Woo hoo I found a great website for you ladies out there who dig on style and function! LadyRide Active Wear strives to provide ladies with quality, beautiful, modern cycling apparel that is fun, sporty, feminine and tough. It just so happens that I know a few women who are sporty, feminine and tough as nails!

Although LadyRide is based out of South Africa you can still get this cycling couture by way of this wonderful new invention called the internet… who’da thunk?

In any case you’re going to love what LadyRide has to offer, super cool designs that are form fitting and functional and get this… they also do custom work! Yeah that’s right if you submit your artwork to them via vector format, i.e., Freehand, Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw they work their magic and bada bing you got your own jersey!

So what are you waiting for ya’ll… check out the LadyRide website and tell’em Echo Roberson from Women’s Cycling Magaine sent ya! Hmm on second thought maybe it’s better that you not mention my name, I think there’s still a few people upset at me for that one time when I…

NEW Retro Cycling Jerseys, The New Yorker

Well, well, well looky what I stumbled on! Check it out ya’ll some really cool new jerseys from one of our favorite apparel makers RETRO! If you’re not already familiar with Retro Cycling Apparel then you’d better get on over to the website and bust out that Visa card. You do want to be cool right?

LOL, what better way to impress all your MTB, Cyclo or Rodie friends than to show up sporting something super-fresh that nobody else has? Tell ya what, we here at WCM have the scoop and we think you’re going to like it. Retro just released some new cycling jerseys featuring some old-school artwork from The New Yorker magazine and they’re like totally Paris Hilton – HOT! Please excuse my use of Paris Hilton but I was dared to find a way to get her name into my blog post today and darn it… I never lose a bet!

In any case you get the point, cool new hotness… now go get some!

More Info For Your Brain

Portland, OR-based Retro is excited to announce their partnership with The New Yorker as they release two new cycling jerseys featuring iconic illustrated cover art from The New Yorker’s archive. The new cycling jerseys spotlight illustrations from two acclaimed artists: Theodore G. Haupt and Ana Juan. This year, The New Yorker celebrates 85 years of publishing. Retro is thrilled to offer these singular jerseys to the international cycling community. Jerseys will be available at retail outlets nationwide and online starting June 1, 2010.

The American artist Theodore G. Haupt contributed 44 New Yorker covers between 1927 and 1933, including his art deco cover for the March 9, 1929 issue. On this 1929 cover, Haupt’s style brings to life a rich, action-packed bicycle race, an inspiring image on race day or any day. Haupt’s work is beautifully brought back to life with Retro’s new men’s cycling jersey. The Spanish artist Ana Juan has designed cover art for The New Yorker since 1995. Juan’s “Blossoms,” depicting a femininity that is both delicate and strong, appeared on the cover of the March 10, 2008 issue and is featured on Retro’s women’s jersey.

Whenever I hear about someone creating, building and in this case innovating all while keeping the planet in mind (sustainability) it brings a smile to my face and my fingers just start typing! With that said I am happy to say I got the chance to meet one of the cycling industries up and coming “good guys” Nick Frey owner of Boo Bicycles.

I know what you’re thinking… this is Women’s Cycling Magazine, what are you doing writing about a guy named Nick? Well it’s simple, it’s a fascinating story and the more people that hear about it the better. So let me get started on telling you how this guy Nick is making the world a better place for both men and women.

Boo Bicycles was (officially) founded in June of 2009 but the wheels have been turning (unofficially) for the past two years. Nick recently made the prestigious walk across the Princeton thoroughfare to graduate from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering program. As you might have already guessed Nick’s “Boo” got it’s start there as a junior year project for engineering design.

Nick says he and his classmates were having a hard time figuring out what they would design, at first. As a matter of fact… at one point the team had decided on creating a high-tech-fancy-pants “Kegerator”! It didn’t take long for Nick and company to put aside their dreams of becoming Princeton fraternity legends and Oktoberfest royalty. After the “Kegerator” hoopla died down they decided to apply what they’d learned in the world renowned Princeton Aerospace Engineering program to a more practical use.

Speaking of practical applications who better to find inspiration from than Bamboo Zen Master Craig Calfee of Calfee Design?

After seeing some of the Calfee bikes the Princeton team and Nick decided they wanted to engineer a bamboo bicycle that was 100% geared to race! The team put there noses to the grindstone and went half blind perfecting every millimeter in AutoCAD.

