Bike Hugger 

In what maybe considered the best day ever for a cyclist like Eric Steele, he rode with us down the Vegas strip in the Mobile Social Interbike

and then won a Novara Fusion

Photo: Byron on Eric’s Camera.

Eric provides a variety of marketing services for the outdoor and hospitality industries at Steele Media and is based in Idaho Springs, CO.

He gets his Fusion next week and will upload the photos. REI is giving away more Fusions online via Facebook.

Taiwan Day Three:

[

](http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2657855&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=582667174&id=562851867) (photo by Kate LaCroix) We woke up at the Hotel del Lago in Shuishe, at northeast corner of Sun Moon Lake. This was the day of the bike “Joyful Bike Tour”, sponsored by Giant Bicycles and China Airlines. Despite the wet weather, at least a couple hundred riders gathered in lime coloured jerseys and rain capes round a stage for the opening ceremonies, including a dance and song performance from Sun Moon Lake’s Thao tribe. Under a large canopy, representatives of the sponsors said some words (though since everything was in Mandarin, I have no idea what those words were), but there were some unexpected aspects of the presentation.

The Let’s Bike Taiwan tour continues through Yanmingshan National Park. Cyclelicious shot the video with a bikecam and represented in a Hugga Jersey.

More Taiwan

• Taiwan Cycling and Cultural Tour: Mark V
• China Airlines Stewardesses on bikes
• Taiwan tag

This Fall we’re riding Flax Fixed, a crazy BMX frankenbike, and this Scott Addict SL. The Scott is our weight weenie bike, with the frame tipping the scales at 1.8 pounds*.

According to Scott, the Addict is the lightest production frameset and it’s noticeably light in your hands. Like wow light. Carbon racing frames in this class hover around 2 pounds plus a bag of chips. The Scott drops another 1/2 pound by removing carbon weave and all the frame bits are carbon: dropouts, cable guides.

The biggest difference is that Scott is using a high-modulus carbon, which means they can build the frame with less material.

Also build it stiff as f*ck. I rode a Scott R2 earlier this year in Greenville.

Oh and we’ve got a Jake the Snake in the queue, as well as a Single Speed Tricross.

*Weighed on a postage scale.

Now that we’ve all gotten back into the groove from Interbike we wanted to reach out and give a thanks for the great Mobile Social event, and provide a bit of our thoughts about thank REI, Globe, and Dahon).

It’s hard to believe that this was just the third year that Bike Hugger was at Interbike, the response we got to the Mobile Social was fantastic. Within days of announcing the logistics for the event we had 100 people pre-registered for the event. We gave out all 250 wristbands we brought, and had more people come through our tent to watch the crit and hang out, including Gary Fisher, who had a few beers and chatted with our attendees.

Cruel

Puffy

Plaid

More from the Bike Works NYC Saddle archive. Carbon saddle from Roues Artisanales.

From the what’s old is new department and odd, comes this Stepper seen on Hong Kong Fixed.

Every year another type of stepper will get invented, we saw them at Interbike and of course in the gym.

Another Bicycle v. (insert vehicle name here) went down and, as our readers would expect, the bike wins! This time it was a helicopter in Sao Paulo.

What we’d love to see is a semi trailer v. cargo bike. A UPS run for the day? Each holiday UPS delivers with bikes. We’ve had

We were in Taroko National Park, descending from the marble-walled gorge to the Pacific Ocean, when we pulled off to visit the Eternal Spring Shrine, built to commemorate the workers who died building the Central Cross-Island Highway. Unfortunately, recent fallen rock (probably due to typhoon swelled rainfall) closed the access to the shrine. We weren’t the only ones disappointed, as there were several tour buses of Taiwanese school children who were also denied entrance. Well, they might have just been there for the restroom access before the walkway to the shrine. The kids freaked out when they saw us crazy Westerners on bikes. After a lot of hand gestures, I coaxed them into posing with my Davidson BMX bike.

Fellow Taiwan 2009 attendee Saam Gabbay pulled this still from a AVI video of us descending Yamingshan Mountain outside of Taipei. Bike Huggers at speed! Note that I’m descending on my nutty Davidson BMX bike. That was one STEEP road climb.

10km past the summit we checked into the Tien Lai hot springs resort. And then another decadent Chinese dinner, followed by hot springs. Too tired to describe the experience properly…this hotel is freaking sweet. Check back later for a longer description….maybe with the video of this still.