CYCLE MODE 2009 [ more pictures ]

Here are some more pictures Kao took at Cycle Mode.




Armstrong / Contador display




Colorful Fuji Bikes




Rapha display with an Independent Fabrication bike


I will probably never ever ride the Cervelo P4


Fumiyuki Beppu display






This Specialized bike weighs less than 6kg!

Cycle Mode

Yesterday we went to this event called Cycle Mode which is sort of like Interbike, but is also open to the general public. It was held in the convention center called Makuhari Messe in the city of Makuhari which is about half way between central Tokyo and the Narita airport in the Chiba prefecture. It was a weekday and a very rainy day, so it wasn't too crowded. They also offered free entrance for women on this day. I was in line to buy me a ticket when a man approached me and offered a free ticket. I was suspicious at first, but it turned out he had free entry already and had extra tickets. So, it was our luck that both of us got in for free.

The thing I wanted to do there the most was to test ride bikes, especially the high end road bikes. I've been looking at them in magazines, on the internet and in bike shops, but I haven't really ridden the more recent road bikes mostly made of carbon fiber. I'm not really in the market to buy one, but I thought I would like to ride them and see what they are about.

It was a huge show, so there was so much to see. We looked at so much stuff and took lots of pictures, so I will try and recount our day the best I can.



Right after the entrance awaited the booths of Eddy Merckx and De Rosa bikes. I've always liked De Rosa for their style and being one of the few Italian bike makers to still offer steel frames. They were definitely one of the bikes I wanted to test ride, but unfortunately the registration for test riding had already closed until 2 hours later.



We walked by the Pinarello booth which had a long line of people waiting to test ride, so we decided to come back to it and then we went to the Bianchi booth. Bianchi is one of the few bike brands that Kao knew of and wanted to test ride and the registration line was still open, so we got in line. It turned out that they closed the line right after us, so we just managed to get in. We waited a while (maybe little less than half hour) and then we signed up to test ride and they told us a time which was about an hour and a half later(!) to come back. So, even after waiting in line, we had more than an hour before we could test ride a bike. I thought I was going to test ride bikes one after another, but it looked like it wasn't going to be that easy.



So, we decided to walk around and just look at stuff and see if there was a bike we could test ride without too much wait. We spotted this cool classic Pashley in a booth nearby.



There was cycling class for children too.

Then we came to the Cervelo booth.



Cervelo is really the cutting edge of race bikes. Like this P4 time trial bike above. I thought their bikes are things that belong in the elite road racing world, so I didn't even think I could ride one, but it turned out that their bikes were available to ride and the line didn't seem that long. We waited about 5 minutes to sign up and it was available half an hour later.



Kao opted to test ride a Masi entry level road bike which was available immediately.



Kao on the test course.



Kao's impression was that it wasn't actually all that different from her old steel road bike other than that the components worked much better.



This is the Cervelo RS that I rode. Kao took pictures of me riding it, so she will probably put them in a post soon. I was pretty thrilled to ride it so that I didn't really check the seat height before I took off, but as soon as I started, I immediately knew that the saddle was way too low. Being on the course for the first time with other people was also distracting. There was too much traffic to really pedal with any effort until the long straightaway at the end of the short loop. Officially, you're supposed to ride just one lap, but it seemed most people were riding multiple laps. I didn't really get enough of a feel with just a lap, so I kept going. The backside of the loop goes out of the building for a bit. It's shielded from rain with a roof, but there were little pools of water on the course. Enough water got onto the tires and onto the course inside the building and there was a sharp turn right after we go back into the building where the water on the building floor made it super slippery. I felt my rear wheel slip even though I wasn't going all that fast. I didn't fall, but I saw a guy fall right in front of me. Kao said she saw 3 poeple crash just during the time I was riding. I did try and ride with a bit of effort on the front straightaway, but it was way too short to really get a good feel. I ended up doing 3 laps. The bike was light and responsive and the carbon frame felt solid, but really the course seemed inadequate to really gauge the ride. The Cervelo RS is a climber's bike, so I would've liked to have gone up a short hill with it.



