Bike Imagery

In all honesty I’m glad to see more bikes on the road. That gas price is not coming down and dude, it’s great to see people seeing the light! I’ve been seeing more bikes in other places too besides the road and trail. Marketing! I know I’m not a marketing genius but using bikes to make things more sellable can be a good thing. (I’ve seen examples of where it’s a bad—or maybe a dishonest or irrelevant—thing too.)

But what’s good? Wine is good. I bet I’m not the only one that grabs a bottle with some level of choice going to the label. I was at one point in time an assistant sommelier so I know a couple things about wine, but with so many affordable choices out there, sometimes it’s the label that pushes it into my bag. My all time favorite so far was the Cono Sur Cabernet Sauvignon/Carménère made from organically grown grapes. That’s cool, but so is the sweet citybike graphic they used:

IMG_7760.JPG
Seriously though, this was awesome wine, if you can find it buy yourself a bottle. But also buy me one too.

There’s this commonly seen image out around too, this wine is good too for the price. We’ve actually got a great piece of art on our wall with an original design of this:

DSC00037.JPG

With a friendly French spelling:

DSC00019.JPG

I’ve never had either of these, but check out the bikes:

DSC00032.JPG DSC00025.JPG

I guess it just matters what you’re into, I’m into bikes and I like wine so I’m alright with it. It looks like dogs are a pretty popular image to push wine as well; I like dogs, sadly my landlord doesn’t:

DSC00020.JPG

DSC00043.JPG

Not the Mad Dog I remember:

DSC00024.JPG
Perhaps a more dignified version of Mad Dog?

Market Your Product-or-Die

I must express a bit of disappointment in the Specialized Innovate or Die contest. I’d like a little more follow-up with the winning entry, I want to see more, read more, and see where this thing is going. The Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle is possibly the most beautiful bike concept I’ve ever seen. Absolutely outstanding from the little information I could glean from the brief YouTube video.

The entire Specialized IoD website is way too clunky to provide much detailed information; I’m sort of shocked they’re relying on YouTube to convey the contestant’s entries. And their site? Way to overload the bandwidth! The ominous galactic sound isn’t fooling me to thinking HAL is about to lock me out of my apartment. The site appears to solely be emphasizing the selling of their own product. (Yeah, yeah, I get it—it is!). I’m tempted not to even care about how their line of bikes are supposed to be different in furthering environmental change. Doesn’t the act of riding a bike at all “further environmental change”? Nevermind the Toyota ad seen on the same YouTube page as the “All Entries” page. I’d like to see Specialized do a bit more than throw five grand at a brilliant idea that they “inspired.” The Globe, upon initial observation, seems a decent bike albeit a bit mundane. Nothing hugely revolutionary.

Specialized Innovate or Die: bit of a let-down; Specialized Globe: nice and neat; Aquaduct Bike: Fantastic, I wanna see more.