Friday, October 13, 2006

Maybe next time

This is a pic I sent from my phone on my way down to Douthat Va with some friends. My goal was to document the entire trip by sending pictures from my phone to this blog. It didn't quite work out as I had absolutely no cell reception the entire weekend.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Walmart Bikes

Another Walmart sighting. $34.88 for a 20" bike! How much does it actually cost to make one of these deathtrap bikes if you can buy the raw materials and parts, pay to have someone weld the frame and partially assemble the bike, box the bike, ship it by boat from Taiwan to the US, ship it to the local Walmart by truck and pay someone to fully assemble the bike? With all the lawsuits nowadays I'm surprised Walmart is still selling these things. If I had a better camera handy, I would have taken pictures of the frame welds, which were horrible. Most of them were booger welds with splatter all over the tubes and in spots the weld had actually burned through the frame tubing. Couple the crappy workmanship with the fact that the same person assembling these bikes is also assembling the gas grills and lawn furniture and I'm not sure how any kid that rides one of these things can live to tell about it. Only thing I can think of is that the bike never actually works properly so the kid doesn't even ride it.

Pulsar NX

Saw this baby in the Walmart parking lot tonight while rounding up my supplies for camping this weekend. It's the first one I have seen in a long time....a 1986 Nissan Pulsar NX. I had one of these in this exact color as my first car. In 1992 I bought it used for $1,800 and nearly 90K on the speedo. Brings back a lot of memories. Pop-Up headlights and a removable sunroof...I thought I had it all. ;)

Monday, October 09, 2006

Mobile Blog

Decided to give this mobile blog thing a try so I could easily archive and post pictures I take with my camera-phone. This blog will probably be mostly mountain bike related but I figured I'd kick it off with a picture of my lady. There is a trip coming up this weekend so let's see if I get some use out of this thing.