After several months of preparation and a class presentation they decided to test out the prototype at the Rutgers Season Opener (March 2008). The bike raced wonderfully but what was more amazing was the response from the crowd. Everyone wanted to see the bike, take pictures with the bike and talk about the bike… that’s when Nick knew he had something special and decided to look into forming a company to produce the bikes for others.

Soon after the Rutgers Season Opener the momentum began to speed up daily. With news coverage coming in from the likes of VeloNews it didn’t take long for world renowned industrial designer and eco-friendly advocate James Wolf (James Wolf Designs) to get involved. When James first saw the bike this is what he told Nick. “I love what you’ve done, I can do it better, let me make them and you engineer/test/sell them!” The rest is history!

After about a year of prototyping, testing, and building, Nick and James came up with an incredible new sleek production model for road, cross and a touring bike.

A little bit about production

James currently lives in Vietnam and has been working with bamboo and other materials for over 15 years. James doesn’t just supervise the production of the Boo Bicycles he’s right in the trenches with four of his hand picked and personally trained bamboo craftsmen.

All Boo Bicycles are made with Dendrocalamus Strictus, one of the hardest and stiffest bamboos in the world. Every frame is entirely handmade (even the joints are wrapped by hand with single-strand, high modulus unidirectional carbon fiber) and they take FIFTY hours to complete!

Sustainable goodness

Boo Bicycles produces a green product, grown sustainably from local bamboo that is hand-cut and treated simply with a sun-drying process over the course of a few months. Bamboo growth is one of the most efficient methods of sequestering carbon dioxide, and the frames would simply decompose into the ground if thrown away but don’t do that!

Nick has decided not market the bikes as a “green” product because he feels there is a lot of green-washing going on and it’s becoming a little cliche. Boo Bicycles are a race-worthy, high-performance machines that are hand crafted from sustainable natural bamboo as well as synthetic composites. Let us not forget simply riding a bike is green and healthy!

Nick says… “If I can get people to ride more often because they feel like a rock star when showing off Boo, then I’m all for it!”

Web Boo: www.boobicyles.com
Twitter Boo: nfreyBoo
Facebook Boo: Fan Page
Email Boo: nickfrey [at] boobicycles [dot] com

I ran across an advertising campaign today for Sustrans, up to this point I had never heard of Sustrans, as it turns out they’re doing great things in the way of sustainability and environmental awareness. Sustrans is the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity. With Sustrans people choose to travel in ways that benefit their health and the environment.

Sustrans aims to:

• reduce the environmental and resource impacts of transport
• enable people to choose active travel more often
• provide car-free access to essential local services
• create streets and public spaces into places for people to enjoy.

Check out Sustrans latest ad campaign to raise awareness and garner support for their cause. I can only hope more programs like this keep popping up around the world and here in the United States. For more info on Sustrans check out the website here.

For more info on Sustrans check out the website here.

Yesterday at around 3 in the afternoon all eyes and attention went to the east wing of the Interbike convention center to see the start of the fashion show and (see if anyone would fall)!

The show started off with a boom boom pow thanks to Dj Miss Dust who was by far the best female dj I’ve ever seen. Having 14 solid years under my belt as a dj myself and turntables in my front room to prove it, you can rest assured when I say this girl was slamming… she was slamming!

So with the beats bumping, beer and vino flowing it wasn’t long before the area cordoned off for the fashion show had swelled to a nice little rowdy crowd of the cycling industry elite and wanna-gonna-bees. The heads where bobbing, hips where shaking and if you were there you would have thought to yourself as I did all it’s going to take to get this party started is one person to start dancing!

If I wasn’t there representing Women’s Cycling Magazine you better bet’cha I would have gotten out in the middle of everyone and got them all dancing! Since we’re not living in Echo’s fantasy world nothing of the sort happened.

What actually did happen is the host came out after the crowd had gathered and was completely liquored up and announced the show would be starting in five minutes! All the media shutterbugs, bloggers and who’s who of the industry gathered around one of the three different stages set up and that’s when the show began.

This fashion show was unlike any other fashion show I had been to or been in. What was so different about this show to start with was that there where three different stages as I mentioned, in addition all the models were not only wearing different fashions from head to toe but they were also modeling bicycles and accessories.

I’m happy to say nobody fell down, thank god. I’m actually surprised because one of the gents pulled a couple of wheelie’s on his bike and people were passing him beers as though he was in a cycling road race or marathon… it was extremely entertaining to say the least.

