by Hobart Wheelers & Southern Vets bicycle clubs, the Mountain Welllington Challenge is one of Hobarts iconic road events. This year Bottles and Chains are throwing the gauntlet down and are challenging Hobarts fixed and single speed community to take the challenge and ride to the top on ‘one fkn gear’. Fixed or single speed.. choose your weapon. To enter, your bike must possess two working brakes.. not a bad idea given the steepness of the descent. I’ve only heard one story of a fixed rider making the summit.. Dave Sipsy McCaig (Hobart’s fmr Canadian courier) regaled us with a story about Canadian John riding to the top in the early hours of sunday morning after a particulary huge saturday night. If a drunk Canadian can do it.. so can you! Contact us @ B’n’C if you’re keen. We’ll run our own little sub-race within the challenge if there’s enough interest!

Sunday 9 March 2008

Start time
Registration 8.30am – 9.45am; Time-trial start from 10am
Riders depart from the start at 15 second intervals to keep everyone spread out on the narrow road.

Location
Longley Hotel, Longley

Distance
20km (1km up)

Included
Ride insurance, time recorded, spot prizes courtesy Bike Ride

Entry Fee
$20

Not dead!

We’re still alive and kicking, sorry about the lack of updates. I hope everyone had a good Australia day, celebrating a bit of genocide. BnC HQ is locked down pretty tight at the moment, with the SS Nats planning fully underway. That shit is going to be off the hook. If you’re thinking about coming down for it, grab some flights now. They’ll be plenty cheap, and it’s free to take your bike with Virgin. Can’t got wrong!

I ate shit on Monday, riding the ol’ mountain bike. As is usually the way, I spent a good few hours hitting up great trails without a worry, then decided to hop up a driveway (not even a gutter) and ended up sliding a few metres on the footpath, leaving a bloody trail behind me. Bugger. Ah well, skin grows back!

Poster and more details for the SS Nats are coming very soon, so stay tuned to the website. We love you all!

A photo from the Pisco paper round.

Former Hobart courier Mat Hunnibell has been kicking about in South America for the past few months. Rumours abound surrounding Hunners antic’s abroad, some true others not.. Anyway here is a picture he sent into BnC headquaters of his Red Tuk-Tuk motorbike. Mat had just stopped to deliver the boys at the building site their morning newspapers when he paused to take this snap (Note the single speed in the foreground). Good to hear Mat’s off the crack and holding down a steady job.

2008 Australian Singlespeed Nationals!

Advanced registrations have closed.
Anything sent after today won’t arrive in time! You can register on the Saturday morning, download the itinerary for all the details.

FRIDAY NIGHT RIDE
The One Gear, More Beer crew are doing a ride on Friday arvo for the early birds, followed by food and drinking. Starts at 4pm and leaves from Salamanca Lawns (the starting location for BnC’s infamous Silo Runs). The itinerary has been updated with details (ctrl-refresh if you still get the old one when you click the link)!

DOWNLOAD THE ITINERARY!

Click below to download the map.

Or view it on…

That’s right folks, the 2008 Australian Singlespeed Nationals are on like Donkey Kong! The Devil’s Isle is the venue and Hobart is going to sweat beer for two days in April. It’s a weekend of bikes, BBQs, parties and debauchery. It’s all about having a good time, hanging out with a good bunch of people and getting a little loose for the weekend. You don’t need to be a race-warrior, you don’t need to own a singlespeed bike, and you sure as hell don’t need to take anything seriously. Sign up, throw down, join in and rock out.

You’ll be guaranteed to have a shitload of fun with a heap of good crew, there will be bands to keep it kicking, 16″ BMX racing to test your skills, a ROLLER DERBY to get your legs spinning, spot prizes for best costume, nudity, loose antics and anything else we feel like.

We’ve even got a VOODOO singlespeed bike to give away to the winner (or who ever impresses us the most), thanks to Treadlies bike shop down in Kingston. Go and tell them how radical they are!

Date
APRIL 19 & 20 (Saturday/Sunday)

Location
Hobart, Tasmania

Party Venue
The Brisbane Hotel

Race Venue
Glenorchy Mountain Bike Park

Click to download the flyer! Spread the word, tell your friends!

DOWNLOAD THE ITINERARY HERE!

Virgin Blue, Qantas and Jetstar offer flights into Hobart. The airport is 20 minutes from the city centre.

The TT-Line sails twice a day and offers passenger and car transport from Melbourne to Devonport (3 hour drive to Hobart).

