Freeriding in India is when your bro on a scooter pushes you along to the market.
DL Byron: October 2009 Archives
A still from riding in Delhi video shot yesterday. We’ll publish the video and other huggacasts from the Mobile Social Worldwide once we’re back in the States.
Riding in Delhi was safer than it looked because of a curiousity bubble around me. A folding bike and helmeted rider was a spectacle with cars, scooters, buses, carts following to get a closer look. Wasn’t my intent to create a scene, but then felt I’d added something to India. Bikes aren’t status symbols in India or something a business person would ride to work.
That’s an opportunity for change here and the businessmen I talked to in the hotel lobby were very curious about the bike.
Like riding in China, I just rode right into the flow. Wish I had a huge horn though. That’s what they do in India: honkity honk, honk.
Denskies chose Kramer for the head tube badge of his Roll.
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Daily Transport
Note this is another in a series of posts from the Mobile Social Worldwide.
Building materials are delivered by bike in India — brick, pipes, steel girders anything you can imagine.
Note this is another in a series of posts from the Mobile Social Worldwide.
While Prague and the Czech people comprise a culture of resistance, it’s not to the car. Cyclist there ride mountain bikes for the cobbles, hilly terrain, and to make quick escapes onto trails when the hostile drivers turn violent. As a symbol of westernization, the car dominates. They proudly make Skodas.
The first stop on our Mobile Social Worldwide was London and we connected with local cyclists, the fixie scene, and a traffic engineer. We rode haphazardly on city streets, a hot lap in Richmond, and calmed roads with cycle tracks.
Typical Commute
Riding in London is aggressive and not for the timid. The photo sequence below demonstrates a commuter crossing a congested road into Hyde Park.
Stop
Wait
Cross
In Prague, multiuse paths include men in hats who escort girls with bows and bikes that are separated.
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It’s a Miele with pedals — spotted this in a Meile Boutique across the street from our hotel in Prague.
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While at WorkCycles to pick up bikes for the Amsterdam stop of the Mobile Social Worldwide, @amsterdamized showed us his photos. This collection was recently included in a NYT feature, the NY 400 celebration, and he was hanging them on the wall for a party.
Mark will sell these soon.
You see whole families on bikes in Amsterdam, including babies like this. We think she is happier than a car-seated child in a minivan with a DVD player.
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On our way to the Tate Modern, spotted this Pashley Pizza bike in London.
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For those cyclists that ride in the rain, they take it very seriously, like with this Hufnagel.
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Chris Guillebeau, an AC360° Contributor, blogged his 28 things I wish I’d known before I started traveling. I’ve annotated it below for traveling with bikes.
Health Care
1. You can legally buy safe medicine, including prescription drugs, for very little money overseas. When in Africa or Asia, I stock up on anti-malarials that cost $5 a day in Seattle. On location, it’s more like $1 for a 10-day supply.
Too much of a boyscout to have meds on-the-fly and stock up at home. Our trips are no more than 2 weeks and we’re absolutely freaks about keeping clean, what we eat, and drink.
2. The best health care is not in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. The best healthcare is in places like Thailand and Costa Rica; that’s why the practice of medical tourism will continue to surge as both travel and overseas healthcare become more accessible.
We haven’t traveling into South America or Thailand, but don’t doubt this and think the state of our health care is ridiculous, as is the political discourse about it. The State should provide health care yes. We travel with a road rash kit and the full compliment of inoculations.... Read more »
Rollapaluza are dedicated to reviving the sport of roller-racing. Two cyclists battle it out on a pair of custom rollers connected to a huge dial over a simulated 500m distance at speeds in excess of 50mph!
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She commuted with a Brompton. Noted that is wasn’t easy, but still good, and better than driving.
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After all the flying on Wednesday, hung out at the BBC with @fasonista. Jason Fields directs the User Experience team at BBC Vision, enjoys the bike, and we’ve known each other for years. He blogs at oyayubizoku and launched iPlayer, amongst other notable digitial achievements.
Dalek Encounter
Having fun with this (BBC/Dr Who evil icon) prop, Jason offered BBC schwag to the best caption
This is the second excerpt from the Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne’s bike book and is about riding in New York. We’re traveling now on the Mobile Social Worldwide arriving in London on Wednesday.
