Photos of the second backrest prototype just received today from the factory. Still a couple of items to be fixed, but it's very close to being ready to start manufacturing!

Last weekend was a busy one, driving down to LA on Friday night, shooting a video all day Saturday, CicLAvia on Sunday, and capping it off with a great two-hour show by Of Montreal at the new Regent Theater in downtown LA Sunday night. Non-stop and it was a blast. 

I've been talking with Brandon, my roommate's brother, for over a year about shooting some bike seat videos. He's done a couple films of his own already and looking to build out his portfolio, and this LA trip turned out to be a great opportunity to shoot the first video. 

This is a picture of Brandon here, manning the audio equipment (I was on camera duty). We shot all of the outdoor scenes in and around Silverlake. It was a perfect day for shooting, a little cloudy so that it wasn't too sunny (though the sun did burn through later in the day).

Even though we were right across the street shooting the video, we found this note on the car, telling us that the next time we'd be towed. Thankfully we were able to finish the shoot all in one day. 

By mid-afternoon we were on Sunset shooting a couple shopping scenes, and I had to take a photo of some of my favorite comic characters, Calvin and Hobbes, painted on the side of a shop.

We're excited to introduce Companion Red, the first of our limited edition handmade leather bike seats! The leather bike seat cushions are all hand-stitched by Mark Christian Bolick based here in the Bay Area. We chose a really rich plonge leather for this limited edition, and only ordered a half-hide of the leather, enough to make about five bike seats in total (including the one used for these photos). 

We took a trip down to Los Angeles this weekend to shoot a new Companion Bike Seat video (more on this coming soon) and turns out it was the perfect weekend to be in LA ... CicLAvia - The Valley was hitting the streets of North Hollywood on Sunday! CicLAvia is LA's version of Ciclovia (started in Bogota 20+ years ago), where city streets are shut down all day, and bicycles and pedestrians take over the streets. I was pleasantly surprised to see all the crowds the turned out for it, with several thousand people taking their streets back.

I sent to SF State yesterday and spent a couple of hours helping out a new bike seat customer install their Companion Bike Seat. He wanted to install the bike seat onto his Raleigh Furley, which had a quick-release rear axle, so we needed to swap that out with a solid axle for the foot pegs.

When I arrived at the quad, I realized I had forgotten to mention that we needed axle nuts for the replacement axle. While Song-Ho went to a nearby bike store to get them, I started working on the wheel. Turns out not every bike store has axle nuts, so it took a little longer than expected to find what we needed.

While Song-Ho was out shopping for axle nuts, a campus police officer stopped by to see what I was doing. We talked for a couple of minutes, then she offered me a bite of her peanut butter cookie. I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so of course I accepted. Ahh the joys of being on campus again!

Once Song-Ho returned with the proper parts, we quickly finished up installing his Companion Bike Seat onto his bicycle. Next step: take his girlfriend out for her first ride on the bike seat!

We finally bit the bullet and hired a professional photographer to take some product photos of Companion Bike Seat for use on our website store and wherever else Companion Bike Seats are sold. Gotta admit the money was definitely well spent, as the photos look great, and really show off the bike seat. DIY is great and incredibly cost-effective, but there's no substitute for working with a professional. The photographer did a great job highlighting the important elements of the bike seat, including the stash-box, placing just enough items in it to show off the storage capacity available.