The Glenorchy Mountain Bike Park is approximately 15 minutes drive from the centre of Hobart. It’s an easy ride from the city and we’ll have a guide to take you there if you want to ride out!

To get there follow the Brooker Highway for approximately 5km. After the second roundabout take the next left at Elwick Road. Proceed through the roundabout, at the end of Elwick Road, onto Eady Street and follow Eady Street as it swings round to the next roundabout. Go left at this roundabout (Tolosa Road) and proceed to the end of the road.

There are Tolosa Park signs from Elwick road and the Bike Park is situated just behind Tolosa Park.

The Brisbane Hotel is at 3 Brisbane Street. From the Hobart Mall travel up Elizabeth Street for 3 blocks then turn right into Brisbane. The pub’s at the end of the second block. Don’t stress, there will be a map in the itinerary, and we’ll be guiding everyone around anyway! This info’s just in case you loose us.

Anywhere you want! You can try for a room at The Brisbane Hotel (get in fast!) by calling them on (03) 6234 4920.

Other options are:
The New Sydney – (03) 6234 4516
The Pickled Frog – (03) 6234 7977
Central City Backpackers – (03) 6224 2404

All are close to the city/venues and will probably give you a cheaper rate if you grab some mates and book as a group.

We’ll be having a BBQ and some other random shit for lunch on both days (including vegan, ya hippies!). The Brisbane Hotel do a bunch of kick arse counter meals (including vegan) for bloody cheap and there will be time on Saturday put aside so that everyone can eat. There should be a special 08ASSN dish that’ll fill you up and sex your tastebuds for super cheap too.

If you’re arriving early and want to sample some other places, follow Elizabeth Street up until you reach the North Hobart main strip, there are plenty of food places there. Or go in the opposite direction down the the wharf/Salamanca Place and grab some fish’n’chips and other assorted stuff.

You’ll need your bike (no gears!) and a helmet. Anything else is optional but we’d suggest gloves, your wallet, clean underwear and clothing suitable for any weather (or something revealing and a little creepy, whatever!). Use your head, bring the important stuff.

You can ride anything so long as it’s pedal powered and only has a single working gear. Keep in mind that the race itself will be on an XC course so you’ll need to be able to ride (or push) it around some dirt. A SS mountain bike is the obvious choice but cruisers, lowriders, BMXs, fixed gear track bikes, clown bikes, tall bikes, SS conversions, 1980 full-rigid Repco conversions and anything else with one gear will will be ridiculous and highly encouraged.

You can modify a geared bike so that the gears don’t work (and be able to prove it), but that’s kinda boring.

Don’t worry stress too much though. Bring anything you want and we’ll figure out how to make it singlespeed on the day. Cutting cables is fun!

If you’re a local, or arrive early, head to the Tip Shop at McRobbies Gully in South Hobart (follow the signs to the tip), find the roughest looking bike you can, rip the derailleurs off, paint it black and ride custom!

For more information or a good time, call Mischa on 0438 599 147 or e-mail info@bottlesandchains.com.

Join the mailing list for updates and information!

Tahune MTB Marathon

That’s right, we’re taking the soft option! Bottles And Chains are entering a rolling gang into the 50km leg of the Tahune MTB Marathon (technically it’s called the Macquarie Accounting Challenge, but no one knows what you’re talking about if you call it that). Everyone else is probably doing the 100km leg, but heavy beer consumption over the last few years has resulted in lower peak fitness for the BnC crew, so that would likely kill us all. Much better to do 50km and still be able to walk during the following month. That said, a bar-stool recovery program holds some promise of rehabilitation.

If you want to come along and join us you should go and register. We’re not going to be doing it in a stressful manner (not if I have anything to say about it) and no one will laugh at you if you fall off (much). Registration closes today! So yeah, do it now or you’ll miss out and you’ll have to sit at home on a Sunday and spend all day recovering from your hangover on the couch eating chips and watching DVDs, when you could quite easily be out in the wilderness getting dirty and sweaty and feeling like you’re about to die!

