Team Spyder

Way back in 1995 when I developed the first version of my web site I had just finished college and started my first real job at Bell Canada. I had been using KMart like bikes that weighed a ton all my life, and loved biking regardless. Our family only had one car, which was highly in demand, so my main method of transportation was a bike. My friends and I would bike everywhere, malls, arcades, to the airshows, restaurants, bike paths, etc... You name it.

So when I started working I got myself a serious bike, and that summer we camcorded all our biking experiences to make a biking music video, and so I could include it as a section on the site. Back then of course with 14.4Kbps Mosaic dial up users I had to make the images really small. In this slight upholstering I thought about recapturing the images (the original graphics were destroyed in a hard drive crash), but would rather spend the time on new stuff.

The whole biking thing pretty much lasted that year. Careers and personal life started taking over and the biking time got sacrificed. But now that we've all moved to California on a fresh start, taking advantage of what Cali has to offer, I hope to have a Team Spyder - California update. Though...it was never really a team. We had a web hosting company called Spyder, so we went along with that theme. Which is really how my whole web site evolved, from developing the company web pages, and merging that into my own as the company was going no where with all of us still working full time at our primary jobs (so I turned Spyder Web Services into just my own personal web site). But Anyways...I'm rambling.

Welcome to the Team Spyder mountain bike homepage. Over the next few moments you will witness some of the death defying stunts ever seen by man kind. The rare footage was taking over the summer of 1995 in the #1 biking city of the world, Ottawa.
Enjoy!

Ok basically, I hate Ottawa overall. But it is one of the best biking cities. The National Capital Commission (NCC) invests a lot of money into bike paths and trails. Across from Ottawa into Quebec is Gatineau Park which is a cyclists paradise. You can bike from anywhere to anywhere in Ottawa without having to deal with traffic. On Sundays they even block off certain parkways and leave it open only to cyclists, rollerbladers, and other human powered devices. That I have to admit is awesome.

Narrated by Tariq Ahmed

Got myself a handy dandy little car, a Mazda 323. It proved to be very useful for biking. Although I have a rack, the ergonomic hatchback design allows me to fit 5 bikes inside the car. It's pretty tight, but it has been done. So I'll always keep this car as the mountain bikemobile.

The car was a good beater, I guess. But what a huge lemon, on the bottom it was rusting to hell and I didn't notice it when I bought the car. Plus it was hot as hell in the summer with no A/C and the heater barely worked in the winter. I thought I was being economical. So I gave it to my parents and sister as an A to B car when I got the Prelude.

In Canada there's a very Canadian oriented television station called CBC, heavily funded by the government (though they're suffering from constant cut backs). They show a lot of cultural crap, but now and then they have some real funky shows (like Kids In The Hall, whose members like Dave Foley have moved to large American networks with shows like News Radio, and Saturday Night Live). One show was called Cycle, a cycling enthusiasts show. They had a segment where viewers can send in a short tape voting for a certain trail of the week. After a lot of experience of riding in the Ottawa region, we vote the Nation's Capital as one of the best places to ride.

Can't really think of a particular trail that really stands out, it's like a sum of all the parts that makes it all great. You can ride a long the Ottawa River if you take the Parkway off Montreal Rd/St Joseph Blvd. That gives you the options of fast smooth uninterrupted paved riding, and right by the river with wide hard packed gravel with the cool wind from the water cooling you down (Ottawa is very humid). Over near Innes and Anderson road there's all kinds of trails that you can spend a life time discovering. The Canal, the world's longest skating rink in the winter, is a relaxing tour in the downtown area.



Way back in 1995 when I developed the first version of my web site I had just finished college and started my first real job at Bell Canada. I had been using KMart like bikes that weighed a ton all my life, and loved biking regardless. Our family only had one car, which was highly in demand, so my main method of transportation was a bike. My friends and I would bike everywhere, malls, arcades, to the airshows, restaurants, bike paths, etc... You name it.		So when I started working I got myself a serious bike, and that summer we camcorded all our biking experiences to make a biking music video, and so I could include it as a section on the site. Back then of course with 14.4Kbps Mosaic dial up users I had to make the images really small. In this slight upholstering I thought about recapturing the images (the original graphics were destroyed in a hard drive crash), but would rather spend the time on new stuff.



The whole biking thing pretty much lasted that year. Careers and personal life started taking over and the biking time got sacrificed. But now that we've all moved to California on a fresh start, taking advantage of what Cali has to offer, I hope to have a Team Spyder - California update. Though...it was never really a team. We had a web hosting company called Spyder, so we went along with that theme. Which is really how my whole web site evolved, from developing the company web pages, and merging that into my own as the company was going no where with all of us still working full time at our primary jobs (so I turned Spyder Web Services into just my own personal web site). But Anyways...I'm rambling.





Welcome to the Team Spyder mountain bike homepage. Over the next few moments you will witness some of the death defying stunts ever seen by man kind. The rare footage was taking over the summer of 1995 in the #1 biking city of the world, Ottawa. Enjoy!		Ok basically, I hate Ottawa overall. But it is one of the best biking cities. The National Capital Commission (NCC) invests a lot of money into bike paths and trails. Across from Ottawa into Quebec is Gatineau Park which is a cyclists paradise. You can bike from anywhere to anywhere in Ottawa without having to deal with traffic. On Sundays they even block off certain parkways and leave it open only to cyclists, rollerbladers, and other human powered devices. That I have to admit is awesome.

Narrated by Tariq Ahmed

Got myself a handy dandy little car, a Mazda 323. It proved to be very useful for biking. Although I have a rack, the ergonomic hatchback design allows me to fit 5 bikes inside the car. It's pretty tight, but it has been done. So I'll always keep this car as the mountain bikemobile.		The car was a good beater, I guess. But what a huge lemon, on the bottom it was rusting to hell and I didn't notice it when I bought the car. Plus it was hot as hell in the summer with no A/C and the heater barely worked in the winter. I thought I was being economical. So I gave it to my parents and sister as an A to B car when I got the Prelude.

In Canada there's a very Canadian oriented television station called CBC, heavily funded by the government (though they're suffering from constant cut backs). They show a lot of cultural crap, but now and then they have some real funky shows (like Kids In The Hall, whose members like Dave Foley have moved to large American networks with shows like News Radio, and Saturday Night Live). One show was called Cycle, a cycling enthusiasts show. They had a segment where viewers can send in a short tape voting for a certain trail of the week. After a lot of experience of riding in the Ottawa region, we vote the Nation's Capital as one of the best places to ride.

Can't really think of a particular trail that really stands out, it's like a sum of all the parts that makes it all great. You can ride a long the Ottawa River if you take the Parkway off Montreal Rd/St Joseph Blvd. That gives you the options of fast smooth uninterrupted paved riding, and right by the river with wide hard packed gravel with the cool wind from the water cooling you down (Ottawa is very humid). Over near Innes and Anderson road there's all kinds of trails that you can spend a life time discovering. The Canal, the world's longest skating rink in the winter, is a relaxing tour in the downtown area.