Tanya Mohn writes about business travelers who bring their bikes with them for the NYT. Tanya and I weren’t able to connect for an interview, but she got some good quotes from other cyclists that travel.
The Globe team spent a day in Copenhagen riding around with the camera rolling.
Following the Seattle stop of David Byrne’s Book Tour, Viking Press provided us with two excerpts from the Bicycle Diaries to share with you. Today we’re posting the introduction and tomorrow the New York chapter (after the jump).
Photo: David Schloss
Besides providing the soundtrack for much of what we do here at Bike Hugger, David Byrne shares our romance with the bike and travel. We’re taking a hardcover copy of his bike book with us during the Mobile Social Worldwide that starts this week.
We’re riding and blogging in London, Amsterdam, Prague, and India. Follow along on our new Travel site. For now, the excerpt …
... Read more »Jill Morris sent us this video she wrote and produced for the Upright Citizens Brigade. It’s footage from the hospital room where a family’s first child is born.
Writing for the Guardian’s green-living blog, Peter Walkers looks back at 20 years of clipless pedals.
It’s 20 years since Shimano took cleats, or clip-in technology, from the world of road racing to the everyday commute. Next time you’re in the office and a newly arrived cycling colleague walks past making a faint click-clack noise as they go, they’ve either mistakenly put on their tap shoes or - a better bet - they are among the many devotees of the cleat, or clip-in pedal.
In the years I’ve been riding, fewer people ask me about my shoes; unless, I’m wearing booties and then they want to know what’s going on with the elf boots.
This bucket of pedals I snapped at TrekWorld earlier this year, contained many of the pedals in Speedplay’s timeline.
Myself I’m a Time guy — what pedals do you use and have used?
Don’t drive very often, mostly ride my bike, but rented a 24 footer for a move and damn that was intense for the first drive. The rental center is at Spokane and 1st. That’s 2 rights and you’re on the W. Seattle Freeway — a busy Seattle thoroughfare with skinny lanes and jersey barriers. No commercial license needed to drive it. Just go for it and the bike-racing instincts kicked in — focused, stayed in my lane, and drove that big ass truck home.
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Update
The travel site was a test and we’ve pushed it into production on Bike Hugger and renamed it Community. Please join it and add your contributions.
Just in time for the Mobile Social Worldwide, our friends at Six Apart and Strangecode got a new site running for us based on TypePad Motion. This is an exciting project for us, the result of years of thought and discussion about the direction of social media and an effort to build a bigger community of Bike Huggers.
I wrote about Motion on Textura Design (publisher of Bike Hugger) last week, referencing the early Mellow Clutterâ„¢ concept, and summarized it as
“Frameworks, codebase, cloud buzzwords aside, TypePad Motion is like a freakin’ magical unicorn that fills your blog with sunshine. Connect the pieces all together, dress the unicorn up as you please, and publish content.”
The next progression of cool is bike polo, but we think it should look more like Mad Max and the Thunderdome than Ralph Lauren.
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Those of us that travel with bikes know it’s an arms race with the airlines — how much they charge came up earlier this year when Pam and I got popped $175.00 per-bike-one-way by Northwest Airlines. As Mark wrote in response to our trip
Ask about and everyone has a tale of how a friend of theirs flew a bike for $5 blah, blah, blah…. Let me tell you, there was a period of time where I logged 100,000 frequent flier miles over two years. I know about flying with a bike … nothing beats the S&S system for flying a 700C wheeled bike,
We know how to fly with bikes too and got charged on that trip because we flew with Scicon cases that say, “bicycle” and are in the shape of a bicycle. Normally we fly with S&S and also with Bromptons and Dahons. The advantage of all of those folders is that they either go into a case that squeaks under the airline surcharge for oversize baggage — pack it light to keep it under weight — or go right into the overhead.
Until recently that is.
... Read more »In the news today, a bell law:
Tampa poised to repeal law that requires bells on bicycles — cited as an excuse to stop and arrest people, Tampa’s bell law is about to get voted off the books.
And the Saratoga School District revises bike policy in — apparently they haven’t heard of Safe Routes to School or possibly just getting to know Congressman Oberstar who’s working on a bike-friendly century. Why wouldn’t you ride a bike to school? Cause of all the cars.
