Team PKBanken Postgirot Open 1985

Technically this isn't a Postgirot Open post card, but as you might have noticed I do not only collect Postgirot Open post cards, but other memorabilia too. Like my awesome jersey! To be honest I don't really want to be seen as "someone who collects memorabilia for a long since discontinued bicycle race, but... I guess that's what I do. Good grief, that's sad!

But for all you other sad sods out there who also have a soft spot for 1980's cycling, here is the next part of my series, a post card for the cycling team Team PKBanken, with a picture of what I assume is the team for the 1985 Postgirot Open bicycle race. Below the title are the dates, depart and finishing places (cities) of the stages of the race of 1985. (Yes, and the logos of the Swedish Bicycle Federation and the PKBanken bank.)

There's not much to say about the post card, is there? I haven't been able to find much about the Team PKBanken team, other than evidence that they might have been a "semi-professional" team. Whatever that means. The suits, that is the jerseys and bibs of the riders are pretty dull, and they wear slip-ins... I'm not even going to mention the hair cuts. Obviously they rode Peugeot road bikes. I hope for their sake their components were better than the ones I had on my Peugeot Mont-Blanc. (But they look like Campagnolo, don't they?)

The guys squatting at the ends deserve to be mentioned, though. No, I don't know who they are. And they have obviously simply pulled the track suits over their other, "regular" clothes - you can see that the guy to the left is wearing a shirt and tie under the track top, and they have brown leather shoes and brown boat shoes, respectively. (In the late 1980's all the cool kids in my school class wore a Lacoste polo shirt, bleached Levi's 501 and brown boat shoes. Today I like Levi's jeans and I have my first ever Lacoste polo shirt, but I still hate those boat shoes.) But the track suits are just awesome! That pastel yellow is nailed!

Some things obviously were better in the 1980's. Ride safe!

Crap on wheels

Have you noticed a plague recently? It's called rentable electric scooters. They're sh... crap. Apparently they have a really short life span, so they're absolutely not environmentally friendly. They're for lazy people. People too lazy to propel themselves forward. People too lazy to park them out of the way, when they have reached their destination or ran out of battery. And the lazy, nature hating people who rent these scooters park them every-effing-where. On sidewalks. On bridges. In the forest. And in bicycle lanes.

Sorry dude. But you had it coming.

Right now it's the wild, wild west with these scooters in Gothenburg. A lot of people are actually renting them and I think there's three companies whose business idea is to rent electric scooters. But a lot of people, especially cyclists, are complaining about them, complaining that they´re parked everywhere and that they're in the way.

And now we have the first death case in Sweden that can be directly linked to electric scooters. A 27 year old man apparently rode his rented electric scooter down a steep hill and was hit by a driver in a car, in Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden, about a week ago. And yes, there is a huge difference between me getting annoyed over electric scooters being parked in the bicycle lanes, and the death of a man with the biggest part of his life ahead of him. A huge difference. It's a tragedy.

So will something be done about these scooters? Yes, I think so. Unless it turns out that these scooters were only a really short craze and all these three companies (Breakit, Lime and Voi) go bankrupt I think some legislations will be passed, so that you can't just park them anywhere. Or ride them anywhere, anyhow, with no safety improvements.

(A common sight in Gothenburg, Sweden, lately.)

Then, when I was taking a walk with T a couple of weeks ago, we saw an abandoned bike just lying on a lawn. We walked over to it to take a closer look when an elderly lady came up and talked to us. She said that the bike had been standing there, leaning against a distribution box for weeks, but now it was lying in the grass. Since no one had obviously moved it I decided that we were going to take it home, and take it to the lost propery office at the police, as soon as I could. Which was a couple of weeks ago. This is the bike that we found:

It's an OK bike, with 26" wheels, I think. But is the front fork broken? It looks a little bent.

I think the paint scheme is pretty cool (underneath all that dust). And it's made in Taiwan!

It's really kind of rusty, though...

This solution, for the front brake, actually is really interesting.

