The weather was nice and it was warm, one of the first t-shirt days for me this year.

But I tried something unnecessarily tech and ended up with a sore leg. I started to manual before the jump and take off with just the back wheel, then a forward pitch moment in the air landed me overly nosedived. It happens, I know, so I jumped over the handlebar onto the ground as usual. But the spot I landed was already the launch of the next jump, so I just landed flat, no way to roll around and let go of the impact. My already sore right ankle and knee called it the day, and the pain was just as bad as when I snapped the PCL, sending me straight to the couch to stay in for a few days.

It was bad enough to force me to miss the two-year anniversary of Boogaloo, my bike friend’s bar. But after a few days of doing nothing much but icing and also going to Hoheikyo Spa, it finally felt better to my relief. I had just got the fork replaced, so injuries at this point are especially not welcome.

I had got this fork, used but nice;

Overhauled it, took off unneeded guts;

Cut and ground it;

I also got super low head bolts at the tips. This way, rail grinds cannot break the bolts. The fork is good and alive till the ends wear out.

The damping adjustment on the right leg will require taking off this bolt, but hey, you won’t touch it often once you set it up. No problem. There is way less sealing capability than the original bolts, but it’s not that bad, I filed down the end surface flat enough to prevent major leakage.

Let’s take a look at the connection between the frame and the fork. The current setup is the only loose ball integrated system in the world that I created by brazing on the lower cup, to which I’d like to add a final touch. The frame is put upside down in the pic, so the big cup on top is the lower cup, and the other is the upper, a Chris King cup with sketchy DIY paint on it.

This is a rather traditional tuning method sometimes called “unsealed bearing packing.” You take off the balls from the retainer pictured in the bottom right corner, and put in more balls than there originally were. It is said to offer more durability due to the load distributed onto more balls. In this case, I had to solve the rubbing of the retainer and the fork steerer tube. The cause could be the misalignment of cup and head tube, too much flex of the steerer, or bad design of the retainer. But I guess all of those are happening, so no further investigation, just solution. By the way, this loose ball integrated system really doesn’t offer any special merits, so it won’t be available on production frames.

Now two weeks later.

Eh?

Seriously?

Umm, I’m open to fork sponsorship offers. I’m confident about fracture testing skills.

Related to what I recently wrote about a YouTube video not available “in the country you live in,” I’ve got to dis someone one more time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Adele, the new phenomenon from England. She’s a good singer, and the song is great too. Well, I don’t have to prove it because the whole world already has.

Problem is, the translated lyrics. What the hell?

Not about translation style issue like direct or more poetic manner to employ, there just are a whole bunch of wrong or awkward translations. Job well done at such a level as when it was contracted out to a friend on a voluntary basis, or for a pint of beer to translate this. What’s even more awestriking is the fact that this is the official video from Adele’s Japanese distributor.

I believe it is vital in the music import business to provide well translated lyrics. Principally because it helps a great deal in the understanding of the world that the artist creates. Besides, everything else is available online anyway, like the CD, or other form of sound file, or the biography of the artist.

So this distributor doesn’t commit to it to serve the Japanese customers by helping them understand the song, while, on the other hand, talking to YouTube like a boss wielding the distribution rights so they can block other Adele videos from Japanese viewers? And there of course is the typical massive rip-off on each Japanese version CD they sell, huh?

They say the business climate is getting tougher for movie and music industries based on physical media. Well, if this is the level of their best effort, then they are simply not needed.

Speaking of which, this movie distributor is on my shitlist too. It’s a shame cause it is a good movie, wrong characters in the introduction. If you seriously can’t spell with no error in Japanese, it’s time for you to retire the physical media business.

“This clip is not available in the country you live in.”

This is the first time in a while I get discriminated based on the region. How exciting. The last time was…yes, about three years ago, when I was a Facebook fan of a Canadian rock band. I got a link in a message like “Check out our recent live show,” then clicked and saw the same screen. Of course, the rudeness made me sad and angry enough to quit being their Facebook fan.

If there is an inherent copyright problem in the material, then the clip shouldn’t have been uploaded on YouTube, or Niconico Douga, or whatever site. But this incident seems to have different reasons.

We at North Shore Products make films as well, so we have our share of philosophy about copyrights. However, we have little sympathy for corporate bodies only remotely related to actual artists who are skimming the cream off someone else’s creation. I don’t know who it is in this case, but would guess it’s either JASRAC or some Japanese record company. If you have ever talked to them about music licensing fees for a DVD, for instance, you know that they both are greedy copyright mafias.

