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Two Wheel Tango, uniquely positioned in the bike community with a healthy amount of women staffers, is ALL ABOUT encouraging women to get involved with cycling (at all levels) and is actively promoting self-sufficiency-on-the-road with totally free women’s-only tube changing clinics!
Fellow female cyclists: I'm ready for you!
I am happy to say that through the last year, dozens of women have mastered tire/tube changing at our sweet clinic. I too have learned a lot about the teaching process (a dry-erase board is key!) and have broken the clinic into “information chunks” so that you have a chance to practice each step while it’s fresh in the brain.
The atmosphere? Relaxed, question-friendly, and sometimes funny. (Especially if I blow up a tube on accident! Hey, nobody’s perfect.) And if you don’t get it the first time, you’re welcome to come back again for a re-cap. It doesn’t matter if you have a 15 year old road bike or a brand-new comfort bike, or if you got your bike here or elsewhere.
What we cover:
- How to remove your rear wheel (that chain can be a bugger!)
- How to remove and install a tube like a pro
- Troubleshooting (how did I get a flat in the first place?)
- Getting it all back together
- How to prevent flat tires (as best you can)
Check out this page at our website if you want to sign up! It’s great, and we’d love to see all your smiling faces this summer!
-Jess
I NEED YOUR HELP!
For a number of things. I bet some of you are optometrists. I need an eye exam. And I bet some of you are gardeners. I need to figure out a good compost-topsoil ratio for my pepper plants. I also need a tennis partner.
With our pixelated powers combined, we could go all the way, Proverbial Partner and I!
This is nothing to do with those things, though. (But, really, that eye exam is a must.)
Last year, I visited Madison, WI a couple times. The first time was for Trek World, a big dealer expo for people that work with Trek. It was great! They gave out free tattoos at the end. Really. Kind of weird, but cool. Anywho, I met this guy named Ian. He wasn’t officially invited to the expo, but he was in the process of biking all over the U.S. from city to city helping people find reasons to love their bikes and their riding. So we talked about our respective trans-Atlantic rides (mine through Bike and Build) and bid farewell.
I later visited Madison to check out graduate school. I stayed at a co-op called Lothlorien House. And I ran into Ian again. AND I FOUND OUT ABOUT HIS AWESOME PROJECT AND I LOVE IT.
He started a project called Bicycle Benefits. (The website is down. Are you still around, Bicycle Benefits? If so, answer my plea…) His idea was to encourage bicyclists, bike stores, and local businesses and places of gathering to get together and help each other out. Check out more about his success in Buffalo, NY from this source!
This could be visible on YOUR front door!
I will take it upon myself to get in touch with Ian and get this program started in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Metro Detroit in general. I have huge huge HUGE hope for local businesses everywhere, and people’s health everywhere, and I think both could benefit (yuk yuk) from this collective effort.
Now, a solicitation for help: If there’s anyone else out there who wants to get in on this, send me an e-mail (samt@twowheeltango.com)! Whether you’re from another bike store, a local bar, an art gallery, the public library, or an active community member, you can get involved! I would love it SO much. I’ll even bake cookies for you. Vegan cookies. Gluten-free if need be.
You won't even taste the garbanzo bean flour.
Okay, I’m done with my plea.
But, coming up on May 3 is the Bike Ypsi Spring Ride & Festival 2009! It’ll be great! Because Ypsi is great! And so is Bike Ypsi! And so are riding and festivals and the year 2009! So, yeah, everyone should go. 10:00 a.m. ride and 12:00 p.m. festival. Helmets recommended. Enthusiasm required!
Did I already mention that? I may have. I can’t be sure. I just want everyone to do it. That and the Gears for Beers Ride for the ALS Association! It’ll also be great. What could be better than fundraising, bikes, and tasty brew all at once? Probably not getting Siegfried and Roy’s autographs while standing by a statue of Siegfried and Roy and a tiger.
Thrity-foot busts of my homeboys? Yes, please!
I expect a flood of e-mails of support. Don’t let me down, y’all.
Sam!
Look outside! Is it grey? Is it cold? Is it April?
Yep!
Michigan will forever tease us with hints of good, sunny, warm weather before thunderstorms and snow flurries and frosts kill off whatever young starts we had naively attempted to plant in late-March and whatever ambitions we had to shake off the cobwebs on the road or trails.
Still there.
But many here are still excited about April. The showers (and frosts and flurries) bring May flowers, as told in days of yore. They also typically bring changing hours for the bike shops nationwide, to accomodate the increasing traffic of customers new and old. However, we regret that this year Two Wheel Tango WILL NOT be changing our hours for the Spring.
Repeat: NO NEW HOURS FOR SPRING! Which really just means that we won’t be opening at 10 a.m. during the week, like we have been in Springs and Summers past. But 11 a.m. is early enough for all of you, right? If you’re peeved about it, call and let us know! We’re here for you, after all.
Okay, so that’s some news. Meanwhile, at the official Two Wheel Tango webpage, we have posted another ride option for all you mountain bikers out there. It’s one of Jerry’s favorites, called the ‘Super Poto’, named lovingly for:
- how super hard it is, and
- the trail that it encompasses, Poto or Potawatomi.
Jerry also has provided us with a review of a new MTB product, the Chunky grips by Extreme Steering, Inc.
Chunky AND pink. Like salmon. Maybe.
They’re totally cool. These grips not only feel great to the touch (both gloved and naked [not fully, just your palm parts]), but mold convincingly to your hand as you tighten down on the silicone. In a way, they’re like memory foam. But, more accurately, they shape better than the rubber used in other grips, such that they accomodate however your grip may change as you move around. Or, if you suddenly gain seven bones in your palm, they will adjust to your new hand shape! Totally cool! Mutations welcome!
Here are the words straight from Jerry:
- “Road tested on two laps of Poto.
- Initial feel very different from traditional MTB grips–soft and malleable progressing to firmness with tighter grip.
- Quickly molds to configuration of grip resulting in enhanced comfort [and] control due to hand position retention in rough terrain without requiring ‘death grip’.
- Effective in reducing strike-thru [sic] shock to wrists and elbows in heavy going–definitely a contributor to reduced joint fatigue on longer trail rides.
- ‘They just feel darn good’–small things can play a big part in FTR (Fun to Ride) Factor.”
The FTR Factor is in Jerry’s head. But soon it will be a quantifiable rating system. Like it? It will appeal to your inner engineer. The grips get somewhere between six TWT roses, four and a half stars, and the two of Ebert and Roepers’ thumbs up.
These grips are somewhere in the nebulous middle.
Now that you are completely perplexed by this graphic, I will offer up a warning, sponsored by the Michigan Mountain Biking Assc. Don’t be the pooper that makes the trails all nasty by riding too early. We had a couple great, dry, perfect days. And I know a lot of us rode a couple times, taking utmost care to avoid the muddy spots. But, now that it’s going to be raining non-stop until May, let’s all be friends and not destroy the paths more than necessary.
Cool. No more prosletyzing. On a happy note, how did the following situation occur?
The irony is palpable.
Betcha it wasn’t candid.
Ride safely!
Sam.
Two Wheel Tango 