Bike Hugger 

You know, I really like socks. An ex-girlfriend said that I was overly obsessed, because I really don’t like the feeling of leaving the house without socks. But who does? Anyways, I came across this photo, and it really caught my eye, seeing as it portrays Bianchi bikes and socks with girls, which are two of my favourite subjects. If you prefer socks with guys, well….if that’s how your gear shifts, whatevs….I just happen to like socks with girls.

From Shamanx

We wear kit and plain-clothes, depending on the ride

Pfftt! whatever to Velo Couture, Cycle Chic, and other stereotypes from @bikeyface. She wears what she wants. She also calls out the cycling creepers taking photos of women on bikes and how they use those images to further their own, self-centered, euro-centric agendas.

Erect baguette is a nice touch

Thanks for that dose of Political Bike Satire. Please may we have another. This time with tweed?

Illustrations by Bikeyface. Originals on Flickr. Posted on her blog too.

I attended a media event last time to celebrate the opening of the Gates Foundation Visitor Center. One of the most engaging exhibits is a wall where you share what you’d do with all the money. Of course, I said I’d give bikes away.

I would!

I’d attach some strings though with economic incentives or make sure the bikes went to Bros like this. They deliver medicine.

Santosh and Vikas are Bros that ride bikes delivering medicine

View more photos from the event on G+ and Flickr and I recommend you visit the center next time your in downtown Seattle. I don’t know museum science or that art enough to talk it more than what I experienced, but it follows the openness of the Gates Foundation new campus. That’s where they’ve also got the most massive bike parking I’ve ever seen. It’s for all their employees that bike to work.

A hallway for the kids to run around doing stuff

Moser on the cover

Jan Heine’s new book is shipping at the end of this month and pre-ordering now on Amazon.com for $31.26.

The Competition Bicycle will inspire cyclists and design lovers alike. The evocative, detail-rich photographs display the history of the bicycle, from racing high-wheelers to modern racing bikes with carbon-fiber disc wheels. Exceptional handcrafted machines ridden by great champions illustrate milestones in the mechanics and craftsmanship of bicycle design.

Why helmets were invented

The book chronicles our instinct to race and the machines we built to go faster, including penny-farthings and the modern, carbon frame.

Like a pentagram frame

It’s been a while since Jan and I have debated 650bs and 6 speeds, which were the new old thing 2 years ago. I see him occasionally dropping off copies of the Bicycle Quarterly at Mark V’s shop.

Like the messengers after them, paperboys delivered papers on bikes like this

Congratulations are deserved for getting the book out and then we’ll get right to the questions about tire pressure and his choices on what bikes to include in the book.

As seen in Thomas Hawk’s G+ photos.

I think most cyclists were confused by the media reaction to Lebron James commuting to work on a bike. As Lebron said himself, what was the big deal?

King James commutes by bike

Photo: @jackNruth

It wasn’t any deal and especially to those of us who ride in a city with pro ball. Local builders in Seattle, like Davidson and Erickson, have built custom bikes for big and tall customers. @Dschrempf used to raced with us. I mentioned that on Facebook and friends responded with their Detlef stories.

While the media continues to marvel at Lebron James commuting to work on a bike and wondering if/how that affects his game, I remembered how many times I’ve been in a bike race with @Dschrempf. A few and this one time, we locked bars at Ballard going into turn one.

Detlef’s bars were enormously wide, like scaffolding that held him upright. As we turned, I rode under and up into them. When I steadied myself against Detlef, my helmet was in his ribs.

Brian Snyder wrote

Drafted behind him for almost 75 miles in Bellingham. What a motor.

And Matthew Hill added

I will never forget Det’s big crash at the Redmond Derby. He caught big air… HUGE air. When he launched, a gigantic shadow eclipsed the sun as he flew off the bike. It was like an airplane was attempting to land in the field, the sun was totally eclipsed. As he flew through the air, arms outstretched, you could feel the “holy sh**!” wave pass through the peloton… a 7 foot tall man hurled into the air like a giant, airborne starfish, followed immediately by the largest race bike the world has ever seen. It cut a wake of chaos unlike any I have ever seen…

Photos

Brian shared photos from his days with Det on the Byrne Invent team.

