Bike Hugger 

SXSW announced their Bike Share project today. Making bikes available to attendees has been talked about since our first Mobile Social over 5 years ago and Tern Bicycles is making it happen in 12.

SXSW presents SXcycles, a bike share program for platinum, gold, interactive, and film registrants. This service will be available to registrants Friday, March 9th – Tuesday, March 13th from 9:00am until 2:00am and is open for sponsorship.

Of course we're there again with Built and the Mobile Social. I'm speaking too.

Link D8

The bikes are located at 513 East Cesar Chavez Street, directly across from the Austin Convention Center and registrants can pick up a folding Link D8 bicycle for daily use with helmet, lights, locks and basket without preregistering, as long as supplies last.

More Rides, More Fun in 12

At SXSW I've talked about making yourself more interesting, done epic shit, and how we work on the web. Also ridden around with thousands of people and brought counter programming with Built. This year, even more rides and fun are being planned. The Bike Share is part of that hotness.

See you there.

Today we've launched a new messenger bag custom made for us by Mission Workshop. The Big Bag of Win is on pre-sale now for $169.00 before we send them off to Amazon's warehouses and ahead to SXSW.

Based on Mission Workshop's Rummy with our emblem on the outer flap and logotype on the inner flap, you can open it up for the Hugga reveal . . .

More photos on Flickr.

There was a time when Cinelli dominated the quality road bar and stem market, and the only company to compete against the venerable Italian marque was another Italian company, Tecnologia del Tubo Torinese….otherwise known as 3T. Strangely enough, both companies ended up being purchased by the Gruppo SpA, run by Antonio Columbo of Columbus tubing. But frankly by around Y2K, Cinelli had completely fallen behind newer upstarts like Deda Elementi and a host of Asian manufacturers in terms of technological innovation. As for 3T, it had wasted away into irrelevance, and in 2006 Gruppo sold the 3T brand to a Dutch entrepreneur. When 3T was relaunched, they made an immediate impact by introducing totally new, well-conceived product with smart graphics and sponsoring Pro Tour teams such as Cervelo and Garmin.

I’ve talked to 3T before and the company has always planned to make a thoughtful expansion of their product line beyond road. The new Luteus cyclocross fork is in some ways their boldest move yet. For while their dropbars and stems are light and elegantly simple, and their aerobars some of the technically best available, the Luteus fork shows 3T aggressively seizing the industry lead in developing and marketing a pro-level, disc brake-specific CX fork.

Let’s assume you really care about the colour of your road bike components. Yes, yes…you’re not one of those people, but we’re talking about a purely hypothetical situation at the moment in which you pretend that you’re not the hardboiled road rider who’d ride a lawnchair balanced on a pair of hula hoops if necessary. You couldn’t give a rat’s ass what you’re bike looks like, nor what Boonen’s bike looks like. You‘re beyond aesthetics, but right now I need to talk about colour ways and coordinating like a nancy. Maybe you should skip this post. Still reading? Yes, your interest is strictly academic, of course.

SRAM & colour: What the hell? A few years ago SRAM created a flagship road component group, and in a move that still has their marketing people hi-five’ing each other, they named it “Red”….brilliant…it sounds like it could be the new fragrance from Dior or whatnot.

Then after a sponsored rider wins the Tour with their bits on his bike, they come out with a yellow-accented limited edition version of their Red…’cause you know, yellow=Tour de France. You can still buy red Red, but for a limited time and a dash more money you can buy a yellow Red….it’s not really yellow though (thank god), it’s mainly all black with yellow logos and no red whatsoever. Next SRAM introduces black Red, which is no more black like the Limited Edition yellow but does have a little red.

Now the model name “Red” seems like not such a good idea. Well, they needed to call it something I guess, and SRAM didn’t want to tap into old Sachs names like New Success.

NEXT UP!: SRAM’s entry level group Apex will be available in a white colour way for 2012….it won’t replace the current black Apex nor is it a special edition “Albino Apex”. Actually, the white Apex looks pretty good to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos I can post, or at least I haven’t been able to steal any yet.

BTW, SRAM’s 2x10 philosophy for mtb drivetrains didn’t win over every product manager in the industry, so look forward to some 3x10 SRAM offroad options next year. But as for you roadies out there who are looking for a triple options…none for you.

At the 2011 Worst Day of the Year Ride.

Uploaded by BikeRanger | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Proud to announce our lineup for Built at SXSW:

• DL Byron - Intros
• Chris Brewer - The Journey
• Mike Lin - Readyset Go! Smart Power Revolution
• Rob Roy Chalmers - The Sporozoan Swarm
• Michael Pusateri - How to Build A BBQ Smoker from a Trash Can
• Danielle Sipple - I Am Femme: Creating your Own Gender Identity
• Brent Heyning - Hackable: Light Communication Kits for Bikers
• Scott Benish - Interactive Design Skills and Urban Chickenry
• Naz Hamid - Online Communities, Offline Relationships
• Andrew Neher - Drawing A Bike From Memory
• Kris Krug - Killer Photos with Your Cameraphone

Follow them on Twitter:

• @livestrongcb
• @bikehugger
• @fenixintl
• @printtroll
• @Cruftbox
• @fiercekitty
• @toyshoppe
• @benish
• @weightshift
• @andrewneher
• @kk

This year at SXSW, we've got a Hugga Booth in the Trade Show. The booth is number 106 and we'll host various happenings there like schwag-a-thons, street art, and the speakers from Built.

We'll also broadcast codes from the booth. The codes are for free samples of our new product, gear deals, and Ibex Wool giveaways. Like our Fan Page and follow us on Twitter to receive the codes. Then come to the booth for code redemption.

Of course, we'll have some schwag at the start of the Mobile Social too, like those Ibex wool hats ....

Conditions were right to ride most of the beach at Lincoln Park before stalling in the Sand.

I've ridden a route past the beach for 20 years and never thought to ride it. A winter storm had pushed all the driftwood up into the concrete wave breakers. The wet sand, pebbles, and rocks made it rideable for a long section.

It was a rush with the surf, wind, and just one other person on there (seen in the top center left) I powered around the point and back towards Alki where the sand was too soft. Then I jogged along, back up onto the path, and home.

I'm enjoying a quiet weekend of riding before racing season starts and we travel to Austin for SXSW. Once there, we've got Built and the Mobile Social.

This cruiser is bad ass.

Just thinking of the rides you could do with that -- add some spiked tires and you're unstoppable on the bike path in Winter. Meccanico di Veno posts on the paint and build on his blog. Also see Go Means Go 1979 Schwinn Typhoon from last year.

I found this Battaglin picture. Notice the heavily bulged FIR front disc wheel and how the fork blades splay out around the bulge. I vaguely remember a story about a late 1980s Giro d’Italia prologue in which a team tried to use bikes with wheels described as such. Is this the bike? I don’t know, and my OCD won’t let it go till I do.

I did find a tiny picture of a similar wheel from a page on the mad Pino Moroni, genius tinkerer to the kings of cycling, the demon of drillium. Native of Italy, resident of Detroit, Moroni’s handiwork with components made Merckx’s hour record bike into 12 lb marvel. In the late ’80s, his services were retained by the Italian cycling federation. It can’t be a coincidence.

I want to know the design rationale behind the bulged wheel. Was it, as one poster hypothesized, to block the wind for the rider’s feet and pedals? Or was it to improve crosswind aerodynamics? Were bike designers even thinking about crosswind performance back then?

I should ask Steve Hed…I bet that guy would have something useful to say about aero wheels.