When I started cycling in the early 1950s, all bicycle saddles were leather. Cheap bikes had cheap leather saddles, and the best bikes had a Brooks leather saddle. Top professional riders worldwide rode on a Brooks. The standard road race saddle was the B17 model. The number two saddle in the world was the French Ideale Company; however, a Brooks saddle would always outlast and keep its shape longer than an Ideale. Then sometime in the late 1960s, early 1970s plastic saddles started to appear. Much lighter and never losing their shape, plastic soon became the standard racing saddle. I can never understand why Brooks did not produce a plastic saddle, they had the high end market pretty much sewn up, and people would have stuck with the brand name. Anyway, they decided to continue with what they did best. It is a tribute to the quality of their product that the company has survived to this day, when all others including Ideale went under. I decided to try a Brooks saddle again, remembering just how comfortable they were. It seems to me that race saddles get increasingly skimpier as the years go by, as bikes get lighter and lighter.  read more »

NOTE: Watch for a contest this next week. The prize will be one of these leather toe clip sewing kits from "Swamp" in Tokyo . Jim G writes about his next LED bike light project . There's a ton of LED lighting technology available now and Jim writes his thoughts on what he'll with some of the new super bright LEDs and a dynohub front wheel. Meanwhile over in the state Capital, Doc Logan wants to escape the smoke from the 1,781 wild fires in the Golden State. Ron of Cozy Beehive writes his thoughts on Ridley Dean's fastest bike in the world . And I still owe Ron a tagged post . This is about as ridiculous as it gets : a drunk cyclist attacks a motorist, and the next thing you know a whole mob of cyclists gangs up on the motorist. The motorist, Colin Yates, turns out to be a long time cycling advocate. Jonathan writes more about it here and here . Olympics: Final 3 members of the US Cycling team are named . Road cyclists Amber Neben and Christine Thorburn and mountain biker Mary McConneloug will represent the United States in China next month. Backlog of bicycle stuff Treadly and me calls it Speedlinking . Cycle Pig has his Weekly Oink . Freewheeling calls it his Freewheeling Roundup . Copenhagenize calls it various things . I just call it trying to catch up. Here are some several quick links for your weekend reading pleasure: Chic cyclist writes of this cyclist : " This is what 17 years of bicycle commuting looks like. As the French say, Pas mal!  read more »

(Cross-posted over on the Kool-Aid site...)

For years now, the bike industry has been riding a wave of popularity not unlike the "bike boom" of the 70's. Not only has this boom been good to the US bike industry, but the entire worldwide bike industry as well. It's been a really good ride, but almost all of us in the idnustry (Yes, I meant "industry"... smartasses...) knew it would have to come to an end one day.

The world is not going to come to an end for the bike industry or for cycling enthusiasts and consumer, but there is going to be some noticeable change very soon.  read more »

We've heard much about the Vlib' Revolution in Paris. Marie was down there for a visit a while back and now it was my turn, together with Wifealiciousness. I was looking forward to seeing how the bike share programme worked and how it fit into the urban landscape of the French capital. In short, I was astounded. It's hardly been a year since the Vlib' was thrust upon Parisians and yet the Vlib' has already become an iconic addition to a city hardly lacking icons. This first photo doesn't even feature a Vlib' bicycle and that is on purpose. The Vlib' Revolution has spawned bike culture. Vlib bikes are everywhere, of course. There are 20,000 of them in the city. But what amazed me was seeing so many normal bikes. I've read that bike sales have increased since the beginning of 2008. Parisians have tried the Vlib and now many are investing in their own bikes.  read more »

We've got a love-in going on over at Copenhagen Cycle Chic this week. It's La Semaine du Vlib' over there, wherein we celebrate the birth of bike culture in Paris since the introduction of the Vlib' bike share programme last year. I just spent three days in Paris with Wifealiciousness and two of them were on Vlib' bikes. It was an astounding experience, even after hearing so many good things about it from afar. I've lived in Paris and have been a regular visitor for years so I was not a little amazed to see the drastic change in the urban landscape. The Copenhagenization of the French capital has not just begun, it has developed in leaps and bounds. There are 20,000 Vlib bikes at about 1500 racks around the city. Add to this thousands of normal bikes that have crawled out of the woodwork and rolled out of the bike shops.  read more »

