My friend posted this funny card on her Facebook page. It’s available for sale on Etsy, and before you get hot-and-bothered, it’s a joke. As a fixed gear rider who is a tired at times of the hipster collective and their fixie riding ways, it gave me a chuckle.
Despite the proximity of Oahu to the Big Island—home of Kona and the Ironman—and the constantly-beautiful weather here, biking is not big in Honolulu or any of the more rural parts of the island.
Up on the north shore the Surfboard is king, and the occasional bike stays primarily to the paths. The roads here have very narrow shoulders and no real accommodations for road riders.
Even rental bikes lay fallow here. This sad-looking collection chained up to a fence are yearning to go out for a ride but alas stay roped down, without a Japanese or American tourist even glancing at them.
This island is a perfect example of infrastructure done wrong for pedestrian and cycling access. Despite the big-ass mountain in the middle of the island, the weather in Honolulu is vastly better than that of Portland or Seattle and the number of cyclists on the roads is down near zero.
Meanwhile, driving anywhere on H1 around 4 PM on a work day is darned near impossible thanks to all the gridlock.
Commute Seattle is a new resource for commuters in Seattle. Today they held an open house at lunch downtown that was standing room only. Lots of commuters, and lots of people looking to make the jump to being a bike commuter. It was good to see such interest and good resources.
Cover of Honolulu weekly. Story is about entrepreneurs In the city. This is Brandon Reid. He owns two businesses in Chinatown.
Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
An Ultan Coyle graphic for Rapha’s Paris Roubaix ride.
Uploaded by R A P H A | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
In this photo from Reuters Pictures, a man walks with his bicycle along barbwire blocking a road near Vice President’s office in Jakarta. Anti-government protesters will rally Thursday to mark the first 100 days of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second term.
I noticed the bike is a Dahon and can’t say our commutes or rides on folding bikes have been interrupted by barbed wire. We’ve certainly seen our share of interestingness, including paved-over Hudongs in China, like the ones NYT just wrote about. Also saw the contrasts of wealth and poverty in India during our Mobile Social Worldwide.
Cause this old-school tricycle freakbike has got the flooded intersection problem solved for you. Just add a canopy and you can wear your work clothes. This pneumatic tire beast, definitely one-ups the Cyclomer.
Uploaded by omahgarsh | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
It’s expected that Apple will reboot the publishing industry today with the release of a tablet computer. It’s likely a better Kindle in form and function that also runs web applications. Expect a one more thing announcement regarding software and I suspect that’ll include proxmity (geocoded photos and videos). More on that below.
The context to the unrelenting hype about a tablet (Mac fans have wanted another one since the Newton) is the Apple Store and buying and/or subscribing to magazines, blogs, and papers. Where this potentially matters to those of us with bikes is more mobility and I hope another generation of related apps. Whether in your jersey pocket or mounted on your bike, the iPhone is more ubiquitous than ever in our sport and rides.
While I doubt it’s usefulness as a bike computer, I do see the iPhone as a dashboard. For those of us that are connected online — arguably overconnected — we can ride and check in with the office and riding buddies. We’ve been discussing “urban mobility” for years at Intel events, SXSW, Webvisions, and our Mobile Socials. There’s a mobile connectivity thread in our community that’s also driven by the fact us bike geeks are also gadget geeks. In the next month, we’ll have the Reecharge on test to charge our iPhone while we’re riding around. Presumably we could pull a tablet out of messenger bag too and plug it in to the Reecharge battery at a coffee shop while we read a tablet version of Road Bike Action.
The iPod lead to the iPhone and then to follow-on touch-screen devices from Google. We hope the innovation from Apple leads to related innovation from bike computers and related fitness apps. What we’re thinking is we’re out on a ride with a small dongle capturing data. Finish the ride, sync to a tablet or phone, and upload the data to a mashed up Latitude-type community. Want to compare your old-fat-guy time on the climb to your skinny-climbing bro? Click a button to overlay your friend’s ride. For bloggers, we could cross-reference that ride to all photos and videos we shot.
After 10:00 AM PDT today, we’ll know more.
How about you readers? Do you want a tablet from Apple or content with being retro in Tweed?
The City Fix, a blog about urban mobility is reporting that the leaders of the government in Beijing are finally realizing that their recent group-hug of the auto culture is seriously screwing up their city.
That’s great because even by casual observation, the city is, vehicularly-speaking, going to hell in a handbasket. When I was out in Beijing for the Olympics in 2008, it was obvious that cars had really replaced bikes. In many areas of the city I was the only person on a bike in sight. That’s a big change from a culture where the car was a foreign and very expensive novelty.