After that, it was time to go for our Bianchi test ride. Kao rode this Bianchi carbon road bike. She had never ridden a carbon bike and said it was much more impressive than the Masi aluminum bike. For my Bianchi test ride, I made sure to have the saddle raised this time. I also rode a carbon road bike. The saddle height was much better, but the handle bar/brakes set up seemed a bit awkward. I couldn't tell too much of a difference between the Bianchi with the Cervelo on this short course though. I felt the wheel slip a couple more times again and after the ride, I didn't feel too much more like doing more test rides. I also thought maybe riding other carbon road bikes might feel about the same with these conditions. As a fan of road racing, I like looking at the bikes that the pros ride, but I think having ridden these bikes, I'm slightly more over the mystique of high end road bikes. I thought these bikes were way too expensive for me to consider before, but I think now I would much prefer a custom steel bike even if I could afford a carbon race bike.



After that we just wandered around the big event space.
One thing that really brought out the bike-nerd in me was the Dura-Ace di2 shifting system at the Shimano booth. The picture above is not the bike I rode, but the bike next to it was equipped with the di2. The di2 is Shimano's electric shifting system. Instead of pulling on the shifters, you only need to press buttons and then motors inside the derailleurs will shift the gears for you. It was pretty neat although you can only get so much out of shifting gears on a stationery bike.



I think the most impressive display I saw was this Fuji display of track bikes.



I think these are actual track bikes and not street single speeds. I am not a huge fan of the whole fixie culture, but I like looking at track bikes used in real competition.



We found what I think was the most interesting booth after that. It was a booth made up of a whole bunch of makers of clothing and accessories. Yakkay helmet was one of them. I tried one out and it seems to look OK as far as I can tell in this photo.



There was also a maker of leather accessories called Maware. We actually spotted Mr. Fisher in this booth as we walked in, but he was just leaving so I didn't get to meet him, but later I found he also took pictures of these accessories and put them up on Twitter.


There were like 4 or 5 clothing makers that made clothing that were like regular clothes except they were made for riding the bike. I didn't get pictures of the clothing this time, but we got a lot of brochures and shop cards, so I think I want to look them up and do a separate post about them. Maybe we'll visit some shops as well.



Anyway, it was a fun event. We saw a lot of other stuff which I didn't write about like seeing Japanese pseudo celebrities speak at the talk show stage and various booths of bikes and gear and it would be impossible to recount everything, but you can check out more of the pictures I took in the slide show above or check out the flickr set here. I am not sure I will attend it again next year, but it was really fun and I think it's worth checking out if you're into bikes and you've never been to such an event.

Alive and well

Hi all. It's been a while since the last post. We were down with the dreaded flu for a while, but also we haven't had so much to write about. I was thinking about this. In Japan, riding the bike is very popular. In front of every train station or super market, you would see a sea of bikes parked there. Yet most biking remains very local and almost too casual. It's just a way to get to the supermarket a little faster. People don't think about enjoying the activity and riding to further places. One reason for this I think is that especially in the Tokyo metropolitan area, using public transportation like the train and the bus is so easy and convenient. It may be the most well run in the world. You can get to almost anywhere within the metropolitan area with the train or the bus or combination of both. It's so easy and effortless compared to other options (driving in Tokyo requires huge amounts of patience), so that most people don't think about riding a bike further than the nearest train station. We're also a bit guilty of this as we've been taking the train a lot to get places out our neighborhood.

Anyway, so we don't have too much to report, but we have taken pictures here and there, so I will post some of them here.


Kao trying her acrobatic moves riding home from Kawasaki.


rental bikes we spotted at the Misaki port. If these were available at the station, we would've rented them, but they were at our destination rather than the starting point, so we didn't rent them. They look pretty nice for rental bikes though.


Kao riding along the Tama river.


Little boy riding by himself along the Tama river.

