EuroBike Summary

After a couple of short newsletters, here’s a longer one with lots of pictures.

EuroBike Friends
Ines went to Friedrichshafen in Germany where Europe’s biggest bike exhibition called EuroBike is hosted every year. It is a great place to meet friends. Ines was happy Sara and her friend decided to do their fundraising bike ride with the destination EuroBike. They were raising money for a project in Swaziland. Ines was so happy to see her again and congratulate her for her successfull ride of 878km on her Flying Banana fixed gear bike. But it was also nice to see other friends in Friedrichshafen. For example Mr. Eijiro Kashima from Japan the President of Kashimax company that hand makes NJS certified saddles.



EuroBike Fixed Gear Sprints
Traffic Distibution, Soundtrack and The 5th Floor were organizers of the Eurobike Fixed Gear Championships. The first event was a 200m sprint race on the back side of the exhibition. It was a little but of a hassle to get the bikes into the exhibition center, but then it was huge fun! There were some cars parked in not the best spots, so it was a little bit tight after the finish line to stop but good that they made a wall of hay. Only 3 girls participated of which 2 were from Natooke! Where are all the European fixed gear girls?



Party at EuroBike
On the last day of the EuroBike (before the public day) there is alsways a huge party inside. Sara and Ines went there too with their bikes. The cool guys from DZR gave Ines a pair of really cool cycling shoes that she cannot wait to try out after getting some SPD pedals. It was also great for Ines to finally meet SQUID (Kevin Bolger) in person – a New York city bicycle messenger who has his own messenger company CycleHawk. He is also the founder of the Bicycle Messenger Foundation helping injured messengers.



Friedrichshafen Critical Mass
When Sara and Ines were leaving the EuroBike exhibition someone gave them a flyer. It was for Friedrichshafen’s first Critical Mass bike ride. These kind of rides are to create awareness for bikes in traffic. Sara and Ines were excited and of course participated. The German law says of you are 16 people riding bike, then you are allowed to use a full car lane. As there were over 25 people they did use the full car lane. And they went onto the regional highway a few times. Unfortunately some car drivers did not understand the point of the ride and did some dangerous maneuvers. We hope next time more people can join and more car drivers can be aware of cyclists.



Goldsprint Race
Goldsprint and 8 Bar organized a roller race or as some know it Goldsprints. Sara and Ines got stuck on the way there in a huge thunderstorm and had to search for shelter for a while. They arrived late but just on time before the finals started. So they were able to race and made it both into the finals. Sara was amazing and beat Ines in the finals. She was so happy as this was the first time ever.



EuroBike Fixed Gear Freestyle
Ines was invited to be a judge at the EuroBike Fixed Gear Bike Freestyle Championships. They were held in a skatepark as it seems in Europe most peopel do skatepark jumps and not many Keo spins or other flatland style tricks. that is a shame as for the jumping the stunts do not make use of fixed gear where as some of the spins backwards require a fixed gear so they are really fixed gear tricks. But of course the tricks that the guys showed were really sick!!! I was judging so I could not take pictures There were only 2 gils participating: Saskia from Holland and Ines so there was no separate category. First place went to Marco (Tokyo), 2. Nasty (Tokyo), 3. Oscar (London).



Eurobike Bikes
It is nice to go to a bicycle exhibition and see all the new designs for bikes. There are many beautiful bikes like the Cinelli Laser, but it is not a new design. It is actually from 1991 where it received the golden design award. they now made a limited edition production of it again. It is hard to take pictures of so many nice bikes and there is not enough space in this newsletter. Next bike exhibition you need to go and see for yourself.



Fixed Gear Erlangen
Erlangen is a city with a 268 year old university and it is where the company Siemens started and has its headquarter. The city has been very proactive in changing to a cycling friendly city with bike lanes on most of the routes. And of course you can ride your bike in the pedestrian zone in the city center. In Erlangen there is a fixed gear group riding around the town on Friday nights. Ines met up with them, rode around and had a cool night out. She is happy to see that there are fixed gear girls and guys in the city she studied in. It was nice to track stand and ride in the revolving door of the bank – at some point we were 4 people at once



Riding Fixed in Nuernberg
On September 10th there was the Red Bull District Ride organized in Nuernberg with big air jumps on bikes. 70000 people came and had a look. So also Ines was there. But as it was really crowded and she has been to many other bike events she decided to ride around the famous city on her colorful fixed gear bike. Fixed gear is not so common in Nuernberg so quite a few people were amazed by her Flying Banana bike.

It is getting much cooler recently, please keep warm while pedaling, don’t catch a cold.

Events for this week:

Thu > Sep 15th > Olympic Forest Ride
Leave the shop at 7:30pm, let’s go to the Olympic Forest ride wild and heat up the cold air with our hot blood.

Sat > Sep 17th > Bike Polo
Start playing at 4:30pm till dark falls, East Gate of workers Gymnasium. It’s getting dark earlier lately, so maybe next week we will start playing earlier too, to make sure we have enough polo time together.