If you aren’t ready to take out a second mortgage for that new shiny Trek Madone carbon frame gem this Christmas for that special cyclist someone out there, you can still let them know you care with a few of these MUCH cheaper biking knick knacks. We made up this short list of anything from a small little stocking stuffer for the once in a while cyclist, to stuff everyday cyclists use…everyday. Of course this list is VERY subjective and includes some of our favorite stuff, but that is why they are great gifts…in our humble opinion.

1.       Chamois Butt’r - Any cyclist worth their salt knows that chafing goes hand in hand with our beloved sport of cycling. To combat this issue, we are big fans of the Chamois Butt’r whether you are riding in that century or quick Sunday morning ride. Every cyclist uses some sort of skin cream or another, which makes this one an easy gift for any cyclist, heck even those runners too.

2.       TimBuk2 Bag ­- Did your cyclist friend make a New Year’s Resolution to ride this bike to work more often? If so, TimBuk2 makes some great messenger bags that they can pack all those work manila folders into along with their laptop. My personal favorite is the feature that keeps the computer compartment separate so you don’t even have to take it out of the bag going through airport security…ah, the little things. Even if they aren’t biking to work, they make some cool packs for just about anything.

3.       Performance Bike Gift Certificate - Does your cyclist friend have just about everything you can possibly think of? Then just get them a gift card to Performance(we’ve donated quite a few paychecks to them over the years) so they can just pick out for themselves what they need.

4.       Clif Bar Shots - Did your special someone get bitten by the triathlon bug? Or does your special someone just like a quick shot of energy on that club ride? Then these things are pretty sweet…literally and figuratively. They are great for those races and rides to keep you from bonking halfway through.

5.       Bike to Work Pants - These things are made from the same guys that invented the Cortarounds and have a rather clever little feature: you can pull your back pocket out and roll up the cuffs to show off their reflective side(how could we not like that) all while keeping you from looking like a spandex wearing cycling commuter.

6.       Breaking Away -  Take a break from biking yourself and roll up on the couch to watch others biking in this charming and humorous coming of age story. This is the classic cycling movie from 1979 of 4 young small town Indiana blue collar kids trying to find their way after high school that culminates in the ‘Little 500’ local bike race. One of my favorites.

7.       Knog Bike Light - We encourage everyone to have bike lights IN ADDITION to a set of BikeWrappers if they are doing any kind of cycling at night and are a fan of this Australian company. They make some very good, very simple, very bright, and very affordable silicon lights for your bike.

8.    Bicycle: The History - If you want to revel in the sheer beauty of the bicycle, this is your book. This is a neat little(480 pages) coffee table book that not only serves as an illustrated history of the bicycle, but also encourages readers to treat the bike as a work of art

9.       Clean Bottle - Can’t fit your paws into your water bottle to reach the bottom that has accumulated a bunch of nasty looking gunk BECAUSE you can’t reach it? Then this is the bottle for you because has the ingenious design feature of being able to unscrew at BOTH ends for easy cleaning. Ride Clean.

10.   BikeWrappers Reflective Armwarmers – Come on, are we going to make a list like this and not include at least one of our products? These reflective armwarmers are our newest product and there really is nothing else on the market like it with the sheer amount of reflectivity that they’ve got. Winter is upon us so that mercury in the thermometer is dropping quickly and these things are insulated to give you a bit of warmth for those colder rides AND made from a wicking material to keep you dry when you work up a sweat. 

