bike menagerie

Hello friends!

Guess what, as you can probably tell by this post I am back from my travels abroad and as much as I love traveling and adventure, I do love coming home. Especially when there are friendly faces and warm greetings to welcome you. Anyways, the highlight of every trip for me is always taking photos. In fact, I think I had well over a 1,000 images from this 12 day trip (probably even more if my camera wouldn't have died 3/4th of the way through)... but anyways. Instead of one massive blog about my trip, I think I'll just share a few select themes here and there and post related photos.

So, this post is about the bikes I saw on some of my travels.

Outside of Portland Oregon (and Minneapolis perhaps) almost in no other place will you see more bikes for everyday use than you'll find in Scandinavia. I thought it was interesting to look at the bikes people seemed to use for everyday use and compare them what we have here. So... this is a little photo blog about bikes. Enjoy!

SWEDEN:

All over Sweden, the type of bike I saw the most were the typical "city bike" style. Heavy, clunky, slow but an upright riding style which makes it easy to go everywhere in your everyday work clothes. I only saw two people riding anything different. Those two people were also the only people I saw on "road bikes" and they were also the only two other people I found wearing spandex (and team kits).

very green: it's got an interesting tube out to the side under the back cargo rack - which I'm not sure what you'd use that for.

a bicycle built for two...

Paul Frank single speed cruiser

This was the first fixed gear bike I saw on my travels. Fixies (or track bikes) are very popular here in the states, are very popular in urban areas... but surprisingly enough... I hardly saw any in Europe. As well... any fixie I did happen to see, had flat handlebars as opposed to the ones with drops that'd we see here. I thought that was interesting.

Stockholm's bike sharing program.

DENMARK:

The Danes are crazy about their bikes. CRAZY! So crazy in fact that they completely shun calling themselves cyclists. It's similar in the fact that many of us walk... but yet, we don't identify as "walkers" or "pedestrians". We don't subscribe to "walking magazine" or start buying tickets to all events where people can be found walking... just because we happen to walk as well. Basically, walking isn't an activity, it's just how we get from point A to point B. Riding bikes in Copenhagen is much like that. It's every day. It's nothing special. It's nothing new. But, to the outside eye... Copenhagen's bike culture (or lack of) is pretty friggin amazing. Personally, I loved seeing an encyclopedia's worth of various bike styles pass me on the street. There were trikes, bakefits, bullitts, city bikes, christiania bikes, fixed gears, road bikes, cruisers, mountain bikes, hybrids, commuters, etc. And... on top of that, all the people are stylishly dressed. Wearing their finest attire, pressed suits and ties and high heels. I loved it! Not once did I see someone wearing a neon vest or have a little hemet mirror dangling off the side of their head. Bikes are as much of a part of someone's outfit as their coat. In fact, some people I saw even took their accessorizing of their bikes and outfits a little too far.

Bullitt bike

christiania bike

The rental bikes even had handy permanent maps on them.

The only folks I saw on "road bikes" or wearing spandex

fashionable lads with matching coats and bikes and skinny jeans

cargo bike (notice the smaller front wheel)

interesting seat and frame design

this bike had a smart elastic band system installed to protect clothes fro getting caught in the spokes.

heavy duty kid and cargo carrying (i love the face paint job on the kid)

Nice blue accents

white bike

Who says you can't bike in wing-tips and a scarf?

now, that's what I call accessorizing!

Aside from the racers dressed in their team kits, bike messengers in Denmark were the only other people I saw wearing spandex. Which I found all sorts of amusing.

ICELAND:

Sadly, my camera broke right before I went to Iceland, so I have minimal bike photos from there. However, when it came to the style of bikes... most of the bikes seemed to be wal-mart huffy style commuter/mt. bikes. I'm not quite sure if it's due to the general isolation of the country or the cost to get bikes there or the fact that so few people live there, but... there was defiantly a shortage of bike diversity. However, everywhere you went in the urban areas you saw people, young and old on their bikes. Going to and from work and school etc. My hotel even had bikes for rent. So, they like bikes there... they just don't have all the types of bikes that we have here in the states or they have in Denmark. However, given the landscape of the country, not only is "by bike" one of the best ways to travel and see the sights in Iceland, but I'm pretty sure they could host some amazing mountain bike races.

I took more photos of hot dogs in Iceland than I did bikes.