Bike Hugger 

Best way to keep your 1-lb bag of Secret Drink Mix fresh? With a Clip-n-Seal.

That white plastic thing hanging off the side of a 1 lb bag of Skratch is a Clip-n-Seal.

One of our readers and Clip-n-Seal fans sent us this photo of Skratch Labs Everyday Hydration Mix in his pantry. Clip-n-Seal is a bag clip that the parent company of Bike Hugger, Textura Design, invented and brought to market a decade ago. It’s quite the little bag clip that’s flown in space, been frozen in Antartica, and used in the production of carbon wheels like ENVE.

Really. Try it yourself on your Skratch, chips, coffee or whatever else you need to keep fresh.

Unmoored by MCA’s death, didn’t know yet what to write or say…This blog and what we do here and elsewhere were defined, in part, by the Beastie Boys. Just like a generation was. When the news broke, saw images like this on Facebook

Photo by April Dawne in Austin

and all I could muster at the time was a status message on G+

Feel like smashing a TV in a smoke-filled room, while cracking open cheap beers, and walking around with a fish eye lens camera. Effects set to polarize.

Then we went on vacation. Back now and to this

The best tribute.

Sabotage with the wife, kids, and nephew from James Winters

A few weeks ago, the millennial’s buying habits we’re written about and how the automotive industry was in a panic. Car makers don’t know how to market to a generation that doesn’t care too much about cars. I confirmed this trend with my teens that don’t equate their social standing with the name brand of car they drive or will drive. I’ve also posted about many car-branded bikes, like BMW, Porsche, Mini, and more. That’s not new, of course, Volvo and Volkswagen were in the sport and now VW is back sponsoring USA Cycling.

An Audi e-bike

Even though more Americans are riding bikes, the industry remains flat and has for nearly two decades. I predict we’ll see more efforts to attract buyers and a new generation of buyers into showrooms by car companies. The automotive industry has the dealer network, engineering prowess, and budgets to make a next-gen, bike consumers will want. If it’s not at the high-end like Audi’s Wörthersee, then maybe a Hummer Montague folding bike brand.

How’s a failed car brand a hit in Japan? The WSJ writes about the trend today

GM brands are hot among Japanese bike buyers. Compared with the battleship gray or dull black utilitarian bikes stacked outside Japanese train stations and supermarkets, GM-brand bikes cut a more exciting profile—because of their mountain-bike styling, prominent logos and vivid colors. Bicycles with GM logos are sold at more than 3,000 retailers in Japan.

“Hummer is the top seller by far. It stands out on a crowded bike rack,” said Takuji Motoki, who manages the Import Bicycle Factory outlet here. “It’s an aspiration-driven purchase. Most people who buy a Hummer bike could never buy a real Hummer.”

Keyword in the WSJ article is “aspiration.” Bikes in the US are always stuck between being valued as toys, or cheap, at the high end or aligned with a bike-to-work aesthetic. Little is done to create aspiration and why the Specialized Turbo was such a breakthrough – it got covered in the mainstream media. Even my teens thought it was cool.

Here’s a tip: the only growth in the US market is at the high-end from the super enthusiasts. That’s why I recently said on the Spokesman

Next time you see a “racer” in lyrca at a stoplight, thank them for keeping the bike industry alive

So what are my teens are going to buy? How to make the bike relevant to them? Don’t know like everybody else, but it’s more likely with lifestyle and technology. A start is to creating a killer app around a bike and marketing it as something cooler then biking to work in a bike lane like your parents. Note how the Audi Wörthersee features

On-bike touchscreen computer interfaces with smartphone via WLAN, and video can be recorded via the in-helmet camera and uploaded via the mobile device to the web. an online portal lets trick cyclists compete against one another, earning points for successful tricks that have been videotaped and uploaded.

and is on tour with a Red-Bull sponsored trails rider.

Think that’s crazy? Aside from the brain-shifting Parlee and the Turbo, the most buzz we’ve seen about a bike lately has been the one for DJs.

Expect something like a hamster-related bike from Kia that detaches from a car, plays music, connects to Facebook and is marketed to the Millenials or an e-bike from Toyota that’s color matched to a Prius.

This video is from the British Film Council and shows the Raleigh Bicycle factory in 1945. Of course, they don’t make bikes like that anymore and few in the UK. While in the UK a few years ago, we toured the Moulton factory, where they still make bikes and 14 Bike Co.

Mad Men Marketing bikes

images from Barreda Museum’s shutterfly

Byron sent me this link, which seems as if Manolo Saiz, the former team manager of ONCE, Liberty Seguros, and Astana professional cycling teams, is selling off his personal collection of bikes. I don’t know if it’s legit or not, but I don’t really care since I don’t have $50K to advance the bid nor do I have room for 57 bicycles in my studio loft. But the array of bicycles listed is just amazing, almost 2 decades of cycling exotica. Sure, Saiz might be a pariah now, since the Operacion Puerto, but the advances he brought in other aspects of cycling are frequently forgotten.