“Music has no border,” said somebody whose name I forgot. In reality, it can’t be farther from the truth. In the time when industrial structures, labor force, culture and even national spots in Olympic games have become borderless, what on earth are they doing? The same goes with so many things, including bike distributorship as well. In the world where anything can be parallel imported, local distributorship is no longer a major right you can be so proud of. It just means nothing unless you think about the way to provide the best experience to customers utilizing it.

So I have spent some time studying the bunnyhop. The theme this time is “Greg Hill tuck.” As you can check if you search for images for these words, this is a term named after a legendary BMX rider still used to describe the form characterized by the deep tucking while in the air on a bike.

There are only two points necessary in order to bunnyhop high; strong takeoff and full tucking. Surely there are skills required for each, setup and positioning involved for each, and the transition between the two elements needs a lot of practicing, but it’s that simple nonetheless. And what I’m talking about here is one way to deal with the second point.

To be honest, I disliked the Greg Hill tuck for a long time, because of the bow-leggedness which didn’t seem too cool to me. However, I realized this is the kind of posture often seen in bike trials, skateboarding or parkour, when jumping onto or over high obstacles. And the reason is because, apparently, you can raise your legs higher if you keep the knees far apart to avoid them hitting the body like when you pull the legs straight up underneath the belly.

So I’m one step wiser, playing with the images without the bike now. Hope I’ll be magically better as soon as my bike is ready.

Let’s start with, um, the big stuff. The bike frame.

Gorgeous cracks growing there, meaning the tubes will snap within a few hours of riding. What should I do? Let’s fix it.

Though not a professional level at all, I’ve been messing with welding recently. This is a perfect opportunity, as I’m too scared to do this on somebody else’s bike.

Spark.

Oh…

Mmm let’s hope reinforcement works as magical cosmetic…

Now the frame material is hybrid, including the stainless steel washer used as reinforcement. I ran out of welding sticks, so tried a broken drill bit as well. One more hole in the frame, one less drill shaft on this planet. Now it’s an official knowledge that welding sticks are made in that specific way for reasons. Besides, you really shouldn’t build a bike frame by stick welding.

My awesome rig. Little cost on used car batteries my friend Occhi gave me, jumper cables I’ve had, and a good investment on the automatic mask, which turns dark reacting to the first spark. DIY is fun and you get to know something interesting even if the results are not best, but you need to be careful about safety. Well at least for me, cause I can be quite sketchy.

So I ride the Halloween-like bike. Not bad. No problem after a few days.

However, the appearance just called for a re-repair in the end.

Looking good! Got gussets, and even some painting job done to hide the filthy welding job. The welding stick was downsized from 2.0mm to 1.4mm, resulting in less holes. Later I heard that you can weld thin stuff better with the plus-ground, minus-stick setup, which I may try next time.

The reason that the original frame does not come with this kind of gusset is that it creates stress riser points on the seat stay tubes where they meet the gussets, resulting in quicker snapping. Then the reason that this is okay as a repair method is that it’s only meant to lengthen the product life a little extra bit. Roughly, the frame gained the life of a new frame with this kind of gusset design, which can be a few months for me.

And within that few months, I’m going to get a new prototype frame. The new one has more support for sideways forces by the chain stays, reducing a lot of stress applied on seat stays which causes problems like this.

So I was glad for a while, before my palm got wrecked. Bike riders are friends with calluses. Due to the contraction of skin as it grows into calluses, there sometimes appear cracks. When that happens at the foot of a finger, I sometimes have to cut open both ends of the crack to make it one united canyon all the way across. It means carving your live skin, it means some pain, but it’s better than having the problem longer.

Don’t click the thumbnail if you can’t take this kind of stuff.

For a few days there was pain, and more pain when I grab the handlebars. In the similar veins my jeans had holes and it was cold.

I still went out and practiced, then…

You too, Brutus?

It’s been a great fork. Originally a 160mm travel all-mountain one, converted by me to 100mm and used or abused in the street, including grinds down rails on fork ends. Bye bye sweetheart.

Luckily though, my great friend who hooked me up with Rock Shox is going to help me out once again about the fork. So these days, I’ve been jumping up, down and over fences with no bike, while also waiting for the snow to melt.

Let us introduce the concept first. This specialty street bike for jumping and spinning is packaged and sold as a complete bike, unlike just frame or parts as we have done before. The distinct differences lie in the ultimate frame geometry and optimized component choice.

• All new construction that allows ultra-short back end
• Super high bottom bracket enables sharp maneuvers
• Short crank arms at 0 mm optimize weight distribution
• High-rise handlebar and strong stem compose solid steering feel

As we focused primarily on maneuverability for street tricks on flat ground (360, 720, tailwhip, bike flip, etc.), some of the original functions of bikes have surely been sacrificed. Still, once you hop on this beast, we are confident that you will see how different our bike is from the old ones not so compatible with tricks.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the photo.