So the government is putting bike lanes back in, restoring bike rental facilities and trying to crack down on bike theft issues. That’s a trend we hope more cities will follow.
Last week, Raleigh got us a Rush Hour Flat Bar for the talk about design and fixies. The bike looked like rolling art in the Design Commission gallery.
I rode it yesterday for a quick spin around the neighborhood
and timing wise, just as I was about to write a review, Urban Velo published there intial test. From the parts mix, to the paint, price, and color-matched components, we are in agreement on the bike.
I disagree with Urban Velo’s “queues from the handbuilt show” take because builders in that show, as well as builders in Portland, make the old like everyone else in this industry. The who influences who debate aside, we saw this bike and more steel initially last summer when Raleigh visited us en route to a Momentum Magazine photoshoot.
We’ll compare notes again with Urban Velo once their long term review is complete and we’ve ridden it into town a few more times.
There’s a shop in the Chicago area that used to have sell products based on windtunnel data. Notecards about the product would say things like “Buy this set of Mavic Cosmic Carbone’s and save 45 seconds in a 40k TT. Only $30 a second!”. We used to call it “buying speed”. I’m not sure if the intent here is the same…but it’s sort of cool anyway.
Before cargo was cool, Sears sold a TOTE cycle. Humblecyclist updated his to fixed and added the huge basket (see an original here).
My first bike was a Sears ordered from the catalog and ridden with reckless abandon around the streets of Oshawa Ontario. It was very similar to this
Had a known at the time, they made urban cargo …
... Read more »In the Fall of 2009, Bike Hugger rode urban in London, Amsterdam, Prague, and New Dehli. Along the way we met lots of people incuding Alien8, Marc from Amsterdamize, Henry from WorkCycles, and the good people of India.
Watch now on YouTube or download and sync to iTunes, your iPod, iPhone. Subscribe to the Huggacast Feed for more episodes.
iPhone users can download and watch now and access our Huggacasts via the iTunes Store on a Wi-Fi or cellular network.
We’ll kick off another year of Mobile Socials @fitc next month.
... Read more »Takes marketing balls to name a bike sissy and we suggest you spec it single speed to show just how sissy you are up the climbs …
At some point, the tweeders could offshoot into reenacting old bike races like civil war reenactors. Kit up in wool, leather chamois, wrap a tubie around their necks and climb like Coppi and Gino Bartali.
Uploaded by lexab | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
There’s been a scary increase in bicycle-vehicle collisions around the Seattle area the past couple years. My wife is confident in my not taking risks, but you never know. We’ve been using Google Latitude in my family since it was in Beta so she can just pull up the browser and check my progress home on the map. I’m told the kids have even asked to see the map so they can point out where daddy is on the map. I’m not sure how much value it really provides if something were to happen, but on nights when I’m late getting home - seeing that little icon moving always makes my family feel better.
The art gallery at Design Commission was the backdrop for our talk about design earlier this week
with a collection of works by Jared K. Nickerson on the walls …
Bike Hugger is visiting Vancouver to cover the Winter Olympics on the weekend of 2/14. The City of Vancouver is making great effort to offset cars at the venues with bikes and the Oympics themselves are using bikes.
Besides blogging the Winter Olympics by bike, were planning on connecting with the locals like Momentum and Kris Krug to learn about alternative media during the Olympics.
We’d like to meet up with you while in town. Let’s ride, show us your town, and hang out.
bombs lomo uploaded by carrett ben raver | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Working on the preso for Refresh Seattle tonight, citing the work of Naz Hamid, and found this cyclist in his photos.
Land and sea, or not, that bike just looks cool with it’s big, bulbous shapes. Likely those cycling in rain-drenched LA could use this for flooded intersections.
Uploaded by Nationaal Archief | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Photos from the Tour Down Under are being uploaded to Flickr — check the Group Pool.
Uploaded by KezSLR | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Speaking tomorrow night at Refresh Seattle with Kevin Tamura from Blue Flavor:
Design the Ordinary like this Fixie — This presentation is a study in the simplest of objects, their usefulness, and how they become part of our culture. It relates to web design and our tendency to overcomplicate, to play drum solos when a tight and crisp backbeat will do. Learn how to find inspiration in the ordinary and pause before adding that flair to your next project.
Another e-bike was in the news last week. It’s from VeloSolex and it was on display at the Brussels Motor Show.
Photo: Reuters Pictures via Daylife.
We’re enthusiastic about motor-assisted bikes and ride one weekly to deliver goods, errands, and just riding around, but it’s not our primary bike.
