Floyd A. O'Reilly Blog: Wednesday Video Roundup: Tall bike touring the Grey Escape Paris-Roubaix & more

Welcome to this week’s roundup! Our first video (above) is a great 10-minute trailer about the Tall Bike Tour and fringe society. It’s somehow related to The Winking Circle (artsy straightedgers?) near Toronto. In any case, the trailer is really interesting even as a standalone piece.

This next video would have been my featured video if I hadn’t found the tallbike family. It deserves to be watched fullscreen. New Zealand is so pretty.

This is another fantastic video/trailer. It’s called “The Grey Escape”, it’s cute (“he’s only 81”). Wonder what they are using those rickshaws for in Norway.

Coming back to the PNW, here’s the Coast Gravity Park up in BC. Their trails look perfect.

Sonja Trauss, part of the new SF Bay Area Renters Federation (aka SFBARF, not to be confused with BARF, also SF-based), is speaking in this short Vimeo segment. I’m personally happy to see renters groups that are focusing on zoning and construction, not just rent stabilization. They have a good FAQ on their subreddit that is worth reading too.

Have you ever wanted to ride in a Thunderdome? Here’s the story of setting up for the “Inger Rucker” race (by Dirty Fingers Bikes) in Skamania County, probably near Trout Lake. This was part of Bike Film Fest last year.

People seem to be better at seeing cars on the streets than bicyclists. Perhaps the answer is not to beat them, but to join them? This faux-car doesn’t quite reach the uncanny valley, but it seems like it might work. The inventor, Mikael Kjellman, is trying to raise funds on indiegogo. (if the youtube link goes away, try watching it on facebook; h/t JM)

San Antonio is one of the many cities that does ciclovia events (like our Sunday Parkways). Via Streetsblog, here’s a video showing their 10th Siclovia event:

I like when Russ comes in from bikefishing and puts videos up on PathLessPedaled. They are always well-produced. This rando bag is really nice and modern; Russ also reviewed an Ortleib bikepacking bag, similar to the Apidura bags.

Staying local, here’s an early mountain bike in the River City Bikes museum collection. I wish Velo Cult did something like this with all their beautiful bikes.

Most bikes are made in Taiwan. GCN got a factory tour in SRAM’s factory. I’m always fascinated by the combination of high-tech and low-tech in the manufacturing process, and I like the original/nondubbed versions of How It’s Made.

Mike Cotty of Col Collective put up a video of riding up Tenerife (which is a ~7000ft climb).

It’s nice to see new video from Specialized’s Win Tunnel. In this test they evaluate the effect of cadence on aerodynamics:

This is an entertaining 25-minute video called “A Slice of British Pie”. It’s basically.. hooning in the dirt. It’s high intensity with music to match, and the riders have a great combination of skill and invincibility.

Finally, here’s a simple video showing a custom frame build from paper to brazing to component assembly. The sounds are all ‘natural’, which makes the audio the best part.

Bike conflicts

I’m putting this under a header so it’s skippable. I don’t want to always feature car-vs-bike incidents, but I don’t want to fully ban them, either. There were some interesting videos this week.

First, this is from Gothamist, illustrating how cars regularly ignore right of way. There’s a great argument in the article about lawbreaking by mode: “Yes, pedestrians and cyclists sometimes break the law, and they should never do that, but simple physics dictates that we must hold automobiles to a much higher standard, and that is why we are not soliciting clips from drivers.”

This video is what many of us are scared about- being hit by a car that approached behind us. This person said they ended up with a broken hip. Sigh. (skip ahead to 1:55, the previous content isn’t important)

Here’s a scary near-miss of a cyclist:

This is another one of those WTFs that some of us have had- behavior from a driver where we don’t even understand the reason. I wonder if people like this understand how lethal it can be. The person posted an update in the comments.

Finally for this section, here are 9 terrible bike lanes around the world:

Paris-Roubaix results

It’s been over a week, so I’m spoiling Paris-Roubaix (aka Hell of the North). The big news is.. pretty much nobody expected OGE’s Matthew Hayman to win. The odds were 400 to 1 for him to win, he’s one of the oldest winner to date, but the OGE team is very happy.

Other things of note include a motorcycle-on-rider crash, American Phil Gaimon crashing out, Cancellara crashed twice, pretty much every rider on Sky crashed, and Sagan jumped over a crash, surprising himself:

The CyclingTips “How the Race Was Won” recap is the best way to see what happened during the race:

GCN’s recap/discussion is pretty good too:

Naturally, OGE, Hayman’s team, is really happy. Here’s their video. They also put up a 360-degree video showing a bike change (360deg videos are really disorienting unless you have some sort of VR setup).

Here’s the official recap video:

Here’s the official on-bike footage (from Velon), they edited together some great small moments- and one of the crashes (at 1:40-2:25):

Other videos: Cannondale’s preview and Michael Matthews talking about the race.

Honorable Mentions

This week’s honorable mentions: a ‘Frankentrike’ crowdfunding pitch (h/t JM), security/safety reminder to Tour de France spectators, Interview after Kirstin Armstrong’s 2016 Redlands Classic stage race win, GCN’s highest climbs in Europe, pro racer ladies trail riding on forest fire-scorched land in South Africa, Princess Mary of Denmark taking her kids to school in a cargo bike, GCN’s overview of the Bespoked (custom) Bike Show, GCN reviews the exotic-looking Orbea Ordu time trial bike, Merida’s response to the banning of disc brakes in road racing, David Millar tries a Brooks saddle on the cobbles (“one of the things I want to do is not be a human billboard anymore”), and street stunting in Korea.

Inclusion criteria: If I’ve missed something, post it in the comments! I prefer videos published in the last week or so. Note if there’s a specific point in a long video that is worth highlighting. Also note if there is colorful language. I will delay videos containing pro racing spoilers by 7 days.

– Ted Timmons, @tedder42