Candy Cranks

Every year for an annual conference regarding trees, cycling arborists gather together for the Stihl Tour des Trees. The Tour is a 5-day cycling trip covering over 500 miles in the country or state where the conference is held, with the intent to raise funds for the TREE fund, a tree research organization. Over 100 cyclists participated in the 2012 Tour in Oregon, USA. I was unable to participate in the full tour, but joined in the last day for a 30mile ride around Portland, OR for the Ride for Research.

All the tour riders in their matching attire gather for the final day of their ride

In good tree humor, the ribbon to celebrate the beginning of the ride is cut with a Stihl chainsaw, complete with the protective equipment donned over the spandex

Rolling out of Holladay Park

Some happy Ride for Research participants

Beautiful Oregon day

Nearly finished with the Tour

And a Tree themed ride would not be complete without custom made wooden bicycles!

Through the Tour des Trees, the TREE fund raised over $500,000 for grants and scholarships to improve knowledge and technology regarding trees. Next year, the tour will be held in Toronto, Canada.. hopefully I can make it to the whole tour and that some of you may participate as well!

Finding Berlin Tours: The first Singlespeed bike-tour and rental in Berlin.

If you´re looking for an alternative way to discover the highlights of the german capital, this might just be the perfect way to do it.

Head over to findingberlin-tours.com for more details.

I am really bummed that i am unable to make it for this event. For those who could, time to start planning, registering and settle your accomodations. Head down to Bali!! A 3 days fixie event not to be missed.

For info, HERE.

With our crazy warm and snowless weather, we’ve got no excuses not to get out and ride!

Illuminations Bicycle Tour:  A winter night ride amongst warmly lit homes, Saturday December 18, Meet at 6:50 pm at the Somerville High School Main Entrance. Depart PROMPTLY at 7:15pm. Bike lights required and dress warmly. Holiday lights, costumes & festive cheer encouraged. Heavy rain, wind, snow or ice cancels bike tour.  A Somerville Arts Council & Somerville Bike Committee joint event.

It took her eleven months, but Kate Leeming is finally back at home in Melbourne after becoming what is believed to be the first person to cycle from the most western point of Africa across to the east coast.

Read the full story here.

Thanks Soph!

If it comes to the topic of climate change, one is being confronted with a long list of things that aren´t allowed anymore. However, to speed up the necessary change in our  society, we don´t need prohibitions, but examples, dreams and social experiments.

Therefore, the Green Music Initiative created an Off Grid Experiment – the Green Music Fahrrad Disko. It´s all about music and energy without  an electrical connection / power supply.

The DJ is only going to be able to play, if there´s enough people (minimum of 4 at a time) producing power by cycling. Which means the DJ can only give you something – music – as long as you´re giving him something – energy. Pretty simple.

The Green Music Fahrrad Disko has it´s premiere on thursday, 19. August 2010 in Berlin. The event starts with a bike tour from Bar 25 at 5pm, which is gonna lead to a secret location. There, DJs of Bar 25 will play as long as enough power is being produced.

If you wanna get involved, RSVP here. More info here.

Celebrating my birthday with close to 100 fixed gear riders from Malaysia and Singapore. Thanks to Harufixed for being great hosts and for organizing this. Pictures courtesy of Mr Yasin Rahim.

Marcus and Miriam have just set out on their cycle tour of Europe, currently in Sweden and in search of meatballs. You can follow their adventures here on the Leather Saddle. Marcus is an amazing photographer so you can be sure there will be some lovely pics to view. Have fun guys!!

More photos from Mick who must be on THE most enviable cycle tour ever. More super shots of him conquering the 1912 metres of Mont Ventoux of at his  blog. Woah.

I just got back from a little academic/pleasure trip to Helsinki, Finland. It was awesome! The weather was beautiful (only one flash hail storm in the week we were there), it was hot and at this time of year 11:30pm is still twilight. Our hotel had free loaner bikes. They were battleship Kronans, weighing a good 30kg (at least), one-speed with coaster brakes which I haven’t experienced since I was seven and was totally unaccustomed to. We took these bikes out for some mini excursions as the university was quite close by, but it was the unplanned, wandering ride out of the city that was one of my favourite parts of the whole trip. This isn’t the exact route, but it was something like this. I had guessed it about 30km, but it turns out to have been more like 40.

We made some stops along the way. The first point of interest was the waterfall by the museum of (history? culture? I forget).

And some fisherpeople.

Refueling with Kage…

Then back on the road…

They have bike paths on the sidewalks in a lot of Helsinki, but even out in the suburbs (which feel like the country) they have great separated paths everywhere.

[Read more →]