At the moment I don't know if the owner have picked, or will pick, the bike up, from the Police lost property office. If he (It's a "he". We can agree on that, can't we?)has picked, or will pick, up the bike I won't have a new old bike. Which is OK. Depending on whether I make any progress with the Kona or not I will keep this bike and use it as a winter commuter bike, or donate it to the Bike Kitchen. I mean, if and when T wants a proper mountain bike I'll probably look for something else.

It was some time since I last worked on the Kona, on that bloody stuck seat post, but lately other projects have had higher priority, like my road bike, my regular commuter bike and L's old commuter bike, which is now our spare bike. In short I am not short of bicycle projects.

Ride safe!

Svenska Cykelmässan 2019, part 2

A guy who calls himself Sambal Oelek also attended the Svenska Cykelmässan bicycle fair, two months ago. He is not a member of Ensliga Bergens cykelklubb (and probably doesn't want to either, which is totally cool), but he was kind enough to give me permission to display his photos from the fair on this blog.

There really isn't that much to say about the photos, except that Sambal Oelek is a much, much more talented photographer than I am. So, here you go:

 A thriatlon bike... Euch!

I think that this stuff (the two photos above, and the manufacturers' badges) are from an exhibition about bikes at the Mölndals Stadsmuseum museum. Keep an eye out for a post about our visit there.

OK, so it's an electric mountain bike... But look how they've painted the logo on the frame. So cool.

Yeah, you will never see me a pair of windfrees. They are probably really clever, but you look like a dork wearing them.

Fredrika Ek's bike!

I don't know who this bike belongs to.

I couldn't get an espresso at Café Kask, but maybe I could have gotten one here? But why was this wagon stuffed away in a dark corner?! How much did they actually sell, from this crappy place? Hey Svenska Cykelmässan! This is not cool!

This is where I bought a Campagnolo Athena crank set, and T a Specialized helmet and a pair of red gloves.

This is pornography...

Thanks for the photos, Sambal Oelek! Ride safe, y'all!

Svenska Cykelmässan 2019

I’m a bit late on this one, but I would like to write a few words about the Svenska Cykelmässan bicycle fair in Gothenburg on the 15^th through the 17^th of March 2019. Some people has been quite negative, saying that the fair was crap. It wasn’t. In fact, the only crap thing about the fair is that it won’t be held in Gothenburg next year. That is, I think that the fair is every other year in Stockholm and every other year in Gothenburg, but to be honest I’m not really sure. The information on their homepage is that the fair will be held in Stockholm next year, and I think it was held in Stockholm in 2018. So will it be held in Gothenburg in 2021 then? Who knows? Who knows if there even will be a Swedish bicycle fair in 2020?

But this year’s fair was fun. Yeah, you could complain that Campagnolo, Colnago, Pinarello or Cinelli weren’t there with a booth, but the truth is that Sweden is quite a small nation when it comes to cycling. We’re not Denmark or Netherlands, and we’re certainly not Italy. And until we become a bigger bicycling nation we’re going to have smaller fairs than those in, for example, Denmark.

By the way the Svenska Cykelmässan was held on the same weekend as the Copenhagen Bikeshow fair, which seems like an utterly stupid decision. If anyone knows why this was the case I’m all ears!

Anyway the fair was both bigger and better-attended than I had anticipated. True, I went there with extremely low expectations but those expectations were nevertheless surpassed. T and I stayed longer than I had expected, looked at more stuff than I had expected, shopped more than I had expected…

First we checked out the exhibitors’ and vendors’ booths. After about one hour we left, went outside and I passed on T to his mother, then went back inside to listen to a lecture/disussion about cycling friendly cities… and Gothenburg. Emil Törnsten from the organization Svenska Cykelstäder (Swedish Bicycle cities) held a presentation about good examples of bicycle friendly cities around the world. (Sadly, I don’t recall any examples from Sweden.) Malin Månsson from the (municipal) City of Gothenburg presented the work being done by the City of Gothenburg to make it a better city for cyclists. And curated the whole thing the Stalinist consultant-type Lars Strömgren did. No, I don’t know if Lars Strömgren really is a Stalinist consultant-type. He’s the chairman of Cykelfrämjandet (sort of… The Bicycle promoting organization), but it’s what one of my friends called him once, and I think it’s funny. Probably Lars Strömgren is a really nice guy. He did a good job curating the whole thing, anyway.