This year was my first Interbike convention and now I can tell you with conviction and certainty that I love the cycling industry! There was so much “stoke” going around each day, thousands of positive folks rushing around feeding off each others positive vibes it was great! Who’s to say that you can’t mix business with pleasure?

These past 5 days I had the perfect mix of business and pleasure. I got the chance to meet a lot of really great people, see tons of new product and I networked my little butt off. Women’s Cycling Magazine definitely got the word out, we’re here with a great quality product and if you haven’t heard our slogan already… “IT’S ABOUT TIME”!

Stay tuned for video from the fashion show in a couple of days. I’ve got to get back to the office in SoCal and edit the vids! As soon as I piece everything together you’ll all be the first to know!

[flashgallery background="http://womenscyclingmag.com/images/misc/bg-for-flash-gallery.jpg" height="500"]

After doing a little research on Google I found plenty of companies and organizations making bikes from good old fashioned bamboo! Who’da thunk?

Well I’ll tell you who’da thunk… Calfee Design thunk it and did it. Visiting their website there’s plenty of information with regard to bamboo bicycles ranging from road, commuter and even mountain!

Some of the benefits Calfee Design claims is that bamboo reduces vibrations, is much lighter than typical materials and customization is easy.

Calfee has also won several design awards for best road bike, best off-road bike and the peoples choice award for best handmade bicycle.

It’s a no brainer that using bamboo is good for the environment, with all the accolades, awards and praise I wonder what there is to say that’s not good about the bikes?

In any case if you’d like to learn more about the bikes here are a couple interesting links I found.

Calfee Design
Bamboo Bike Studio
How To Build Your Own Bamboo Bike

If you have a story you’d like to share or you own a bamboo bike please let us know.

Sustainability and great design, think progressive and live dynamic!

Peace.

What do you get when you cross a taxi with a bike? A Bixi of course! Having already become an enormous success in Paris and Montreal, the wildly popular Bixi bike sharing program is finally coming to the States early next summer in Boston. Why Boston? The Bixi program was initially developed to cut down on city traffic congestion. If you’ve ever been to and driven in Boston, then you probably are already aware that it is one of most tightly packed and congested cities in the country. So it seems only natural that it be chosen as the trial city for the U.S.

Bikes As A Viable Hassle-Free Transportation Alternative

The Boston program, and its accompanying infrastructure, will closely resemble the Paris and Montreal programs which allow riders to pick up a bike from one of over 280 installed bike stations using a credit card or a Bixi-key (which is essentially a membership card). Similar to how Zipcar works (only with a bike instead of a car), riders can ride their borrowed bikes anywhere they like and then simply return them to a station closest to their final destination. The stations require no locks or locking done on the part of the rider and are designed for ease of use both in the borrowing and returning phase of the rental process.

The program is currently slated to be only in Boston proper at the moment, but there is talk of expanding the program to neighboring Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline in the near future. No firm numbers yet as to how much it will cost riders to use the bikes, but currently in the Montreal program people can pay either a $78 yearly fee for unlimited use or $5 per day. Both prices are extremely cheap when compared to how much it costs to operate and own a car; or even ride public transit.

The Good: A very successful, popular, and inexpensive public transit program that has zero-emissions and improves riders health.

The Bad: The program is only in Boston at the moment with no talks of expanding to other cities. Americans are not known for the propensity for exercise. Many Bostonians are upset that a Canadian company was selected to oversee and operate the program when there are many local bicycle manufacturers.

The Bottom-Line: Though the U.S. program is only in its fledging stage, Bixi could turn out to be a great alternative to single car driving, public transit and an ever increasing waistline.

Via: sincerelysustainable.com

When it comes to advertising in the cycling world these days advertisers are thinking outside the box and out doing one another week after week.

Relative to other sports, cycling is considered to be in the upper echelon of the sporting world. I consider cycling to be one of those sports marketed similar to the likes of tennis or golf where you see an extra tier or two of higher end products because the sport is marketed mainly toward individuals. Basically we all want to look cool and have the newest, greatest and latest. With that said you can be assured that advertisers are doing everything they can to get your attention and outfit you with their products.

Most advertisers will go the normal route and find a popular rider to sport their fancy new gear but every so often you find an advertiser that finds a way to market their product sans a Tour De France winner or nationals champion.

This newest ad campaign from SKINS shows how you can advertise a product without a rider, showcasing only the product itself and a bucket full of creativity. If you look at the ads closely you will see that the rider is riding so fast (thanks to the aerodynamics of their helmet no doubt) that hitting a bug is like going as fast as a bullet.

