Category: Review

  • BICYCLE : A Great British Movement

    BICYCLE : A Great British Movement

      I had the chance to watch a very interesting documentary over the weekend called “BICYCLE” : A Great British Movement. “Bicycle” is an independent film, created and directed by Michael B Clifford and produced by Pip Piper of Blue Hippo Media, that asks the question why is the bicycle back in fashion? “It tells…

  • Cycling Science by Max Glaskin

    Cycling Science by Max Glaskin

    Cycling Science: How Rider and Machine Work Together  by Max Glaskin is a new book from the University of Chicago Press that will be released in November.  I don’t have a copy of the entire book, just a 10 page preview sampler from the publisher, but from what I can see it looks like it…

  • Cervellum Hindsight 35 – first impressions

    Cervellum Hindsight 35 – first impressions

    About a week before I left for China, Evan Solida, the designer and founder of Cerevellum, dropped off one of the first production Hindsight 35 units for me to try out. Some of you may remember the test ride I did with one of his early Gameboy based prototypes back in 2008…and I think you…

  • Three bike books from Laurence King Publishing

    Three bike books from Laurence King Publishing

    I was only expecting a copy of The Custom Road Bike, by Guy Andrews, from the folks at Laurence King Publishing, but I received two other books as well. All three are interesting, so I want to quickly share my impressions of each of them. When I first browsed through The Custom Road Bike,  it…

  • Italian Racing Bicycles

    Italian Racing Bicycles

    When I started to get serious about road riding and racing in the mid 80s, I bought a Suntour equipped Trek 500 (just like the one on the cover of the ’85 catalog). It was a fine bike, especially considering the fact that it cost less than 300 bucks, but from the first time I…

  • A couple of weeks with a bamboo WebbWorks Hilltribe

    A couple of weeks with a bamboo WebbWorks Hilltribe

    I have mentioned quite a few different bamboo bikes on this blog, but until recently I had never really ridden one for longer than about fifteen minutes. A few weeks ago though, that changed when my friends at TTR Bikes loaned me an Alfine 11 equipped WebbWorks Hilltribe to try out for a while.  It…

  • A couple of book reviews

    A couple of book reviews

    In addition to playing in the surf, eating some great seafood, and riding bikes with my family, I had the chance to catch up on some reading while I was at the beach last week. The two books I took on the trip were It’s All About the Bike by Robert Penn and Joyride: Pedaling…

  • Come and Gone by Joe Parkin

    Come and Gone by Joe Parkin

    I was on vacation at the beach last week, so I didn’t get a chance to post any new content on the blog. I did get a chance to finish reading a good book while I was lounging in the sand though- Come and Gone: A True Story of Blue-Collar Bike Racing in America by…

  • FlashBak

    FlashBak

    For the last couple months, I have been trying out a product called FlashBak. As you can see in the pictures, the FlashBak is a rectangle made from heavy-duty nylon strap with 10 embedded flashing LEDs. Four clips on the corners with elastic cords hold the unit in place and the 3 AAA batteries are…

  • Bike Snob book illustrator Chris Koelle

    Bike Snob book illustrator Chris Koelle

    I am a fan of Bike Snob NYC (aka Eben Weiss), so I was pretty excited to receive a copy of his new book from the publisher a few days ago. It is a nice little book… hardbound and about 5” x 7” inches in size with full color photos and 2 color line drawings…

  • Batavus BUB review

    You may remember that the Batavus Urban Bike (BUB) was one of the new designs that really caught my attention at Interbike. Soon after the show, I was lucky enough to get the chance to try out one of the prototypes for a few weeks. Before I get into my thoughts about the time I…

  • Background on the Batavus BuB

    I recently mentioned that the Batavus BuB was one of the new city/urban bikes that really caught my attention at Interbike. Soon, I will get a chance to try out a prototype BuB for a couple of weeks… in fact I will be picking the bike up at Renaissance Bicycles this Sunday (speaking of Renaissance,…

  • Smart Move: Bicycles from the Embacher Collection

    It probably won’t surprise many of you to hear that I have a pretty extensive collection of bicycle books at home. Some of you may even remember when I mentioned a few of my favorites some time ago in a post about old bikes. Well, now I have a new book to add to that…

  • Chrome Metropolis Messenger Bag review

    I briefly mentioned in a February post that I had a new messenger bag from Chrome to try out. Now that I have been using that bag, their Metropolis model, for a couple of months, I can say that I really do like it a lot. Previously, I was commuting with a North Face messenger…

  • Custom Bicycles: A Passionate Pursuit

    As Cyclelicious mentioned in a post earlier this month, the 2009 North American Handmade Bike Show was the biggest one yet. That is great news, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Notwithstanding current economic conditions, it seems like interest in custom bicycles is at a high point (in recent memory at least). There…