Lars Strömgren curating

Emil Törnsten showing how one can easily make taking the bicycle the smart choice.

A bad photo of Malin Månsson.

After the seminar I left, went outside, was passed T back and then we went back inside. This time we took our time checking out all the exhibitors’ and vendors’ booths, saw a lot of cool bikes… and honestly some not-so-cool, boring or just plain butt-ugly bikes. Let’s concentrate on the cool bikes, though!

Helkama bicycles are always fun! But what’s with the extremely boring booth?! The woman who worked in the booth was really nice and friendly, and explained to me how the collaboration between Helkama and Merida works, but I was completely bugged out by how boring the booth was.

It could, so easily, be cooler, nicer, better-looking and interesting. Hey Helkama, I’m gonna show you how, just hang on.

T checking out a Lapierre Xelius SL. Damn it was light!

A Lapierre XR 929 Ultimate. Shiny! Gold! Almost a bit obscene, isn’t it? ;) Good-looking, though!

These commuting bags and backpacks by Weathergoods Sweden really impressed me! Stylish, they seemed really well-made, and as a bonus they only use synthetic leather in their products. The only question marks are what the price will be when they start selling and how the colours will fade in sunlight. The blue bag/backpack might get a really nice, vintage look.

This bike from Trek is fun. And actually the slogan isn’t that bad, either.

Commuting gear from Tucano Urbano. Really stylish! Of course, what’s to be expected from an Italian company? When I looked inside one of the garments it was made in China, though… I could easily picture myself commuting to work wearing their stuff, it just would have been even easier hadn’t the stuff been made in China… (Sori!)

(This is how happy you get when you can have a free Guerciotti catalogue.)

Guerciotti… Damn! I’m really content with my Helkama Kuningaskulkuri, it’s everything I want in a road bike and it suits me perfectly. But these Guerciotti bikes...

Guerciotti Record is their retro model. It’s steel and it comes in a variety of cool colours.

But their limited edition Made in Milano “Milan red”, closest to the camera here, is something extra! Beautiful! (And Campagnolo components! Well, in the Guerciotti catalogue, at least.)

http://www.guerciotti.it/en/

Café Kask wasn’t as Italian as it should be, I couldn’t even get an espresso. (We all know that Kask is an Italian manufacturer of helmets, right?)

Fredrika Ek and her Mr Bike. Taken from Fredrika Ek's instagram account. Hope that's OK!

Should have taken a photo of Fredrika Ek’s booth too… It might have been the smallest booth in the whole fair. Fredrika Ek decided, a bit on a whim, it seems, to ride her bike from Sundsvall, Sweden to China, Australia, South America Africa and then back. (Well, she must have flew parts of the way.) She was super nice, showed some photos of herself riding around the world and sold her book. I bought a copy, which she happily signed. Truly inspirational!

Lastly some films of MTB Freestyle Show. These guys are extremely talented!

Early winter day

Winter has arrived. At least up here in the North I think it’s safe to say that winter is here now. The temperature these last days has been around -10º. (C - Celsius. Of course. Celsius really is the only sensible unit of measure when it comes to temperature. If you insist on using another unit, I only have one thing to say to you: Change.) It has even snowed. 

To be honest I haven’t been out riding much anyway. First I was a little fed up with cycling, after having ridden the Kalmar Grand Prix race (at a personal record average speed, I might add) my butt was sore.

Yeah, I ride in a Giro d'Italia 2016 la maglia rosa without being Vincenzo Nibali. So sue me. 

And I had ridden quite much up to that race too, I was the first one to sign up to the race which meant that I was given the Number 1. And riding with #1 on my bike and on my back and do really bad just wasn’t an option. Not to mention going DNF or DFL… So I had been training really hard, including a bunch of 100+ km rides. (Miles? If you mean real miles, i e 10 kilometres, we can talk miles. If not, then no,) My longest ride – also a personal record – was 150,81 km, from Växjö to Kalmar. That was a really great ride, by the way. Instead of choosing what might have been the fastest way between Växjö and Kalmar I opted for the smaller roads, less travelled, calmer and so much more interesting. I hope that I can do it again next summer, and if you have the opportunity to do it I highly recommend it.

