For some reason, however, interest in the Coconino Cycles T Shirts died off.  Perhaps we saturated the market.  Or maybe, ordering Coconino Cycles T shirts was just a good excuse to call up Steve and have a good chat, a service we were not able to include in our T shirts sales.  Either way, sales of the T shirts dwindled.  So with that being said, we decided to clear off some shelf space and inventory dollars by offering the T shirts for free with the purchase of Old Man Mountain Racks.

Actually not just Old Man Mountain racks, we’ll toss in a Free Coconino Cycles T shirt into any order over $99 with “Garro sent me” followed by size and color of T shirt in the comments of the order.

Steve Garro of Coconino Cycles and Channing Hammond of Old Man Mountain are both inspired craftsman plying there trade by hand building some of the best quality cycling equipment around.  Both craftsmen pride themselves in simple and durable designs.  And both craftsmen cater to small and loyal sets of clientele.

Good times Good times were to be had at the 1st annual Flagstaff Hullabaloo. The event featured 4 great bands, kids events, great food and beer and lots of wacky, crazy people having fun. We decided to use it as an opportunity to let Flagstaff know that we had moved to a location in Downtown Flagstaff. We had some BikeShopHub.com T-Shirts done up along with a new banner for the Extrawheel Advert Trailer.

We set up a bunch of bike child trailers, bike cargo trailers, panniers and a bunch of kids stuff. With all of the kids at the event, the iBert Bike Child Safety Seat and our demo Strider Balance Bike were our biggest hits. We also had alot of interest in the Burley Travoy as well as the made in Flagstaff Wandertec BONGO bike trailer.

We also decided to deck out our Xtracycle Radish with an iBert, the new Xtracycle PeaPod and 6 different bike commuter panniers.

To finish of the gold sprints, Bike Shop Hub’s own backwards Casey was confronted with a backwards challenge by backwards Kyle.  The race was slow and lethargic (fast and furious in reverse).  It was also the closest of all the races that evening as the riders stayed neck-and-neck throughout.  Eric of Absolute Bikes jumped on stage to encourage the racers with some fortune cookies in the face.  At the end Casey squeaked out a win.  And in backwards tradition, he bought backwards Kyle a beer.

Once again, Flagstaff Biking did a great job hosting the event.  I had a chance to enjoy Wednesday’s bike breakfast and  attend the wrap event at the Green Room on Friday evening which included a bike fashion show where I got to bring the events mc up onto the stage on Xtracycle towing a Wandertec BONGO Trailer.  It was quite the scene, but unfortunately no picture to post here.

Riding in on Wednesday, I did get to take a few pics of this Mom riding in with her son in their Burley Bike Trailer.  With having recently launched the BikeKidShop.com we are very interested to here about how parents are bike commuting to work with children along for the ride.

BikeShopHub.com is very proud to be a growing company in this rough economy and we are looking forward to growing our team to help continue our pace of growth.  Let us know if you have any questions about any of these positions and please pass on the word about to anyone that may be interested.

I’m not sure what type of photo is appropriate to this post, so here is some cool bike art from our favorite diner, Brandys.

For our inaugural Flagstaff Bike Bloggers meeting I contacted Pete of MountainBikeRiding.com, Nate of HandlebarSandwich.com, Adam of AdvenutureBikeRiding.com, the Gnome of DrunkCyclist.com, Troy of Epic Rider, Dara of Dara Marks Marino, Jon of Rocky Chrysler and Steve of Coconino Cycles.  A handful of bloggers showed up for our inaugural meeting and we enjoyed discussing topics ranging from Nate’s recent participation in the Kahtoola Snow Bowl up and back race to the increasingly integral part social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are playing in getting readers to blogs.

Flagstaff is a great cycling town with extraordinary cyclists.  Beyond just riding our bikes, Flagstaff seems to attract cyclists with an opinion.  Here is a round-up of the above mentioned bloggers and their blogs.

MountainBikeRiding.com is former Pro Mountain Bike Racer Pete Prebus’s website dedicated to providing a full range of information and community to mountain bikers.  Pete’s got a lot of great resources in his website, from mountain bike buying guides, to riding tips to excellent mountain biking destination.  Pete’s media extends from his blogging into some great mountain bike photography.  Lately he’s added video and pod casting to the mix.  Check out Pete’s blog for true expert knowledge on mountain biking.