Giant for hill climb TT. 650C wheels

Though one of the few managers at that level who was never a professional rider, Saiz introduced a higher order of organization and professionalism to the sport. Perhaps one might even say that Greg Lemond broke riders out of the old world mould while Saiz led teams from a organizational standpoint. And like Lemond, Saiz was never shy about pursuing technical innovations. What were the first large diameter aluminium, American-made bikes in the European peloton? If you said Cannondale, you’re wrong. Washington state’s Klein made a small run of bikes for ONCE in the early nineties, though I don’t remember if they were actually used in the Grand Tours instead of the team’s standard LOOK frames. If the Klein bikes are but the answer to an esoteric trivia question, ONCE’s switch from LOOK to Taiwan’s Giant frames marked the beginning of a new era, as Asian builders (and to a lesser extent American) would carve an ever increasing slice out of the prestigious pro level bike market.

The collection’s time trial bikes tell a story of evolving philosophies of speed. Perhaps because ONCE was first and foremost a stage-race team, particular attention is paid to both flat land and hill climb machines. Back before the UCI required bikes to have the same size wheels front and back, teams often used bikes with 650C front wheels for time trials, but ONCE also had bikes with 24” front wheels, 650C front/rear, and 24”/650C combinations. There are several hill climb TT bikes with 650C front/rear; the idea was to exploit the low inertia of the smaller rim and to shorten the chain stays as much as possible.

Other than team bikes, there are a few curiosities like a bike with a Nike swoosh for a top tube.

Klein. Note curved seat tube to allow shorter chainstays.

LOOK Cycles. Team Once raced on yellow bikes and kits except during the TdF, when they wore pink (and later black).

From the artist that made the BikePorsche, a Ferrari.

A tandem inside

The porsche was cardboard. This is aluminum tubes and plastic

Video

The video mocks Michael Schumacher’s SLS “tunnel” video and the project is a parody of the 05 Ferrari FXX.

image source

There’s been some head scratching on the configuration of the new Dura Ace 9000 brake caliper. Velonews speculated that there are 3 pivots hidden in the caliper above. What’s kind of weird is the spy photo from Japan (about a month old) seems to show a full production model, while the shots of Team Sky Pinarellos at the Giro this week have logo-free examples, as if they were prototypes. I would say that the new caliper most likely just has two pivots, but instead of Shimano’s previous (and widely copied) configuration of a central pivot and a secondary pivot, the DA9000 looks to have to equally spaced pivots. This would mean that the mounting bolt is not a pivot at all, that it simply holds a centre piece with a pivot at either end.

In essence, the DA9000 would be a cross between a centre-pull brake and a side-pull in that there are two pivots in roughly the same position as a short reach centre-pull, but the cable pulls along the side instead of having a straddle cable and yoke. Seen below is the Paul Components “Racer” centre-pull (from paulcomp.com)

The similarities between the two also might explain the “direct mount” brake that Velonews discovered on a leaked tech document. Paul’s offers a “direct mount” version of the Racer which does away with the central bracket and instead mounts the two arms directly to a pair of brazed-on bosses, the arms pivoting there on. With a number of aero frame manufactures building bikes with integrated brakes, the DA9000 direct mount most likely has a similar purpose. However, bikes like the Willier Twin Foil that I have written about before have pivots that would not accommodate centre-pull-like brakes. The TRP brake that fit the Twin Foil are a variation of linear pull/cantilever arm brakes much like v-brakes, and the mounting boss sits below the rim’s sidewall (ie between the rim and the axle) rather than a centre-pull which has the boss above the rim. Also, I’m not sure how the cable arms and barrel adjuster would work on a rear brake, which on aero bikes is frequently jammed up behind the bottom bracket. Such as position would have the barrel adjust and the chainrings competing for the same space.

In this huggacast rode two bike lanes through suburban blight, then back to the hotel, like a man in a suitcase.

Bike lanes through suburban blight

Watch the ride now on YouTube or download the video file.

Right lane only

Subscribe to the Huggacast Feed for more episodes.

Ed. note: YouTube is blocking this video for mobile users so Sting can get paid. We’ll upload another version without Man in a Suitcase. For now, click the download links to view the file from our servers.

Chained to electrical wires with trucks rolling by

High-rez photos from Florida are lightboxed on Picasaweb and on Flickr.

Phones

Mobile phone users can download and watch now and access our Huggacasts via the iTunes Store.

Uploaded by KOBB to Flickr

In part one of this post, I shared a caricature of Pantani by Jorge Mora and a blog post about Il pirata’s suicide note.

Sal Ruibal wrote that note and posted it under his Nick Verstain alias. Why? I asked. Sal replied

At my first Tour in 2000, Lance had a press conference at the first mountain stage. A member of Lance’s entourage asked me to ask Lance a question about Pantani calling himself The Pirate (Il Pirata) instead of Elephantino. I did and Lance launched into what was a prepared rant about how you can’t give yourself a nickname, it just happens. And he kept referring to Pantani as Elephantino. As I was new to the European peloton, I didn’t know that Pantani hated being called that and was enraged about Lance’s insult. Pantani got psyched out about it and that affected his performance in the Tour. There’s more to it, but the gist is that after Pantani killed himself, I felt that I had contributed to his pain by setting him up to be humiliated. The poem is my way of making him human again, explaining what he couldn’t say while alive.

Whoa. Wait. Sal was there? Wasn’t that the no gifts era and the next day Pantani rode Lance off his wheel?

Yes, but that was Lance’s intent. Then he folded on the Col de Joux Plane, lost too much time and left the Tour.

No gifts for Pantani.

Uploaded by KOBB to Flickr

From Kleider Studios.