Eastern Oregon Roadtripping With #NoBikes.

There's a great writeup of the 4th of July NoBikes roadtrip over on Embassy. Aaron Gates, the blogging force behind NoBikes (and now a Northern Embassy staffer), spearheaded the trip, as he does every summer. This year's route up the Columbia River Gorge meant that I was able to leave work Thursday evening (in Portland) and catch up with the crew in Hood River by sunset.

Two trucks, two cars, one minivan, 20 people, and 19 bikes.

All credit to Tony Archibeque Jr. for the lenswork. Aaron is assembling the video. (I got one clip on the last day.)

Lineup: Matt Desson, Aaron Gates, Donald Delp, Cary Lorenz, Delia Millsap, Tony Archibeque Jr., Slade Scherer, Jack Nicholl, Colin Fried, Jordan Thaden, Andy McGrath, Dave Butler, Carl Arnett, Ty Scott, Tommy Joseph, Mat Ridgeway. Down in front: David Clay and me, Tony Piff

You'll Never Ride It IV: Epic Spot Sniped by Fixies & Sk8-Lugers.

You probably saw the fantastic pics of this gigantic hydroelectric reservoir posted on that Slovenian fixie blog back in June. For the record, I'm not so much annoyed by the fixed gear gnar-dog antics , as I am jealous of their amazing spot. (Though I confess that I did chuckle at the bmx bullies tearing up the comments section.)

With nothing original to add, I refrained from blogging about it.

Yesterday, however, I saw the spot again, featured in a YouTube video on the Skate & Annoy blog, and decided to make a quick post.

Suffice it to say, if you dislike William Spencer, you're going to hate Almir Jusovic. (I adore them both.)

I don't think there's anything intended as ironic in here. Truly, seriously, unfashionably original. Lots of wonderful sketchy spots; reservoir roll-in is the ender-ender.



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Related: You'll Never Ride It I, II, and III.

Dan and the Dish

Here are two dope pictures of Dan from streetphire shredding one of the acoustic mirrors from April 11th's post. Can you imagine having this as a local spot? Incredible! And he's not even using a cheater board! (Note the concrete block directly in Dan's path: ninety years ago, that block would have supported the listening microphone. Neat.)

A million thanks to the Shithawks blog for bringing this to my attention.

You'll never ride it, pt. 2: G-CANS

For the second installment of You'll Never Ride It, we have the Tokyo G-CANS project, an immense network of tunnels "for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city." The tunnels were blogged to death a couple years ago, but never mentioned with reference to bmx or skateboarding, so I'll go ahead and throw up the standard set of rehashed images.































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My dad was talking about Dogs and Demons (I haven't read it (yet)). The book basically predicts Japan's economic and environmental collapse, due to an obsession with exactly this kind of ridiculous public works project. Terrible, but I just can't help getting a little teary-eyed when I think of all the amazing concrete wonders, never to be glimpsed by a skater or bike rider.

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Land Rover used the location to shoot a tv commercial, which is a cool idea but pretty weakly executed. The YouTube:



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Here's another quick G-Cans movie. Video helps give context to all the familiar images; and the audio really completes a sense of atmosphere.

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Tours available in Japanese: "Feel the grandeur of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Tunnel."

Feel the grandeur!

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And, while you and I will never bike the tunnels, some people (admittedly) do. Heck of a commute.

You'll never ride it (and neither will I).

These massive concrete structures are "acoustic mirrors", built in the first quarter of last century along Southeast UK coastlines. By gathering sound and focusing it at a microphone, the dishes gave the Brits an early warning of approaching enemy aircraft, simply by listening.

But faster and faster planes diminished the mirrors' usefulness, and the advent of radar in the 1930's rendered the technology officially obsolete.

There are a dozen or so mirror sites smattered along the coast, but the most impressive specimens, pictured above, stand today in a defunct quarry, surrounded by a moat, at an old military base. A drawbridge provides access for tourists.

Type "acoustic mirror" into Google Earth, and you'll find them.

Hilarious as I think it would be, trying to session these post-modern, post-apocalyptic monoliths with my little bicycle, that's really a minor component of my attraction to them. I just hope they remain standing for a while, and that I can go and have my picture taken with them.


















Read more about them and see lots more pictures here, here, here, and here.

The world is incredible.