I’m not enough of a train geek to keep talking about the ride, but it was good, smooth and fast. The purpose of the trip was to see some bicycle-related factories in Taichung.

It’s basically like landing at Narita, taking an excessively long bus ride to Tokyo, checking out a huge exhibition, talking business, then head to Osaka to breathe in some actual factory atmosphere (we are here now).

The factory visit stories are actually kept secret here for secret reasons, but there are other things to be experienced on trips.

Wherever it is in the world, boys cannot help stopping by certain places.

The hardware store.

Great surprise, as expected, about the weird Japanese text on product packages.

Of course, I didn’t just go there to look for something to laugh about. Who said hardware stores are where you find the trends in the industrial reality, well it was me. What I saw there was, similar to Japan, mixture of standards and price competition.

In the bolts section, inch-sized ones occupied it. It is because they are the majority in the construction industry, I was told. On the other hand, what was written on tape measures beside metric measurement was the Japanese Shaku measurement. For one thing it originates in China and has been vastly used all over Asia, and for the other, there is the direct influence from Japan from when it governed Taiwan. It actually was a stunning similarity to Japan that different units are still being used although the metric scale is the only official one.

In the U.S., for instance, the majority would be the imperial ones, whether you are in the bolts or rulers section. In bicycle industry as well, some American brands (like Profile Racing) swear by imperial bolts, making it hard to find replacements in Japan. But if you step north across the border, metric and imperial scales coexist in Canada. As there are a lot of instances of imperial measurement in bicycles, partly due to it having been the European standard unit back in the day, and partly due to the direct influence from the USA in genres like BMX, Canadian tape measures come in handy quite a bit in my experience.

I saw another example of how hardware stores can help out bike riders. In the USA, lawnmower chains are typically sold in hardware stores for pretty cheap pricing per length. Back when thick chains were the fad in BMX, you could just drop by one of those stores and get some 41 chain if you resided in the States.

Back to Taiwan, another similarity to Japan was that the electric plugs were the same as Japan. So I thought about getting some extension cord, but decided against it because it didn’t seem cheaper. Just like in Japan, there must be the kind of price competition between hardware stores, home electric stores and 100-yen shops with different strategies regarding the balance between quality and price. Though Taiwan is an industrial country, there is no competition against China if the focus is on price rather than quality, hence no price difference with Chinese products wherever you buy it, Taiwan or Japan. And if you buy proud Taiwanese products, it may work well but may not be cheap.

Just like in most countries in the world, Japanese cars are common. They drive on the right side unlike Japan, but some vehicles are beyond the level to care about which side the steering wheel is on.

It surprised me quite well when it made a sharp u-turn in a crossroad just because it missed the entrance of the construction site.

At the end of such a day, I found a cool athletic thing in a park.

It’s just what it seems. It was pretty hard to let go of your hands and keep swinging both legs in the same stride. I loved the challenge, but cut it short because I knew I was looking suspicious doing it alone. Got a movie that no one should ever see either.

The night walk goes on.

I was really impressed when I saw this shrine just along a backstreet. It was beautiful.

And there is a dog, even in the 24-hour long-distance bus terminal.

So I enjoyed the townscape, visited some factories, and headed home.

Taking the 4am bus, wondering when I’ll be traveling with serious businessman baggage. The beer in this shot is nothing but a joke compared to the friendship bottoms-ups with the great factory crew the day before. The sign reads “Flying Dog Bus”, characterized by the awesome old lady at the desk who helped me with bus details with little English, some written communications and a smile.

Tao Yuan Airport in Taipei is clean and nice as always.

So this is how my Taiwan trip ended in joy.

As soon as I landed in Chitose, this is what I did.

My bike and snow obstacles for the first time in a while.

The only problem this time was the bad weather; my stomach doesn’t work well when humid. It stopped raining only on the last day. In that sense, coming back home was the best thing, back to where it RAINS very little. Doing business with the whole wide world while riding bikes in Sapporo, this has got to be my dream life.

I was once told Taiwan is just like Japan about 30 years ago, and in fact I felt it that way quite often. For instance, the city of Taipei is a modern place with WiFi connection everywhere, but it still is home to a chaotic and laid back atmosphere that large cities in Japan have forgotten.

I saw a mysterious solo BBQer in the street,

I saw a superhuman sample in the wig shop,

And you can see a whole bunch of scooters and dogs.

I’ve met this one last year, so he seems to be rocking a bit of a friendly facial expression, just like friendliness plus ennui divided by three.

