Chris Writes.

What a great series of ads from River City Cycles in Portland. These are four in a series of about a dozen ads in the campaign. They’re brilliant and very clever, but most importantly, they’re pushing the environmental message without being flowery or tree-hugging. They’re abrasive. Aggressive. And the only thing they lack is a decent way for these ads to spread.  These would make great stickers to put on gas pumps. 

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one of my very best friends just had his first (and perhaps only?) beerthday. He, a seasoned veteran of hops and barley juice, had succesfully gone for a year without beer. Without alchohol of any kind, actually. And he gave up caffeine too, just for kicks. So, the year passed. And we celebrated, by riding bikes and making beer at his apartment in Santa Monica. Making beer from scratch, in case you’ve never done it, is a very slow and painstaking process that makes every $8 six-pack worth every damn penny. After nearly 9 hours of never being more than a few feet from the stove, we have 5 gallons of beer that needs to rot for three weeks. And it might be terrible. but if we were doing it for the beer, we would have bought six-packs.

So we started with barley. 11 pounds of it. For the first few hours, we basically made rice, drained it, and then threw away the rice and kept the rice juice (the “Wort”). Essentially, sugar-water made from grain. Then we cooked that for a while, and added the hops. Cooked it for another long time, stirring constantly and maintaining just the right temperature. Then we put it on ice, broght the temperature down to 80F, added more hops (aka “Dry Hopping the beer”), and then put it in a fancy plastic pail. At this point, we “pitch the yeast” (aka “put the yeast in the barley juice”), and the yeast attacks the starch in the sugar water. This attack creates alchohol, and releases CO2. After three weeks of rotting action at room temperature, we’ll have something that might resemble beer.

I admit, it sounds like a lot of work, but now I appreciate beer even more than I already did.

Also critical, and the moral of the story: before the beer making, we rode Mt. Wilson in Pasadena. It was a truly classic ride, involving old friends and some big angry rocks. And it’s all further proof that mountain biking and beer will forever fit together, but never in the way that Michelob would like them to. Manufacturing the link between social sporting events and post-event libation will always seem exactly that – manufactured – unless you’re actually in the middle of the experience yourself. So says me.

On Thursday, August 3^rd, a trio of Specialized staff (including yours truly) met up with our Stumpjumper Museum (perhaps the world’s only travelling mountain bike museum) in New York City, and set up the historical display in the field of a giant outdoor stadium. We were accompanied by the likes of Verizon, Clif Bar, Camelbak, and Pfizer – as well as dozens of non-profits like Reverb, The One Campaign, and other eco-friendly organizations that support bio-diesel, wind power, and energy conservation. Then 70,000 people showed up.

The Dave Matthews Island Getaway on Randall’s Island in New York City is an annual two-day music festival, with two stages and over a dozen acts, including David Grey, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Government Mule, Tea Leaf Green, and others. Specialized sponsored the Dave Matthews summer concert series with a pair of Stumpjumper FSR bikes that will be given away to lucky winners at the end of the summer. Other contest supporters include Burton, Nordica, Taylor Made, and Camelbak – all companies that produce sports equipment that the band members actually use. Bassist Stefan Lessard is a recent S-Works convert, and is now very happily riding his 2006 Specialized Carbon Epic.

This was the largest show of the tour, and Specialized was invited to participate as an ‘Eco Village’ exhibitor. Specialized took advantage of this unique opportunity to share the Specialized brand and Stumpjumper history with literally thousands upon thousands of potential new cyclists. The booth was never quiet throughout the hot, sunny weekend, and it took the efforts of all three of us, plus invaluable help from local shop-guy Tim and local rep Troy Angwin, to answer the non-stop inquiries. Many concert attendees were not only cyclists, but were also dyed-in-the-wool Specialized fans, and they were happy to share stories about their own bikes as they spent time looking through the museum. There were many, many comments like “I’m stoked to see you guys here” and “I love my Specialized bike!” (or helmet, or shoes, etc).

Also, in keeping with the ecological theme of the village, we also displayed a poster outlining our new Tire Recycling program. There was a massive amount of interest in this – lots of people inquired about how the process works, where the rubber mats get used, and where they can take their tires to be recycled.

We handed out over 1700 Specialized Stumpjumper water bottles during the two days of live music, each one put directly into the hands of someone who asked for one. Every bottle included a postcard that listed all our local dealers on one side, and a simple message on the other: “RIDE A BIKE.” At least one booth visitor asked for more of the postcards, saying she wanted to pin one up in every cubicle where she worked.

The festival opened at noon each day, and the village was crowded most of the day, until about 8pm when Dave and his band took to the stage. At that point, we secured the museum’s valuables and headed down to watch Dave perform each night. Both performances were incredible, and it was a great way to finish off each day!