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Show #69 – December 17, 2011

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Guests: Charles Youel, Art Crank & Dave Kirk, Kirk Frameworks

Snow is falling (and sticking) in northeast Ohio at this writing. That’s nature’s way of telling you to stay indoors, curl up with your favorite audio player and prepare to be entertained, informed, and perhaps even inspired by a fresh episode of The Outspoken Cyclist.

This week, we have a couple of regular guys doing extraordinary things. The first is Charles Youel, the founder, director and curator of Art Crank. Charles is a cyclist and graphic designer who decided to put on a ‘poster party for bike people’ in Minneapolis, and 500 people showed up! Realizing there might be something to this idea, he’s done about twenty more similar events around the country. Caution: listening to this interview may cause you to want to travel long distances to attend an Art Crank event.

After a brief bit of news, the second half of the show brings us an interview with Dave Kirk, of Kirk Frameworks Custom Bicycles in Bozeman, Montana. Dave is a fan of The Outspoken Cyclist, but we would have had him on anyway, just to hear about his history as a racer, production framebuilder for Serotta, and now proprietor of his own shop. Plus, he has some interesting insights for those who might want to start framebuilding for themselves.

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Show #68 – December 10, 2011

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Guests: Charles Pelkey, Red Kite Prayer & Stefan Walz and Chris Mooney “Tucson Spokes”

December is hurtling along toward the “big” holidays, and the end of another year. Diane has pulled together a couple of early stocking stuffers for Outspoken Cyclist listeners who have been extra good this year (naughty listeners are admonished to do an extra set of intervals before downloading this week’s show).

If you are a long-time reader of VeloNews, the name Charles Pelkey will no doubt be familiar to you. Charles wrote for the “journal of competitive cycling” for 17 years, rising to the post of Senior Technical Editor. Coincidentally, he received a cancer diagnosis on the same day this past July that he and a number of other VeloNews staffers were let go. Charles is now an attorney, and continues to write his Explainer column for Red Kite Prayer, and is undergoing chemotherapy for his cancer. Listen and find out what else Charles is up to these days.

Our second interview this week comes from a place where the sun shines 300 days a year on average: Tucson, Arizona. Stefan Walz and Chris Mooney have written a gorgeous new book called Tucson Spokes. It’s a photo collection about the people who ride bikes in and around Tucson. Sunny, flat, and with easy access to 9,000-foot peaks? You’d ride your bike a lot there, too.

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Show #67 – December 3, 2011

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Guests: Jody Dzuranin, Consider Biking; Thomas Prehn, Cateye America

The calendar says December, but the weather still says October. No complaints here, and if the “weather suits your clothes” as the song says, keep riding outdoors. The three month indoor ride to nowhere will start soon enough.

The first stop on tonight’s tour takes us south to the capitol of our fair state, Columbus, Ohio, and a conversation with Jody Dzuranin, Operations Manager for Consider Biking. Consider Biking serves ‘people who pedal’ in the Columbus and surrounding area of Ohio. Jody will bring us up to date on their Open Streets initiative, and progress on the Ohio-to-Erie Trail, among other exciting opportunities for cyclists.

Regardless of how warm (or cold) it is, daylight is at a premium this time of year. Our second guest can help with that if you want or need to ride at night safely and legally. We’re joined by Thomas Prehn, President of Cateye America. Thomas has news about some very cool lights, including USB-rechargeable models inexpensive enough to fit in your Christmas stocking (hint, hint).

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Show #66 – November 26, 2011

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Guests: Chef Biju Thomas, The Feedzone Cookbook; storyteller and writer, Maynard Hershon; encore broadcast  with David Herlihy, author of The Lost Cyclist

Well, here we are in the middle of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and one of the many things Diane and I are thankful for is the opportunity to invade your ears each week and bring you our take on what’s happening in cycling. And naturally, we’re also thankful that you tune in or download each week. Without you, we’d just be two cyclists sitting in a small, dark room taking to ourselves.

So Diane and Brian up and run off to the Adironacks this week, but before she skipped town, Diane put together a show we think you’ll be thankful for.

First up is Chef Biju Thomas, who has combined his passion for bike racing with his passion and skill at cooking. Chef Biju has teamed up with Dr. Allen Lim on The Feed Zone Cookbook: Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes. The book focuses on making tasty, healthful food that can sustain a competitive athlete, and yet require a minimum of ingredients and preparation.

After a short break, Maynard Hershon is back with an original story that’s just right for the holiday season, entitled “Nice Wheels”. Always nice to hear from Maynard, and we promise to badger him to return to TOC periodically.

We close out this Thanksgiving weekend show with an encore of an interview Diane conducted almost exactly a year ago at the now-closed Joseph Beth Booksellers in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Author David V. Herlihy was in town to promote his book The Lost Cyclist.

We hope you enjoy this week’s show, and we hope you found time for a ride or two in the unseasonably mild weather the past few days.