I went back down memory lane as I recently heard a friend’s story of their bike being stolen, which brought back the painful memory of my bicycle thievery story from about two years ago, which I thought I would sahre. To frame the scene, I am living in the expensive San Francisco, and fortunate enough to live in a place with roommates that has a garage. I can’t tell you how nice it is to not have to worry about street parking but more importantly gives me a space to store all my toys in this expensive square foot conscientious city. So rather than squeezing my bicycles, surfboards, sports equipment, and other outdoor goodies in the apartment, I was happily cramming them in our garage. Since the garage is fairly secure and took two sets of doors to actually get into the garage from the front, felt pretty secure that everything in there was safe and didn’t need to additionally lock ‘em up… Apparently, that assumption turned out to be very wrong. One day I geared myself up to go for a ride in the city, moseyed my way down to the garage, looked in the spot where I keep my bikes, and quickly came to the realization that both my mountain and road bike weren’t there. I started going through the memory bank of, “Did I lend them out to someone? Did I leave them at a friend’s place after my last ride? Did I leave it locked outside the bar last time I went drinking?” but know that my memory isn’t THAT bad that I could forget about both of my bikes. Then the violating realization slowly hit me, “Someone took them!”. They physically broke into our place and took them. I have no idea when it happened and who could have known that they were in there but they knew exactly what they were looking for. My suspicions were only further confirmed when we looked on the front door of our place and found a spot on the knob where they used a screwdriver to pry open the lock… This is when the anger started to set in. They could have taken plenty of my stuff and I wouldn’t have been that upset, but come on man, my bikes!?!? The more the neighbors and I check the garage, we realize they took several more things… My motorcycle helmet, some tools, and honestly can’t remember what else now, because I was still fuming about the bikes. The police come out to file a report and takes down all our information. Once the police leave, I am still mad but am trying to come to terms with the fact that I will never see my rides again. As time passes since the break-in, I have visited several pawn shops in the area and have been watching Craig’s List just in case the remote chance that they turn up on there, but to no avail. After a few weeks of checking in and me growing more pessimistic by the day that they would ever show up, sure enough a single listing for my exact model and color road bike shows up on Craigs List. Unfortunately, I did not register my bikes’ serial numbers with the city police department since I thought I was pretty safe on that front, so I wouldn’t be able to identify my bike this way. Though thankfully for me and unfortunately for the person that posted this, they included some very HQ and detailed picture of this bike, which I could specifically point out and identify certain scratches and marks that I had acquired through rather unfortunate at the time crash from a blown tire. My first reaction is to act like I want to buy the bike myself and get a little of my own vigilante justice… But cooler heads prevail and I call the police to find out what I can actually do, though do this only after I started phase one of vigilante justice plan and called the guy acting like I wanted to buy it. I find out from the police that there is really nothing they can do, since the CL posting is from South San Francisco, and it is out of their jurisdiction. At this point THAT is definitely not going to stop me from getting it back, so I call the police in South San Francisco and give them the whole story. The guy on the phone doesn’t really give me the time of the day until I mention two things: 1) I have pictures on me on my stolen bike with certain markings I can specifically use to identify it and 2) I conveniently have the guys contact info(name and phone #) since I acted like I was a buyer earlier. With this they tell me to come down to the station and they’ll see what they could do but not to have that high of hopes. So I quickly jump into the car, parked in the broken into garage, and speed my way down to their station. Once I get there, I tell the detective my whole story AND give him the name and phone number of the guy, who is going by the criminal mastermind name of….Brolio… He takes that and runs it through their criminal mastermind database and find out that Mr. Brolio has a warrant out for his arrest for something completely different, so things just got a bit more interesting. Since my bike wasn’t registered with the city, it would have been fairly difficult to pinpoint the bike specifically on him even with my pictures, but since he already had a warrant out, it was go time. So with this new info, the police start talking STING. Awesome! When I hear that word, I immediately think of the classic Robert Redford flick, The Sting, and I get real excited and prepare to bring out my inner Redford. We concoct the plan that my dad(policeman) is coming with me to check it out and I will get to wear a wire to get the guy. Even more exciting! I make another call to Brolio to arrange a time and place to meet at a local Wal-Mart parking lot, since the police want to go to a neutral location reducing the chances that the guy will evade the arrest, but he doesn’t want to meet anywhere other than the address he gave me first, so game on. To prepare for this, the police go to of all places, Google Maps street view, to get an idea of the house and possible escape routes. With the meet up spot remaining his place, I am told the disappointing news that I will no longer be included in the sting because it could be too dangerous for a non-heat packing simpleton like myself.  As the time approaches when Brolio and I(undercover cop with quite the beer gut) agreed to meet up, I am staked out in another cop car several blocks away waiting for it all to go down. While we are patiently waiting, the other detective tells me some really cool cop detective stories, which make me really consider a different career path than future, chief bike reflector… Finally it crackles over the radio that, “We got ‘em”, which has me very relieved to hear that I could finally be re-united with my wheels. We roll up in the unmarked town car and there are several cop cars with their lights flashing, blocking off the street traffic, with one Mr. Brolio in cuffs on the front hood of the car. The only thing left now is to get a warrant from the judge to search the property. Once this comes through, the police check out his place and find not only my bike, but a slew of others, components, expensive rims, you name it… Turns out Brolio had quite the operation going and was probably a fence for some bike ring. Once the police take inventory of everything, the detective rolls my familiar ‘ole road bike out of the house. As I got to take a closer look at it, he had removed the aero bars that I had on there for a recent triathlon and swapped out my pedals and seat for cheap ones, so guess he started to sell the bike piecemeal. Sure enough, I was able to point out the exact scratches on my left handlebar and frame(thank you crash) like I showed them in my pictures. A little paperwork and one statement later, and I was cleared to take it home. Unfortunately, he did not have my mountain bike stored away in his garage as well, guess he had already sold that one, but I was a happy camper. I got my road bike back AND took down an illegal bike ring at the same time AND saw justice prevail with Brolio by following the proper legal route. Craig’s List serves as an easy way for thieves to sell their stolen merchandise, but in this case this thief did not expect a very pissed off cyclist to track him down using the very tool he was using to sell my bike. Now that same bike(and a new mountain bike) are sitting in my moated, electrified fenced, attack dog guarded, super-duper safe garage…so don’t you even think about trying to steal it again…

