Bike Hugger 

Well, let the upgrades begin. My Gios Feluca came stock with some crappy components. I’m still trying to get some SRAM Rival components, but these the Kenda Kwest tires need to go now. But “mini velo” means small wheels, so there’s not a lot of choices when you have 20x1-1/8” (451) rims.

So a few people have asked what exactly is my souvenir bike from Japan, and here it is: a Gios Feluca mini velo. Mini velo can be any bike with small wheels (and they are frequently folding bikes), but the market in Japan has taken the small wheel platform and added a twist. Some mini velo have taken on the style, components, and sometimes the capabilities of 700C road bikes. Well-known North American and European brands have jumped onto the trend but only offer their mini velo to the Asian markets (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea).

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p> This picture was the end of my test ride. I bought the bike from Loro in central Tokyo.

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UPDATED - with some of your favs

The season for the Pro’s is underway. We’ve gotten a few comments asking about the news sources we use for following our favorites. There are a couple of the usual suspects:

• Cyclingnews.com
• Velonews
• ProCycling
• EuroSport
• Pez

Blogs:

• Podium Cafe
• EuroPeloton

but lately it’s been fun to follow the pros on Twitter as they tell you just how much spare time they really have:

• Lance Armstrong
• George Hincapie
• Dave Zabriskie
• Team Slipstream
• Ivan Basso
• FLandis
• Jani Brajkovic
• Bissell Cycling Team
• Tommy D
• King of Pants Racing

Got any others you’d like to share? I’ll update the post with the good ones.

Remember when all spokes were silver? I thought black spokes were stupid when they first came out…now I’ve got this fetish for them. Here’s a picture of a straight-pull Sapim “CX” 2.0/1.5mm spoke against a wheel built on DT “Alpine III” spokes (2.34/1.8/2.0mm).

And what happened to those colourful plastic spoke sleeves kids used to put on their bikes? Did those disappear from the market when The Partridge Family went into syndication?

While I was in Japan, I saw bags of spokes for sale at bike shops, powdercoated in a variety of neon colours. It’s only a matter of time before the fixed gear crowd stateside gets ahold of them. It’s occurred to me that fixed gear bikes are developing from velodrome speedsters to trick bikes in a manner that parallels BMX’s transition to flatland freestyle bikes. Hopefully I’ll have more later to write and maybe video.

I’ve been running a FSA K-Force Light mtb crank and ceramic BB on my dropbar Bianchi mtb for a week and a half now. With little free time and no car to get out to real trails, I’ve had to satisfy myself with urban playtime and I have some things to say about the K-Force Light.

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p> In short, I like this crank a lot, and I have to say that I have in the past generally disliked FSA cranks.