Seen at the velodrome...

From Gunnar

Leather toe clip sewing kit - Bicycle Blog

I thought these were cool and I was going to blog about them anyway, but then I found out I could win them if I created a link:

Win this leather toe clip sewing kit - Bicycle Blog

They might go really nicely with the fixed steel and leather motif of D's Cannoli project and let you wear your classy kicks on your bike without scuffing them up like this guy:

Taken from http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/search/label/Men%20Milan

Mudflaps for your mountain bike

No, not this kind of mudflap, or even this kind -
But along those lines...



And this thing, which is basically a skull shaped grapefruit-sized block of aluminum:

And then this, which will appeal to your peyote smoking microbus driving Southwestern mountain biking friends:


All this bicycle finery was spotted at Ales and Trails, for sale by a NorCal outfit by the name of Dirty Dog MTB.

Sticker image from www.northernsun.com

Lots of interesting stuff from the Velodrome

Like this picture of fellow Bay Area Blogger - Beth Bikes!:

An unattached skin suit. Brilliant!

Stay tuned to this space.

Cobranding - with mixed results

If there's one thing people with money like, it's matching stuff. Like, matching luggage:

Or pets:

And modes of transportation:

Of these, who among us wouldn't desire a Ferarri themed Colnago? Less appealing - the Toys-R-Us Hummer mountain bike and the Saab 8 speed, gigantic steel framed, BMX handle-barred bike who's downtube is also a cable lock.

Photos from (in order of their theft):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/uncreated/LV%202/LVDarjeelingLtd2.jpg
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2008/05/parishiltondogs.jpg
http://us.saabexpressions.com/Products/Product1.aspx?ItemId=50000059
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2929069
http://www.colnago.com/en/tecnologia/immagini/col%20cm%20ferrari.jpg

Oooh, I bet that feels good

Northern California is on the tail end of a 100 degree plus heatwave (through which I mountain biked one day, commuter biked another day and actually drove one day it was so hot, what a lame excuse). So, as I was reading a Garmin-Chipotle rider's Tour De France blog on Velonews, I paid attention to what he calls ice socks. So, I did a little searching to figure out what that was and discovered that the soigneurs actually fill plain old bike socks with ice and the riders throw them in their jerseys on their backs. And here I thought I was going to discover some high tech medical device style cooling garment.


Photo from http://www.velonews.com/photo/77303

$12k bike with $200 engineering

According to Velonews, Scott bikes will sell the 'Genius' Limited mountain bike in the US in 2009 for $11,500. Further reading indicates that there was a patent dispute with Specialized over suspension design. So this is how they got around the patent?


It looks like the rear wheel is going to throw junk right into the shock and shock pivot. Is this some lawyer's idea of a good work-around? Or does Scott like to play in the mud?

Picture from http://velonews.com/photo/77550