must be Italian

Take a few minutes and watch Chris Harris not driving cars. Instead, a few famous rally drivers do it for him. In bonkers Lancias. It's readily apparent which driver is true-blood Italian as he beats the snot out of the 037. There's also bonus commentary on why the Delta S4 is one of the most dangerous machines best racing cars ever.

While we're at it, how about some more Delta S4 supercharger whine:

making bike parking sexy

Ok, this pushes all the right buttons: overkill amazing use of engineering, user-friendliness, and efficient use of valuable urban spaces. Two hundred bikes take up a lot of space. This is an uber-compact, and secure, solution. They are likely not cheap and much of the US is a ways off from seeing the benefit of such structures, but places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, with multistory bicycle parking decks, would be excellent sites. In an ideal world where these were common in bustling (thief-ridden) city centers, taking the Colnago out to the bar seems more viable. Oh, and it's also weatherproof for people using their bikes for honest-to-goodness transportation. 

Check out this video detailing the design and operation of the underground bike parking tube.

door rings

In an attempt to make our generic brick house more unique and better reflect its occupants, we decided to decorate the front door. Our neighbors have some pretty bright doors: blue, signal yellow, and we love the look. Particularly cool is a bright yellow door with flowers painted in silhouette on the glass storm door. 

As neat as that is, bicycles are our bag. So, after painting the door a nice green, several worn chainrings were fished from the crank bin and painted black. This gives good contrast and visibility from the street. I think it turned out great. We have a sketch to turn the rings into psuedo-flowers with stalks connecting them. We'll see how it looks are a week or two before hitting it up with the paintbrush. I'm on the hunt for more dead rings, too. I can't bring myself to paint the useful (130BCD road rings) or rare (NOS Campy) rings in the spares bin.

The rings are held on with black coated sheet metal screws and finish washers. The door face is steel and was pre-drilled in the appropriate bolt patterns.