We're always a fan of innovation here at Companion Bike Seat, especially when that innovation involves building on top of our bike seats to further expand the functionality of your bicycle. One of our customers recently sent us these pictures of a custom tow-hitch he made for his bike seat, that allows him to tow a dolly behind his bicycle. It comes complete with a swivel so that turning while in-tow doesn't cause any issues.

Really goes to show how ripe the bicycle is for innovation, in enabling it to truly transform the way we transport ourselves around our world as our cities continue to grow more and more congested with people, cars, scooters, you name it. Electric scooters are great alternative to driving (albeit still pretty dangerous in a lot of situations) but they lack the benefit of exercise that you get from a good old fashioned bike ride. 

 Great news! Companion Bike Seats are now compatible with thru-axle bicycles! There's a new product on the market that makes it possible to convert thru-axles to solid axles to allow pegs to be installed onto the rear axle.

It's called:
Atomlab Bolt-on Axle Adapter, and they're available now on Amazon. These convert 12mm thru-axles to 10mm solid axle ends, perfect for the pegs that come included with our bike seats.

Now Companion Bike Seats are compatible with even more bicycles!

A customer of ours recently started making rubber shims for our bike seats that raise the frame up off of the pegs. This is extra useful for fatbikes with tires that are 4.5 inches and larger, providing additional clearance underneath the storage compartment. They're available for purchase directly from the Dragonfly website.

A recent customer of ours created a customized security device for his Companion Bike Seat, installing it into the storage compartment. It's a vibration sensitive audio alarm to try and scare away potential thieves, and also includes a GPS tracking device just in case they're undeterred by the alarm and are able to successfully steal the bicycle and bike seat. 

Here's the description he provided of his crafty alarm and tracking device:
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Hi again! An update on our previous conversation.
Since you were interested on a security measure for the backseat. I installed a magnet held: battery pack/vibration sensitive alarm/GPS tracker into the box. They all use those small light STRONG magnet name-tags (from employees at stores like Target, Best Buy, etc.) to stay connected to the walls of the storage box. After all 3 items were installed, they really didn't take up much space, as you can see, the U-lock still has plenty of space to hold more chains or other locks.

Btw, those small holes drilled into the sides of the box were to allow the sound to come out louder. After much testing, there was a huge difference when the box was completely open to when it's locked close. Those holes helped a bit. My friends thought I went a little overboard with the GPS locator, but I think it's worth it to protect my investment.
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​Love the ingenuity, and don't think he went overboard at all. Maybe we'll turn this into a product some day!

We had several orders from people planning to take their bike seat out onto the playa this year. Unfortunately the bike seats were scheduled to arrive at the fulfillment center without enough time for shipping before people left. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I already had plans to meet the new shipment when it arrived at the fulfillment center in Phoenix, since this is a new partner and it's always great to meet business partners face-to-face. In order to get bike seat orders out to folks heading to the playa, I filled up a minivan in Phoenix and road tripped north to meet them in Reno to give them their bike seats.

The new inventory arrived safely at the new distribution center on Friday of last week and I was able to review it all on Monday after arriving in Phoenix late Sunday night. The shipment looked great and all back-orders have been shipped out this week. I met with the team managing fulfillment now and they're good people and will take care of Companion Bike Seat well. It was pretty exciting to see the rows and rows of new bike seats (and backrests and ebike pegs) ready to ship out!

All in all it's been a pretty exhausting road trip after covering over 1500 miles of a 1700+ mile road trip, but well worth it at the end of the day. Most of our bike seat sales occur online today, so I get very few opportunities to meet with customers face to face, and this road trip has been awesome for that. Plus, bike seat orders are flowing again!

Great news! I received word from the factory this weekend that manufacturing was completed on Saturday! The new bike seats, backrests, and ebike pegs are going through final inspection at the factory now, and if everything looks good, they'll be in a shipping container on a boat heading towards California by the end of this month.

This latest shipment contains more bike seats, backrests, and the newly updated ebike pegs. This new design for the ebike pegs makes it easier than ever to tighten them down onto the rear axle of your ebike.

Tentative arrival of the shipment in LA Harbor is scheduled for August 15. From there it'll take a couple days to clear customs and get trucked to our new distribution partner's facility in Phoenix AZ. As soon as it arrives in Phoenix all back-orders will be shipped out immediately. I'll be traveling down from San Francisco to greet the shipment personally and make sure all back-orders are shipped asap. If everything goes according to plan, back-ordered bike seats should arrive by or before the end of August!

Stay tuned for more updates as I receive them from the factory and our shipping partner.

Companion Bike Seat was out at Pedalfest 2016 yesterday in Jack London Square, Oakland, CA. This was our first year attending Pedalfest, and it was quite a sight to behold. In my opinion it is probably one of the best bicycling events in the bay area, lasting all day long, and some of the coolest, craziest custom bikes you've ever seen. Plus, tons of great food, grog, and music ... nothing but good, clean fun.

Towards the main entrance of Pedalfest was Whymcycles, some really cool, functional bicycle-art pieces. I'd be really surprised if one or more of these didn't make it out to the playa later this summer. Not pictured below, but they had a bicycle with a ping-pong table strapped to the top (it folded up to ride the bike), so you could take your ping pong tournament with you wherever you go! And all over Jack London Square there were bicycles "parked" on the light-posts. It must have been a heck of job getting those up, and then taking them down afterward!

We were out offering free test-rides to anyone who wanted to take the bike seat out for a ride. Unfortunately we're still temporarily out of bike seat inventory, but it was still a great opportunity for people who hadn't heard of us give our bike seats a try.

And of course, what type of bicycle event would it be without at least a penny-farthing or two, or what I decided to call "the Pedalfest double penny-farthing!"

Pedalfest is a lot of fun, whether your a hardcore cyclist or simply a leisurely rider, there's something for everyone. We're planning on attending for many years to come. So come on out next year and check out all the fun!

We ran out of bike seats back in April and more are being made as we speak. We're also having more backrests made, as well as mass-producing the ebike pegs for the first time. Prior to this, all of the ebike pegs have been regular pegs, customized by a local machine shop.

The first set of backrests were made by a different factory from the one that makes the bike seats. However, for this order, the bike seat factory decided they wanted to make the backrests as well. So they needed to put together prototype samples of the backrest as well as the ebike pegs. These samples just arrived today, and everything looks great.

Now that we've had a chance to review the samples in person and they meet the spec requirements, the factory can move forward with mass production of both the backrests and the ebike pegs.

A gentleman in Santa Monica CA reached out to me a couple weeks ago inquiring on whether or not I thought it possible to rig one of our bike seats onto his tricycle. After trading emails for a week or two digging into the measurements of the trike rear end, there didn't seem to be any visible challenges  with installation. The pegs weren't necessary as the seat mounts directly to the frame of the trike. The peg clamps required some custom shims once the bike seat arrived, but otherwise it was a perfect fit!

I plan on reaching out to Elon next week to start talking hyper loop seats ...

Giorgio also noticed something pretty cool with the bike seat and his red tail light. The way the tail light was positioned on his tricycle cast a bright, red glow off the bottom of the stash box, which made for a great effect riding at night.

Hyper loop seats should definitely glow red, right?!  Such futuristic technology deserves nothing less.