Random Fridays.

A few events of note this weekend on the coasts...

The first is the Nutcracker III down in Florida tomorrow. No website to link you to but all the necessary information is listed on the flyer below. Lots of great prizes to be had, get out and support a good cause.


The second is on the West Coast out in California, Woodland Hills to be exact. Cross season isn't completely over - the So Cal Cross Prestige Series is having their season finale Santa Cross on Sunday. Costumes and celebrating another great season. Be there if you can.


And finally...

Truth be told, here in Grand Rapids there is quite the growing cycling community: last year being awarded bronze level status as a Bicycle Friendly community, having 11 shops, 2 bicycling ministry co-op's, 1 urban mountain bike park [with another on the way], miles of paved trails, access to multiple mountain bike trails just outside of town, a few frame builders, numerous road and mountain teams, a strong presence and advocating by the WMMBA, the growing bike polo community, and 3 bicycle company headquarters [just to mention a few things...]

One of these being our friends over at Slingshot Bikes. Slingshot has been around since 1982 and offers a unique selection of bikes. They recently released their new long sleeve cycling jerseys. Our wheels are offered on a number of the Slingshot models and we are pleased to be featured on their latest jersey. Get one today while supplies last.

Hey Green Eyes!

Celeste. There is just some thing about it.

Some say it's the color of the Milan sky, some a mixture of military paints, and others the color of the former queen of Italy's eyes. [Thank you Wikipedia!] This is a timeless color that's been in our line for a number of years on our Deep V, Fusion, B43, Blunt, Aero, VXC, Aeroheat and Aerohead rims.

Regardless, all I know is our celeste comes from Australia.

Some of you have probably seen our new ad in Urban Velo. Sporting how versatile the Bottle Trap is and since we know how you love matching colors, yesterday we received the first batch of the Bottle Traps in celeste. Numbers are limited now but more are on the way!
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This Saturday is also a big day here in Grand Rapids, as it is the ribbon cutting/Mayor's Ride/'official' opening of the GR Bike Park. Join Ryan, J-Bolt and a slew of others at 9am for a trail day, then at 11am let the riding ensue!

Then Sunday, I'll be heading back to my homeland [Cedar Falls, IA] for an extended weekend and will be putting on a little urban ride with a few people; and yes, I'll be rocking the 16" folding fixie! It looks to be a good weekend here in the Midwest, so get out and ride!
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Finally a few videos for the weekend. The first two are from the Velo City 2010 Tour, the first is a recap of sorts followed by a teaser from the past LA event

The final video is from a film project in it's early stages of development. 'Career Courier' is a documentary on, you guessed it, career bicycle messengers. We're excited to be a part of this project and look forward to seeing Kenton put together his vision for the film. Share the love, click on the widget below to see the video and help support the cause.

Monday Videos

Another day. Another Monday. After a weekend, the mind is always a little sluggish; so why not keep it simple today with a few videos to hopefully stimulate the mind on this Monday morning.

First, if there was any question on bike polo, this video sure does clear it up. Well... it doesn't but it was posted over a on the Hardcourt Bike Polo website, which is a great site to get an idea of the ins and outs of this segment of the cycling world.

The next video was posted over at Urban Velo last week: the Red Bull Minidrome. Yes, you read this correctly, minidrome. And yes, it is that sweet.

Red Bull Minidrome from Radar Films on Vimeo.

I'll leave you with a video I stumbled onto this weekend on the GR Bike Park. With the Mayor's ride coming up this weekend, it's exciting to see how this park has developed and is developing [plus, you can see Ryan and J-Bolt doing a few runs on the pump track]:

Dirt and Polo

Busy day here at Velocity but never too busy not to show off one of our rigs... Today, we have another one of Paul's, with a short write up:

After many years of mountain bike racing and many different mountain bikes, my IRO has put the fun back in mountain biking.

IRO 29er stats:

- IRO single speed frame and fork
- Velocity Blunt wheelset
- Avid mechanical disc brakes
- FSA crank
- Ritchey handle bar
- Ritchey seatpost
- Race Face stem
- Time ATAC pedals

From racing to pulling my kids around in the trailer, my IRO makes every ride a great ride!

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Staying with the mountain theme. We recently posted over on our Facebook page a video from an early run by Ryan on the new pump track at the GR Bike Park. Lots of hard work by a group of devoted volunteers has both the pump track and the first single track loop taking shape in time for the Mayor's ride and park clean up date on May 15th.

Finally, for all of our friends across the pond. No not Wisconsin, we mean the big pond... over in Amsterdam. We've hinted at our love for bike polo here and there's a little throw down right at the finish of the Giro d'Italia this Saturday. Check out their website for more details. You'll have a chance to win some of our Deep V rims and a few of our Bottle Traps.