HandlebarSandwich.com has become Nate’s “handle” around town.  Nate specializes in living the good life and making it look easy.  Mountain biking all summer and skiing all winter, Nate is a rock star of the outdoor opportunities in the Southwest.  At our meeting we were all asking Nate how he maintains his schedule getting in one epic adventure after the other with travel and good times mixed in all while keeping his engineering job running at full pace.  To get some inspiration on living life to the fullest, check out his blog.

Adam has recently gotten into blogging here at BikeShopHub.com as well keeping our blog BikeTrailerBlog.com updated. Adam has been writing his own blog focusing on mountain bike touring, AdvenutureBikeRiding.com.  Adam is a very talented cyclist racing at the Pro level in both mountain bike and road.  Adventure Bike Touring chronicles Adam’s mountain bike touring adventures as well as featuring mountain bike touring gear and tips.

DrunkCyclist.com is the best know blog to come out of Flagstaff.  The originator behind Drunk Cyclist, Big Jonny has moved down to Phoenix for law school, but still keeps blog posts rolling in.  Dave, aka the Gnome, now holds the reins, keeping Drunk Cyclist running strong.  Drunk Cyclist is a blog dedicated to leaving no rock unturned when it comes to any controversy surrounding Flagstaff cycling, cycling advocacy, professional road racing, politics and anything else that captures the imagination and/or distaste of the very active Drunk Cyclist following.

Epic Rider, like Handlebar Sandwich, is a blog about living the good life in Flagstaff. Troy always seems to be doing some of the most unbelievably epic mountain riding and skiing around and telling the story of it on his blog.

Former top pro mountain bike racer Dara keeps her personal blog, Dara Marks Marino, regularly updated with posts of her life in Flagstaff. Her in-depth, reflective style covers a wide range of topics and often circles back to her love of cycling.

Jon, aka Rocky Chrysler, blogs at Rocky Chrysler. Jon is a long time Flagstaff cyclist and skier with old school cred. I’m not sure if I’m correct on this, but I’m pretty sure Jon has been spending his summer breaks from teaching, working at Absolute Bikes and leading their Tuesday morning rides since I first got into mountain biking 17 years ago. Along with his blogging Jon is a bike journalist having freelanced for Bike Magazine.

Steve Garro of Coconino Cycles fame, keeps up an excellent blog that keeps all of his customers updated with the current bike frame he is crafting. Garro takes some great photography of both his shop and the outdoors with some exquisite shots of the local flora. Garro’s travel also are a big part of the blog as well.

And I can’t forget good old FlagstaffBiking.org which unifies and unites Flagstaff’s biking community through a variety of activities, events, advocacy drives and involvement with city government.  Flagstaff’ Biking’s blog keeps Flagstaff cyclists abreast of upcoming events such as their premier upcoming event, Bike-To-Work-Week kicking off May 16th.

And finally as you may already know, BikeShopHub.com is only 1 of the 4 blogs that we are involved in. Our other 3 blogs are UtilityCycling.org, BikeTrailerBlog.com and WomensBikeTalk.com. While these 3 blogs are topical blogs and not very Flagstaff centric, the Flagstaff vibe does make its way through quite a bit especially in the photos. And we do have high aspirations for this blog, the Bike Shop Hub blog, to represent our shop life and what is going on in Flagstaff’s cycling world.

If you are a Flagstaff bike blogger and want to be added to this list, send us an email or comment on this post. Thanks for checking out all of the great bike blogs coming out of Flagstaff and bring your bike out here to see for yourself what everyone is blogging about.

We have all seen it, a cyclist riding down a one way street going the wrong direction, blowing a stop sign, or just not obeying the rules of the road and riding all over the place with out any where with all, acting as if because they are on two wheels the have the right to ride how and where ever they want.  These acts seemingly small are at the heart of bike/motorist interaction, bicycle advocacy and how bikes are seen in the US in general.

In general there is a feeling among the majority of motorists that cyclists should not be on the road and that for the most part they just get in the way of auto traffic.  This has created some strong animosity between drivers and cyclist, sometimes ending  very unfortunately for both parties.  I have seen the trends my self, motorists see a small number of cyclist breaking what they consider equal road laws that both cars and cyclist are required to follow and become disgruntled towards such cyclist.  But Americans love their stereotypes and cyclist are just as susceptible.  Motorists seeing a deviant cyclist then assume all cyclist share the same deviance and the assumption that they can do what ever they want turns into an unfortunate and dangerous assumption.

