This is my review and opinions on the Bicycle Raider Deck.
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Duration : 0:5:24

Technorati Tags: andyfieldmagic, Bicycle cards, bicycle raider deck review, black cards, cards, deck review, mattsmagicuk, mismag822, playing cards, review

Has Japan designed the world’s best bike shed?
It’s not often something stops you in your bike tracks. But a spectacular “bike tree” invention from Japan bowled me over when I was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago.

Fed up with bicycles locked to railings, piled on top of each other, blocking doorways and roads, a local council in the city installed the mechanical masterpiece. It’s basically an automatic storage system for cycles and operates with computer tagging of bikes and either storage in a building or a basement structure.

There are a number of locations where these bike trees are now in place in Tokyo some hold 600-odd bikes, others more than 6,000. The concept came from the massive Japanese steel company JFE, whose engineering works division first started them in 2007 but are now spreading.

The idea is quite simple, although no doubt the technology is fiendishly complicated. Bike owners who want a secure parking spot must register and pay a monthly fee 1,800 yen (around £12 a month) and students get discounts.

Bikes are fitted with a small electronic tag. When the bike is placed into the ruts of the bike tree machine, a sensor logs the owner’s details. A mechanical arm then emerges, pulls the bike into a cylindrical well and stores it at high speed in a free location. To retrieve the bike, the owner swipes a card through a reader and the bike is plucked from racks and brought back down or up if it’s a basement design to earth. The process of retrieval normally takes 15 seconds but can be slightly longer (it took 30 seconds in my experience).

The advantages are plain your bike becomes theft-proof, you are encouraged to cycle to work and local authorities don’t have to deal with unsightly and sometimes annoying bicycle clutter. The downside is that it costs a lot of money and the infrastructure involves serious resources.

The tree’s inventors at JFE are very proud of their invention and naturally curious as to whether it would catch on Europe. Perhaps it’s time Boris Johnson, London’s cycling mayor and biking knight in shining armour, took a look.

http://www.urban-shade.com

Duration : 0:3:5

Technorati Tags: bicycle, bike, cycle, japan, parking, storage, tokyo

Review is here: http://reviews.mtbr.com/blog/2010-gary-fisher-superfly-100-29er-preview/. Reviewer is 5’8″ and the bike is a 17.5″ size. On the trail in Park City with Mtbr.com founder Francis Cebedo and the 2010 Gary Fisher Superfly 100 carbon fiber 29er.

Duration : 0:3:50

Technorati Tags: 29er, cycling, gary fisher, mountain bike, mtb

Andrew Juskaitis of Giant bicycles shows off the new 2009 TCR Advanced SL Road Bike.

Duration : 0:2:23

Technorati Tags: giant, road bike, RoadBikeReview

WATCH IN HD!
Introducing Cyclecide, an inventive band of Bay Area performance artists who make creations out of materials from the junkyard. These Makers create everything from amusement park rides to outrageous bicycle contraptions to found-object sculpture. Plus, we take a historical spin through the origins of the modern bicycle. Check out Cyclecides website at www.cyclecide.com

Duration : 0:10:5

Technorati Tags: 101, art, bicycle, Cyclecide, DIY, electronics, Episode, how to, Make:, Maker, makezine, Profile, SCIENCE, television

I was looking to get my son a bike with training wheels for his 4th birthday, and I came across these (new?) balance bikes (example images below), which have no pedals, no training wheels, and no chain. I’m tempted to buy one of these instead of a standard bike with training wheels, but I’m also talking myself out of it at the same time. Here are my thoughts:

The idea behind a balance bike is that they teach children balance before pedaling, but the downside is that the balance bike cannot be converted into a proper two-wheel bicycle, and the cost is about the same, making the balance bike nothing more than a mere novelty in my mind. And although I’m not completely familiar with the construction of either style of bicycle, as far as I can tell, any standard bicycle can have the pedals and chain removed and you’ll essentially have a balance bike, right?

The one upside to a balance bike is that it doesn’t cause a child to become training-wheel dependent. I can see my son falling into that "trap," but is that REALLY a big concern? I mean, I’ve never seen a teenager still struggling to overcome his dependence on training-wheels, have YOU?

Still… balance bikes seem to have gotten a lot of favorable reviews from parents who say "I can imagine my son or daughter being able to ride a bike in no time," but then again, there is no actual testimonial from or about a successfully transitioned, full-fledged bicyclist. Who knows if they found the transition to be any easier, especially with no basis for comparison?

Do any parents or bicycle enthusiasts out there have insights that might help me resolve this matter of bicycle vs. balance bike?

Pictures of balance bikes:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Balance%20bike&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

In your shoes, I’d buy a bicycle and even skip the training wheels. If you want, as you note, you can remove the pedals and you have a balance bike.. done. And you can put the pedals on when s/he wants and/or is ready.

Around our town, folks start their two year olds on balance bikes. I have a balance bike for my two year old (if you do buy one, don’t buy a wooden one.. they all break.. I don’t know a parent without a broken wooden balance bike, fixed with duct tape and new screws, etc. I’ve been very happy with the aluminum frame one we bought, a Strider – and generally they’re lighter weight than the wood ones too.) I had to get a balance bike because they don’t make "regular" bikes small enough for my daughter to ride. If they did, I would have gone right to a standard bike and taken the pedals off. I talked to many parents around town before choosing one.. all said that if your child is tall enough, just go for a regular bike and convert it to a balance bike if you want/need to.. but my girl wasn’t tall enough.

I want to go on a quad biking holiday, for 2 or 3 days.

I am 16, i only want to quad bike, not walk absail etc etc.

Where can i do this?

There is a large mountainous area set up near Canmore Alberta (between Calgary and Banff). Quads to a fair bit of damage to the environment, so the though was to allow it in an area, where people can quad, camp, etc., but the damage is confined to this area.

I am looking for a light but big mountain bike

Who knows where you are since you didnt say but see here: http://www.performancebike.com/bikes/SubCategory_10052_10551_400308_-1_400001_400001 Plenty of em’ and all you have to do is look. Extra 20% off thru sunday only on the lowest price you can find too. Any good sub 25lb mountain bike will be a hardtail and around $1000 and up, any heavier and the quality goes down from there. This one is exactly 25lbs: http://www.performancebike.com/bikes/Product_10052_10551_1074203_-1_24500_20000_28502 You didnt say anything about price now did you?

i’m considering buying a tri bike for triathlons, and am wondering how it would compare to road bikes in a typical cycling event. I’ve done a couple of aqathons, duathlons, and triathlons, and i’m sure i’ll get good use out of a tri bike, i’m just wondering how versatile it would be

Tri bikes are made for triathlons, and depending on how they are set up, may or may not be legal for sanctioned individual time trials. A tri bike would not be permitted in a mass start road race, and some cycling clubs do not permit riders to use tri bikes on group rides. When you are riding in a pack, aerobars are not safe to use, and when you are using them, bike handling is compromised. If you are going to do only triathlons, a dedicated tri bike is the perfect choice, but for more general road riding, a road bike is more versatile. If you ever have ambitions to do a road race, you have no choice but to choose a road bike.

Do only losers use diamondback bicycles, like is it a loser bike brand that mostly losers/nerds/geeks gets (no offense to those people at all – this is just a curiosity question that I hope everyone is honest with) or is it a bike that both losers and cool people get or a bike that mostly only cool people get?

Coolness depends on the rider. If you are cool enough, you could pull off riding a Magna.

Diamondbacks are definitely a step up from Next or Magna, but they aren’t going to prop up your image if you aren’t already cool. But at the low end of the price spectrum, they’re a good, reliable option.