JRA

This past weekend there was a lot riding to be had: Ryan, Rachel, and Matt along with a crew of others headed up north for a two day ride that ended up being a good 150 mile trip, Jacobi threw down at the Fort Custer Stampede, and J-Bolt continued the shaping of the pump track at the GR Bike Park.

We also sent out some rims to the 5th annual VeloCity 2010 Tour. This is a 4 city tour that spans the whole U.S.. The first stop on the tour occurring in L.A. for the 3 day event. A number of races, parties and polo, all made for a great time for all who showed, I'm sure. The next 3 dates and cities go as follow:

May 22nd :: Chicago

July 3rd :: NYC

TBA :: San Francisco



For more details head over to the Cyclehawk website, but most importantly get out to these events! Thanks for the support, Squid!


Whether you're a messenger or mountain biker and everything in between, be sure to be checking all the events that we are a part of on the sidebar on the left. We do our best to keep that up to date. Each is an opportunity not only to get out on your bike, but also to score some Velocity gear.

Mother Nature Won.

As she normally does, Mother Nature threw down at Trans Iowa making it the epic that is. 58 riders starting, 0 finishing: race was called between the 1st and 2nd checkpoints. We've gotta love technology, there were plenty of live audio updates from the event organizers and a few of the riders kept their Twitter feeds live and going throughout the event... check out #tiv6 and see a little of what all the riders went through.

A hats off to all of you would showed up to ride and battled with the elements. Of course, the final group of riders that made it the longest in until the event was called deserve a special shout out:

Joe Meiser

John Gorilla

Corey "Cornbread" Godfrey

Matt Braun

Eric Brunt

Jay & Tracey Petervary

Charles Parsons

For more insight, reports and pictures on all things Trans Iowa related check out the Trans Iowa site, Guitar Ted's site, and the TI History page.

In all things Grand Rapids related:

The other event we told you about last Friday was the Hop Cat Alley Cat here in Grand Rapids. From all reports the event went off without a hitch and the weather held off all allowing our GM to take 2nd overall in the event.

The Grand Rapids Bike Park is in it's final push to meet the deadline for completion. We've mentioned this a few times on the blog and can't help but bring it up again. This week there are 3 days people are going to be out there getting this place into shape: Tonight, Thursday Evening and Saturday. Keep up on all things GR Bike Park on their Facebook page.

We all love riding the local trails, it's easy to forget all the work needed to develop and maintain the trails we love. Regardless of where you are, get connected to your local MBA and play a part.

Trail Work.

For the past few months, especially these past few weeks, there has been a growing movement of people involved in developing the new trails within city limits here in Grand Rapids, appropriately called GR Bike Park. We've mentioned the park awhile back when preliminary layout was done in January and Ryan threw out his back. This park renewal, specifically the trail system, has been headed up by the wMMBA and has been gaining a lot of steam as the pump track is in it's final stages of completion and the single track is coming along well.

With the May 15th launch date quickly approaching, work has been occurring on the Thursday nights and a few weekends to get this urban bike complex together. J-Bolt, Ryan, Matt, Jacobi and along with the hard work of countless others, have been pouring in the hours to make these trails a reality. This is truly a great thing to see and to hear going on; especially when local governments are tight on funds, for outside groups to rise up, develop, manage and pursue projects like the GR Bike Park. This is the first park of it's type here in Grand Rapids with talk of another already started.

So if you're in the Western Michigan area, check out the Facebook event page and GR Bike Park's Facebook and Twitter pages to keep up on the status of the trails [along with pictures], when trail work days are happening and other ways to help. Finally, this weekend is the 21st running of the Yankee Springs Time Trial down at the Yankee Springs State Recreational Area near Gun Lake. It's a great race for the start of most riders seasons with around 600 riders showing up. Good luck to everyone!

Whether you are racing or not, get out and ride this weekend. Enjoy!

Hey everybody! Ryan's back!

After what we considered a pretty normal Monday here at Velocity, minus the fact that we were running a man down. Today we are back to running at full strength with Ryan here after his extended weekend.

Turns out, Ryan is a pretty experienced recumbent rider and took an extra day to spend cruising around with the rest of his recumbent crew [as seen in the picture]. I'm told it was a great spin out west, with a few stellar climbs and some great flats to really open up the legs.

In all seriousness, Ryan was gone yesterday due to some reoccurring back problems after working on some of the new trails being built here in Grand Rapids over the weekend. Yes, we are resilient here in the Mitten, building trails in January is possible. A few of the local news stations made it out, you can check out one of their write ups here. GR Bike has a few things up on their Facebook or do what we do and follow them on their Twitter.