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 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 brought our bike seats out to the first annual Bike Life Festival today to show our support for the South Bay bicycling community and of course to spread the word about Companion Bike Seats. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon for the festival, which took place at St. James Park in the historic St. James Neighborhood in downtown San Jose. There was a live DJ and several bands, food trucks, games, bicycle art, and plenty of bicycles. It turns out San Jose is a real "fixie city" with more fixies at the festival than any other bike!

Our "booth" was right across the park bike path from several artists making "velo art" specifically for the festival. We got to watch this particular piece start from scratch and develop into what you see here, done entirely with spray paint. I didn't get a chance to ask the artist the name of this artwork, so I'll call it "the many faces of cycling in San Jose."

All in all Bike Life Festival was a great event, bringing the community together to celebrate bicycling and showcase local bicycling-related businesses in the South Bay. We look forward to joining in the festivities again next year!

We were out at Berkeley Spark this weekend to enjoy the festivities and to help promote Bike Seats on the Playa. With so many cool DIY bike seats, bike trailers, and art bicycles, I had to write a blog post to share some of the pictures. Berkeley Spark is a sort of Burning Man pre-party or send-off party held annually at Civic Center Park in Downtown Berkeley. It was a beautiful Bay Area summer afternoon, full of arts and crafts, dancing, food and grog, and most importantly ... lots of bicycles. 

This was by far the coolest art-bicycle of the afternoon ... the fish tongues were an especially nice touch. Fish Bike was a completely functional art piece, though pretty difficult to ride being that it was so heavily laden with metal armor. 

It was great to see a place that embraced bicycling as a regular part of life. I was pleasantly surprised to see bicycling called out as one of the four ways people can help save the planet! This was on a take-out bag from an amazing barbecue restaurant just outside of Bogota.

Much like most major cities nowadays, Bogota has a thriving bike-share system, Bogota Humana, that just recently launched.

We brought both of our bikes, an Electra cruiser and a Globe Work path-and-pavement, with us this year. With the two bike seats we had enough room for four people to ride to the show every day. No need to rent extra bikes for folks when you've got a couple Companion Bike Seats!

There were five of us staying at the house, so someone always had to walk, but we traded off each day. The bikes (and bike seats) turned what would have been an hour and a half walk into a 30 minute trip.

Photo disclaimer - riding on the sidewalk is strictly prohibited in New York City, and children should always wear a helmet.

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"I took my daughter to school, had been looking forward to that so much. She had never ridden on the back of a bike. I realized that this morning. Very strange that I hadn't thought about that till this morning. I was practically taken home from the hospital when I was born on the back of my mom's bike! Jumping on the back of your friend's bike is something that you do regularly in Holland. And of course people jumping on the back of yours.

Riding with her hanging on to me this morning felt so right! I think she  had a few nervous moments (morning traffic on 2nd & 1st Ave in Manhattan can be a little intimidating). She had no way of knowing how good of a bike rider I am. We got to school in less than 5 minutes.

I am so happy with my backseat!"
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GREEN WAVE

It's a great thing to see (especially in your own backyard) and a huge step in the right direction. High five America!

Cities all over the US are investing in more bike lanes and bike-friendly thoroughfares, making it that much easier for bike commuting to take a foothold. Not a moment too soon, with the growth that bike-share programs have seen over the last couple years. Apparently bicycling in the US is on the rise!

(Photo taken at Valencia Corridor in San Francisco.)