Just a quick note

... about the results from the UCI Road World Championships in Richmond, that ended yesterday. And actually just about the results from the Women Elite Road Race. Because what is there to say about the Men Elite Road Race? Peter Sagan won, Michael Matthews came in second and Ramunas Navardaukas was third. 110 out of 192 contestants finished, 82 did not. (That's 57% of the riders finishing the race.) And there were no Finnish riders in this race.

The Women Elite Road Race, on the other hand, was both interesting and fun, as there were no clear favourites for this race. There were some crashes, a couple of attacks and for a while it looked as if Małgorzata Jasińska from Poland could win, but with 900 metres to go Lizzie Armitstead attacked, then dared Anna van der Breggen to begin the sprint which she did, but being cool, calm and collected Lizzie Armitstead won. Congratulations! Lotta Lepistö came in 40th. Unfortunately our favourite rider in this race Enkhjargal Tuvshinjargal didn't finish the race and Laura Vainionpää, the second Finnish rider, didn't start. 88 out of 138 contestants finished, 50 did not. (That's 64%.)

Lizzie Armitstead sprinting to the finishing line. (We borrowed this picture from UCI. Hope that's OK!)

40th out of 88 really isn't that bad! Especially considering that for example The Netherlands had seven riders, so had USA, Great Britain had six riders, so they were able to employ tactics, the whole team working for one selected rider. When you're alone you have to fight so much harder. We're not saying this to try to diminish Lizzie Armitstead's achievement, we're saying this to explain that 40th place is actually really good.

Anna van der Breggen from the Netherlands, Lizzie Armitstead from Great Britain and Megan Guarnier from USA. (We borrowed this picture from UCI. Hope that's OK!)

And Enkhjargal Tuvshinjargal... How can you not like a cyclist from Mongolia? She's pretty good as well, she won the individual time trial at the Asian Cycling Championships in 2013 and she is the 2015 National champion of Mongolia. Too bad she couldn't finish the race!

Enkhjargal Tuvshinjargal at the race. (We borrowed this picture from Heaton Johnson's Flickr page. Hope that's OK!)

(All small cycling nations deserve a little extra respect, we think.)

Ride safe!

Ugly bicycle spotting, 3

Here's another pretty ugly bicycle:

Or actually the bike itself... No. It is ugly. The blue colour is kind of nice, but the decals, that gold colour of the decals, don't match at all. And that triathlon, fast forward seatpost... Ew!

So what can we say? It's probably a very fast bike. And it probably is less likely to be stolen, due to it's looks, which is a good thing. Interestingly, when we googled "Everest Sora Racing" all the top hits were from Norwegian sites... Is Everest a Norwegian bicycle brand?

Ride safe!

... and trendies!

So bicycles are hip now, no one has missed that, have they? They are no longer simply means of transportation or sporting equipment, they are now trendy accessories. You can walk around with a bike frame in your hand but bike frames are kind of heavy. (Unless they're carbon, but then they're really not that cool to walk around with.) You can also roll it along slowly or just stand and kind of hang over it, like posers do. Preferably wearing a bicycle cap and/or some other cycling-associated clothing... Like this 1980's Adidas sweatshirt:

(We borrowed these pictures from Donny Fung's tumblr page. Hope that's OK!)

There's no doubt that this girl totally rocks this sweater, but... let's just say that our opinions about the sweater are mixed. Oh, and we're definitely not calling her a poser.

If you take your bicycle outside at least you're kind of using it. But then there are those who simply hang a bicycle on a wall, buy some bicycle-inspired interior decoration, posters... but not because they like bicycles and bicycling, just because it's trendy right now. This Monday our local newspaper Göteborgs-Posten had a full page about bicycle-inspired home furnishing in their housing supplement. And because Göteborgs-Posten usually acts like they hate bicyclists, never miss a chance to explain how horrible bicyclists are, how bicyclists take up space on the streets, are ruthless, hate cars (and Göteborgs-Posten loves cars) and so on... Because they act like that, we simply decided to steal some of their tips and publish them here. So here goes:

1. First of all we could mention that we're working on a blog post about storing your bicycle: How to store your bike, in style, part 2. (Part 1 here.) Göteborgs-Posten mentions two bicycle storing products. One which we will take up in that future blog post and Cycloc, which we mentioned in that old blog post. "Decorative even when you don't have your bicycle hung up." Ehm... No, it's not.

