tag
When you shoot a lot of film, you end with a few frames left over from time to time. Some of these photos are from my AWOL ride, others from MTB trails in Austin and a few randoms. None really mean much together but as individual frames, they tell their own story. Check out narrated photos in the Gallery!
While I’ve shown you photos of Cinelli’s new touring bike before, I don’t think I’ve given a proper introduction. The Bootleg Hobo was developed as a fully-loaded touring bike, spec’d with a triple crankset, front and rear racks, proper touring wheelbase and a mid-trail geometry. You can see more details at Cinelli and the Hobo is in stock and ready to ship to your local Cinelli dealer.
Previously:
Cinelli Bootleg Tour d’Afrique 2013 and the Hobo
The winter is the time of year to camp in Austin. Some of the Beat the Clock Cycling club guys and I will be spending the weekend camping and riding a nice loop I put together in the middle of hill country. While I doubt I’ll be maxed out in gearing like I was in this photo, there will be a lot of climbing and a lotta dirt. I can’t wait!
Regular posting will commence on Sunday but I’ll be posting to Instagram @JohnProlly all weekend!
Photos by Shannon Ayres
So… if Chris Bishop isn’t going to NAHBS this year, who’s going to win it? I’m partially joking but Chris’ latest work is mind-boggling. Ryan’s 650b Randonneur frame is absolutely stunning and I still can’t believe how many details are packed into this bike. Head over to the Bishop Flickr to see more!
The ever popular and sportier version of the Brooks Flyer, the Brooks Conquest is back. Meant for a touring, mountain, klunker or fatbike, these saddles are a bit longer, like a racing saddle, but offer a little more compliance for distance. Check out more information at Brooks!
Ever since Erik showed me the first sneak peek at his Specialized AWOL, I knew I’d have a blast photographing it one day. Little did I know, however, it’d be in San Francisco. By now, you’ve seen photos and video of this bike here on the site. How could you miss it? With the special Nickel PVD – Physical Vapor Desposition – coating, it pops!
Erik even referred to this bike as a “peacock” in the Transcontinental video. It’s almost so distracting that you fail to notice the Shimano Dura Ace Di2 Alfine 11 speed Gates carbon belt drive set up with hydraulic disc brakes. Or the wicked fat tire clearances.
Other nifty details are the Plug by Supernova, which charges electronic devices but one of my favorite frame details is the special bracket for mounting the rear Supernova light onto the non-drive rocker dropout. And of course, the Fällkniven F1 Swedish special forces-issued knife with its (purple) zip-tied sheath.
Trust me, during our ride in the Diablo Range, I was geeking out so hard on this bike.
Yeah, it’s pretty jamming and what better place to shoot it than Bernal Heights in SF, at sundown, as the sky itself put on a color-assault of its own. Countdown to full nuke… 3… 2… 1…
Photo by Heather McGrath
The Brentwood is by no means a new offering from Geekhouse, well, not officially yet. Last year, they debuted this new porteur bike at NAHBS and soon enough, with the launch of their new site, the Brentwood will have its own page in the Geekhouse catalog.
For now, head over to see more photos of this clean and tidy bike at the Geekhouse blog!
Is it spring yet? Got your touring rig figured out? No matter how I feel about my rig, or the other offerings on the market, it’s always refreshing to see something as classic an classy as the Breadwinner Cycles Aufderheide tourer. Head over to Breadwinner for specs and their Flickr for some more photos.
All week, we’ve been looking at a touring bike, being ridden off-road but what I really want to do next is a bike packing trip. Maybe not as ambitious as the Tour Divide, but something multi-state and for a week or two. The latest from Blackburn follows two rangers on just such a trip.
What’s a Blackburn ranger? Want to become one? Find out how below.
When Erik and I met at Eurobike last year, we talked about doing a ride to celebrate the Specialized AWOL release. Originally, we talked about Oregon, then LA, but after some research, we realized there were plenty of roads, tracks and trails literally in SF’s backyard.
