Bike Hugger@Interbike

Spheres not gears - Ellsworth Ride

I attended a historic industry event where the NuVinci Smooth Cruise VCP was announced. NuVinci is continuously variable planetary hub and promises to change the way bikes are designed and built. They showed that promise with an Ellsworth, limited edition NuVinci hub, belt-driven "Ride" cruiser/commuter bike. I'll get photos of it up later.

I'm going to meet with DaVinci and Ellsworth to discuss this hub and bike in detail and blog all about it. It was an impressive event, impresssive technology, and gee-whiz bike.

Surly Xtracycle confirmed!

Byron sends along this photo from the floor of Interbike, which officially starts today. I'm sure we'll have more details when the show is open and the bike isn't locked down, but the long and short of it is: Surly is launching the first production all-in-one Xtracycle.

That means folks who love the idea of an Xtracycle will have one less obstacle to hurdle: No more kit-building. Also, I can't see any reason the StokeMonkey wouldn't work.

Questions for our eyes and ears in Vegas: Is Surly selling this as a frame or a bike? What are they calling it? What's the availability?

I'm crossposting this to both Bike Hugger and our special Interbike coverage site. Most of our Interbike content will be at the Interbike site, so if you dig this, check there.

Surly's big secret

So, over at the surlyblog, the fine folks at Surly Bikes are doing a little tease on two new projects they've got coming.

Putting 2 and 2 together, I noticed the other day (before their domain was apparently hijacked) that the Xtracycle guys mentioned that they would be in the Surly booth.

Xtracycle sells Surly's Karate Monkey with a Free Radical as part of a kit, but that's not something Surly would be this excited about. My prediction is that Surly is about to introduce a bike dozens of us must have thought about: an all-in-one Xtracycle.

The FreeRadical is a cool hack, but at its heart it's just that: a hack. There are a lot of advantages to building a long bike from scratch: uninterrupted stays should be stronger than a bolted interface, for instance, and you can match your componentry to the bike's new role right from the start.

A few smart people have already undertaken the longbike-from-scratch challenge. Xtracycle has talked about it, Curtis Inglis built a custom frame, Todd at Cleverchimp has the beautiful Xtravois, and Fraser Cycles has built a couple of long-wheelbase city bikes.

Xtracycle's presence means that, unlike Fraser's bikes, the Surly will be compatible with Xtracycles accessories, which I'm hoping includes the Stokemonkey.

This is just my hypothesis. If I'm right, Byron will be all over this tomorrow.

Euro Commuters

When I'm in Girona next month, riding everywhere I can, I'll be paying attention to all the practical, commuter, working bikes. We're learning much from building Bettie, our sport-utility bike project and seeing groups like Shimano's Alfine raises my hope that we'd actually see commuters riding bikes like that in the States. They do in Canada with all sorts of electric-assist bikes. Not only that, but they set amazing records for human-powered vehicles -- dude rode 650.5 miles in 24 hours.