Traffic Justice Summit
Help get justice for: Kevin Black, Jill Spanjer, Susanne Scaringi, Tatsuo Nakata, Autumn Sansom, Paul Douglas Ratliff, Jose Hernando, Gordon Patterson, Ilsa Govan, Stuart Thayer, Paul Jaholkowsky, Veronica Gonzalez, Michael Ann Boucher, Bryce Lewis, Marvin Gene Miller, Michael McClurkan tonight at the Traffic Justice Summt, an effort to make history by changing the law.
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 5:30 - 7:30, Seattle City Hall, Bertha Knight Landes Room.
While Grant Podelco told us there’s not a bike scene in Prague we are undeterred. Foreverdigital snapped this shot of a fixie at the John Lennon wall. We’ll bring the bike culture with us and I’m sure we’ll find like-minded cyclists next week.
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Cycle U is opening a new location in West Seattle. Cycle U offers indoor training and coaching. In this location, the services include bikes and a shop with clinics and more.
Great news to see another bike shop opening in the Seattle area and also that it’s in a former car dealership. I posted on re-cycling GM dealerships earlier this year and, well, there ya go.
Also see
Colnago, carbon everything, Cat 5 racer. Didn’t get to connect with the owner, but would have appreciated the obsession and mentioned that he might want to tone it down a bit on race day, as he moved through the ranks.
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Ultremo DD for the winter bike. Go on easy, roll well, a bit bouncy, and puncture proof. Last year an Ultremo survived a big pothole hit — if these do get cut and split, you can superglue them back together.
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This cyclist fixed up an old Pacific Wanderer with a stabilizer bar attached to boxes front and back and an upright position with cruiser handlebars. The Puffy Vest completes the bike and look. Spotted this DIY Cargo bike in West Seattle.
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The bakfiets with milk cans inside the Freia dairy factory. “This was a regular way of transporting the daily milk into the cooperative factory.”
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As we’ve been tweeting, this Fall we’re taking the Mobile Social Worldwide to London, Amsterdam, and Prague with a stop in India.
The Mobile Socials are usually timed to coincide with a major event in a host city. This year we were in Austin for SXSW and Portland for Webvision. For the Worldwide edition, we’re making the cities we visit and the cyclists we meet the event.
We’re putting the interwebs to work now thanks to our Rand McNally desk atlas and I-Ching sticks the details of the rides and meetups are emerging. We’ll post and tweet the locations and times as we land and ride in each city. Let’s all meet for tea and crumpets in London, beer in Amsterdam, Chai in India and… well we’re not sure what they meet over in Prague, but we hope to find out.
If you’re in one of these cities, stay tuned to our Twitter feed and the site for details of our our mobile social global hangouts.
Lemond Zurich and I kept a brisk commuter pace while discussing frame materials.
Wondered what all the construction was between the Stadia with Bianchi Flatbar and hoped the City would at least add a bike lane.
Raleigh Cross bike appreciated the “nice bike” comment as I passed and Kona Dew just nodded as I rode by.
Love helmets; especially futuristic ones that fold and look like they came from the movie Tron. This maybe the start of a helmet-modeling career. Regardless of that prospect, finally someone has designed a helmet for travel. The problem is that helmets take up a massive amount of space in a suitcase.
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Pereira Cycles locking bicycle has been generating lots of discussion and interest since last week.
Features:
- Handmade Tail light
- Custom Rack and Stem
- Custom Lemolo bag
- Integrated U-lock
Embrocation Cycling Journal uploaded video that explains how the bike locks.
We could probably start a don’t steal bikes bro series with the most egregious bike thefts, like David Byrne’s from a few years ago, Lance, or a special Silver Eagle.
This week it’s Peter Sagal’s brand new, black and yellow Felt.
I came out today, my bike shoes clattering, and spent a strange thirty seconds staring at the space where it was, denying to myself that I couldn’t see it. Then I found the cable lock, sliced through, on the ground with my helmet.
The bike was brand new, black and yellow, as you see, with Time road pedals and an underseat bag with tubes and inflater. Anybody see anybody riding it on the streets of Chicago, hit them with a rock, but try not to scratch the paint.
