Eric’s guest posts at the beginning of this week came at a great time. I have just been too busy to write much for the blog lately. It is not that I have a shortage of content- in fact, look for a book review next week and a couple of product reviews soon. It is just that, as I mentioned before, free time has been hard to come by lately. I have received quite a few emails from readers the past couple of weeks though, so today I want to quickly pass along a few of the links that some of you have been sent to me.
Brad is a friend and former co-worker who now lives in Taipei. He works near the new trade show hall, so he stopped by to check out the show last week and sent me these pictures of a women specific Giant Avail Diamond road bike. Yeah, this particular bike is a little outrageous with its jeweled accents, but Brad mentioned that bikes designed for women are becoming very popular in Taiwan. He points out that “there is even a 2 floor Giant shop downtown entirely devoted to women’s bikes and accessories know as LIV.” Check out the link to the LIV site; pretty interesting.
Brad also sent me a link to the website for Speed One, a Taiwanese company that makes some interesting bikes, mostly of the small wheeled variety.
Robb from MTB by 198 recently visited the production facilities at Cane Creek Cycling Components. He has a great post from the visit with several pictures of the production and testing areas.
Lawrence pointed out a completely wooden bike made by a carpenter named Peijia Wu from the village of Nanzhuang in Shandong province, China.
In response to my post about the Skua, pjotr320 commented that the ‘Velayo’ velomobile from Germany features rear wheel steering. A quick Google search turned up this and this. Let me know if any of you, especially those of you who can read German, know any more about this design.
On a related note, Krash sent me a link to VeloKit, which is “an easily removed, all weather body for three wheeled recumbent bikes.” He points out that it is a “reasonably priced alternative to dedicated hard-shelled velomobiles and gas guzzling autos.”
Rounding out the velomobile topic, I will point out a new blog on that subject sent to me by Pixelman. It is written in French, but even if you can’t read it, check it out for pictures of various designs.
Andrew, who designs furniture for a living, sent me a link to some mahogany handlebars that he made. Nice work Andrew! For more wooden handlebars, check out Fast Boy Fenders.
It has been a couple of weeks, but Lane sent a link to his website, CETMA Cargo. He hand builds racks and cargo bikes in Oregon. It is a nice looking, straightforward cargo bike design, so I encourage you to take a look at some of the pictures on his site.
Contrail is a conceptual frame mounted device, which leaves a chalk line behind your bike as you ride creating impromptu bike lanes throughout the city (or at least showing others where someone else has ridden). The design has been around the web lately, but I think it is an interesting concept that is worth another mention.
Finally, I will close with a link to something that is not even really a bike. It does look like it would be fun to try out though. I don’t know much about this “spin vehicle”, but you have to like the look of fear on the face of the rendered model toward the bottom of the page.
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