Today, we're going to an event called Cycle Mode which I think is kind of like Interbike but one for the general public. If it's just booths of bike stuff, I might skip it, but you can actually test ride the bikes there, so I'll have an opportunity to ride a lot of bikes I'd never ridden before. We'll be sure to take a lot of pictures, so that will be something to report afterwards. I think Mr. Gary Fisher is there. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll run into him.

Oregon Manifest Constructor's Design Challenge

I went to the opening of Oregon Manifest Constructor's Design Challenge on Friday.



That's a nice thought and I would like to see the bicycle become as popular as they are in Copenhagen, but I think Portland has quite a unique bike culture as evident in this event and I think Portland will become something quite different than Copenhagen. I'm not sure if there's a greater concentration of custom frame builders anywhere in the world right now. I think for me as well as for a lot of people, the custom built bicycle is the ultimate bicycle to have. I don't see that I will ever be able to afford one unless my income somehow miraculously starts to increase, but it's nice to just look at all the pretty bikes for free. This Constructor's Design Challenge as I understand it is a challenge for the frame builders to design and build the ultimate modern transportation bike to create an innovative, purpose-built rig for the everyday rider. So, I expected to see innovations I haven't seen before.

Well, it was quite packed with people and I wasn't able to closely examine each and every bike, but my first impression is that there were a whole lot of beautifully built bikes, but most of them didn't seem to offer anything new. There were lots of bikes with disc brakes, hub dynamos and custom racks, but those are all things that have been done before. A few bikes though stood out from the rest.

Pereira Cycles


This Pereira bike definitely seemed to stand out the most. Not just because of its bright paint job, but it has a couple of unique features. One is the integrated U-lock. I often thought it would be so cool if the U-lock could be an integrated part of the bike, but I couldn't quite visualize how this could be done. From what I gathered, the lock works perfectly with Portland's staple bike racks and when you ride, you can store the lock arm into the pocket within the bag on the front rack. I think it would be even better if it didn't need to be taken off to ride, but I think it's very worthy that he made this. I think for the purpose of this challenge, it is more important to try something innovative even if it isn't perfect. The other feature is the custom Lemolo bag which was made especially for this bike. I don't know the details of the bag, but I haven't seen any bag like this before, so I'm quite curious what it looks like on the inside.

donkelope bikes


I've never heard of donkelope bikes before, but this bike caught my eye as it has a Hammer Schmidt crank set. I'm not too familiar with them, but I think they are mostly used on trial mountain bikes and its advantage is that it has a very small chain ring compared to normal cranks, so you will have more clearance for obstacles. I'm not quite sure why it's on this bike, but I guess by the look of the bike, it's meant for heavy duty riding and you will be able to go over obstacles more easily.

Ahearn Cycles


This bike doesn't have any break through innovations, but the custom rear rack basket and the front light guard are quite unique and they really add to the overall look.

Inglis Retrotec


Lastly, this Inglis Retrotec doesn't have any innovative features as far as I could tell, but I thought I'd mention it because these Retrotec bikes are a personal favorite of mine. Something about the smooth curve of the top tube to the seat stays is so visually pleasing. This particular bike is pretty big, so if I were to get one, it would be a lot smaller though. (Dreaming is free, right?)

That's about all I was able to gather at this event.
The opening was pretty crowded as well as not very well lit in some places, so I wasn't able to really look at all the bikes carefully. I think I will try and go see it again when it's less crowded and see if there were things I missed. I'm sure there's quite a lot I didn't notice.

here's my flickr set if you want to see more pictures.

Bike Portland has a better looking and much more thorough set here.

and Pereira Cycles has a set of its own bike here.

Will Pereira win the challenge? Stay tuned.

p.s. I think if I was somehow involved in this challenge, I would try and add turn signals on a bike. That's something totally separate from the skills of a frame builder, but I think it's doable and would be great to have on a bike for city riding along car traffic.

