A Bar Joked About Cycling Accidents Weeks After Waller County
The bar’s proximity to a busy bike path and the recent incident in Waller County could have been good reasons (among many others) to refrain from making the “joke,” but Truck Yard went ahead anyway, and then proceeded to display its marquee sign on the internet — which is both public and subject to significantly more criticism.
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The negative backlash from the cycling groups was enough to prompt the business to limit social media users’ ability to engage with the bar online, per Eater, and Truck Yard issued the apology pictured below on Monday:
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The “joke” message has since been taken down and replaced, and pictures of Sunday’s marquee have been scrubbed from the bar’s social media channels.
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Tardigrade Moon Bike Is An Overlander Built For The New Frontier
The Tardigrade isn’t just a cool idea with no functional basis — it’s made of components that would ideally suit it well for traversing the Moon’s surface. That includes airless carbon tires and an all-aluminum tubular frame that protects the battery pack and other sensitive components, according to German site Motorrad.
Image: Hookie
The Tardigrade’s motor and batteries were lifted from a Swedish bike called the Cake Ösa and are projected to deliver 68 miles of range, with a top speed of 9 mph. It weighs 295 pounds — on this planet. On the Moon, that’d be something like 49 pounds. Steering is handled electronically, which might disappoint anyone hoping to kick up clouds of lunar dust on the Tardigrade as if it were a dirt bike, dragging legs and everything. But again, that’s not really the point.
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The Tardigrade will probably never make it where it belongs, but it will be honored with a place at the Petersen Automotive Museum this month, as part of the museum’s ADV:Overland exhibition spanning the past, present and future of motorized exploration.
It certainly looks the part. What differentiates the Tardigrade from other theoretical extraterrestrial machines is that it balances form and function in a believable way. It works as as art, with its massive wheels, lean, minimalist frame and metallic highlights, but it’s also not terribly hard to imagine an actual lunar bike bearing some proportional similarity to this one. And it’s the believable concepts that tend to be the most exciting of all, no?
I’ve never been to the Daytona 200. Maybe I need to go haul my BMW GS down to Daytona Bike Week to see what all the fuss is about. Adding KotB is just icing on the cake. No, it’s more than icing. It’s a whole other cake on top of the cake. More of a good thing is always better.
When’s the best time to start your career as a rally co-driver? As with most things, I’d assume the younger the better — and that’s just what this dad has done with his daughter.
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This video comes from Ridonkulous Rally Sports, a YouTube channel that shares videos of a family-run team’s efforts to conquer the local rally world. There are tons of great in-car shots from domestic American rallies for those of you that love events like the Southern Ohio Forest Rally or the Sno*Drift Rally that takes place in the winter.
But there are also plenty of videos of the family having fun, and that’s just what we have with this co-driver clip:
The short video is worth a watch. In it, a young girl has a book on her lap and takes it upon herself to direct the driver where he needs to go. She calls out a series of directions and numbers from her Things That Go book, occasionally agreeing with the driver when he lets her know they have to take a hairpin.
It ends with a wonderful sentiment: “When the kid wants to help, you let her help. When she asks to ride in the car when you’re pulling it in the shop for the night, you give her a ride, even if it’s only a 20 sec ride. When she climbs in and turns that red light on and then pulls out her pace notes all on her own, you always 100% take that freakin ride! Never get so busy that you miss the little things. The most important things.”
Kudos to you, dad. It sounds like you’re raising a future rally champion! And for everyone else at home: get your kids involved with your cars. Many of my favorite childhood memories revolve around being included in my family’s automotive pursuits. Bring the little ones in and have some fun.
Jumpsuit. Helmet. Gloves and Shoes. You’ll need all of these to pilot a race car, but arguably just as important as any of these things you wear, is the thing you sit in: the seat itself.
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This is why, as funny as it may sound, race car drivers have their own custom fitted car seats, which they swap out when taking on the task of operating their machines. Alpine shared the following video about this often overlooked but important tool in a racer’s kit:
A total of three drivers will operate the Alpine A480 at the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Man and the World Endurance Championship. Matthieu Vaxiviere, André Negrão and Nicolas Lapierre will all be driving for Alpine, which means that three different setups are necessary to fit the racers.
These custom setups are made by filling a plastic bag with polyurethane foam in its liquid state and placing it in the car. The individual drivers then take a seat inside and get into their racing positions. They hold there for the fifteen minutes it takes the liquid to harden. Once it solidifies, the foam is removed and honed to fit, then covered with a fireproof material and even given a handlebar!
Photo: Renault Group
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I’m completely delighted by this. I would have thought that a race car is such a focused machine that there’s no room for idiosyncrasies such as custom seats, and that it would instead take a “One Size Fits All” kind of approach.
Of course, adjustments would be made for each racer, but overall it might seem easier to have the one seat that can be made to fit different drivers. This, however, is not conducive to good driving, and Alpine explains how the different forces at work in motorsport make a custom seat an essential part of the car, emphasis Alpine:
Moreover, […] where races are punctuated by stints, a change of driver also implies a change of seat. With high deceleration rates under braking and up to 4 g of weight in the corners, the seat has to fit each driver’s body to the millimeter. As the only part of the car that is entirely made to measure, the seat is therefore a central object with which the drivers have a very special relationship.
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As one of our own motorsport fanatics, Bradley Brownell, pointed out to me, these incredible race machines are often piloted by drivers of varying sizes. It’s less about about comfort at that point, and more about the safe operation of the race car. What’s more, the custom seat is also about the efficient operation of the car, per Alpine and Lapierre:
The moulded seat also optimises driving efficiency. Perfectly adjusted to the drivers’ morphology, it allows them to give the best of themselves: “being well installed in the car, helps us to make fewer mistakes, to be well concentrated focused only on the driving, to be at one with the car”.
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Now I need to take a moment and scheme of a way to make my own custom bucket seat. Not at all because my seats are very, very worn, but because you can’t say you drive a race car if you don’t carry a custom seat.
