Judge Who?

Today at Tsuen Wan Magistrates Court, magistrate Debbie Ng Chung-yee acquitted a van driver of dangerous driving, after he ran down and kill a cyclist having crossed a double white line while knowing that he was unable to see clearly.  She found him guilty of the lesser charge of careless driving, for which he was fined $4500.

Shockingly, Magistrate Ng then went on to blame the victim, Colin Robertson, a highly experienced cyclist and road user who competed internationally, saying that “the deceased’s unwise decision of cycling on that road ... led to the misfortune.”  She also misrepresented the advice in the Road Users’ Code to “wear bright or .. fluorescent clothing” as a constraint on the cyclist and apparently deemed the van driver, Lam Wing-sang, less guilty of the charges of dangerous driving and/or careless driving because of the clothes that Mr Robertson was or wasn’t wearing.

Mr Robertson was showing clear and legally compliant lights when he was struck by Lam, and the court heard no evidence that was not driving his bike perfectly safely and normally.

Lam had a lengthy record of poor and illegal driving, including one count of careless driving and 10 instances when he was caught breaking the speed limit.

In view of these entirely unacceptable comments by Magistrate Ng, the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance calls on the Department of Justice to urgently review this manifestly inadequate decision and to consider what action might be necessary to ensure that a) an appropriate punishment is given to defendant, b) the magistrate in question is assessed for her suitability for the post, and c) all participants in judiciary and the police are made aware of their duty to treat all road users equally and fairly, and not allow prejudice and ignorance against people riding bicycles to influence them. 

More on http://hkcyclingalliance.org/ shortly. So, beware- if you get run over crossing the road, it was probably your fault. WTF?!?

Samui Style

A bit of an alternative take on Tour de France race tech- here's some Tour de Koh Samui local Thai tech. The juice may be similar.

Ghost Bike

I couldn't bring myself to take any photos from Sunday's commemorative ride to the site of Colin's fatal accident due to a rather overwhelming emotion of sadness. Suffice to say the ghost bike memorial we installed prior to the event is now full to the brim with flowers from the 100 plus visitors who attended the ride. I was honoured to be involved with the plaque procurement, to which we now work towards the fulfilling the engraved Chinese instructions of 'this is a memorial, do not remove'...

RIP Colin

Yesterday was one of those days you wish will never happen. When news came through that Colin had been killed by a truck whilst out training in Tung Chung my immediate reaction was a sense of disbelievement- has this really happened? Not just to another anonymous person in the newspaper, but to a friend, to one of the most talented people I've known, not just on a bike, but in the boardroom or at home with his family. And so I, nay, we must come to terms with the fact that he will not be wearing kilts to anyone else's weddings, and he will not be leaving anyone else in his wake the moment the power in those long legs went to those poor pedals. Most of all, his wife and family must come to terms with the fact he never will get to ride with his son, and that yes, indeed, he has gone. It should never happen to anyone, least of all to someone like this. RIP Colin.

http://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1526663/british-cyclist-dies-after-colliding-van-tung-chung

In The Shadows

A bit quiet around here of late. Need to find some time for updates... Meantime, here's a picture of my Ambrosios getting some sun.

Winter Where Art Thou / Look Up

As the humidity and temperature rises, it is a good time to look back on the winter that passed and recap a few pictures from around town on one of the more glorious weekends. Look up!

Fushimi Inari Taisha

10,000 of these bad boys up on a hill over 4kms, each one sponsored by a company in return for good luck / fortune, and only lasting 10 years. The Japanese have really nailed the modern day religion meets capitalism meets art installation meets park / tourist attraction. Truly incredible on so many levels.

http://inari.jp/

2 0 1 3 > 2 0 1 4

The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on the year past and look forward to the year ahead.

2013 was a pretty stellar year at bnb towers, with some incredible travel ventures to pastures new, including the cultural delights of Japan, Sri Lanka, Inner Mongolia and India. A few 'old favourites' like rides in Taiwan and Shenzhen also featured strongly, and it's always nice to make it back to the motherland. Meanwhile, here in Hong Kong, we've seen the opening of the HK Velodrome and an ever increasing number of cyclists on the roads and trails. More km's have been logged on 2 wheels (and 2 feet) than 2012 and I was pleased to realise a few goals both personally and professionally. Who knows how much steel has gone up and concrete has been poured?!?

2014 promises as much as ever. Now is the time to pin a few targets on the cerebral cortex, get out there, and do it.

Poetics of Man Cave

One's Paris room, inside it's four walls, wrote Paul Claudell, is a sort of geometrical site, a conventional hole, which we furnish with pictures, objects and wardrobes within a wardrobe. The number of the street and the floor give the location of our conventional hole, but our abode has neither space around it nor verticality inside it. The houses are fastened to the ground with asphalt, in order not to sink into the earth. They have no roots and, what is quite unthinkable for a dreamer of houses, sky-scrapers have no cellars. From the street to the roof, the rooms pile up one on top of the other, while the tent of the horizonless sky encloses the entire city. But the height of the city buildings is a purely exterior one. Elevators do away with the heroism of stair climbing so that there is no longer any virtue in living up near the sky. Home has become mere horizontality. The different rooms that compose living quarters jammed into one floor all lack one of the fundamental principles for distinguishing and classifying the values of intimacy.

If this is Parisian living then what in God's name is Hong Kong? Gaston Bacelard's 'Poetics of Space' hasn't been the lightest holiday reading, but passages such as the above do have some resonance. On the one hand, I rather enjoy living on one level with no stairs to run up as you realise you left your jumper in the bedroom on your way out the door. On the other, I do miss the concept of cellar retreats and man cave hideaways. Intimacy is one thing, but identity is another. Perhaps this is at the root of the true meaning of metrosexuality?