Det rolling

Photo: b.p.s

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

After 382 days spent riding through the streets of Montreal, being sometimes quite cold, sometimes quite hot - and sometimes quite scared, I dedicate this movie to you, Yves Blanchet :-)

Beautiful and meaningful to all; especially, those of us who spend much of their lives on the bike.

Packed up and sent back to Parlee

Bikes come and go at Hugga HQ – in for review, or special projects, and very few of them get my attention like the Parlee. I was attached. Mostly because I’d raced a Cross season with it, suffering in the Elite categories. I left my fitness somewhere on a plane in 2011 and just when I starting going good, finishing on the lead lap, I got sick. Then pulled the plug on racing to regroup over the holidays.

The Parlee never let me down in those races or in the snow. I pushed the bike to the limits when I could for a few hurtful moments at a time. While my legs didn’t show up until the season was nearly over, the heart, soul, and effort were there. So was the Parlee.

I have another Cross bike this next Season, a few months from now in the late Summer and Fall. Maybe it’ll perform as well as the Parlee CX-H did.

In the studio at Parlee

Hope so.

Byron recently posted an aged picture of two men with bicycles strapped to their back. I recognized the photo from somewhere as being WWI Italian soldiers, and in my net search to verify I came across the webpage of The BSA & Military Bicycle Museum. One hundred years ago, shortly before Serbian nationalists assassinated Franz Ferdinand, this Bianchi Model 1912 was ordered by the Italian military to equip their Bersaglieri, or light infantry units with an emphasis on high mobility. At the time, Bianchi made 45,000 bicycles, 1,500 motorcycles, and 1,000 cars yearly. This Model 1912 was a fairly ambitious design, incorporating front and rear suspension on a folding frame. After WWI, Italia expanded the number of bicycle troops as part of tactical commitment to mobile warfare (as opposed to the stalemate of WWI trench warfare), though those divisions converted to motorization before WWII.

BSA Bicycles were a well-known, quality brand in the United Kingdom from the beginning of the bicycle until the company sold bicycle assets to Raleigh TI in the mid-1950s. The company came about from the consolidation of several munitions factories in Birmingham that came together to meet a critical British shortage during the Crimean War, eventually selling rifles to a handful of countries. In 1880 with military arms sales flagging, the Birmingham Small Arms Company diversified into bicycles since the industrial processes of guns and bicycles apparently had a lot in common. BSA’s bicycles introduced many innovations that paved the way for cycling’s popularity, while simultaneously serving as a critical supplier of military arms during the two world wars. Besides guns & cannons, bullets & bombs, bikes & bike parts, BSA seemingly had a role in every British machine that moved in the first half of the 20th century, including Daimler (autos, engines), Triumph (motorcycles), and de Havilland (aircraft).

BSA’s story bears similarity to that of Spanish cycle manufacturer Orbea, which also had a start in small arms in 1840 before building bicycles. Orbea’s transition to bicycles had more to do with Fascist dictator Franco’s policy of dismantling regional autonomy and arms production; the Basque company was prohibited from manufacturing weapons during the 1930s.

It is often said that bicycles today are soul-less products for mass consumption, but perhaps we are deluding ourselves if we romanticize the history of the bicycle. If we can only approve of a bicycle if is handcrafted in some one-man shop, then we should admit that we want luxury artisanal goods. Bicycles are as much an industrial product as automobiles, aircraft, sewing machines, and machine guns.

Limited visibility

Over the weekend, on Sunday, rode the I-90 bridge by memory. This photo is from an onboard iPhone camera in front-facing mode and shows visibility at about 10% from car spray. An earlier squall left standing water on the road. Anticipating an epic crossing, I quickly took the photo as we descended the ramp to the bridge bike lane. Then put my head down and kept a steady pace to the other side. The spray was as constant as the wind and polluted with run off from the cars. I’ve crossed that bridge thousands of times, but never like this. Gluckman was on my wheel and I knew all he could see was my tire.

We were here and could barely see

On Mercer Island, after the bridge deluge Gluckman said almost poetically

I get a rush from mastering the elements. Being comfortable in miserable conditions with the right gear.

Don’t know if I could sum up riding in the rain better or how we get through it hour after hour, then treating it as a challenge in itself. Especially when the weekend before, I failed at it and Mother Nature reminded me who the boss is.

To get a photo that fast on the move, I used the Cypher Gloves and the iPhone was in a Biologic Reecharge case.