I concentrated on riding... and finding my way! So I didn't really take that many photos. For some reason, which I won't examine, the few photos I took were mostly of derelict houses.

Kronobergstrampen is a 350 km cycling route through the Kronoberg county, Sweden. However, it's hard to find much information about it, so I don't know how organised this cycling route really is.

Endless roads and dark forests in the Kalmar county, Sweden.

The Sankt Sigfrids kyrka church in Sankt Sigfrid, Kalmar county. I didn't go in, but the exterior is quite nice!

But after Kalmar Grand Prix my butt was sore and I was a little fed up with cycling, so I needed a pause from it. When I was up for riding again the weather was crap. After that I got ill. And then autumn came, with slippery leaves covering the roads.

And now it’s winter. Which means a couple of things. Firstly it means taking my road bicycle apart and meticulously cleaning every part. I won’t bore you with details about how I clean my bike, let me just say that it is as clean as I can possibly get it. (Without unwelding the tubes.) The second thing is continuing to saw through the stuck seat tube in a Kona Lava Lamp, that will eventually hopefully be my winter commuting bike. I really don’t get that many opportunities to take out the bike and the saw and go at it, but I haven’t given up! Actually it’s a matter of prestige now, I am hell bent on getting that seat tube out of the frame.

Actually this must be the ugliest f**king bike I have ever came across. So it's perfect as a winter commuting bike, since winter commuter bikes are (meant to be) routinely mistreated.

The misery...

The third thing is the most important: To get my son’s Christmas present (he doesn’t know English yet, so it’s safe to write this) – a Specialized Hot Rock 24” mountain bike pristine and flawless. Since it’s a second hand bike I have some work to do, for example the pedals are totally crap, but basically it’s a good bike so it’s totally doable. A good clean (no, not really like the one I do on my road bike) and some new parts will do the trick. The parts arrived in a big box last week. It’s nice to do something for someone else, even if it’s for my son.

It doesn't look like much now, but I hope a good cleaning and some new components will change that!

The new component came in this small, handy box!

But besides the above I don’t expect much bicycle-related to be going on this winter. You can always wish for more bicycles (n+1, anyone?), bicycle parts and bicycle clothing but I can honestly say that I don’t really need anything. All my projects – the above mentioned, a mountain bike and two road bikes that I will fix and then sell – will require some new parts but… I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. So if I get this blog more up and running, meaning that I will update more regularly (yeah, fat chance) I suppose I will focus on other aspects of cycling. And since it’s winter it’s not really bicycle race season either…

Yeah, there are some races in January through April, like Tour Down Under in January, Tour de Taiwan and Volta a Catalunya in March, to name but a few but I am always eagerly waiting for spring, summer and the grand tours. (Yeah, well, last year I boycotted Giro d’Italia, due to the race having the opening stage plus two more stages in Israel. And Israel occupies Palestine, as you might be aware. But that was last year.)

2019 might be a good bicycle racing year. Giro d’Italia 2019 is concentrated around Northern Italy, Tour de France will have its departure in Brussels, go through the Eastern and Southern parts of France before finishing in Paris on the 28^th of July and Vuelta España… Well, I honestly don’t know if Vuelta España has been presented yet. It would be kind of typically Spanish to not have presented, nor even decided on the route yet.

And I have signed up (and paid) for my two usual races, the Göteborgsgirot 140 km race and the Kalmar Grand Prix Open 130 km race. I don’t think I was the first one to sign up to the Kalmar race, so this year I won’t have the same pressure on me to do at least OK, but I will of course try to do as good a race as I possibly can. With a little luck I might even be able to have a go at the Växjö-Kalmar ride, or even ride from Göteborg to Kalmar. We’ll see. 

But here and now I finish,so ride safe!

P.S. What a coincidence! After I had posted this text I saw on instagram that Vuelta España actually presented the route, yesterday. They will concentrate on the Northern and Southern parts of Spain, and of course, on Madrid.