Le Tour de Francing…
Hi everyone,
Hope you had an awesome weekend! We have had a pretty busy week here at Natooke with everyone getting their bikes ready for some summer riding! We are also very excited with the start of the Tour De France! We have some more of our regular events on this week as well as some special ones, so we hope to see some of you there. If you haven’t come before, please don’t be shy, we don’t bite! If you’re not sure about playing, you’re welcome of course to come and watch to see what we are always raving about!
This week’s events:
Wednesday July 20th
Morning – Bike Trick Practice – This week’s bike trick practice session will be on Wednesday morning at 9am at Ditan Park West gate to practice or learn awesome new tricks for you to show off with your bike! Come along and hang out with us whatever your ability!
Evening – Bike Polo and night ride in the city!
Meet us at Natooke at 5:45pm or meet us there to start playing polo at 6pm. We will be playing at Ditan Park West gate (just off Andingmen Waidajie). We will play for a couple of hours and then go for a little bit of food before going on a night ride through the CBD. You’re welcome to come join us for the night ride if you can’t make the polo beforehand. We’ll be riding through the city lights when Beijing is a bit calmer!
Saturday July 23rd
Bike Polo! – Meet us at Natooke at 4pm to start playing at 4:30pm or meet us there. We will be playing at the same place as last week, at the Worker’s Gymnasium East Gate. If you’re still haven’t tried bike polo and you’re curious, come along and watch, we’ll also be going out for some dinner afterwards!
Another little reminder about the Tour de France!
- Thursday July 21st – The Glaibier Finish (8pm – 11pm)
- Friday July 22nd – Alpe D’Huez Finish (8pm – 11pm)
Last week we watched it in a bar that had it on live streaming from the internet so this week Tom is proposing to go to the Unconditional Love Coffee to view it there in Russian! We’ll be there from 8pm on both days.
A cool challenge we found for you!
An challenge organized by Bishengyuan Tea to promote their brand with some really awesome prizes if you win (iPhone4, iPad2, iPod Nano, Electronic books, Electronic photo frame, Bishengyuan Tea are the listed prizes).
The aim of the challenge is to go to the 25 locations around the city that they post on the website and take a picture with a cardboard cut out of an advert with Xu Jing Lei and the tea. Then you must collect a stamp from each of the destinations. The winner is the first person to post all their photos onto the Bishengyuan official website. While we are not too fussed about the tea, it seems it might be a good opportunity to practice your Alleycat racing style. It would also be an opportunity to show those car drivers what cycling is all about! The three stages will be held on July 22nd, July 30th and Aug 6th. More information at: STC website
Some reminders!
Fixed Gear Revolution 3 will be held on August 20th at the West side of the workers gymnasium.
And don’t forget to keep next Friday (29thJuly) and August 12th free for STC’s midnight rides throught the city!
See you at one of our events!
Natooke Team & Ines
Last Week
Bike polo is fun every time even if it is mainly practicing shooting and passing skills or focused on team work strategy. It was great to see some people come watch Tour de France together drinking beer and eating snacks! Only thing was that we had to watch from an Internet live stream that was not fast enough to catch everything. We are happy that we found the Youku Channel of “catphone” who uploads every stage of Tour de France 2011! The bike swap meet went really well with about 50 mainly Chinese cyclists coming to look at the second hand bike parts and having a lot of fun. There will be sure more bicycle garage sales coming up.
New Arrivals
Natooke shop has new spokes in great colors: Painted red, blue and green that match our Flying Banana rims as well as shiny anodized gold. The first wheels built up with these spokes look so beautiful. Natooke shop also has a great new employee Tiger. This young fixed gear rider is working here for his summer vacation and helping us build bikes for our customers. He also brought us delicious dumplings for lunch.
New Natooke Bikes
1st bike: The “Purple, Yellow, Black and Grey Bike” as she calls it is a trendy combination of these four colors, just like some of our fashionable Korean messenger bags we have in the shop. It deserves a better name.
2nd bike: A clean black and white Flying Banana Columbus steel fixed gear bike with a Japanese Nitto bullhorn bar
3rd bike: The last of our“Fixed Gear Revolution II” bikes is sold and built up one month before this year’s event. He chose a nice Velocity and H+Son rims and loves riding it passed the jammed up cars.
Liaoning TV Show
Have you ever heard about the TV show called:“让快乐飞”? Presented by Liaoning TV, hosted by Libin. Now this show will become more famous after inviting Ines on their stage! Ines was sad to hear that the 4 invited celebrities were kind of proud to not have ridden a bike in the last 10 to 20 years, but very happy that Libin made them get back on a bike, at least as a passenger. The show will be broadcasted in 1 or 2 weeks.