2. Then they mention Bruce Doscher's posters. They're actually really cool and not too expensive either. They're not the official posters from the races, though. Do a search on the internet for some super cool posters from the 1960's and 1970's. Or try this!

3. A miniature bike from Afro Art:

(We borrowed this picture from Afro Art. Hope that's OK!)

That one is really super cute. And that's it from us now.

Take care!

Hipsters, fixies and plastic models

There won't be any real bicycles today either. Or... OK, we could tell you that we just watched Shelley Olds win La Madrid Challenge by La Vuelta, followed by Giorgia Bronzini in 2nd place and Kirsten Wild in 3rd. And we think that it's great that La Vuelta follows Le Tour, and organises a race for female bicyclists, in connection with the final stage of La Vuelta. Female bicyclist deserve big races! They work just as hard as the male bicyclists but are paid less.

And we could also tell you that lately we have become a little obsessed by mountains. Or obsessed by "mountains" - we don't have any Alps or Pyrenees up here in the North. We do have the Scandinavian Mountains, but even they are quite a bit from where we live. So we have to settle with what we can find, slopes about one or two kilometres long, with an average grade of 7,5 % (i e for every 100 metres ridden you're 7,5 metres higher up). And as we mentioned a week ago, on the hardest stage of La Vuelta the last climb was just under seven kilometres long and averaged 11,2 % grades, with slopes up to 21,67 %. Compared to that we've got nothing. But hey, we just have to make do with what we've got, and as we're not pro bicyclists we're actually OK with what we've got too.

But what we wanted to tell you today is more of a continuation of the last blog post. Check out these photos:

(We borrowed these photos from Italiaanse Racefietsen. Hope that's OK!)

Pretty cool, aren't they? Plastic (or possibly metal) model bicycles, fixies and hipster male dolls! Complete with Cinelli T-shirts, even... (But where are the fixie-riding female dolls?)

Ride safe!

This post has nothing to do at all with real bicycles

Other than that it started with a bicycle ride to a plastic model exhibition. And as amends for all this non-bicycle related stuff, we'll start with some pretty cool plastic models of bicycles. There is this:

(We borrowed this picture from Hobby Search. Hope that's OK!)

one, which is probably quite easy to find. It's not super-exciting but OK. And possibly you could modify it. Ditch the mudguards, the chain-guard, the kick-stand and the luggage carrier and you have a fixie. With some drop handlebars and a racier saddle you could even make it resemble a racing bike. Or just keep it as it is, if you're into more standard bikes. That's cool too.

Then there is this:

(We borrowed this picture from Italiaanse Racefietsen. Hope that's OK!)

which actually is a racing bike. It looks really cool and it's even made in Italy. It's probably quite hard to find. And if you find it it's probably really expensive.

And lastly there are our photos from the plastic model exhibion. There were a lot of models exhibited, but these were our favourites:

 (We think this one was called Villa Nautica, and it is made from a plastic model of a ship, paper and other assorted materials. According to the description there are some scale model figures in there but we couldn't spot them...)

 (This Vulcan bomber is cool. And huge!)

 (A WW I bus)

 (Some kind of desert truck)

 (A Finnish Hawk)

 (An F-16)

 (Another F-16)

 (A Viking!)

 (This model was really impressive. It even featured a detailed, lit hangar deck!)

(Helicopters, above and below)

 (Nautilus - the submarine from Jules Vernes' novels)

 (Yep. We get it.)

 (A Victor. Cool and huge as well.)

 (Some Star Wars models. We're not really fans of the Star Wars films, but these models are cool.)

 (Maschinen Krieger)

 (This figure needs no introduction, does it?)

 (The contrast between this minion and the monsters behind it...)

 (This guy we just couldn't figure out. He spent some time arranging some tin cans and tightly drawn strings, and then started playing and to be honest it sounded... crap. Really, we can appreciate stuff like Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz, but this just sounded like some mentally deficient guy randomly beating some tin cans and tightly drawn strings. He's not mentally deficient.)

 (A WW II Finnish tank)

 (A Rocket Bunny style car, apparently)

(Tyrrell P34 race cars, above and below)

 (A gold and black T-Ford. Nice!)

That's it. Ride safe!