Baseline Bicycles website launch

For the past few months I've been working nonstop on starting a company, Baseline Bicycles. 

It's been a total blast, but extremely busy. I actually like having a purpose like that, and it's amazing to be able to create something new. 

Baseline Bicycles is a company all about high-quality, simple bikes. Currently we're offering 4 different fixies or fixed gear bikes. 

I know a lot of my friends have asked me what a fixed gear bike is before, so here's a really quick explanation: A fixed gear bike, or fixie, is a bike that had a "fixed" rear cog. That means that while on a normal bike you can coast, on a fixed gear bike the pedals keep moving as long as the wheels are moving. Some people hate it, some people love it. The really cool thing that I like about it is that you have perfect control over your speed. 

It's also like you're riding a whole new animal. When you start going down a hill, you can't just cruise...those pedals are going to keep on spinning with or without you! It's like the bike comes to life. 

Of course, many people would prefer to be able to coast like normal, and that's why all of our bikes actually have a "flip-flop" rear hub, which means you can just flip the rear tire around and put it into "freewheeling" mode, which means you're able to coast just like normal. (And the bikes actually ship with the rear wheel attached in "freewheeling" mode)

I've been a ton of work into this company and I'm proud to say that the website is now live. You can check it out here

I love these bikes. They're beautiful. It's kind of like a beautiful car though. People don't love ferraris just because they look awesome, they also love them because of how they feel, how they perform. There were a lot of cheap fixies on the market that give you flat tires the first time you ride, or don't even come with a rear brake (so how could you even ride it as a single-speed freewheeling bike when give the option?!). We've put a lot of attention to detail to create a fantastic bicycle company. 

Hangzhou Greentown (杭州绿城)

The beautiful Stadium of Hangzhou. 

So, we decided to go watch the last game of Hangzhou Greentown. At first it seemed like it would just be like any other soccer game, well, except for it being in China, and our faces being painted. 

We bought our tickets, went inside, and quickly realized that we were in the nosebleed section and needed to get to where the hardcore fans were: 

No one questioned us as we walked to the lower seating area because we fit right in there: 

Mike had an especially good look for the game. 

As you can see, it was EPIC!!! So much fun. The entire first half nobody scored, but in the second half Hangzhou Greentown scored three points!!

People loved seeing a couple of foreigners mixed in with the die-hard fans, and it didn't take long for all the camera guys to find us and constantly take photos of us cheering.

After the game everyone wanted to get our photo! It was the most "celebrity" moment of my life when we were totally swarmed and surrounded by cameras and fans, and there were paparazzi-like guys with huge cameras that flashed like crazy (and super fast). 

This isn't actually a photo of us, but it might as well have been! It was a total blast, some guy gave me his scarf, and I will forever remember Hangzhou Greentown and all their crazy cheers. 

Coding

So...I've been making a website.

It's for the company I started, Baseline Bicycles. It hasn't been too terrible, but sometimes it can get pretty crazy with all this "HTML" "CSS" "Widgets" "Plugins" "yada yada yada"

One thing that was really driving me crazy was trying to get my shop page to do what I wanted. Anyway, I finally got it after days of trying to figure it out!!

So I did a victory dance, and I had to take a photo because I was seriously so happy:

So happy ^_^

I was also able to check on the bikes, get the product images done, and they're on their way now!

Getting a ride back from the product images photos in a tuk tuk : )

West Lake (西湖) - Tranquil Sunday Afternoon Ride

It's almost like a tradition for us to go on a leisurely Sunday afternoon ride. It also seems a part of that tradition to always turn it from a leisurely Sunday afternoon ride into an insanely epic Sunday ride! haha. They always turn out to be way longer than planned, but also way more fun. 

Traffic was bad. Pictured above you can see Mike navigating the traffic. haha. Bad traffic = fun ride. We ended up weaving in and out of traffic while flying down the road and it was a total blast. 

The beautiful West Lake. 

This is our friend, Tiki. She kept going on about how she was sure we ride much faster than her on our geared bikes (she was on a fixie), and then of course once we started riding it was hard to keep up with her! She was going crazy fast. Well, at least until we got into the heavy traffic and weaving through crowds of people and cars. That's where Mike and I really began to shine because we love squeezing through everyone. 

Contemplating on a boat. I love boats.

These kids couldn't believe some hairy-faced white dude was on the boat. They became Mike's new friends.

Turned the corner and found a Starbucks! I guess it's actually one of the biggest ones around. 

Mike throwin' up the ShAkA?! I couldn't believe it! The guy's never even been to Hawaii! hahaha. 

This is right before things really got crazy. If you look ahead of Mike you can see all the cars we're about to start going through. We were on our side of the road, on the opposite side of the road, in between cars, to the sides, on the sidewalks, and just anywhere we could fit basically! Even through a little road construction. haha. 

So we asked some cute Chinese girl to get a photo of all of us to mark the end of our ride together. She totally ignored the fact that we were with Tiki and cut her out of the photo entirely! haha. 

So then we asked her to take another with Tiki in the photo this time: 

I think she was just nervous because a couple of good-looking foreigners were talking to her. Or at least one good-looking foreigner. hahaha. 

Anyway, the ride was awesome. It was epic. We ended up doing around 22 miles which was sweet. We were sad that our friend Liz wasn't there to enjoy the ride with us, but I guess we found a Chinese replacement for her. jkjk! Hopefully the three of us can get back together sometime and ride. The ride home took a lot longer than planned because we were enjoying it too much and going so fast that we weren't really paying attention to where we were going at all! It worked out after we got help from a lot of strangers. 

Shaoxing (绍兴) - INDOOR SNOWBOARDING!

So this was totally awesome.

'WHHHAAAAAAA??'

'Yeah'

'Num. Num. I like to eat pocky sticks'

So Mike and I went with our friend Jane to go indoor snowboarding. IT WAS LEGIT. I actually haven't even been snowboarding for the last...about 5 years, and I totally had forgotten how much I really love the sport. !!

Being indoors, I had pretty low expectations, but was very happily surprised that most of the snow wasn't that bad, and the hills weren't too crowded either. 

If you look behind me you can see the top of the bigger hill wasn't even all covered in snow. Behind me it's all concrete. 

This was the closest thing we could find to a jump. haha. I'm guessing the indoor snowboarding in Dubai is a little nicer, but here in Shaoxing we had a hard time convincing them to even open the second lift for us. 

Jane's cousin, his wife, and his wife's sister (next to me in this photo) met up with us too. 

They hadn't been snowboarding before, so I think the most fun they had all day was right after the group photo when I told everyone to just sit on their boards and RIDE!

This is what the other lift looked like (the first one was that moving walkway-style one). This was a terrible design for snowboarders because you put this thing between your legs and it pulls you up. The problem is that on a snowboard you're facing sideways! At one point Mike totally fell down and it looked hilarious, but I wasn't fast enough with my camera to capture it on film. 

Mike recovering his board. haha. 

View from the top

View from the bottom

View from outside. 

So we snowboarded for four hours, had a total blast, and oh yeah, Mike and I were the best snowboarders there!! Booyah! haha. It was great because pretty much everyone there was beginners, so we would come flying down the hill and after every run you would here Chinese people like "wow..." or "whoah.." hahaha. It was so great.