Some might question the durability of the helmet because a bug smashed through the helmet but the point is that you’re actually going that fast… fast enough for a bug to break through like a silver bullet to a werewolf!

In any case it’s nice to see a little creativity go into an ad instead of taking the typical route of finding the hottest rider at the time and dressing him or her up like Ken or Barbie on wheels and slapping a podium bottle in their hands.

Kudos to the Furnace ad agency of Sydney, Australia for coming up with this creative and unique idea for SKINS.

Weather you’re looking for a stylish new bicycle to commute to the local farmers market or you need a unique riding helmet, CycleChic has got what you need.

Surfing the web today I happened to come across this very unique website and thought I’d share with the rest of the WCM community. Although CycleChic is based in the U.K. that doesn’t mean you can’t get some of their stylish products.

In an industry saturated with choices and every manufacture from Tokyo to Seattle vying for your business it’s not to often you find a line of products that truly stand out from the rest. It just so happens that CycleChic is in a category all it’s own.

Check out their website and see for yourself.

An ambitious public-bike-rental scheme called Velib is celebrating its second anniversary this month in Paris. While the bikes have transformed the city, they’ve also proven to be as popular with vandals as they are with commuters.

There’s no doubt about it: Parisians have taken to Velib. In just two years the chunky gray bikes have been used for more than 50 million trips and have become a part of the cityscape. As many as 20,000 of them now flood the streets of Paris. The first half-hour’s rental is free, and the charges are reasonable after that. Users can take a bike and return it at any of the city’s 1,000 bike stations.

Businessman Charles Andre de la Hogue says the bikes have become part of his life.

“I use Velib regularly to go to and from work,” he says. “My office is 10 minutes away, so by bike, it’s very convenient. I’m very satisfied with Velib.”

Velib is a contraction of velo — French for “bicycle” — and liberte. Surveys show 94 percent of Parisians consider the program a success, despite some initial glitches.

But what has surprised everyone is vandalism: 16,000 bikes have been replaced because of damage or theft. Tires have been slashed, frames smashed, chains cut. And 8,000 bikes have been stolen.

Police have retrieved about 100 Velibs from the Seine River. But the fate of most of the missing bicycles is unknown.

Albert Asseraf works with the advertising company JCDecaux, which operates the bike scheme for free in exchange for billboard space. He says company officials were taken aback by the vandalism.

“Every Velib is ridden about 10,000 to 12,000 kilometers a year by about 10 to 12 different riders a day,” he says. “So there’s a normal wear and tear that our repair teams take care of. But it’s true — we greatly underestimated the willful damage inflicted on the bikes.”

The bike scheme was supposed to cost the taxpayers nothing. But now the Paris City Council has agreed to cover $500 of the cost of replacing each damaged bike — an estimated expenditure of $2 million a year.

A publicity campaign has been launched to call attention to the problem. Ads with a catchy tune and the jingle “All for one bike, one bike for all,” play on television and the Internet. And the city has been plastered with posters that show a cartoon Velib being roughed up by a thug. The caption reads: “It’s easy to pick on Velib, it can’t defend itself.”

Despite the unexpected damage to the bikes, Velib is still a huge success, says Paris City Council member Gildas Robert.

“Because of Velib, the number of bikes on the streets of Paris has risen 30 percent,” he says. “Velib has got people buying their own bikes, too. The city is changing. The traffic is diminishing and people are driving more carefully. Velib is helping in the mayor’s strategy to reduce pollution and get people on bikes, especially for short trips.”

I’ve taken my own Velib for a spin, and the drivers do seem to share the road better. But only halfway down the street I realized my right brake didn’t work and the bike lock was cut. So I changed bikes at the nearest Velib stand.

That’s where I ran into Belgian student Stephanie Loquet, who gave me a tip for my next ride.

“Before you take your Velib, you have to check the tires,” she says. They could be flat. “You have to check the brakes. You have to check the gears. You have to see if the steering wheel is still pointing forwards instead of to the side. So really, it’s like a full check-up before you can take the bike.”

Parisians have many theories about the vandalism. Some say it’s youths taking revenge on the bourgeois bohemian class that use the Velibs. Others chalk it up to the disagreeable character of Parisians.

It’s true that a similar scheme in Lyon has suffered none of the same destruction.

“Velib was supposed to make urban travel more civilized,” lamented the daily newspaper Le Monde in an editorial. “Instead it has increased uncivilized behavior. No one expected that.”

Original article via NPR