The Bike Blind

   
I'm going to be honest with you. Competitive cycling is not my favorite sport. It's ok but it's got a lot of subtleties that are just kind of....confusing. Time bonuses? 23 days straight? A team where only one member wins? Who can keep it straight?
Baseball. Now that's a game. 9 innings, 3.5 hours, final. 0.4 seconds to decide whether or not to swing. Hit and run, suicide squeeze, and cutoff.  Curveball, screwball, and spitball. Brush offs and walkoffs. Now those are sports terms. While the rest of my co-miners here at the salt mine may not share my enthusiasm for such "Ball and stick" sports one thing we all can agree on is the simple pleasure of a nice bike ride.
One local baseball gem, the Madison Mallards have married America's greatest pastime with the simple bicycle ride by accomodating those who decide to Go By Bike to their games this summer. The Trek Bicycle Store "Bike Blind" (a play on the word "Duck Blind" which ironically is something you sit in while you are attempting to kill ducks) is an area next to the entrance that features a free secure bike valet and the stadium's best parking. On Saturdays friendly Trek Store staff will be on hand for bike washing and simple maintenance while you enjoy the game.
The Bike Blind is the brainchild of the Mallards front office who noticed that their standard bike racks were often full and some of their fans were forced to find more creative methods of bike parking. Having a guarded, secure area is nice but the best part is definitely the country club coat room-style service you get. If you plan on heading out to the game, forget about worrying about parking. Take the bike.

And So It Begins

Sorry for the hiatus cats and kittens but it's the most wonderful time of the year here at the salt mine. The time of year you stuff 9 bikes into single occupancy hotel rooms. The time of year when you're up at 4:30 to catch morning light, scout locations, meet with models, wardrobe, shoot until sunset, download photos, eat, catch up on email, pass out, wake up at 4:30. It's catalog season! My lifestyle book has taken on a different look over the past couple of years as we try our best to feature different geographic locations around this beautiful nation of ours. Two years ago it was the Pacific Coast, last year the American Southeast. We always try and pick locations that meet the following criteria: Pleasing landscape/architecture, bicycle-friendly, and not in a dry county. When the team met this year we looked around the table discussing potential locations and settled on the most important location of the past 365. Washington DC. I hadn't been to the city since I was on an 8th grade field trip and I have to say, it was great to go back. The District did not disapoint and I thought I'd share a few of the little "bits of tid" I picked up from the time we spent rolling around the city:

1. When you are conducting a photoshoot outside of the White House, do not use the word "shooting" use "photography". There are men on the roof of that home that will look at you with binoculars and make you uncomfortable.

2. "Rolling Thunder" is not a weather forecast. It is 10,000 motorcycles and it will slow your bicycle photoshoot down.

3. Every building is important. Even the ugly ones.

4. It's not a good idea to stand outside the US Treasury building at lunch time and ask the people coming outside if they could please make it a "working lunch".

5. When parking, read all of the signs. There are usually a lot of them.

6. On second thought, don't drive. Ride a bike. It's much easier and you can park super close to the monuments.

7. 4:45 am is the absolute best time to visit the Lincoln memorial. I was only ready to do it once but an unfortunate "formatting" mishap forced me to do it twice. My future kids are screwed if we ever take a family trip to DC.

8. 8th graders are just as annoying now as they were when I was in 8th grade.

9. Washington DC is possibly the only city that actually gets busier during Memorial Day weekend.

10. When a hotel says "Garden View" they really mean "Basement Hole".

This year's catalog drops mid-August and can be found at your local Trek dealer. If you'd like to submit an idea for next year's location, light up the comments section below!

"The Appearance of Shabbyness"

Working on our lifestyle products here at Trek, one of the biggest requests we get is "can you just make the bike black? I don't want to stand out." The thing about that statement is that it's not totally true and no, we can't make an entire line of black bikes. Yes, some people may not want to "stand out" but everybody wants to be at least somewhat noticed. If that statement were true, there'd be no reason to make the Trek District. And then there would be no trekdistrict.com. The underlying truth is that the requestor is probably scared that somebody will rip their bike off and they'd rather not see their investment in the hands of bicycle miscrients.

Well, now there's a way to deflect the attention from your sweet ride without haveing to actually sacrifice the paint.

UK-based desinger Dominic Wilcox has come up with a solution that is simple but seemingly effective. Dominic has come up with some super-realistic scratch and rust decals that can be slapped over a nice paint job to give the appearance of "shabbyness". You can deflect thieves while keeping a clean aesthetic for only £3.99 (which is only, like, 74 US dollars). While Dominic makes no guarentee as to the effectiveness of his decals, he has seen some success with his own bike in London. Capital idea! Check him out here.

