Posts tagged “travel”  

For cyclists looking for a getaway there's really few better spots than Martha's Vineyard. The popular tourist destination is actually a mecca for roadies, thanks to the countless miles of bike paths, numerous small farm shops and acres and acres of park land.

In four days of riding my wife and I have only really repeated the same stretch of road coming into and leaving Oak Bluffs, which is one of the more happening of the main towns on the island. (Edgartown is more upper-crust, Vineyard Haven is more working-class fishing-village and Gay Head is a cliff.) Thanks to the craptacular economy ,this week has been really deserted. We've been able to walk into just about any restaurant and sit down without reservations.

Riding back to Hugga HQ from a Novara photoshoot, Neighbor Tom stopped me to show off his new bike and what a bike it is -- a Tout Terrain Silkroad.

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Along with the BikeHugger crew, I'm in Portland for the Mobile Social, and while I'm looking forward to riding it, meeting Hugger readers and giving away prizes (I've been told I might be doing the raffle), I'm equally excited for the next few days of riding.

I arrived in Portland last night and set up my trusty Bike Friday, after a walkabout looking for an 8mm Allen for my pedals (thanks to Waterfront Bicycles at 10 SW Ash for giving me a 6mm to 8mm adapter so I didn't need to buy a $40 wrench) I'm all ready for a week of riding and I couldn't be happier.

Last night I remembered why I like Portland so much as I came across the carnival being set up by the river, without a soul paying any attention to it. Rows after rows of amusements and vendors waiting to open on Friday, but not a local in the park.

Now I'm going to head up to the hills (after some Stumptown coffee) and stretch my legs before coming back to ride over and be mobiley-social.

I've posted before about my own travel bike, a custom Sycip with S&S couplings. I designed the bike for maximum versatility. By changing out handlebars, rear wheels, and other peripheral components, the bike can become a road fixie, a TT bike, a touring bike, or a road racing bike. Someday I'd like to do a cyclocross race with it, just to say that I've done it all with that bike. I've been almost 20 countries with it, and it's outlasted two relationships. It's a great formula that inspired Byron's Davidson Modal bike, but my bike did have a predecessor.
Here's my current Sycip in front of the predecessor, just yesterday.

The Modal is a travel bike concept that folds and toggles between single, fixed, and geared modes. This wheel was built with Nexus 8 Speed Premium "Red Band" attached to a Hed Ardennes. It's for internal-gear mode and we're building this up now with a drop bar.

Bike Hugger Modal tags.

Geoff Casey from Baron Bicycles wrote to ask me about riding in Maui. Below are my responses.

I'm going to Maui on the 24th, bringing a bike...what should I know?

Excellent. It's way less Blue Hawaii and more strip malled than you'll expect, but ride a few miles out of town and you're good. They have new bike paths along the main highway and you'll ride every ride along highways. The locals there are tolerant of bikes with some haters. I got nearly killed two years ago by an angry hippie in a bio-diesel Mercedes with a No Iraq War bumper sticker. Maui is car-centric and all those white sedans you'll see are tourists.

This belt-driven S&S-coupled bike

folds and packs up like this

and then is ready for the bus, subway, train, and/or ferry.

On test soon and on the ride during our Mobile Social @ An Event Apart.

The New York Times, which is known for picking up on trends mere weeks, months or years after they've actually become trends (witness this recent piece in the Fashion section on how people are making money on iPhone software), has recently discovered that people like to ride bikes in Portland.

Aside from the fact that it's in no way secret or news that Portland is a great biking area, the article is chock full of tips, like this:

"There is an amazing selection of restaurants and brewpubs like the Lucky Lab and the Bridgeport Brewery, but my favorite thing to do is hit Powell's Books," said Mr. Rogers, the shoe designer. "Every trip I spend a few hours there, not only to check out books, but to check in with the world."

Seems there's not only bikes in Portland but beer and some new-fangled bookstore named Powell's. Thanks NY Times!

