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And unusual support was taking place in the Chile streets, an urban downhill bike riding called the The Valparaiso Cerro Abajo held in Valparaiso.

It’s great to see the evolution of sports that make the most of their environment to add a new dimension of excitement. While most traditional downhill bike races take place on the side of mountains with a single track course weaving its way through the trees and other obstacles, this urban downhill race involved massive drops from one street level to another, descending steep staircases, avoiding random dogs and moving along at high speeds avoiding many obstacles of this urban landscape.

While one wouldn’t consider Chile to have a race attracting international attention, it shows you that anything is possible when you truly believe.

The video was filmed using a similar helmet mounted camera to what we use to fill but filming our red suits around Melbourne.
One of the most amusing parts of the video is when a representative from the UCI, which is the international cycling Federation was trying to explain to the Chilean writer about the perils of not wearing sufficient body armor to protect himself.

My local bicycle shop was unable to remove my seat post so they used a can of Coke poured down the bottom bracket to unseize the seat post.

The worrying thing is that we are consuming this beverage which has high acidity properties, enough that it will dissolve years of road grime and sweat. The real question is what are the effects on our body of consuming this product on a long term basis?

Over the years I have heard anecdotally that pouring coke down your drain unblocks it or using Coke to loosen wheel nuts on your car or remove the corrosion from battery terminals. While I dismissed this as an urban myth or one of those story we have against large multi national conglomerates, I was truly surprised there was some truth behind it.

A client of mine who worked for a big beverage company mentioned that the handling of one of the key ingredients of their soft drink, E211 or sodium benzoate used protective clothing when handling the drums that contained this chemical. It was treated as a hazardous material and required the necessary OH&S procedures in place to remove the risk of contamination and harm.

The ingredient in Coke is Phosphoric acid which is widely used in the food industry. Unlike fruit as oranges that are naturally acidic, the production of Phosphoric acid is a highly involved process that starts with mining the raw ingredient phosphate from phosphatic ores mined around the world.

A good friend of mind who survived cancer attributes one factor to reducing the amount of acidic food that he consumed. While there is much conjecture about whether a diet low in acidic foods stops or reduces the growth of cancer cells, it’s one treatment that is worth investigating further. Even now there are companies that are selling water that is high in alkaline that has the opposite effects of acid within the body, once again this is an area that requires further research and testing.