... Read more »
What’s remarkable about this photo, presumably from the 80s, is not that it looks like Kelly Lebroc with big hair, slotted shades, spandex tights, pumps, and lasers shooting out of her boobs, but that bike! We spotted one like it at One On One Bike Studio during the Globe Bikes launch and later learned that dudes bombed modified BMX bikes down SoCal canyon roads in the 80s.
Laser-boobs-bike was spotted on the Whoa blog without attribution — it was likely an ad campaign or maybe a look to the future of bikes and boobs. View NSFW version.
Pam was just riding along and suddenly she’s got a fixie — no freewheel. Upon further inspection, we discovered a spoke had broken and the spoke remnant was lodged in the cassette forcing it to turn around with the cranks.
Then we got into the real story, which was she sprinted up a cobblestoned climb in downtown Seattle with a 30 pound backpack affixed to the rear rack! Pam’s power, intense climbing grade, weighted rear, and cobbles all led to a broke spoke, which in turn made her Dahon into a fixie (for a while at least).
Mark V we need you to repair this soon. Thanks.
From the Winter Cycling set on Flick and Lovely Bicycle’s blog.
Uploaded by lovely_bicycle | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Definitely needs a cup holder for the rum, gin and juice, or beer.
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At just over 700 fans, our Bike Hugger Facebook Fanpage is active with the comments. Last week, the topics included Bike Haters and what your Spring riding plans are.
Today, we asked “what keeps you riding in the rain?”
and the responses included
Garrett Kemnow: We are from the Pacific Northwest = raingear, What can stop us?
Bryce Shotwell: fenders are cool.
Cyndi Mundhenk: Peer pressure!
Brian Fung being able to smile as i ride past all the cars at a dead stop b/c of traffic and weather
Lang Davison Mist on my face is lovely
Michelle Rogers If we waited for the sun to shine we might not ever ride a bicycle again.
How about you readers? What keeps you riding in any weather?
Our first Mobile Social of 2010 is in Amsterdam during FITC, a creative conference about design and technology.
Meet outside of the Felix Meritis -- conference center -- and group ride to a reception at WorkCycles Jordaan. Marc from Amsterdamnize is our host.
Can't join us for the bike ride? That's ok, you can still meet us anytime after 17:00 for some beer, apps, and conversation at WorkCycles Jordaan.
There are lots of places to rent bikes in Amsterdam:
... Read more »The new Seattle Mayor rode to
and from a press conference today.
Photo by @jjtweets. See more photos in our photostream.
Everybody has grown to love Universal Sports HD and their great coverage of cycling, but Versus is taking a break from Rodeo and Wrestling to pick the the 2010 Tour Down Under. Great news for all of you suffering through these winter months attached to the trainer.
A handmade Sketch Book from Party Bots.
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Clearly not wanting to be left out in the “ugly kit” department, the 2010 Footon-Servetto-Fuji team has really put the “ugh” in “ugly.” Unless this gear was designed with desert camouflage in mind, there’s really no reason why beige should be the dominant color here. (According to the press release on Cyclingnews this is “gold” not beige, but I’m not thinking that translates too well in photos.
If that weren’t bad enough, I think the large foot imprint’s going to be the start of a lot of “we stomped all over them” jokes. Finally, while one leg is black the crotch-region is beige. That’s…just…a…bad…idea.
The presentation ceremony of these jerseys was unique as well “Vuelta a España’s emcee Juan Mari Guajardo’s began the ceremony with a short film depicting a fictional chase scene in which burglars try to steal a valuable package, but are out-paced by world Rally Champion runner-up Dani Sordo’s skilled driving. The film ended with the truck pulling up to the hotel, and then fiction became ‘reality’ as the riders in black capes go to the truck to rescue the goods - the team’s Fuji SST 1.0 racing bikes.
Removing their black capes, the riders revealed the team’s new kit, designed by Dario Urzay, in gold with black logos.”
Oy.
Come on professional cycling teams, step up to the plate and design some good looking kit. You’re starting to make Nascar apparel look like evening formal wear.
Yes!
Uploaded by omahgarsh | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
I’ve got a pretty cool rainbike and have a lot of red-light conversations with other riders, but I get the most questions about this little black plastic thing on my stem than most anything else. It’s tall, sort of strange shaped and next to my PowerTap head unit. At the start of my ride today, Byron gave me the, “What the…?”, so I told him I’d post the details.