Grundyundies new bike

As promised earlier, here are some better quality pics of Mat Grundy’s new ride. Built (Frankenstein style) by the big man himself (with a little help from Grasshopper jnr jnr..). The set up has a few unusual attributes. Ah, note the front hub.. yep, it’s a BMX hub.. but the hub and rim hole counts didn’t match so there was a bit of improv wheel building action. ..um, the front fork is an old school 1″ touring job.. probably perfect for a man of his stature? The seat post bolt is out of Russ’s old Repco Superlight.. the stock Soma bolt stripped out on the 1st attempt to tighten it.. Lame. Brake lever courtesy of my Surly emo and until it’s recent liberation, the brake itself had been living at the bottom of a spare parts box @ Treadlies for the past 15 years. Cranks are old Campy mountain bike cranks? WTF? Strange but true. Seems to ride well.. although the pilot did whinge a bit about having to pedal ALL the time.. so much for him being a seasoned single speeder.*

*(I always suspected that single speeding wasn’t about bikes and was all about the beer).

Live fast, die old

Andy linked up to the kids at Cycle Jerks today, and because I’m always impressed by a cheesy punk rock reference I felt the need to spread it further (given how our readership is so massive and all, ha!). They’re a bunch of nuts from Denver, Colorado and their blog has a bunch of videos and other suitably random and good shit on it. “Full of racing, blood and beer. What the fuck else is there?”. Sounds good. They also have a radical logo, suitably ripped off.

So yeah, don’t get off the internet quite yet, go look at their website. If you’re from Hobart, don’t buy a t-shirt or I’ll be forced to wrassle the shit outa ya.

I thought hipsters were a type of jeans?

A wise man once said “Get off the internet and ride your bikes.” Actually, it’s probably been said a bunch of times. Smart words regardless of who uttered them first and how many times they’ve been repeated. That said, the internet can be handy for plenty of things, even if most of them are better and more enjoyable when actually done out in the real world. Looking at beautiful bikes and old-school bike magazines seems to lack a little texture when they’re being blasted at your eyes through a computer screen. Music’s a little richer when it’s coming through an amplifier rather than your tinny PC speakers. That new component looks great in the online store, but the photo’s got nothing on the first test ride. And the best YouTube footage pales in comparison to the feeling you get when you’re out on your bike with your mates.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the shit-talk and bullshit that mindlessly repeats itself every hour of every day on the internet. Naturally, when it stems from this website I wholeheartedly approve of it and suggest you quit all other activities so that you may dedicate your life to BnC, the refresh button and the ol’ comment posting link. But most of the time you need to step back and ask yourself if this shit really concerns you, or if you might be spending a little too much time worrying about words and websites and fashion trends that can be ignored simply by closing your browser, or visiting another website. The internet is a forum for the world and just like any public space, it’s got its full share of morons and idiots. Do yourself a favour and avoid getting caught up in the shit-creek, ’cause who wants to paddle through that when there’s perfectly good singletrack up the bank and over the hill?

Ignore the trends, forget the hipsters, get off the internet and ride your bikes.

Christmas Carnivals past..?

How fkn cool are these shots? I fished them out of some old issues of ‘Tasmanian Mail’. The above shots were taken at the 1907 Latrobe Wheel.. Hard packed clay track.. supposedly the best in the state at that time? And the shot below is of the 1908 Scottsdale Wheel!! This is the track my Grandmama’s cousin’s were racing on back in the 1940s.. (See my earlier Old Bike’spost) My Grandma can’t remember if this was a dirt or grass track and I can’t tell from the pic which it is either.. yeah, sorry about the picture quality eh.. Photocopying micro-film! Not ever going to be good!!

Ah, these shots are getting me pumped for some B’n’C grass track racing!! hmmn.. another possible future event?

No grave but the sea

The Sea Shepherd crew are at it again, with two of their crew being held on a Japanese whaling ship in Antarctic waters. They’re a great organisation whose direct-action protests actually target the guilty parties, which is all too rare these days (although there’s nothing quite like a bit of black bloc molotov cocktail action). Go read!

In bicycle news, clouds have been gathering and the forecast seems to be for another alleycat some time soon. We’ll let you know when we find out more.

There’s also been some chatter regarding the 2008 Single Speed Nationals in Tasmania, so hopefully we’ll see more info surfacing on that!

The photos from the now-infamous Christmas Alleycat have been provided to us in an unmarked manilla envelope, obviously shot by an unknown contributor with a high powered telephoto lens. We’re all being watched! While the race report has yet to materialise (I take full responsibility, but if you want to know what happens at these things you should just show up! Haha), the photos and results will finally be online…shortly.

We’ve also got some plans for official BnC jerseys (and skin suits?) in the pipeline, so we’re going to be needing your feedback! For starters, if anyone can recommend a jersey manufacturer who make good quality gear with low minimum unit requirements, let us know!

Stay tuned, this party’s only just getting started!