@ the Cow Palace, doors open at 10 AM

If you are in the Bay area November 12 and 13th be sure to come check us out at the San Francisco Bike Expo and hang out. You can see some of our new patterns(not available for sale yet) or our new reflective armwarmers in person, but the more entertaining thing may be seeing me trying to stand on my feet all day on Sunday after running the Men's Health Urbanathlon earlier that morning... Guess I really didn't think that one through before agreeing to that race. Oh well, it should be fun and think this show should be even more fun.

There will all kinds of really cool stuff there...a freestyle competition, a BMX battle, a whole section just of custom frame builders, a cycle showdown, and of course a fashion show. 

Johnny Hoogerland having a pain in the ass kind of day...

Well, we are through stage ten of the Tour de Carnage of the 2011 Tour de France and one thing is for certain…this is not your typical Tour de France. From the new teams in the field(four American teams), an incredible amount of roster jostling on the teams themselves, to the Contador/perennial runner up Schleck rivalry, the intensified race for the green jersey, to the bizarre car crashes involved, this has been an interesting first week and a half of the Tour so far. With all this action going on, what better way to get the inside scoop of what is going on than hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth per se…or though that little service called Twitter. With things about to crank up even more and the tour gets ready to separate the men from the boys(with these boys being 10X more man than I will ever be on my best cycling day…) with the upcoming Pyrennes mountain stages, there should be a lot of chatter going from the cyclists themselves. Or shall I say the tweets will be flying across the twitter-verse as the cyclists work those thumb muscles as much as they are “dancing on their peddles” across France, as a Mr. Phil Liggett would say. Here is a very un-comprehensive, very subjective, and very biased(mostly English speakers) list of those cyclists that we think are the most entertaining Twitter-ers. This list will not include a Mr. Andy Schleck or Alberto Contador(even tweets in Spanish and English) even though they are two of the favorites to win the Tour, mainly because they are GREAT cyclists but not that interesting of tweeters. So without further ado, here are some of our favorites:

10. Cadel Evans,  @cadelofficial - This Aussie has already managed to win a stage in this year’s Tour(Stage 4). Pretty neat to see him wear that chicken pox jersey...

9. Chris Horner, @hornerakg – Unfortunately, Chris is already out of the Tour this year due to a crash, but he has always been a favorite of ours for his always upbeat attitude. Even after his crash this year, he was able to complete the race and not even remember crashing in the first place. Lady luck has not treated Team Radio Shack too kindly this tour, though him being out may mean that he will have a bit more time to tweet off some more inside scoop…

8) Christian Vande Velde, @ChristianVDV - Christian has paid his dues over the years and is starting to take the spotlight himself. Plus he usually has some entertaining pics posted...

7) Dave Zabriskie, @dzabriskie - Yet another rider who is out of the tour due to a crash and broken collar bone, but entertaining none-the-less. Anyone who thinks the Book of Mormon musical is funny as well is good by us...

6) George Hincapie, @ghincapie -  This Tour de France veteran(15 times) seems like a constant on the tour. He helped Lance to win all seven of his titles and is the domestique extraordinaire. 

5) Mark Renshaw, @mark_renshaw - Renshaw has been Mark Cavendish's lead out man, not afraid to throw a head butt every once in a while.

4) Thor Hushovd, @thorhushovd - Thor, God of Thunder, managed to hang onto the yellow jersey for seven days to start, which is a very impressive feat considering he is a sprinter at heart. 

3) Levi Leipheimer, @levileipheimer - Levi came into the tour hot off a win at the Tour de  Switzerland though has had a tough Tour so far with several crashes already and losing several members of his team. Hopefully this Santa Rosa neighbor's luck will turn around shortly. 

