As soon as I heard about Circulus last year, I picked up the phone and called Dan at Portland Design Works. It’s not trivial shipping a velodrome 1,000 miles so it took a bit to iron out the logistics. But we knew we’d get it done. As PDW co-owner, Dan Powell, just wrote, “Circulus is going on a little road trip.”

Along with co-sponsors Paved magazine, All-City Cycles and Yakima, we’re super excited to have Circulus at the annual industry gathering this year. What do we have planned? We’ll have open riding sessions available at various times throughout each day of the show. You’ll be able to grab an All-City bike from the pit and hit the track.

We’ll also have a couple of featured events – one each on the first and second days of the show. On Wednesday we’ve got the PDW/Paved Pro-Am Classic at The Circulus. Described as “Quite possibly the first annual celebrity micro-velodrome pursuit world championships, featuring stars and others.” More details about the event (and about those stars we mentioned) are still to come.

Yakima’s got the reigns for the Thursday night festivities, and I hear that it might involve some form of bike roulette… Stay tuned for more on this as it develops.

And while the events are nominally competitive, we’re shooting to focus more on the fun than on hard-core racing. Look for MC’s Chris DiStefano and Stevil Kinevil to keep the feats of strength in check.

This last Saturday, PDW hosted a little get together up at their place featuring Circulus. Hers’a little write up by BikePortland.org.

And finally, here’s a little sneak peak at Circulus in action:

PDW Circulus Promo 1 from James Wilson on Vimeo.

Where will you find Circulus at Interbike? It’ll be on the street level of the show (this year’s show is on two floors of the Sands Expo, remember?). Walk through the Urban Lounge near registration, through the new Pub beer garden and you’ll run into it.

But first, you’ve got to register for the show. You have registered already, right? www.interbike.com/register for those in the business of bikes.

The writer of the post had a great quote about how Levi’s fits in the bike market:

Levi’s garments are so stitched into the fabric of our culture and work-a-day life that extending the brand to casual cycling was a no-brainer for us.

Also, seems like I missed Prolly’s post about the line and his involvement with it last month. Check it out here if you missed it, too.

Heard from Joe over at Paved Magazine who got a pair and they’re capri style. Anyone else know if they’ll all be capri’s? Seems like the company is basing the cycling line off their 511 skinny jeans.

One funny observation given the simple, “work-a-day”, durable, apparel-for-the-masses appeal that Levi’s jeans have, the technology that they’re incorporating in their bike line sounds suspiciously typical for a high-tech bike industry product: “Levi’s is utilizing Swiss fabric brand Schoeller Technologies, and their Nano Sphere Technology + 3X dry textile treatment.” Maybe that’s just tech sweet talk intended for us tech-obsessed cycling enthusiasts. Better living through over engineering, right?

Welcome, Levi’s.

To see some great bike-specific jeans from two companies that specialize in the category, check out Osloh from New York and Swrve who are based in Los Angeles.

The website for the Freewheelin’ program is here and you can also follow them on Twitter under the bikesharing account name.

In the video, Avery Stonich from the BBC and Dan Oftedahl from Humana talk about the program and you get to see the wareheouse where the bikes are all being assembled. Hopefully you won’t see the pre-roll ad for a truck like I did. Gotta love contextual advertising.

Here’s the link to the original article that goes along with the video.

I love Wired Magazine. Love the tech, the science, the design, the snarkiness and the utter geek-coolness that permeates each issue. And Wired seems to love bikes, too. They do an inordinate amount of bike-related stories for a techie magazine and attend Interbike each year. I did a search for ‘bike‘ at their website and got over 4800 links to articles. Love that bikes fit right in with iPhones, Drobos, Star Wars fanboy movie reviews, geoengineering solutions to climate change and Wii’s.

In the spirit of the magazine’s review style, here’s the July 2008 issue of Wired that just arrived in the mail:

Wired: They dedicate two whole pages to bikes: the first to Specialized’s Tarmac SL2 (‘Olympic Gear’), and the second to a test of four cyclo-cross bikes: the Moots Psychlo-X, Cannondale’s XTJ, the Specialized S-Works Tricross and Redline’s Conquest Pro. Are you guys planning to be at Cross Vegas his year?

Tired: They get the colors of the world champion rainbow stripes flowing through the article right, but they get the order wrong. Nice gesture guys, but it’s blue – red – black – yellow – green. I stand corrected: Mark from Wired commented (below) that the colors are actually intended to represent the Olympic ring colors which are the same but in the printed order. Sorry!

The feature doesn’t seem to be online yet since the issue’s still fresh, so pick up a copy at your newsstand.

Photo by CHARLIE NEUMAN / Union-Tribune

The story deals with the recently inaugurated Sprinter light rail line launched earlier this year in northern San Diego County. I haven’t had a chance to ride it yet, though I suppose I could take it to my current Metrolink train in Oceanside. There’s been criticism that the line is a “train to nowhere” from Escondido to Oceanside, California. As a result, apparently many more than expected (upwards of 12 per car, according to the article) are bringing their bikes on board to complete their journeys at either end.

“We have really been overwhelmed with bikes so far – more than we expected,” district spokesman Tom Kelleher said. “It’s a pleasant dilemma.”

I agree – this is a “pleasant dilemma” to have, right? This is a great sign and takes the mission of a light rail system one step further: people leave their cars behind even to get to and from the train. With the encouragement of this great participation by cyclists, all that’s needed is a creative and “pleasant” solution. Unfortunately, we’re dealing with government bureaucrats here. Their answer to so many bikes on the trains: limit them to 4 citing safety reasons. The transit district is also proposing that bikers just use the 278 bike lockers installed at the stations along the route. Yeah, no need for your bike at the other end of the line in a suburban setting…

The limit is planned to go into effect on July 1st.

“On July 1 there are a lot of people who just won’t ride the Sprinter anymore, which is just going to be unfortunate,” Keehan said. “It’s not good for the transit rider or the transit district to not accommodate those riders.”

The commenter “Left Coast” summed up the situation best and provided the best solution:

so let’s see, right at one of the MOST significant times in public transit history, where they have the greatest opportunity to increase ridership, and help the environment, what do these dummies do?!

ENCOURAGE people to bring bikes… many, many bikes. make one of the cars one big bike rack. think you idiots, THINK! stop being bureaucrats for once in your lives.

I just hope Metrolink doesn’t get any ideas from their peers to the south and try something like this. I really like the idea of making one of the cars “one big bike rack.” I chat with a fellow bike commuter on the platform, but when the train comes we have to split up so that we won’t compete for the limited bike racks. Would be great if we could ride on the train with the other bikers.

To end this post, I’ll leave you with one final comment to help frame the situation with a bit of humor:

Pack the train with bikes and people! It is not about comfort it is about saving fuel!
In 3rd world countries you could be setting next to a box of chickens or a pig head.

Here’s a funny story of how he dealt with a customer who bounced a check back in the early days when Specialized was still struggling and starting out:

It wasn’t always easy. I insisted that the stores pay COD, because I didn’t have extra money. One time a $1,000 check from a store near San Francisco bounced. When I called the owner about it, he gave me some big story about how he’d eventually get around to paying it. I knew he was lying, and he refused to return the merchandise. I sent my roommate up there with a check to buy the shipment I had just sold to the store and then had him cancel my check. I called the owner and said, “That great sale you made? Well, that was my roommate, and now my check has the same value as the one you gave me.”

Make sure you read through the many comments as there is one from industry insider Rick Vosper (ex-Specialized and Veltec Sports) and one from Ron Jamis, founder of the Jamis brand.

There’s also a video interview with Mike here.