Houston benefactor breeds 20 000 new cyclists

ELVES & MORE, the organisation behind a givaway of 20 000 bicycles to underpriviledged children, believes that with bikes for basic transportation the kids can more easily participate in after-school activities, go to the library or get a job. However the 20 000 bikes have to be assembeled and "Elves" are needed to help with the work.

Read more about the project in the Houston Chronicle or visit the projects hompage www.elvesandmore.org.

Kona History Illustrated

Kona Explosif anno 1990

Kona in Denmark has an excellent overview off the Kona line up from 1990 to 2005. And it's all in English too. Great if you feel nostalgic or just want to check up on a used bike you're about to buy.

I thank my Danish neighbors for this great initiative!

Red Alert!

RoadBikeReview Forums - Stay Black.... You better have this thread in mind when shopping for an alternative to your black tights. Unless, of course, you want to show off ;)

Great tool for ride planning

When planning my training rides I find the site www.map24.com of great help. It's a very responsive Java based map service that contains unbelievable amounts of information and it's fast as a shark.

All public and private roads are displayed and they have tools to plot and measure rides.

It is totally free and it looks like it will stay free since Google has integrated links to the service in search results when you search for bigger towns and cities.

On my wish list for making the service better is a way to save plotted rides and share them with friends. And of course display of cycle paths.

Check out my town :)

Heart rate monitor comparisons

Heart Rate Monitors UK HRM experts have a great search engine to compare different HRM's to each other. They have HRM's from Polar, Timex, CardioSport, Nike, Suunto, Oregon Scientific, Reebok and CicloSport. And you search and apply filters for specific features.

Kona face lift

Konas website Konaworld has been updated with a new look. Check it out!

"The Bicycle Cleaning Thing"

The Chain Keeper

A couple of months ago I read a great article in the Swedish cycling magazine Kadens about bicycle cleaning. The author used a very smart tool when cleaning the bike.

The tool keeps your chain in place when taking the rear wheel off. This makes it easier to clean the chain and the cassette separately without having your chain dangling all over the place . Taking the rear wheel off without this baby usually results in grease all over the lower parts of your frame.

After reading the article I went out to my local dealers wanting to buy one. Dong! No one had ever heard about this tool although they understood it's value. I emailed the editor of Kadens and asked if he could ask the author of the article where he got hold of the thing. A couple of weeks later I got the reply that it was custom made by the author and he sent me some suggestions on how I could make one myself.

I put this project up on the ever growing list of things to do and hoped that someone would capitalize on the idea before I got time to do it myself.

Three weeks ago Kadens published an memo stating that "The Bicycle Cleaning Thing" had been found. The company Pedros sells this thing under the name "The Chain Keeper" and it's available in Sweden through www.cyclecomponents.com.

I got one ordered now and hopefully i'll get it sometime next week.

Initializing...

Howdy and welcome to my blog about bicycle related stuff. My current status as a cyclist is commuter and weekend warrior. I live and ride in Stockholm, Sweden.

I've got two bikes at the moment. One is the hybrid/speedster/flat-bar racer Kona Dr. Dew 2003 and the second one is a Cannondale CAAD3 road bike.

The Kona is my work horse. Used for commuting and transporting my kids. It's also a good training bike although the flat bar gets a bit tiresome for hands and elbows if you go on longer rides.

The CAAD3 is my training bike. Bought it from a friend at the end of the summer. Haven't really ridden in this one yet but it looks promising. Use it indoor on my trainer during the winter.


My ambition with this blog is to post comments on cycling related news that I find interesting and my own reflections on cycling in general.