Congratulations to Team Mountain Khakis to a victory at the USA Crit Race at Mandalay Bay as well as an overall victory of the USA Crits Championship Series.  Team Mountain Khakis ride on the Freedom Racine saddle.

The largest bike show in the world, Eurobike, is a week of walking countless halls checking out the newest of the new product lines offered by companies worldwide.  It’s both impressive and exhaustive.  When Gary Gleason, Jason Moeschler and I traveled to Germany to represent for Freedom USA/WTB USA, we decided to travel with our bikes to commute from Weingarten, the location of our hotel, to the halls of Eurobike, located in Friedrichshafen.  What we found was an impressive network of separated bike paths, small villages, and beautiful countryside.

It is no wonder that Germany boasts a bicycle ridership figure in the neighborhood of 20%.  Besides the first night returning to our hotel where we took a number of wrong turns, the result of jetlag, getting from point A to point B in Germany is mostly a matter of reading signs, following the arrows and pedaling your bike in the correct direction.  Of the near 35 mile roundtrip commute, less than a mile was on roadway shared by cars.  Most of the trip was on separated bike paths along with a few light dirt paths.  It seemed that bike ridership to the show was decent, but not overwhelmingly impressive.  As you can see from the bike rack photo, the bike parking was never full.  In fact we passed several traffic jams on the way to the show every morning, an interesting dichotomy to experience in one of the world’s most bike-friendly capitals. 

It was a pleasure to bike in Germany and I would recommend it to anyone seeking to explore Europe in-depth.  The mere act of commuting by bike to the show transformed our work trip into an adventure holiday.

Imagine a community that accommodated the bicycle as a mode of transportation as most communities accommodate the car. A community where bicycles rule, buses have their own lanes and roads are designed to decrease the volume and velocity of car travel. A community where local business establishments thrive because there are higher levels of foot traffic. Welcome to the Netherlands, where 27% of the population rides a bicycle for transportation. The city planners throughout the Netherlands had a common vision - incorporate the bicycle into every road construction project and building retrofit project. The pictures below show how the integrated system works.

Class I Cycle Track. Notice where parking is in relation to the cycle track and moving traffic	Bicycle lanes denoted with colored pavement, stripes and arrows. Notice the separate bicycle lanes for left hand turns.

Such infrastructure has been Freedom’s guiding light. We believe that integrating such infrastructure in our communities in the United States will inspire more people to ride their bicycles for transportation as well as recreation. This is the reason we have spent countless hours at city council meetings, lobbying at the state and federal levels, writing proposals for federal and state bills, and studying the Dutch method of traffic engineering. Our next big project – To incorporate Dutch road engineering standards in all federal, state and local road engineering projects in the United States. We are currently strategizing these efforts with our advocacy partners. - Words by Marcus Vyvyan

Within the past few years, these terms have found their way into just about every magazine, newspaper, website and marketing campaign in Western Culture. After decades of neglect and oppression, these terms have tugged, pushed, and pulled their way back into the consciousness of the mass western population. They are used as verbs, nouns, and adjectives. They are sleek and sexy. They are the new “Who’s Who” of the glamour world and counter-culture movement. They are a lifestyle. They are powerful.