The bike is likely at a pawn shop already and the money smoked through a meth pipe. Peter Sagal is the host of NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell me. A show and podcast we often listen to in our travels.
Spotted this Vision bike at UW yesterday. With a giant head tube, no seat tube, and reversed stem, I was confused. Reader gregraisman commented: “a discontinued semi-recumbent bike. Fore-runner to the Townie,” or flat-foot bikes. Possibly the RANS?
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Met these tourists outside of Costco. They were fueling up for a ride between Seattle and San Diego. Check their equipment and notice those handle bags.
Mark track stands on his S&S BMX — there’s much to like about a 20 inch travel bike; especially one that’s near bomb proof. We’re traveling with Dahons to Europe and India later this month — more on that trip in another post.
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4 chairs on a bike during a move? Sure. Why not? The table is on another bike, like this.
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The Telegraph reviews Kraftwerk’s Catalogue collection (iTunes) and observes
Where so much music back then (prog rock) and today (everything recorded with ProTools) can sound dense and cluttered, Kraftwerk’s was virtually empty, implying the wide open spaces of postwar central Europe, as experienced by rail, motorcycle, or bicycle - the band’s three preferred methods of transport.
You can hear that openness in their Tour de France soundtrack. Also the breathing, drivetrains, and rhythm of the peloton. To us, Kraftwerk not only influenced a generation (including hip-hop), but their music sounds like the bike.
It’s another example of music and bikes, a topic we’re covering more this Fall and into the Spring.
Boing Boom Tschak Ping — man machine.
Sweet Pea Bicycle’s Litttle Black Dress bike on a coffee run. The Little Black Dress is in their LUST line of custom bikes for women.
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“I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It’s getting safer to do so, but I do have to be fairly alert when riding on the streets as opposed to riding on the Hudson River bike path or similar protected lanes.”
The media and positive reviews of the Bicycle Diaries continue with a Weekend Edition Sunday story today on NPR. Earlier this week, we attended the Seattle stop of a tour for the bike book. Unlike the usual book tour, David focused the event on advocacy with a civic leader, an urban theorist, a bicycle advocate, and himself each giving 10 minute presentations.
Kryptonite lock core is built into steerer tube. Fits ubiquitous Portland “staple” bike rack perfectly. Handmade “pear” key fob. An entrant in the Oregon Manifest Constructor’s Design Challenge.
Also see the integrated light.
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Forgot the lock for a quick store run, so just folded the bike up in a cart and shopped. No one seemed to notice. I was ready if they did to say, “found it on Aisle 3, dunno.”
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Reader Gianluca sent us photos of his drop-bar Cannondale.
Assembled this bike just to obtain a road bike with hydrauilc disc brakes cable-actuated by Campagnolo Ergopowers. The sprockets are Miche for Shimano cassette, but I corrected the thickness of spacers to fit a Campy 9s cassette. On the handlebars I placed CLB Tech One (they are like Problem Solver Travel Agent) to encrease the amount of pulled cable. Hydraulic levers are actuated by derailleurs cables, not brake cables to obtain a better fitting around the CLB internal pulley (slim cables are more flexible)
Very nice.
Emily and Tashon are riding all 5 boroughs to find the best Taco in NYC while celebrating Russell Crowe’s famous taco ride.
Back in 2007, there was the Tour de Taco Bell that also celebrated the taco and riding South of the Border.
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Dahon’s folding, travel helmet.
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iPhone
iPhone users can download and watch now and access our Huggacasts via the iTunes Store on a Wi-Fi or cellular network.
This Fall we’re riding Flax Fixed, a crazy BMX frankenbike, and this Scott Addict SL. The Scott is our weight weenie bike, with the frame tipping the scales at 1.8 pounds*.
According to Scott, the Addict is the lightest production frameset and it’s noticeably light in your hands. Like wow light. Carbon racing frames in this class hover around 2 pounds plus a bag of chips. The Scott drops another 1/2 pound by removing carbon weave and all the frame bits are carbon: dropouts, cable guides.
The biggest difference is that Scott is using a high-modulus carbon, which means they can build the frame with less material.
Also build it stiff as f*ck. I rode a Scott R2 earlier this year in Greenville.
Oh and we’ve got a Jake the Snake in the queue, as well as a Single Speed Tricross.
*Weighed on a postage scale.