The escape and return to the Tour de Fat

I went to the Tour de Fat event here in Portland this past Saturday. I'm sure most people know what that's about, but just in case you don't, it's sort of a pro-bike event put on by the New Belgium Brewing Company with a bike parade, performances and of course beer.



I got there a bit too late to see the parade, but it was still relatively early. I went inside the event area and there were people dressed up as they were just in a bike parade and there was some stuff going on the stage and it seemed like people were having fun, but it was hard to tell what was going on.



It was a bit early to drink beer and I couldn't get into the performance stuff that was going on, but there was this area where you could ride a bunch of "funny" bikes. Bikes that have been modified in funny ways and seemed to ride very differently than how we expect bicycles to ride.



I didn't ride one myself, but it was fun just watching people get a kick out of them.



The vibe was mostly peaceful and if I was there with others, it would have been fun to kick back and drink beer. There was a lot of bike enthusiasts and bikes, but then other than the Sprockettes who were supposed to perform later on that day, the performances didn't seem to have much to do with bikes. I sort of felt like there was something missing (like the actual bike riding). So, I decided to go and ride my bike. Well, I sort of planned that before and looked up the map for a good destination.


View Larger Map

So, I decided to go to the Kelly Butte Park which was a park I hadn't been to and wasn't too far. I didn't feel like riding too far, but wanted to go somewhere I hadn't been to. I'd been going to all the parks around Portland as I like parks and usually they offer a quiet and pleasant place to take a break. Though some of them turned out to be more like an undeveloped nature reserves and not really made for humans to rest at. Kelly Butte Park turned out to be sort of in-between.

As I turned off the Divsion St. onto 103rd Ave, the road turned upwards so much that I was in my lowest gear and needed to zigzag my way up. I came to a gate which completely closed off car traffic. I had to get off and carry my bike over the gate to go further. I rode the steep hill a few hundred feet more and came to an open space which sort of looked like a lawn, but was full of wild flowers.



I laid in the middle of it for a while as the short steep hill really took it out of me. There was not one person there besides me and it was a nice change from the event.

I noticed that there was a trail leading into the trees an decided to go an see what's there.



There were lots of trees covered in some algae(?) like stuff and flowers I hadn't seen before. I decided to play "nature photographer" and took some pictures.





The place had a strange atmosphere to it, like if it was darker and colder, it could be a woods where witches lived.





I walked further to see if there was an opening with a view down below, but I couldn'd find it. So, it is a park where people must come sometimes, but not so much that they made special amenities for humans. I kind of felt like it's sort of a secret spot most people don't know about.

On my ride back, I got hungry and wondered what to do about it. Going home and fixing something was the obvious option, but much to my surprise, I found myself riding back to the Tour de Fat event.

I got there and it was still going on as before. I headed for the food and beer tents and got food and a pint of a New Belgium Stout. The beer was really delicious, but a bit expensive at $5. I think if you're promoting your product to possible new customers, the price should be a little friendlier. Either that or part of that $5 should go to bike advocacy. They had tip jars for the BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance), but I didn't feel quite generous enough to donate after I paid $5 for a beer.

I didn't mean to sound so negative about the event. Like I said, if I was there with others, I probably would have had a pretty good time. I think it's a fine event for people who it appeals to. If you like dressing up for a parade, watch vaudeville like performances and drink beer, this is the event for you. I like the beer drinking part definitely, but aside from the parade and the modified bikes, it didn't seem to have much to do with bikes. Maybe that's a good thing as it appeals to a wider audience and maybe show them how fun bike riding people are. I didn't see it happen, but there was a portion of the event which was called like "I WANT TO TRADE MY CAR FOR A BIKE!". I don't know how that turned out, but that would have been interesting to see. Everything about this event seems sort of "extroverted". If you want to dress up for the parade or give up your car in front of an audience, I guess this is appealing. I like riding my bike quite a bit, but I don't like dressing up and if I was making a big lifestyle change decision like giving up my car, I'm not sure that I would want to do it in front of a bunch of strangers. That's just me though. Oh, and one more thing which I thought was cool was, after I ate and drank, I went to throw out the dish and the cup I used and the staff person who was supervising the trash bins said to put all my trash in the compost bin. Apparently, everything I got within the premises were compostable. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, all in all a cool event.