I get in most of my training time commuting to and from work. Living in Seattle, we have lots of dark and rain, so riding at night is pretty much necessary. Rather than sink $400 into a new Garmin 500 that has a backlight, I found this cheap alternative. A little obtrusive, but it does the trick.
Frightening the other fruit in the bowl everyday, it’s El Banana. In your jersey back pocket, El Banana makes your teammates feel weak and fat.
Uploaded by Kevin Tamura | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Full ride report on Rapha, all 107miles of it.
Uploaded by R A P H A | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
We got a chance to look at the Sanyo eneloop hybrid bicycle at the Interbike show this year, but now the company’s officially unveiled the bike at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Thanks to its earth-friendly bicycle-slash-electric bike design the eneloop nabbed the top priTemplates and Themes for the Eco-Design and Sustainable Technology category.
The three-speed eneloop uses “regenerative” technology (much like hybrid cars do) in order to charge the battery from the pedaling. The motorized front hub provides three assist modes to help provide a boost when a rider can’t keep up with the terrain.
Cycleicious has an early hands-on review of the bike which appeared in Momentum #43.
Grease Monkey Wipes are going to appear on the ABC Reality TV show Shark Tank next week.
on Friday January 15, 2010 at 9:00 pm EST/8:00 pm CST, Grease Monkey Wipes will be featured on the Mark Burnett produced reality TV show Shark Tank on ABC.
Grease Monkey Wipes are citrus cleaning wipes that use an all natural degreaser for heavy duty cleaning. We keep a pack of them in our Saddlebag for the winter tire changes.
Before
After
Also travel with them for the times when you drop your chain on a hotel floor while assembling a bike and a blackened spot of goo stares back at you.
Also works on removing the chainring tattoo from your calf …
A shop we’d like to visit.
Uploaded by TokyoFixedGear.com | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Spotted this flyer for a Bikes Part Drive at Wholefoods Roosevelt Square.
Please bring in your new or gently used bike parts to donate! We’ll be collecting parts to help Alaffia with their Bicycles for Education program.
Alaffia makes SHEA butter skincare products and empowers their vendors in Africa with a coop. They gather bikes to give to students so they can get to school. This drive is to supply parts for the cargo container of bikes they gathered in the past.
Haven’t tried Alaffia, but we’ve got SHEA in our chamois. After years of using Assos we switched to Nubutte. The stuff is remarkable, even healing this road rash.
En route to the Bahamas, we stopped at an airport newstand and I flipped through Lance’s new book, Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal. The photos are remarkable. Just a year earlier we were riding in Kona while Lance and Liz, the photographer, were there.
We never saw Lance, but every cyclist passing each other was checking to see if it was him. If you remember Lance’s reality show, the photos are even more behind the scenes. My favorite is the giant jar of Nutella.
The New Year brought an interesting spike in my newsreader with opinion writers commenting on a new California law regarding bicycles without seats. It’s now legal to ride a bike without a seat in California, if that bike was designed to not have a seat. Don’t know how many bikes there are without seats. We noticed the Fastboy assless last year
We’d like to turn onto this street sometime. Do need to ride in San Francisco again.
Uploaded by busbozo | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
We occasionally get “what bike is this” requests and this one is particularity interesting because of the spy-photo quality, giant tires, and it maybe possibly a snapshot from a Magnum PI episode where the criminal is a shorts-shorts wearing, crazy-bike riding thief.
Readers? Astroboy’s been wondering.
Over the weekend, a brief flurry of bike-related Twitter activity followed Xeni Jardin’s tweet that
I have joined the rare and hallowed ranks of People Who Will Not Shut The Fuck Up About Bicycles.
Xeni is the Curator of Internet Esoterica, Anomalies, and Curiosities @boingboing, a blog we often refer to when explaining to our bike peeps what it is we do.
A few weeks ago, we published a few irreverent predictions about 2010. If we were to think more seriously about what’s going to happen this year, it’s more crossover of bike culture into the geek and mainstream media. 09 had bloggers spotting fashion, celebs, fixed worldwide, cargo, and of course racing. One of the highlights for me, was presenting at the high-geek Gnomedex about us people who ride bikes and don’t shut up about them.
Since 2004, Xeni has periodically blogged about the bike from the Maker point of view:
We hope she posts more like this and whatever bike she’s riding and the places she rides. That intersection of tech, geek, creatives, and bikes is what we’re doing here and at them Mobile Socials.
Photo by Tyler Hicks from a NY Times story on elaborate bicycle stereos.
Whoa, that’s some panniers — wouldn’t get to close to this bike in a crosswind.