2) Taylor Phinney, @TaylorPhinney - Even though this young buck isn't even racing in the Tour this year, he is worth a follow.  Taylor is a a pretty prolific tweeter who seems to respond to just about everyone that tweets at him...

1) Mark Cavendish, @MarkCavendish - The Manx Missile himself is by far the most entertaining and interesting cyclists tweeter out there. If you're going to follow one Twitter-er cyclists, Mark is your man. He usually doesn't hold back on his tweets, which sometimes gets him in trouble and they then disappear. He is the self-proclaimed fastest man on a bicycle and already won 2 stages this year and 15 in the previous three Tours. 

Now that was our exclusive cyclist only list and would be remiss if I didn't include a few other notable tweeters that you may want to follow as well. Here are four bonus cycling personalities that are pretty entertaining as well.

4) Neil Browne, @neilroad - Neil is a pretty popular blogger and 'kind of a big deal' who is also a commentator for Versus. 

3) Bob Roll, @bobkeroll - Former cyclist and one of our favorite commentators out there. 

2) Phil Liggett, @PhilLiggett - Cycling icon Phil Liggett is quite the tweeter. I can't imagine a tour without him announcing it.

1) Jonathan Vaughters, @Vaughters - Vaughters is quite an entertaining tweeter and the manager of the Garmin-Cervelo cycling team. Plus any team that wants to get a sponsorship by these guys is good by me...

Who are your favorites? Anyone we missed?

The end is near...

Well, according to a lot of crazy folks out there, the world is coming to an end this Saturday around 6 PM... I figured before we reach the end, I thought I would just sum up a few interesting tidbits about how far bike commuting on planet earth has progressed in the past few decades. While researching this, I realized there are quite a few different camps and numbers out there, but eventually came to this study which seemed from a fairly reliable source(Analysis of Bicycling Trends and Policies in Large North American Cities: Lessons for New York) down the middle of the road, plus it was 63 pages long which makes it pretty official to me... Real quickly, some of the interesting stats:

• The number of bike commuters in the USA rose 64% from 1990 to 2009
• From 1988 to 2008, cycling fatalities fell by 66% in Canada and by 21% in the USA and serious injuries fell by 40% in Canada and 31% in the USA
• All the major cities cited in the study had implemented a different mix of strategies(bike boulevards, bike corrals, cycling events, bike-transit integration, bike sharing programs, bike parking, etc.) with all varied results.
• New York, with all of its efforts to increase cycling advocacy(with cycling almost doubling since 1990) lags behind all the other cities mentioned in the case study.
• They cite Portland as one of the best cities that has implemented a "truly comprehensive, well-integrated, long-term package of infrastructure, programs, and policies to promote cycling."
• Climate does not appear to be a serious obstacle to increasing cycling...
• The Western states/provinces of the US and Canada have, by far, the highest cycling rates, while most of the states in the American South, have extremely low levels of cycling.
• A 2008 Portland survey found that 18% of its residents used bikes as their primary or secondary mode for the work trip, which is comparable to cycling mode shares in northern Europe.

A few of the things that really stand out to me...1) The fact that cycling fatalities in the US decreased 21% over 20 years is only a good start. We have a lot more improvement there to go. 2) How apparently amazing Portland is and how much the rest of the country needs to come to be like them... You're welcome Portland. 3) After personally living in the South and the West, the difference in biking is PRETTY obvious and didn't need a study to figure that one out. 4) The increase in the amount of bike commuters is not going to be slowing down any time soon.

Since this is National Bike to Work week and it was just B2W day last Friday here in SF, I made a little video to celebrate. I shot a short little time lapse video of cyclists at an aid station along a popular commuting route, which gives you just a tiny glimpse of how many cyclists there are in this city(in three and a half minutes). 

This guy needs an iPhone...

I for one am constantly amazed at what that little minicomputer in my pocket called the iPhone is capable of. Whether you want to turn your phone into an artistic camera lens, a slingshot that tosses angry cartoon birds at green pigs, a way to accept credit card payments, or a way to check the latest powder at your favorite ski resort...there is an app for that. App developers took bikers into consideration when they made these apps that make cyclists love their iPhone even more. We made up a very biased and subjective list of simple apps that we like that don't require you to buy any other peripherals. There are plenty of really cool and much more serious biking apps out there that integrate special add-ons that allow you to calculate your watts or turn your iPhone into a cycling dashboard, but we are sticking with the basics for now...

