Handlebar Hoopla, What Now?

My Royal H Mixte is almost built up, save for the fenders, racks and lights. I don't want to post glamour shots before the bike is completed, but let's just say it has some unusual features! The build has been slow, but more or less trouble-free so far... until we ran into an unexpected glitch with the handlebar setup.My idea for this bicycle was to install VO Porteur handlebars with Silver bar-end shifters and Guidonnet brake levers.  In theory this seemed like a good plan, but in practice several things have gone awry...First, the stem length we thought would work (6cm) is apparently...

Read more »

Cycling and the Beach

If you live in a beach town, it is easy to hop on a cruiser and pedal to the shore, have a swim, more or less dry off, and pedal home. But what about incorporating the beach into long, strenuous and hilly touring style-rides? This has been our dilemma when taking trips to Maine this summer. In the absence of folding bikes (and frankly, I don't think folding bikes would be appropriate for the terrain here), we strap our roadbikes to the car, and get around entirely by bike once we arrive to our "base" location. In rural Maine, everything is far away from everything else - at least by Boston standards...

Read more »

Seymour Blueskies

As some have already noticed, I recently acquired one more bicycle that I have not yet written about. It is a vintage Trek roadbike - fast and aggressive, with super-responsive handling. Don't ask how I got the bike; sometimes these things just find you. It was in exactly my size, and came along at a time when I had begun to experiment with more aggressive road cycling. I wanted to try a "real" roadbike without spending more money, and here was my chance.So please allow me to introduce Seymour Blueskies. He is a Trek 610, built in 1982. The lugged steel frame is made with Reynolds 531 tubing,...

Read more »

BSNYC Friday Fund Quits!

(Catching up on emails.)Firstly, in the spirit of all that is "epic," I am pleased to announce that I will fuse next week's Labor Day weekend with the coming workweek, thereby creating an "epic"-length holiday weekend for myself that will begin, well, now. Rest assured that I plan to use this "epic" weekend productively by spending time with family, sending hundreds of Dominos pizzas to the offices of Transportation Alternatives, and washing my fleet of 1,000 bicycles. (Insert your suggestive "polishing my Big Dummy" pun of choice here.) All of this is a complicated way of saying that I will...

Read more »

BSNYC Product Review: Electra Ticino 8D

As many of you are probably aware by now, former President of the United States and avid mountain bike enthusiast George W. Bush has recently gone "29er:"If only Bush had adopted larger wheels back when he was in office, he totally would have cleared that gnarly second term, and he might even have successfully made it through that highly technical "Iraq" section. (As Gary Fisher will tell you, it's all about the "angle of attack.") Incidentally, the bicycle Bush is about to drape those baggy shorts over is a Niner, and you may remember Chris Sugai of Niner (the guy who isn't George Bush or the...

Read more »