Uploaded by mmeiser2 | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
While David and I were hanging out with Specialized in Morgan Hill last year, his USB hub failed and he asked to use one of mine. I grabbed my Crumpler and pulled out a hub and also had at my diposable most anything else a traveling bike blogger would need. If NORAD goes down or the cable in the room or anything else, I’m ready for that too.
David hadn’t seen such a devotion to packing — I learned most of this from Mark V — and suggested I write about it. Going into Twenty Ten, I’m carrying a DSLR now and even more gear. I upgraded to a photographer-specific Sinking Barge Deluxe that holds the Macbook Air and camera, along with the proven
... Read more »
In news that’s just now officially breaking, Specialized has announced that it will be sponsoring Astana in the 2010 season. That’s great news for Tour champ Alberto Contador, who is the remaining friendly face on the team after Lance took a walk to Team ‘Shack taking his bike sponsor with him. (Trek, the company you might have heard mentioned in Tour broadcasts of old had won quite a number of yellow jerseys under Astana rides, Discovery riders before them and Posties before that.)
Unfortunately though for anyone who has any fashion sense, the Astana jersey has now gained the red colors of Specialized because really, nothing goes together better than light blue, yellow and red. Please, please god let this be just a working jersey while the fashion enlightened over at Specialized are working on their final versions.
Otherwise Lance and Alberto won’t just be battling for top spot on the podium but for the honors of most distracting jersey.
The New York Times, which is quickly becoming a cycling magazine, has a very motivational piece up about cyclist Joao Correia who, after a decade off from the pro ranks swelled balloon-like thanks to a life of meals with clients and sedentary lifestyle. At 34 he’s shed sixty pounds, 20 points off his body fat percentage and is racing in the pro ranks again with Cervelo.
Makes my two miles on the treadmill today look positively pansy-assed.
A new culinary cycling adventure series launches January 5th and features NYC in the first installment on pedaling.tv.
Whether it be a small village bakery, a fine restaurant, or simply a picnic at the right stopping point, food and drink have always played an integral role in cycling—not only because they fuel the work, but in many cases the culinary experience provides cyclists with some of their fondest and most enduring memories.
The web episodes also contain cycling tips, bike fitting, and more bike culture as the hosts ride through NYC’s culinary nook and crannies.
We’d like to meet the producers Iri Greco and Jim Fryer and give them due props for putting this together. This project was obviously a massive amount of work.
Maybe they can bring pedaling.tv to Mellow Johnnys during SXSW and our Mobile Social? Lots of good eating and pedaling in Austin, Texas.
It’s pink and it folds. What’s not to like?
Uploaded by Bigfish Folding Bike | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
We took the Dahon Biologic iPhone mount with us to the Bahamas and who better to test it on a Dahon than a teenager who wants to listen to her tunes on an Island ride?
Initial results were disappointing because she used her iPod Touch, which is much thinner than an iPhone. The welded touch-sensitive membrane wasn’t close enough to the front of the Touch to allow her finger to swipe or touch the interface. Every bump she hit in the road triggered the Touch’s shake-to-shuffle feature and her iPod was frustratingly shuffling the whole ride. If she were to use it again, I’d add a pad underneath to push it close to the membrane.
... Read more »
Di2 derailer and shifters with SRAM crank and brakes was spotted on the ride today. Di2 is an update to the Baron bikes the UBC team has been riding since last year. So far, according to the owner, the electronic shifting has been flawless in the wet Seattle Winter.
Combine that mashup drivetrain with disc brakes and you’ve got a holy ultimate winter bike. Click through to the Flickr photo and see the notes. There’s a PowerTap in the drivetrain too.
I need to check, but think there was some shimming the front derailer needed.
Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
When David Schloss joined us he brought with him his product editor background and moreover Pro photographer skills. The dude has the biggest camera at the events we attend, and some of the best bike photos I’ve seen. Right up there with Liz, Matt McGaughey, and Ken Conley.
David’s skills trickled down to the rest of us and you may have noticed I started shooting with a Canon 50D.
The camera is Canon’s first in-house, mid-range DLSR and intended for Prosumers. It retails for $1,000.00 for the body only.
... Read more »
That’s a first — the New Years Day is a winter storm with 25-mph winds and a bonus salt-water splash coming around Alki Beach.
Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Hey Ecomodder, instead of making a massive cardboard air dam for a Geo Metro, may we suggest you spend that time on a bike?
Find one at a garage sale, 2nd-hand store, fix it up, ride it all over. Make it a New Years resolution. Just saying maybe 15% increase in mileage for all that air damming isn’t worth it.