BTW: While these are a great idea, I'm not guarenteeing they will work. You want to keep your bike? Buy a big lock.

Go By Bike PSA

Seeing as it's a Friday and it's also May 1 (Happy Birthday Chris!), the begining of Go By Bike Month, I wanted to get out my PSA about helmets. Bike helmets save countless lives every year. Ride your bikes, get out and enjoy the warmth, and be safe!

Had to post this video. Not sure where it was shot but you gotta love the vibe. bicycle commuters should be hugged more.

Cruiser Season!

One of my absolute favorite bikes that Trek makes is the one that a lot of people don't talk about. It's got 0 grams of carbon fiber. It's wind tunnel numbers are absolutely horrible. It's the aboslute most fun you can have on two wheels. Our cruiser line represents everything that i love about summer. When you live in Wisco, trust me, you earn your summer. When the mercury starts to creep on up to above 55 on a consistant basis, you know it's time to break out the bermudas and Ray Bans. Lemonade. Fresh cut grass. Dippin' low and slow. Sandals. Can I preach on sandals for a second? Most versatile footwear available. I'm like the Carrie Bradshaw of sandals. I've got formal flips and casual flops. That's why I was stoked to see the Trek Calypso (Women's Ecru Pearl) grace the most recent Havaiana's ad in this month's Vogue. Get yourself a pair of Havaianas. They will make you smile. If you don't believe me, take our Cruiser Classic for a spin in your new kicks. If you're still not smiling, well, there's not much else I can do for you.

Yeah, I read Vogue and know who Carrie Bradshaw is. Deal with it.

Bike Lane Blog's favorite summer songs:
"Summertime" - Will Smith
"Vivrant Thing" - Q Tip
"Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog - Three Dog Night (Thanks Scoop!)
"Steal My Sunshine" - LEN
"Hold on! I'm Comin'" - Sam and Dave
"SpottieOttieDopaliscious" - Outkast
"In The Summertime" - Mungo Jerry
"Good Life" - Kanye West

Got a favorite summer song that you want included in the mix? Holla at the comments section. I'm working on my Summer 09 playlist right now and my ipod needs your help!

Hot or Not?

Do you ride our bikes? Want to tell us how great you think our products are? Great, we'd love to hear what a great job we're doing too. We've got a spot for you to let us know how much you enjoy the stuff we make. Bear with me for a quick plug for one of our coolest and most under-utilized web features.

If you'd like to speak up and let people know about your experience, what you're doing with the bike, or any tips for tricking out your ride, hit up our reviews section on each bike page. You can even upload pictures and video! Seriously, who else gives you such a voice? Just go to whatever bike page you'd like to preach about and click the word "Reviews" below the bike picture. Click the words "Write your own review" and you open the line to let us know anything you want to speak up about our product. And believe me, we read these and not just the interns.

It's all about offering you, the consumer, the industry's most robust interactive experience. Or at least that's what Casey, our web marketing guy, tells me.

Bonty Bamboozle

  

Recipe for a great practical joke:
1. A Willing Audience
- Often referred to as "The Mark". The target has to be willing to listen to your message and willing to believe what you tell them. News about Lance in the bike industry is like Grey's Anatomy to middle-aged housewives. They crave it like oxygen.
2. Realism
- The farce has to have some meat on the bones that make you stop and think about whether it could be real or not.
3. The Pay Off
- The overall premise has to be ridiculous. The Onion has made its entire living on this fact.

All these ingredients went into Bontrager's April Fools joke. We fancy ourselves quality pranksters here in the Loo and when late March rolls around the wheels start to turn. Beef bouillon cubes placed under the shower caps in the womens bathroom was one idea but that seemed.....smelly. Then Lance falls off his bike and presents us with the perfect opportunity to tie-in Bontrager inForm technology.

Industrial Designer, Hans, was tasked with creating the replacement clavicle and went right to work. After a little research on the design of the clavicle bone and a little measuring tape action, he was ready to prototype. Some may argue that using our super-expensive prototyping machine to produce a fake bone for practical joking purposes is a misuse of resources but I'd argue that when you're about to get somebody good, no expense can be spared. Especially when that "somebody" is the "world".
After the bone was finished it was time to shoot it in a believable setting so we hit the carbon room with some rubber gloves in on our on-site factory to get the shot. After borrowing an x-ray of a broken right clavicle from the world-wide interweb we hit up the Photoshopping skills of our photo studio to take the giggle fest to the next level. The "implant" was added to the x-ray and a carbon weave was added to the picture of the actual piece. For the finishing touch, our copywriter put some words to paper with some "credible" sources lending quotations and we were ready to roll.

