Bike Hugger 

Delta is running an airport kiosk ad with a happy cyclist who rides through the country, arrives at home, and books a flight. He’s in a good mood and the well-produced ad exemplifies how easy it is too fly with Delta.

The ad doesn’t show the shock that cyclist will get when he checks that bike at the airport — his beeming smile will quickly dissolve to a pissed-off grimace. I know many good people at Delta (well the NWA peeps), and the marketing group that produced this ad is totally unaware of how mad cyclists are at airlines.

During the talk with Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman at SXSW, I was asked about traveling with bikes and many in the room had stories of airlines ripping them off. Doug tweeted a request to Southwest, Lance Armstrong retweeted it, and lots more tweeting ocurred.

Following up with Doug today, he told me in email:

SWA says they do ship bikes for free but the problem is that their size limits don’t fit most bikes. If the bike is too big they charge 50.00. I think they could change their policy with enough pressure.

Oversize is a reason I travel with folders or coupled bikes. I agree with Doug. We should put the pressure on. Event to the point of reasonable fees. $175.00 one way is inexusable.

Hey Delta, us cyclists want to ride happy and book flights like your kiosk ad. Fix your fees and keep us happy.

Introduced at the Taipei Bike Show, SRAM’s new X7 mtb group is “aimed at mid-level XC to entry-level downhillers and freeriders.” No pricing announced yet, though. The group has many of the features of the vaunted XX group, SRAM’s pricey pro-level XC group. Both groups use a double chainring crank coupled with wide-ratio 10sp cassettes, including choices with 36tooth cogs.

Much like with the XX group, most of the components are branded SRAM instead of the cranks being labeled Truvativ. The hydraulic brakes still bear the Avid logo, but all the components are stylistically integrated with a dark, matte finish. Also interesting is the matching hubset, since SRAM hasn’t in the past marketed hubs.

I work in a shop that is more than a quarter century old, housed within a building that is more than a century old. The nooks and crannies are teeming with mice and forgotten things. I lost a Rock Shox SID fork for about 7 months, and my favourite crankpuller went MIA last year and has yet to be heard from again.

Then I found this tool: I have no idea what it is. Readers? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

(Oh, I just know I’m gonna get a lot of off-colour hypotheses.)

I presented Design the Ordinary, Like this Fixie with @ktamura @mixevent today.

A fixie is used as a prop in the talk because it represents a simple, ordinary bike that serves a specific function. Fixies were made from parts bin by cyclists and I asked what if websites were like that? What if we made them as simple as possible to just deliver content like a messenger with packages.

Specialized provided us Globe Rolls for the talk. I’m riding one of them around Vegas later today.

The two most common questions from new road bike buyers is “what does it weigh?” and “how much does it cost?” And really, these two questions are inter-related, but the function isn’t linear. Moving upmarket from the entry-level to mid-level, bikes get a lot lighter, but weight reduction gets much more expensive after that.

Why?

Road racing season is almost here, and another round of gluing tubular race tires begins. Here are some of tips for making the operation less messy.

1) A truing stand allows you to layer glue on the rim easily. You can do it without one, but you’re making your life more difficult.

2) The fingertips from latex gloves. I can’t get a really good grip on a tubular with gloves on and often get the gloves pinched between the rim and tire. But I’ll cut the fingertips off and use them to apply the glue. You get good control, and the clean up is quick. I usually use a new fingertip for each glue layer as the tips get fouled with clumped glue.

3) Hand lotion. Since I don’t have good luck wrestling stubborn tubulars with latex gloves on, I apply a liberal amount of lotion on my hands, especially to the backs, before I go for it. Allow lotion to dry so that it won’t rub off on the work pieces. The lotion helps prevent the glue from sticking to the skin, easing with post-job handwashing. Actually, I usually wear gloves for the first half of mounting the tire, then I pull them off for the final bit. It depends on how many gloves I have and if they are snug enough.

Here we have the oldest bike on the Mobile Social and the tallest. Bikinis too.

Uploaded by kk+ | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

See this outside of bars all over Austin.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

I’m talking today with @livestrongCEO Doug Ulman @SXSW about Changing the World and Lives with Bikes:

This core conversation will talk about how cycling, the bike, and social media are changing the world and lives. You’ll learn about Livestrong’s community and Bike Hugger’s blog, events like the Mobile Social, and the millions who follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter. It’s a discussion of bike and pop culture and socializing the good with these Interweb tools.

A core conversation is just Doug and no audio/visuals discussing the topic with the audience. It’s at 11:00 AM in Room 7. We’re both looking forward to it and seeing you there.

Last night Doug and I met, over a few beers, at the Livestrong party

also met Chris Sacca who told me a very funny fat-boy rides bike story — fat boy being him.

We’ll post on that one soon.

By all accounts, this was our best Mobile Social so far and we’ve got more coming with dates being announced soon in Toronto and Portland. This year, Cyclefilm made this film for us