1. RunKeeper Pro and Lite (Free and Free)

I know what you’re saying, RunKeeper, how is this a biking app? Well, contrary to the name of the app you can actually use this thing for all kinds of activities(Mountain biking, hiking, downhill skiing, rowing…well, you get the point). The app uses your phone’s GPS(which is surprisingly accurate) to calculate your current pace, average pace, time, distance and all that good stuff…all while you listen to your music. Not only that but you can set goals for yourself through the app, like your target pace, intervals, and fitness classes, which will talk to you during your workout to let you know how you’re doing. Another cool little feature is that you can see your route on a Google Map after you workout so you can see all that distance that you covered. We used this one to make our mark on the city of San Francisco a little while back… And lastly, the best part, the Pro version is currently free(usually runs $9.99) for a limited time so don’t drop the free iPhone app ball and download it while you can.

2. iMapMyRide ($4.99)

So you can pretty much take everything we said about the RunKeeper App and apply it to this app. The one thing that we like a bit better and differentiates it from is their ability to find routes. Yes, Runkeeper does the same thing, but think that MapMyFitness team has done a better job in this department. Looking for a new single track mountain bike ride within 10 miles of your home? Then do a search through them to see user reviews, interactive maps, as well as the climbs and elevation changes.

3. BikeDoctor ($4.99)

Ever got stuck in the middle of a ride because of mechanical problems? Or do you just want to have a better understanding of some basic DIY bicycle repairs? Then this nifty little app could be for you. The app is very easy to navigate, has color pictures for all repairs, and instructions on what you will need and how to’s on fixing whatever it is that you need fixing…

4. LiveStrong (Free)

Well, if you are a cyclist of any kind, chances are you may care about what you eat to fuel your rides… The LiveStrong app allows you to keep track of all your portions, telling you how many calories you just ate for just about any food imaginable. Not only that you can enter your activities, so you know how many calories you burned that day. Put those together and you can track and measure your daily calorie consumption so you can hit your daily target and lose those last stubborn 5 lbs… The app syncs with the LiveStrong DailyPlate website which means you don’t even need your iPhone next to you to enter in that little snickerdoodle that you just snuck in…

5. BikeWrappers Bike Light App (Free)

Well, we couldn’t resist. I mean what kind of company would we be if we couldn’t give ourselves a small little shameless and biased plug for the work we put into this one? We aren’t claiming this to be the best-est or clever-est app out there, but it serves a very useful function…safety. It simply turns your iPhone into a blinking bike light. You can choose between the white and red light, then throw it in your backpack pocket or armband to help you be seen at night. Not only that, but it is also a calorie calculator so you can figure out how many future beers will be offset from the ride you just took or time spent pushing the baby stroller… AND we even threw in a jukebox function into the thing. So you can line up your favorite songs to play while you do whatever it is that you do. ...AND we even put in a bicycling safety guide. Like we said, a simple but effective little app from our very jaded opinion. Plus, we're giving it away for free...

BikeWrappers from Space...or by RunKepper

OK, well that title may be a little misleading. A more appropriate headline would probably be 'BikeWrappers can be seen from GPS SATELLITES from space.' 

So I needed to get out and go for a little ride yesterday and figured what better way than doing a little GPS map writing(no idea if that is a real thing). I figured it would be kind of like those planes that write out stuff with smoke in the sky, but using my fancy phone instead. Being in San Francisco made it a bit challenging with all the hills, but figured the Richmond district would be a great place to do it. Plus the roads there kind of look like a piece of graph paper. So I fired up the RunKeeper App on my phone, decided to get a little creative in my route, and got some urban cycling in(with our BikeWrappers on of course). It took a little mental horsepower for me to make sure I was writing it out properly from the street and took a little over an hour to do, but the final GPS product is kind of cool...and we spelled it right. We are just glad we didn't name the company, "Reflective Wrappers That Go On Your Bicycle So You Can Be Seen At Night". That would have been a doozy...

And a random fact. How many miles did it take to spell this out to be seen from space? ...13.7. You can see the full RunKeeper stats here.

