I just discovered that Sacha White the craftsman behind Vanilla Bicycles (which I’ve given up owning one of and contented myself with a their t-shirt instead) created a tricycle for his daughter. I remember loving trikes as a kid so I imagine she is one psyched little jr. cyclist. At 10 grand a copy I don’t expect you’ll see the kids around the neighborhood riding them any time soon but the original post by Wired is a good read.

At last there is a tool that enables cyclists to map their route from point A to point B while preferentially factoring in bike paths and bike lanes – Cyclopath. Now I’ve been to point B quite a few times and know the way but I’ve never gotten there from point C. Cyclopath allows me to map the route, adjust it, get a sense of what I’ll be in for and print directions. You can use any address in the Twin Cities and surrounding region the map covers and even map to points of interest like parks.

Maps can be viewed as street layer or aerial photos and the system indicates distance, allows you to make and save changes to maps, share them and even lets you interpret your route using several filters of special interest to cyclists like “byway type”, rating and even by slope so you can embark on the pleasantly futile task of trying to plan a route that’s down hill both ways.

There are many more features and it seems like a pretty powerful new tool but one with a little bit of a learning curve. Fortunately the folks at Cyclopath have taken this into account as well and are offering a lecture about how to use the system. Not only are the tool and the lecture free they’ll feed you breakfast so stop by as you ride your bike in to work tomorrow (weather should be pretty nice). The lecture is Thursday, November 12 from 8:30 – 9:30 at the UofM. More info available here. Can’t make it to the breakfast? View it live online at 8:40 am.

Who would take on this heroic and altruistic effort you ask? Well that is the beauty of having a large land-grant, research oriented, university in your town. The University of Minnesota’s Institute for New Media Studies did all the heavy lifting. Now all you have to do is enjoy the ride.

The Big Picture over at the Boston Globe (which presents current events through collections of huge – for the web- photos) has posted 40 really gorgeous photographs from this year’s Tour de France. With every new picture I take myself I develop ever greater respect for the pros who can capture amazing moments like these and do it in razor sharp focus. Most of these pictures concentrate on the riders themselves but many include the spectacular scenery and even the colorful spectators… uh, jumping for joy. The two shots here are by Jasper Juinen and Joel Saget respectively. Nice work guys!

While I’m not sure you’ll want to typeset the annual report your working on in BikeType by London based designer Emma Webb you’ve got to admit it’s pretty fun. You can check this and some of her more practical creations on her Behance portfolio with the equally fun title “ideas are shiny”.

Cycling – long identified with the slightly obscure, super-fit, spandex set – has been going mainstream. Bike messengers have done for bicycling what skateboarders did for surfing. They’ve given it the patina of urban accessibility. While one might argue they’ve also tarnished the luster a little they also deserve some credit for the surge in popularity (and viability) of urban cycling. Adidas celebrates urban bike culture in a series of photos marketing their upcoming Originals OT-Tech collection (not on the Adidas site yet) as seen here on Hypebeast. Here are two of my favorite photos. If you want to see these kicks in person check in with my man Jason Sack. If he doesn’t have a pair nobody does.

These cyclists are incredibly talented by the way. I’ll post some videos of the outlandish moves these riders have developed when they aren’t busy racing your package across town or hanging out at Pizza Luce.

Here’s my girl Cindy cruising on her Velorbis Victoria. She also has a mountain bike and a road bike (below) but the omafiets we imported after she encountered them while studying in the bike-friendly Netherlands is her favorite. It really is beautifully designed and she gets many comments when we go out riding. If you love girls on bikes (or if you actually are a girl on a bike) Let’s Go Ride A Bike is the blog for you. Not only are there some nice posts and photographs but a terrific list of other bike blogs so you can continue to explore.

Stop what you are doing and familiarize yourself with this really wonderful bicycle tour photography by Gregg Bleakney. Take a few extra minutes and look at his Adventure section too. They’re even better than the cycle shots but this is a bicycle photograph post. Oh, and while you’re at it the Portraits, People and Landscape categories are spectacular too.

Those of us in Art Director type roles often have a different experience with photography than your average Ansel Adams fan. We find ourselves doomed to search for nuances in the arrangement of sesame seeds in a series of 600 hamburger photos looking for the shot that will out sesame seed the competition. Or, worse yet, if you are on the production side of things photoshop out the single, deal-breaker, symmetry-destroying, sesame seed the art director feels will result in a catastrophic drop in hamburger bun sales.

Lay down your loop or your stylus my friend and just enjoy this collection of terrific photography (and links to more of the same) about your most favorite thing – bicycles.

Photo-Cycle
Photographer Eddie Clark captures racing and free style moments.

Adam Leahy Photography
Adam shoots race and recreational cycling as well as doing some commercial work. Thankfully bikes don’t have sesame seeds.

Rolf Hagberg Photography
Rolf takes a different approach and is exploring cycling as a foil for creating beautiful, abstract images.

Outlier
It’s refreshing to see bicycles in advertising (haven’t we had enough cars as props). Outlier makes fashion for cyclists so the connection is obvious but don’t these photos convey a hip, urban culture aesthetic?

Check back in soon. As cycling continues to catch on (and hopefully replace the automobile as pop culture icon) and I continue to find talented cycle-friendly photographers I’ll share them here. Until then ride to live – live to design.

I love the first few issues of a new magazine when the emphasis is heavy on design and a faithfulness to the mission. Those early issues are wonderful even though their success often attracts enough advertising that the original magazine winds up so buried in a sea of pharmaceutical and automotive ads that I can no longer even find the table of contents. Let’s hope that is not the fate of this sweet new cycling rag out of Britain (am I the only one who misses calling it Great Britain btw?) called The Ride. It’s got a great low-fi feel that fits my experience of cycling’s semi-underground. The kids out inventing new tricks or pounding out mileage in the middle of nowhere (as apposed to all the expensive spandex you can see any evening on Summit Ave.)

But I digress. Importing one of the first two issues is pretty spendy at roughly 23 bucks but these guys are still hungry remember. So they’ve generously offered to let you download a pdf of the premier issue for nothing more than the time it takes the electrons to jump across the pond. Then again if you can spare the 23 bones I’m sure they’d appreciate it and you’ll have a collector’s item from before it contained seven pages of SUV ads.

Go Ride.