Lightwallet

Meanwhile, as I purchased 2 spokes for $11HKD each, I pondered over how many other pairs of wheels I could buy for the cost of these Lightweight wheels in the aptly named Bull Bike. The answer:

• 2 x 2nd hand Corima 4 spoke track wheels - $3,500HKD
• 1 x 2nd hand Corima 4 spoke TT rear wheel - $2,500HKD
• 2 x New Ambosio Nemesis / Record training wheels - $4,500HKD
• 1 x 2nd hand BMW E36 3 series convertible (4 wheels) - $30,000HKD
• And it seems that I still have $17,000HKD left over to spend on oh, I don't know, a tricycle? 

Taj Ni Hao

 
When I think of bling buildings I tend to think gold taps, Louis the 14th furniture and brash ornate decoration. Or a another Chinese mainland apartment fit-out. But just as there is another way beyond the shining new Bentley (like an old Rolls), history does have a habit of showing us it is possible to transcend elitist notions of anti bling by delivering the sparkle with a touch of class. With its hulking chunks of white marble, precious stone inlays and 20 years worth of gratuitous carved ornamentation the Taj Mahal certainly delivers on this front. Yes it's popular (like 3 million people a year popular). Yes it's populist as the picture postcard image of India and the 'forever Diana' backdrop of a thousand PC wallpapers in the Home Counties.

However, if you lose the iconography and deal with the amount of people also enjoying this incredible feat of human / elephant power, what you have before your eyes is a building rich in material beauty, proportion, scale and symmetry. There aren't too many buildings of this scale carved out of white marble and to witness the changing reflections of light as the sky transformed from overcast to brewing dark clouds before the Monsoon sky opened was an experience to remember. Now, back to my silver taps and plain white walls...

Vector Rip Off

Inspired by this article on how the UK Government could have better used the money they spent on Thatcher's funeral, I thought it would be interesting to see what you cycling related items one could buy instead of a pair of brand spanking new, but rather expensive, Garmin Vector pedals. Drum roll please, here's some thoughts on how else to spend $1699 USD:

A Life Time's Cycling Holiday Experience

1x BC bike race entry: $1650USD
This looks much more fun than looking at Garmin Connect graphs.

http://www.bcbikerace.com/registration/pricing

His and Hers Mountain Bikes

2 perfectly serviceable brand new '29er mountain bikes: 2 x 550 EURO
How about 2 bikes for the price of 2 pedals?!?

http://www.bike-discount.de/shop/k1860/a82813/big-nine-tfs-100.html?mfid=594

Flights to go Training

5 return flights to Taiwan to go train in the hills: 5 x $2500HKD
I'm thinking the training benefit of this would far outweigh a couple of metric gauges.

https://www.dragonair.com/

Enough pedals to Last a Lifetime

66 pairs of Shimano SPD pedals: 66x£16.50GBP
Power meter pedals are all good, but 66 times the price of a standard SPD? Really?!?

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/hk/en/shimano-m520-clipless-spd-mtb-pedals/rp-prod3759

Totalitarian Taxis

In a brief moment of totalitarian idealist dreaming, wouldn't it be quite stylish if all the cars in each city were the same colour, make & model? Everyone would have to drive jet black Alfa Romeos to be allowed into Milan, or white convertible Mercedes Benz to be mix it up in Miami. Hong Kong has shades of this on a Saturday night in Soho, with the legions of Red Toyotas forming a non-stop procession. But I guess freedom of expression dictates that the occasional interspersion of a tycoon son's Lambourghini is OK and we are witnessing that liberalism in action.

To Froome or Not to Froome?

To Froome or not to Froome- that is the question heading into this year's Tour de France. Do I support the Kenya born Britenya Sky man, or do I not??? It's a curious scenario to be in- for the UK to have such an embarassment of riches to be even asking this question, something that was unthinkable even just a few years ago. However, I think it's a valid question as to whether one should automatically support a rider just because they share a passport with you, and Froome certainly has some reasons for me not to warm to him so much:

 

1./ He has yet to show any sense of a personality in any interview / press release I've seen him in. The whole Wiggins spat over the past few months spoke of someone not confident in their position as team leader and didn't do him any favours. Unlike Wiggins, Froome does not have any counter culture associations (be that Mod or otherwise), which might be fair enough, but at that level of sport it's nice to try and show some level of personality depth beyond the usual 'one day at a time' / 'game of two halves' autocue blurb. Witness the turnaround in the public's perception of Andy Murray following his Wimbledon final tears on court / emoticon speech episode- at least it showed he was human. Is Froome a robot?

 

2./ His style of riding makes him look more like a triathelete than a pro cyclist... The wobbling shoulders when climbing, the sprint that flaps around like a wet towel, the nervous facial expressions whenever he takes off those nasty white glasses. Everything about his body language when riding is just not something to either aspire or warm to somehow. I'm not expecting a Boonen or a Gilbert all in attacking style, but I'm not sure he's even ridden a one day classic, let alone been in the mix for a win. Compared with other Grand Tour riders like Rodriguez, Evans, Valverde, Cunego, Nibali and even Contador, who all ride, and sometimes win, big one day races, it's a bit of a shame not to even show face. Even Wiggo has ridden (and suffered) Paris Roubaix- just, well, because. If you're going to claim you're not sky high, it might be best not to follow Armstrong's lead too much.

 

So, I guess I've made it clear that Froome is not my all time favourite Brit Tour rider, but will I support him? I guess given his rather colourful past, the alternative of a Contador podium top step is even less appealing, but you can bet he'll at least do it with some panache if he does win. However, if a genuinely clean rider does step up to the plate and win with some style and display some emotion (without looking like they're going for a swim for afters), I'd be happy to support them, whatever their Nationality.