With the help of Jared from Riv Bike, Erik began to think about a three day route from SF to the Diablo Range, Morgan Territory, Henry Coe and finally, into Morgan Hill where we’d share our story and watch the premier of the Transcontinental film. It seemed like an achievable goal. We’d pack for camping, which included cold nights and mornings and most importantly, we’d take our time.
Rather than actually planning our route, we decided to take trail maps and meander a bit off the beaten path. Digital maps don’t have all the trails marked and some of the current maps of the Diablo range revealed a path none of us had taken. We were set.
Unfortunately, as it tends to go, unexpected elements came into the equation and our plans changed. At first, I was pretty upset about it, seeing as how I was planning on pulling a few stories out of our ride, but after reviewing my photos, I decided it made for a good story…
Part of what the Specialized AWOL project represents is an escape, a desire to get out of your normal ride routine and try something new. Taking a chance if you will. While we didn’t complete our ride, we had fun and saw some incredible displays of color as Mother Nature impressed us all.
Seriously, the sunrise the second day rivals all in my past experiences…
Read on in the Gallery!
There’s more to come, including my review of the AWOL Transcontinental Limited Edition and a Beautiful Bicycle post on Erik’s own bike.
Apologies for the lack of updates today, I was unable to spend any time online and spent the afternoon working on the story and photos from the weekend. All I’ll say right now is that I had a blast, even though our original plans got shortened a bit.
More to come, including a bunch of rad photos, a review of the AWOL and photos of Erik’s mad-peacock AWOL.
This morning, the AWOL team and myself left San Francisco for a three day ride through Henry W. Coe state park down to Morgan Hill. While we have a general idea of how we’ll get down there (i.e. excessive speculation), we’re leaving a lot of room for error. Because, let’s face it, no big ride can go down without something going wrong. At least that’s my track record as of late.
I’ll be riding one of the new hydraulic disc, belt drive AWOL Transcontinental limited edition bikes and shooting photos of the ride for a few features on PiNP.
Come Monday, we’ll be showing my photos from the ride at the premier of the Transcontinental AWOL video at Specialized HQ.
Follow Hellhommus and me on Instagram this weekend for updates!
Well, the time’s here. It’s the fourth and final episode in the Specialized AWOL Transcontinental Race documentary. This has been one hell of a journey and I can’t wait to see what the AWOL team has planned next.
As always Ertzui delivered an exceptional web series. It’s so good that I just watched the whole thing over again. See parts one through three below!
As I sat down to scroll through all of the Beautiful Bicycles I photographed this year, I quickly realized how diverse PiNP has become. Previous year’s lists never had a MTB, much less two and even though the site has begun to embrace dirt riding more and more, there are still three track bikes in the rankings. Most of these bicycles were made in the USA by small frame builders, but two overseas-manufactured bikes made the cut.
This year for the Top 10 list, I looked at site metrics, social media ‘chatter’ and my own favorites (which were remarkably in-line). All of these bikes got at least 100 Facebook likes and over 20,000 visits within the first week of posting. The latter two requisites were necessary to bring it down to ten bikes, from the dozens of my personal favorites. Also, I omitted my own bikes from this list.
I like to think of PiNP as a showcase for Beautiful Bicycles and how they get put to use. See the full Prolly is Not Probably’s Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2013, in no particular order, in the Gallery!
Man, this has gotta be my favorite web series of the year. Is anyone else actually considering doing something like this? I miss the open road and these videos truly capture the physical and psychological challenges you encounter along the way.
Go AWOL!
Previously:
Specialized AWOL: Transcontinental Race Part 02
Specialized AWOL: Transcontinental Race Part 01
Geekhouse has really embraced the fade paint job and it seems like Blue Lug is eating it up! Head over to the Blue Lug Flickr for more photos of this beaut!
This looks like a rad project. Follow the Path Less Pedaled here. Thanks for the heads up Kyle.
Here’s the second, gut-wrenching episode of the AWOL project’s coverage from the Transcontinental Race, shot by Ertzui. Watch as the road takes all Erik and Recep have to offer. The Stelvio section looks horrific!
Previously:
Specialized AWOL: Transcontinental Race Part 01
