BIKEMONKEY

Happy SF Bay Area Bike To Work Day, all.

I did my usual Tour of South Bay Energizer Stations this morning, covering the 12 miles from Sunnyvale to Menlo Park in two hours, which I think must be a new slowness record for me! I distributed Action Wipes to the Mountain View Caltrain and Palo Alto City Hall Energizer Stations (thank you to Sue at Mountain View and Matt at Palo Alto for helping out with that), gave a bike bell to a newbie bike commuter, passed along the latest issue of Urban Velo at the Wilkie Way bike bridge, and consumed my share of bagels, coffee cakes, bananas, oranges, fruit snacks, and coffee along the way.

Congrats to Steve, who won the Bike Snob NYC book after he found me at the Dumbarton bike path Energizer Station in Menlo Park (sponsored by Oracle).

Related posts:

1. My Bike To Work Day in 60 seconds
2. Bike To Work Commuter Convoy
3. Happy Bike To Work Day

For me, the big part of a big bike festival like the Sea Otter Classic is meeting old friends and making new ones.

In no particular order:

Martha Van Inwegen, who keeps the world clean and happy with her Action Wipes.

Martha handed her Action Wipes out from Cyclological’s booth, where I met sales manager Kevin.

I tweeted my arrival at the Sea Otter media center when the guy sitting next to me said, “Oh, hi Cyclelicious. I just saw your tweet!” This was mountain bike photographer Patrick Branch, who does interesting things with pole mounted cameras and remote controls.

Chip of SOAR Communications and Rich of Interbike.

I didn’t actually meet him and missed his Saturday night BBQ, but a special thank you to Jan Valencia who confirmed that it’s indeed possible to bike to Laguna Seca via Hwy 68 from Salinas, CA.

My buddy “bikes gone wild” of Marin County, who introduced me at Sea Otter to custom titanium builder Dan Nelson of San Francisco. Dan was a 220 pound alcoholic when he was invited to go on a bike ride. He immediately fell in love with it, and today he has a cyclist’s build. Dan was already a welder when his girlfriend signed him up for a titanium bike building class at UBI. He’s has a a fascinating story and his bikes are super sweet to ride.

Rod Judd (whom I kept calling Todd) of the International Mountain Bicycling Association and Mark Davidson, president of the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz.

At every bike show I attend with Tyler of Bike Rumor, we always seem to miss each other. At least we talked on a phone a little bit this time around during the show.

Hello to Mia from Momentum Magazine, the ultra buff Anthony of Ride SFO, and Gwen. Gwen organizes the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition fashion show that takes place the evening of Thursday, May 13. I betcha didn’t know that Gwen has amazing singletrack skills!

.

Howdy to Light & Motion chief light bulb Dan Emerson of Monterey, CA. I’ll post some interesting stuff they found in a marketing survey regarding what bike commuters want in bicycle lights later this week.

Paraic McGlynn’s business card says “Director of Applied Cycling Science” for Serotta Sports. He’s the guy bringing Catlike helmets to the United States beginning in July.

I always like to give a little link love to Mark of Kinetic Koffee up in Humboldt County, California. He has an interesting new project: He takes the unique artwork from the big coffee bean bags and mounts them, selling them really cheap (like $20 each). It has a certain maker vibe that I like; I don’t see them listed on his website but maybe if you ask nicely he can show you what they look like. He also has “Gearhead Go-Bars” at his booth that are pretty tasty all natural snack bars.

Kristy Morrow is “Sponsorship and Social Media Manager” for Yahoo Cycling Team. She gave me grief about the Google Mail email address on my business card. Shout out also to Patrick McCarty of Yahoo Cycling, who is often confused with his former Discovery Channel teammate Jason McCartney. You can read that story in the Monterey County Herald by James Raia.

Speaking of Raia, he’s the “National Cycling Examiner” for Examiner.com. He’s also the author of Tour De France For Dummies. He lives in Sacramento now and introduced himself to me when he saw the Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen shirt I wore.

It was good to meet Mr Robert Egger, Creative Director of Specialized Bicycles, even if he is still a little mad at me for the spoof I pulled on his employer a couple of years ago.

Related posts:

1. Sea Otter Classic 2009
2. Sea Otter Classic 2008 photos
3. Ten for 2010

Happy Bay Area Bike To Work Day, everybody!

Ride with me in the Mountain View to San Jose bike convoy this evening and get free stuff (while supplies last).

The best (IMO) prize is the “Roadie” mirror for drop bars from CycleAware. I have one to give away. If you want it, be the first one I hear say “Cyclelicious rocks!” (or something to that effect).

The other stuff will be some Action Wipes body wipes (handy for the after ride bash at Plant 51) and degreaser wipes from Grease Monkey (handy for cleaning up after a tire or chain repair). I might have a couple of other goodies. I’ll hand these out until I run out.

The plan is to start from Mountain View Caltrain after 5:30 PM. We’ll wait for southbound Caltrain #266 (scheduled arrival 5:36 PM, though you can count on it being about two minutes late). Meet at the north end of the parking lot on the southbound platform side of the Castro Street train station.

I’ll be on a gray Specialized Roubaix with red tires and a little GoPro HERO cam mounted somewhere on the bike.