I also managed to see an old friend from Japan.

Trying every Taiwanese beer with Ken from Goldrush… First time to see him in years, but neither of us had changed much, especially in terms of the passion for bikes.

Local diners are complete with the presence of dogs, though I’m a cat person myself. The beers tasted rather plain, as they are like everyday table wines. The black one is not that black nor thick, as if it were served half & half.

These beers were sold at convenience stores for about 100 yen per can, so things are cheaper all in all. However, at Daiso, the 100 yen shop from Japan, it was all 39 Taiwanese Dollars, or about 110 yen, making it actually more expensive than in Japan. Lineup of merchandise was about the same, so the retail price would apparently stay the same if the goods are manufactured in China and so forth. Speaking of convenience stores, there are heaps of FamilyMart stores, which surprised me last year by the thickness of the plastic bags. This year, though, the bag thickness stayed the same but they had started charging about three yen for a bag. With this point, effectiveness of this whole ecological movement aside, Taiwan is more advanced than Japan.

In Taiwan, they speak Chinese and Taiwanese (which I heard is a variation of southern Chinese dialect). Some people study English and Japanese as foreign languages, but you don’t get lucky all the time. I was surviving language incompatibility at typical places like local diners by uttering simple English words like “meat,” “vegetable,” “rice” and “soup” as well as pointing and gesturing. Substitute kind Taiwanese big mamas in this equation, and you get this:

I wasn’t feeling well this time, so I dropped about 500 yen for this feast. It may look messy just because I had already started eating. I’m not good at taking pictures before eating because I just forget. The soup, chicken, meat on rice, and the straw-like vegetable, they tasted absolutely great.

I also had noodles at this famous shop often, which was under 200 yen for the bigger size. Rice noodles and pork intestine simmered together, topped with coriander. It’s fast, cheap and good, so is popular among tourists as well as locals. You only have to specify regular or large size and yes or no to coriander, so it’s rather easy for non Chinese speakers to order as well.

When you actually do need to communicate, conversation through writing can be helpful. It was the first time for me to experience that my Japanese ability saved me abroad.

Once when I rode a taxi, the driver didn’t understand it when I said “Taipei Station.” It was hard to believe such a simple thing could not work, but repeating it didn’t help either. Then I wrote it in Chinese/Japanese characters on a piece of paper, and I was all taken care of. As I got off at the station I said “thank you” in Chinese to the driver, and he said “thank you,” in English. I felt like, dude, that’s great you actually understand English, it could have been greater if you had used that ability somewhere else earlier!

As I took a ride on Taiwan High Speed Rail from Taipei to Taichung, the challenges never left me alone. The ticket vending machines were just like what we have in Sapporo for subway lines, except that, of course, it was all in Chinese. There were all these selections of where to go, how many adult and child passengers and so on, and I was so happy when I made it through all these traps and got the right ticket, right after which I found the “English” button on the start screen. Anyways there was one thing left to do now; grab a train lunch and hop on the car.

The story is getting a little bit long…to be continued.

It was great in that I saw most things I wanted to see, including the Taipei Cycle Show and whatnot. It was definitely worth it.

On the other hand, I was let down by not being able to go out for a ride with my local friends there I met last year, because they were too busy working and it was raining everyday as well. Still, I managed to find some spot in between the rain and between my travel plans where I got to know yet other bike friends there, and rode a little bit on a borrowed BMX bike.

When I got back, my bike withdrawal made me get the bike out of the car parked at New Chitose Airport and ride around on snow piles for about an hour. It was surprisingly obvious how much snow had melted in the past week, in Chitose and in Sapporo alike.

It’s been a bit frantic here due to the trip and tax report deadline coming up at about the same time, but the asphalt, my good old friend who I haven’t seen for a while, has been calling, so I might go out for a ride later.

As the calendar page flipped, temperature went up and I see more ground emerging from under the snow. The air temperature still tends to stay negative the whole day, but as the sunshine melts snow covering asphalt, bike practicing does not have to be limited to tiny heated patches of road.

Speaking of practicing, I still can’t pull bunnyhop 360 I’ve been working on for the past month and a half. It’s getting better at least, so I’ll make it a goal of this month to do it clean.

Also this month, I’m visiting Taiwan, actually just next week. I’ll see the Taipei Cycle Show, talk business there, and go check out some factories as well in search of some opportunities. There is one prototype due early next month too, and I’m excited. The only regret is I have done nothing with the Chinese language, even though I promised myself to come back with some ability at it when I was there last year. Well, I’ll at least try to learn something right before the trip or on the plane, so that I can say stuff like “I don’t speak Chinese” with perfect pronunciation.