Bridge Pedal 2009

Hope you all had a great weekend. On Sunday, I rode my first (& maybe last?) Bridge Pedal.

For those of you who are not familiar with the event, it's an annual event here in which you ride over the numerous bridges that crosses the Willamette River that runs through the center of Portland. Some of those bridges are either totally inaccessible like freeways or have very limited access (with only a narrow sidewalk to ride on), so this event is the once a year opportunity where you can ride freely over all of the bridges without having to worry about car traffic.



It started very early with sign-in from 6:30am an then starting at 7:00am. I'm usually still asleep so early on Sunday morning, so I didn't get quite enough sleep. There were 3 different distances from 14 to 38 miles and I took part in the 11 Bridge 38 mile ride. The starting point was already on the freeway. I rode up to the start and was probably in the first few hundred riders. When I looked back after a bit, it was cyclists as far as I can see. There were some 6000 people doing the ride and 20,000 people all combined for the event. It was by far the biggest cycling event I've ever taken part in.



We started at 7:00am and immediately went up and down on the freeway. It was very strange indeed to be riding on the freeway. The scale of the road is much bigger than what I'm used to and the pavement felt a bit rough in places too. Our side of the freeway was open just for us, but the opposite direction had the usual car traffic. I wonder what the drivers must have thought upon seeing us there. Most people on our ride seemed very athletic oriented and the pace was pretty fast and I was beginning to get passed by others. After we went over the river a few times over different bridges, we crossed the Sellwood Bridge which was the Southern most bridge in this ride and then we made our way up North. It was after we crossed the Hawthorne and Ross Island bridges that something seemed strange like I was riding the same route twice. There were cyclists on the same street but separated in the middle. I rode on the right side already, but this time I was on the left side. I asked a volunteer person about it and he told me that this was the red group (8 bridges ride) route and my group was on the other side. I should have known better than to listen to him, but I went the way that he said and I ended up doing the same loop again and came to the same exact place again.


(taking a break on Fremont Bridge, I-405)

It may have been a blessing in disguise though as people around me by then weren't as gung-ho as the front runners and I seemed to be going faster than most of them. It wasn't my initial intention to ride so fast, but riding in a large group does make you ride faster and it does feel good to be able to pass others. I was happy to find that I'm still faster than average going up hills too. After a few more crossings over the Willamette, there was a long flat stretch to the North and I seem to be uncharacteristically riding faster on the flat than those around me and so I might have ridden harder than I should have. We came to a climb up to the St. Johns Bridge which I didn't expect and I couldn't go up it like I did on the other climbs. I crossed the bridge and then I stopped at the rest stop in St. Johns soon after. I had a banana and an energy bar and it tasted soooo good! From there, I was more or less in survival mode and just managed to get to the finish.



I was dead tired and I couldn't believe when I looked at my watch, it was only 10:00am. It seemed a lot longer than just 3 hours. The ride was 38 miles, but with the extra loop and the ride home, I probably did like 45 miles altogether.

Anyway, it was an intense, but a fun ride. Maybe I didn't ride it as smart as I could, but it gave me a good idea of my fitness level and I feel like I can take on some longer rides now. I took some photos here and there, mostly during the first half of the ride. you can check them out in the slide show below or on flickr.



I'm really not a good photographer though and I was mostly preoccupied with riding to take time for good photography. There were plenty of places though that would have been great to take pictures at. You can check out KTesh's Bridge Pedal set on Flickr for more great pictures of the ride.

At the beginning, I wrote this may be my last Bridge Pedal. I just want to clarify that I didn't say that because I do not want to do it again. I would do it again if I'm here still, but I'll most likely to have moved back to Japan by then, so I may not have the chance to do it again. I'm happy to have done it and if I get a chance, I will do it again. Hopefully Kao can do it with me if that happens.