Bike thieves are back in the news with a post from the NYT City Room Blog. The comments are the best part with gems like

Did anyone accidentally buy my Fuji royal blue 5-speed bike with a mixte frame last year, thinking the salesperson was legit?

and

Try having your bike stolen from your apartment, by your neighbor!

In this photo from Beijing, I used the obstruction technique to obscure our nice, new bikes among crappy, ancient, Chinese ones. All I had was a cable lock. Did not get stolen.

Also the Kryptonite ball-pen legend still has legs.

When I'm traveling, my folding bikes go where I go and that's everywhere. Training, racing, and touring we use the buddy system and the bikes just aren't out of our sight.

On Bettie, I use Val's immobilization techniques. Those include toe-strapping the front brake, disabling the motor, and cable U-locking the front wheel to the fork.

That bike weighs more than an hundred pounds and it's gonna take at least 3 or 4 tweaking meth-heads working together to hoist her into a truck. Discussed in this post from last year.

I think until we get bike parking like Asian and European cities, this is a perennial problem.

Svein put Seattle locals in the hurt locker before going Pro and races without a typical cyclists’ physique, which is even more remarkable and motivating

“It was by far the most content I’ve ever been,” he said. “My bike was a piece of junk. I had nowhere to go, no place to be. Didn’t have anyone telling me what to do. If I felt like lying on the side of the road, I did.”

On test is an Abio Verdion, a folding bike with a belt drive. Interestingly, this bike was spec’d with parts I’ve never seen before from Shimano, including a thumb/button shifter and 4-speed Nexus.

During the past year, we traveled and rode in many places around the world. Those places include Tuscany, Rome, Amsterdam, Vegas, Shanghai, Taipei, Austin, Portland, Maui, Monterey, Kona, Santa Barbara, and Japan.

Our 08 travel posts, photos, and videos, are gathered here on this topic page.

It’s a Big Island — we were riding South and Lance was riding North. We never saw him, but did see the same lava letters shown in this photo. While riding into Kona Town, a local stopped us to say, “did you know Lance was here?” “Yes!” we replied.

Every cyclist we passed, we’d check if it was Lance. I bet they were doing the same thing.

Photo credit: Liz Kreutz

Hugga rode Kona on the Big Island.

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Just back from Kona and getting caught up, with more observations about traveling with a Macbook Air. As I’ve written, the computer does what it should, it’s not limited by the processor or graphics card. I ran a full compliment of software including iPhoto, Final Cut Express, and VMware fusion.

Spotted in the airport, returning from Kona, en route to Seattle. That’s a Pixar, custom Timbuk2 bag. See the inside in this photo.

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

We went to Denver over the holidays and although I used to keep a bike to ride when I was working there regularly, I decided to use it as my rain bike in Seattle. So it is always with some remorse that I travel to Denver for more than 3 days. I’m not big on spin classes although I have done some killer ones in Boulder, but Denver? The mountains beckon and I just want a real bike to ride.

Dents, scratches, creaks; all part of a travel bike and a “patina.”

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

Yep the MagSafe Airline Adapter totally worked.

That’s the first time ever that I’ve had power on a plane.

And I went for it.

Like Jay Allen said, I

turned the screen brightness all the way up, opened every app, compiled some software, started two movies running simultaneously and started calculating the quintillionth bit of pi; then edited a Huggacast.

I wanted to hear them fans blow; I also blogged with locally hosted Movable Type Pro, deleted a bunch of emails, and turned my screen so the traveler across the aisle couldn’t see what I was doing …

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

I recently posted about the Macbook Air as a travel computer for cyclists. I also covered my effort to

… become more mobile, simplified, and lightweight. Traveling with an folding bike, S&S case brings out the perfect packer in me and a desire to get even more efficient on the road.

In this post, I’ll continue the discussion on being more mobile and the “Great Mac Sync.”