Well, of course it all depends. How much do you weigh? How fast are you going? Are you riding with a parachute attached to your back…? I had always thought that this number was around 500 calories an hour then would vary a bit either way depending on how hard you were grinding it out. Though now I know for sure after coming across a nifty little chart in an article in the September 2010 issue of BicyclingMagazine. The chart below shows how many calories a 150-lb rider would burn for every hour of the various speeds of riding, which is calculated according to the Compendium of Physical Activities Tracking Guide(a standardized set of calorie-burn-measurements):

You can calculate what you, yep specifically you, burn every hour you spend on your bike. First, take your weight and divide that by 2.2(that puts it into kg). Now multiply that number by METS(metabolic equivalents, a unit of energy cost of an activity), which is listed in the parentheses in the chart. Now you have yourself an idea of how fast and how long you have to ride to eat that extra slice of pizza and beer. 

Happy Hunting folks!

Location #1: (N 37° 45.583’ W 122° 25.670’) or just enter (37 45.583, -122 25.670) into your Google Maps.

Hint for Location #1: Rhymes with Schmolores Bark… Check by the Miguel Hidalgo Y Castila statue.

Location #2: (N 37° 46.346’ W 122° 26.908’) or just enter (37 46.346, -122 26.908) into your Google Maps.

Hint for Location #2: Up for some basketball in the Panhandle Park?

Location #3: (N 37° 46.961’ W 122° 30.602’) or just enter (37 46.961, -122 30.602) into your Google Maps.

Hint for Location #3: House has eight sides to it. Check up the stairs…

Location #4: (N 37° 46.222’ W 122° 28.059’) or just enter (37 46.222, -122 28.059) into your Google Maps.

Hint for Location #4: Trees provide some good shade. Especially between the de Young Museum and Academy of Sciences…

Location #5: (N 37° 45.294’ W 122° 26.786’) or just enter (37 45.294, -122 26.786) into your Google Maps.

Hint for Location #5: There was a TV show in the 90’s by the same name. Check along the wall between the two sets of binocs.

Get out your compasses, your GPS units, your smartphones, your ability to navigate by the stars, or just your freaky psychic abilities to compete in BikeWrappers first promotional giveaway. Why do you need one of these nifty gadgets or supernatural abilities to participate in this competition on Tuesday June 15^th starting at 7:30 PM? Quite simply because we will have several sets of our BikeWrappers scattered throughout the city of San Francisco to be discovered by those lucky, quick, and diligent enough to beat out all your fellow scavenger hunters to the secret locations. The whole promotion will be run through the Twitter account@BikeWrappers with the instructions, news, locations, updates, and all that good stuff being posted before, during, and after the fateful night. So how is this all going to work, you ask? Starting promptly at 7:30 PM on June 15^th, 2010, we will tweet out the GPS coordinates of all of the hidden sets of BikeWrappers. All you need to do is, take those coordinates and put them in your GPS or your smartphone and try to be the first one to find it. Once you get to one of the spots, the free set of BikeWrappers(a $45 value) will be hidden in a cone with a reflective BikeWrappers sticker on it so bring a flashlight if you want to make it a bit easier on yourself. If you are one of the lucky folks to beat everyone to the punch, please send a message(preferably with a pic) to @BikeWrappers that you have found your set at the location # and we will tweet an update so everyone knows not to waste their time going there and can race to one of the other spots. We will be diligently tweeting the progress of the scavenger hunt and let everyone know when it is over and they have all been found. So how exactly will you find these things with just a GPS location? Well, luckily for you people that have a fancy smartphone, you can use this to enter in the GPS location into Google,Yahoo, or Bing maps, download yourself a Geo-cacheing app(here’s 11 good ones to choose from), or use your own or borrow a friends’ GPS unit to simply enter the coordinates. For example, this will be an example tweet: “Location #1: (37.802°N 122.419°W) or just enter (37.802, -122.419) into your Google Maps”. If you do this, you will see that the location is (the famous Lombard Street in SF). 

So let the games begin…on June 15^th…@7:30 PM… sharp. If you aren’t lucky enough to find a set yourself…or don’t know what BikeWrappers are, visit www.BikeWrappers.com to buy your own or learn a bit more about them and us.

I have always been a fan of Google Maps. I use it on my computer to find stores, driving directions, public transport directions, my house from space, and scour mountain ranges that I plan on climbing. Until recently, you had the options to figure out how to best get from point A to point B by car, public transport, or walking. I have recently discovered that Google Maps now allows you to find the best routes to BIKE from point A to B. It takes into account routes that are bike only streets, bike friendly routes, and even helps you to avoid the steepest sections of where you are going(which is very valuable in SF). Thanks Google…

On another note, I recently discovered that you can enter GPS locations into Google Maps which will be very important with an upcoming contest BikeWrappers is putting on…