Consider yourself bamboozled! Big props to all of the Trek peeps who brought this together. If anybody asks, this was all done on personal time.

 

Off The Rack!

Readers of "The Lane" know that this blog fully supports America's Hip-Hop efforts. Ever since the puzzled looks my parents gave me when I bought my first LL Cool J album have I stood up for Hippity-Hop culture. Listening to rap music while growing up in Wisconsin is not as weird as it sounds. Problem is with the music becoming so pervasive in American society, there is a whole lot more garbage to sift through. Way too many open mic nights, karaoke bars, and reality television have given people the impression that anybody can pick up the mic and throw down. This is, unfortunately, not true. However, some people are given the gift of gab and can spit it about any random topic. Like bike racks on the front of buses.

This video is courtey of Louisville's (I have the Cardinals losing to Memphis in the Final 4) Transit Authority (TARC). I gotta hand it to the 'Ville. The hook is catchy and the rhyming and production quality are pretty decent. Louisville is actually becoming one of the more bike friendly cities in the US. Stay tuned for more on that later.

"Bring it down, pull the bar, put it on..." That'll be rolling around the melon for a few days.

Favorite parts: The handlebar dance at :16 and the Lil' Jon-esque background chant, "Use a bike rack, YEAH!" at :14.

The Devo Bike

If you like Devo and custom fixed gear bikes, you will think that this is the greatest blog post ever. I can't say as I'm all that familiar with Devo's music (aside from "Whip It" of course) but I am quite familiar with dope rides and this is for sure the latter. Trek Industrial Design rockstar Mike Hammond worked up this custom fixie complete with "Devo Hat" spacers. After we wiped the drool from our fellow Trekkies off the bike, Mike decided that the bike could do more for the world than just reside in his stable of fly bikes. The bike is currently being auctioned and the proceeds donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. If you'd like a chance at owning this amazing piece of "Devo-tion", click here. Bidding is live now!
Two LAF posts in a row. I'd send those guys a bill if I wasn't feeling so.....charitable.

Trek Goes Hollywood

This past weekend, yours truly hit the City of Angels as Lance Armstrong hosted a couple thousand of his friends for some seriously positive LiveSTRONG vibes.

We're painting a series of bikes for Lance this year around the LiveSTRONG theme and we've partnered up with a few artists to crank out some custom paint schemes for the man to race throughout the year. Lance is a bit of an art-buff and we couldn't be happier to provide the canvas to some of his favorites. This event would kick off LiveSTRONG's "Stages" art show and we hooked up with the guys at Nike to help make it all happen. The first two bikes are by iconic pop artists, Barry McGee and KAWS. The KAWS bike is going to make an appearance at Milan-San Remo (Euro Race) next week and is sure to blow some minds. The McGee bike is a serious piece of work with a vintage look and some unbelievable graphics. The bike is made to look as if it's rusted steel which is quite a feat when you're actually working with carbon fiber. Will any of these bikes be production? No promises.

The night kicked off with an open invite to anybody who wanted to take a two mile bike ride from the Los Angeles Children's hospital to the Montalban Theatre. The ride was fun but honestly the story of the evening was that for a solid hour on a Saturday night, major streets in Los Angeles were closed to nothing but bicycle traffic. There's something so gratifying about flying past a line of exotic cars waiting at a police barrier while thousands of bicycles get waived through.

After the arrival at the theatre, invitees were treated to free bike valet, some cool refreshments, and a preview of the hottest bikes on the entire face of the earth. Ben Stiller kicked the evening off with a little stand-up and intro'd Lance for a Q and A with Nike CEO, Mark Parker and artist Shepard Fairey, of the iconic Obama poster print. Shep did a huge wall mural for the event that is currently on the side of the Montalban Theatre if anybody from LA is reading this and wants to check it out. Corner of Hollywood and Vine. Big Lance face. Can't miss it.
The surprise of the night was when Ben Harper hit the stage to do his thing and brought the house down with his band, Relentless 7. I've seen the guy only once before and if you get a chance, make it happen. He's an incredible musician.

Overall, an absolutely amazing event. Those peeps at Nike know how to get down, no doubt. The biggest winner of the night was the LiveSTRONG movement and the Lance Armstrong Foundation which is the reason for all the hoopla. Never has the fight against cancer been more important and that is an organization that is doing amazing things for victims, survivors, and anybody that's been touched by the disease.

If you dig the bikes, check back in from time to time as we'll be posting more as they become available.

For an insider's recap on the event, as well as a list of artists you can expect to see pieces from, click here.