The Tour de France may be on a rest day, but the rest of the cycling world has not been idle. In fact, so much is going on that the mainstream media is bursting with bike-related news like a commuter's fanny pack. Here are just a few stories from the past weekend for your enjoyment: First is this story about bike polo from Sacbee.com , which a reader posted in the comments to last Fridays post. At first I thought a Sacbee was something you might get from riding your bicycle in hot weather while wearing jeans, but it turns out its simply the Sacramento Bee newspapers website. This article was full of informative tidbits. For example: There are two strands of bike polo, Kennedy says. The first is played on grass with mountain bikes and wooden mallets. The other is a street version that has been adopted by bike messengers and serious road cyclists, played on asphalt or concrete, generally on fixed-gear track bikes and with mallets fashioned from ski poles or metal crutches and PVC pipe. I was grateful to know there are two strains of the disease so that I can do my best to avoid both, though Im more than a bit skeptical about the writers claim that serious road cyclists are playing any form of bike polo. If this woman can find a serious road cyclist who will ride anything other than a road bike for any purpose outside of training or racingmuch less risk exposure to cigarette smoke, wear cutoff jeans and chase a ball around while doing itshe deserves a Pulitzer. The whole point of the article seems to be that bike polo is "fun," and roadies consider any riding that is "fun" to be junk miles. And in the roadie cult junk miles are not kosher . "Bike polo players probably have more tattoos and piercings and drink more beer than the equestrian riders who drink white wine and champagne," Kennedy says. "And the urban bike polo players have more tattoos and piercings and probably drink more beer than the grass bike polo players." This is an important distinction. In the vast and disparate world of cycling it can be hard to know where you belong. Fortunately, though, people like John Kennedy of the U.S. Bicycle Polo Association are keeping track of everybodys tattoos, piercings, and drinking habits so the uninitiated can slot themselves right into a cycling subculture. Hopefully we can use this information to come up with a more rigorous set of guidelines, similar to the USA Cycling race category system. Im no expert, but Im thinking it would look something like this: 0-1 tattoos, 0-1 beers a month : Road Cyclist 1-3 tattoos, 1-2 beers a day : Offroad Cyclist 3-5 tattoos, non-earlobe piercing, 1-2 beers an hour : Urban Fixed-Gear Cyclist 5-8 tattoos, multiple non-earlobe piercings, 12 beers an hour : Messenger, Polo Player, Marijuana Salesperson 8+ or tattoos above the neck, multiple piercings in the crotchal region, 1-2 bottles of isopropyl a day, bedbugs : Tall Bike Rider, Squatter Fake tattoos, faux-hawk : Euro-pro, e.g. Damiano Cunego Then again, I watched the video accompanying the article, and despite Kennedys claim that urban bike polo players have lots of tattoos and piercings very few were evident. Could it be that sweeping generalizations are not always accurate?  read more »

James Starley (1830 - 1881) is considered to be the "Father of the Bicycle Industry." Born in Albourne, Sussex in the South of England, James Starley (Above.) left home at eighteen years old and took a job as a gardener. Starley was a mechanical genius who gained a reputation for mending clocks and inventing useful gadgets. It is interesting how chance meetings in a persons life can not only change the course of that individuals life, but in this case change the course of history. Starleys employer, John Penn, bought an expensive sewing machine for his wife, which broke down. James of course fixed the problem and, what is more, envisioned improvements to the mechanism. Penn knew Josiah Turner, one of the partners of the makers of the sewing machine, and in due course Starley was taken on as an employee at the London sewing machine factory. His talent was such that Turner and Starley started their own sewing machine company around 1861. The pair moved to Coventry, in the West Midlands of England, because of the abundance of skilled machinists there. Coventry had previously been known for its clock making industry.  read more »

A cancer scare a year ago is fueling newfound ambitions for Belgian attacker Philippe Gilbert (Franaise des Jeux) heading into this years classics campaign. At the beginning of the 2007 season, the 25-year-old was alarmed by the sudden appearance of any ugly black mole on his left leg and immediately went to the doctor. Before he knew it, he was hustled into surgery not knowing whether or not hed ever race again. The doctor said I should have it removed and I lost 10 days after surgery waiting to hear the results, Gilbert told VeloNews. Thankfully, it wasnt melanoma. That is the most dangerous cancer. It was very scary. Melanoma is one of the deadliest forms of cancer and theres been a recent spike of several high-profile cases among the peloton.  read more »

As the most profitable race promoter in pro cycling, Amaury Sport Organisation wants to dictate how the sport is run. Thats why for the past three years ASO and its surrogates have resisted substantive changes in cycling, particularly those changes involving the elite-level ProTour, which all other parties have embraced. ASOs insurgency has now come to a head in its bid to independently promote next weeks Paris-Nice. And it appears that this time it has made one step too many. The Paris-based ASO part of Groupe Amaury, a media empire that publishes the most profitable French newspapers, including sports daily LÉquipe has expanded considerably in recent years.  read more »

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com . Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, Inside Communications, Inc. Live updates are great!  read more »