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Show #65 – November 19, 2011

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Guests: Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles; Amy Walker, author and co-found Momentum Magazine

Cyclists are so creative and resilient! Certainly we don’t have a monopoly on those traits, but most cyclists I meet are doing innovative, or at least interesting things. To wit…

Take for example Steve Garro of Coconino Cycles. Steve quickly brushed off a 45 mph encounter between his bicycle and a 1967 pickup truck to return to building custom bike frames and tending fruit trees in Flagstaff, Arizona. He also kayaks and rides an off-road hand-cycle, among other activities. You can hear the rest of Steve’s story as he’s our first guest on this week’s show.

If you’re looking for a good bicycle-related read this winter, look no further than a new book edited by our second guest, Amy Walker. Amy is one of the founders of Momentum magazine, and she enlisted the help of some fellow creative cyclist types to produce On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life. It’s got the Steven Bilenky seal of approval, but you don’t have to take his word for it; Amy’s is our second guest on The Outspoken Cyclist this week.

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Show #64 – November 12, 2011

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Gary Helfrich, Sonomo County Bicycle Coalition; Lauria Mellot, Reflect Sports

After living on the south shore of a Great Lake for more than a quarter century, I’m used to wild mood swings in the weather by now. But still, a day of accumulating snow sandwiched between two stretches of sunny and 60+ degrees in early November is wacky, even for northeast Ohio. Happily, The Outspoken Cyclist is a constant, calming companion for your brain, no matter what the thermometer reads.

Our first guest is an icon, not only in cycling, but in several other fields, including rock and roll, and transportation planning. Gary Helfrich was one of the forces behind the original incarnation of Merlin, went on the road with Aerosmith, and is now the executive director of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition. We got to pick his brain on all those subjects and more in a lengthy interview this week.

Cycling, swimming and other outdoor activities can be hard on the skin and hair. Diane spotted some new products at Interbike from Reflect Sports. Their flagship product, Hoo Ha Ride Glide is a chamois cream that was developed to be friendly to female “saddle contact points” (aka the Hoo Ha). It was also developed to make you smile when you say its name. In any event, our second guest this week is Laurie Mellot, one of the partners in Reflect Sports to tell us about Hoo Ha Ride Glide, and their other products.

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Show #63 – November 5, 2011

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Jim Ochowicz (needs no intro!), Rody Walter, Groovy Cycleworks

Here in northeast Ohio we’re enjoying some unseasonably gorgeous weather, knowing that the ‘gales of November’ will be upon us soon enough. ‘Every day’s a holiday and every meal’s a feast’ as the saying goes, and this week’s Outspoken Cyclist is both.

Our first guest is none other than Jim Ochowicz, cyclist, speed skater, former manager of Team 7-Eleven, and current manager of BMC Racing (you know, Cadel Evans’ team). Jim, or “Och” as he’s known was the catalyst for the first U.S. pro cycling team to have success racing in Europe, and his new book, Team 7-Eleven: How an Unsung Band of American Cyclists Took on the World – and Won has just been released. Jim joins us from Palo Alto, California to talk about how he moved from the road to the ice and back to cycling as a team manager.

For the second half of the show, we stick a little closer to home as Diane welcomes Rody Walter of Groovy Cycleworks to the studio. Rody trucked on up from his home in Wooster, Ohio, where he’s a mountain biker, family man, firefighter/paramedic, and the mind and flame behind Groovy, not necessarily in that order. If you’ve got the patience and some cash, Rody can build you a custom road or mountain machine that fits you both physically and aesthetically, and it’s almost guaranteed that he’ll make you laugh out loud at least once during the process.

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Show #62 – October 29, 2011

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Ron Burzese, Bicyclingblind.org; Bina Bilenky, Philadelphia Bike Expo; Maynard Hershon, with a bicycling story

The skies have turned sunny in northeast Ohio this weekend, which fits the mood of this week’s show perfectly. We have three guests who are simply wonderful people, each with a great story to tell.

Ron Burzese is a competitive cyclist who has raced in numerous Texas state championships, a world championship, and nearly qualified for the Athens Paralympics. And he achieved all this without eyesight! Ron is a blind tandem stoker who works as a certified travel instructor for other blind people. Along with a few other like-minded people, Ron started the U.S. Blind Cycling Connection a little less than two years ago. Bicyclingblind.org helps connect sighted captains with vision-impaired stokers, and opens up a whole new world for folks whose legs and lungs refuse to to obey the limits of their eyes.

During the news this week, we have a short, but fun conversation wth Bina Bilenky, who’s the organizer of the Philly Bike Expo, which is happening this weekend in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And to wrap up the hour, the only person who could top a story like Ron’s is Maynard Hershon, and that’s exactly who we have in the second half of this week’s show. Maynard will bring us an amazing story that also happens to be 100% true. Not to be missed!

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Show # – January 1, 2011

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Guest: Diane Lees – The Outspoken Cyclist Herself

Today as we say “goodbye” to 2010 and “hello” to 2011, The Outspoken Cyclist takes an opportunity to get better acquainted with our host, Diane Lees. Diane has been interviewing personalities from all corners of the cycling universe for some time now, and it occurred to me that we should find out more about what she brings to these interviews.

Although she’s an artist and writer, Diane isn’t your typical artist or writer; and although she’s a bicycle dealer, Hubbub Custom Bicycles isn’t your average bike shop. Give a listen, and learn about this unique and creative individual on today’s Outspoken Cyclist.