SF Bike Expo - Highlights

Honestly, the San Francisco Bike Expo http://sfbikeexpo.com/ was disappointing. It felt like a flea market rather than a convention. I would have liked to see new developments, serious custom bikes, and more of the stuff on the fringe. The Maker Faire is much better event for unique bike stuff.

There were a few displays that really caught my eye.

Wooden Bikes - a new take on an old material.

• Renovo http://www.renovobikes.com/ - engineered hardwood bicycles that you can park in your living room.
• Bamboo bikes - there were a couple companies showing off their bamboo bikes.
  

Bike Apparel - most biking clothes are garish and unflattering. They are fine tuned to serve a single purpose, racing, and while they do that well, they seem inappropriate for the other 99% of the time. It was nice to see some clothing with some style.

• Shelia Moon -http://store.sheilamoon.com/
  
• Outlier - http://outlier.cc/
  

Bilenky - http://www.bilenky.com/ - this was the reason we came to the expo in the first place. They do two really cool things:

1. They retrofit bikes with Bicycle Torque Couplers (BTCs) which allow any bike to be disassembled.
   
2. They build special custom tandem bikes where one rider is upright and the other is recumbent. This Viewpoint model can be adapted for special needs riders. We've ordered one and should get it around the middle of February. I'll post pictures when they are available.