But on the flip side, cyclist are forced to abide to laws that were written by motorist, I wonder how many cycling laws in this country were written by someone who rode their bike to work that morning.  Were cycling laws truly written with the idea of integrating cyclist into American transportation and for safety, or were they written  with the approach of keeping cyclist out of the way of motorist as much as possible?   Is it right to apply the same laws that  govern a solid metal mass weighing a half ton or more, to a small non-motorized entity that moves and behaves under a completely different set of physics?  Most cars require tens of feet to suddenly stop traveling at reasonable speed, most cyclist traveling at a reasonable speed can stop in six inches or so. The type of cyclomcy that cyclist use when riding has greater implications then we realize.

America is a driving culture, this is not the Netherlands or Denmark and it never will be, it is part of our society to travel long distances by auto, the great American road trip is an inherent part of our culture and most of our towns and urban structures are designed solely with auto transportation in mind.  But as gas prices rise and environmental awareness grows, more and more people are turning to their bikes for transportation and fun.  Is it the increase in the numbers of recreational cyclist and cyclist commuters on the roads that will force a revaluation of cycling legislature or will a change in legislature promote more people to take to using their bikes, feeling that the transportation environment is now safer.  It could almost be a chicken or egg argument.  When there are 100 cars and 5 cyclist it is easy to disregard the cyclist presence, but if there are 100 cars and 50 cycles things might be very different.

The future of cycling in the U.S. is bound to continue to be a controversial one, more and more people are riding everyday and motorist certainly aren’t going any where anytime soon.  I hope that the future holds greater understanding and patience on both sides. Motorists need to realize that most cyclist are law abiding citizens that are at an extreme and very dangerous disadvantage,  just remember, it is someones son, mother, father, or daughter on that bike that you feel is in your way.  And cyclist although the laws we adhere to were not written with our best interests in-mind, we still have an obligation to lesson the animosity between us and motorist and to increase our legislative presence.  I know it is not fair out there and we usually get the short end of the stick, but disregard and spite has never accomplished anything.

The City of Flagstaff has made a lot of improvements over the last 10 years to make the city much more bike friendly. They have added new urban trails, bike lanes, and even a bike bridge over a busy 4 lane street. The urban trail system is a network of paved and gravel paths that are generally removed from streets and run through local neighborhoods. They provide a safe and quiet way to commute around town. In addition, most of the new streets being constructed have large bike lanes for safer riding on the streets. The annual bike to work week organized by Flagstaff Biking, is a large event that the City has rallied behind to encourage more bike commuting.

The mountain biking around Flagstaff is not too shabby! With national forest surrounding the town and an ever expanding network of trails to ride with very comfortable summer time temperatures, the mountain biking experience is a lot of fun. During the winter months many mountain bikers from Flagstaff head to the warmer desert climate of Sedona.  Sedona is a 45 minute drive from Flagstaff and offers a nice network of trails that surround the town. Take a look at my photos of trail riding around Flagstaff and Sedona.

The road riding around Flagstaff is pretty good but there are a limited number of places to ride. There is usually a Saturday morning group ride that consists of racers and recreational riders who ride the Lake Mary and Mormon Lake circuit for training/fun. The road riding is generally through the large scenic Ponderosa Pine forest that surrounds Flagstaff.  For a small city Flagstaff has a fairly large bicycle industry. The notable bike shops are AZ Bikes, Absolute Bikes, Single Track Bikes, Cosmic Cycles and the soon to open Revolution Bicycles. In addition there are two custom frame builders in town by the names of Coconino Cycles and Sendero Cycles. Steve Garro is a local mountain bike legend who specializes in custom fillet brazed steel frames (they are a work of art!) at Coconino Cycles. Joe Murray is a national mountain bike hall of famer and long time bicycle designer and he is the head honcho designer/fabricator at Sendero Cycles. And of course there is the Bike Shop Hub home of Bike Trailer Shop and Bike Bag Shop! Last but not least is the cool community of cyclists in Flagstaff. There are so many friendly riders of all types of riding.

Whether commuting through town, throwing down the hammer on a great piece of singletrack or enjoying a nice summer road ride, most fellow riders take the time to say “Hi!”, if not stop and chat about how great it is to be out riding. There are a lot of loose nit social groups that get together for a ride and then there is the highly organized Flagstaff Biking group that is involved in promoting bicycle advocacy in Northern Arizona as well as trail building and maintenance. When all that is put together it is no wonder that BikeShopHub thrives in this cycling focused high altitude environment. Flagstaff may not be large in population but it is huge when it comes to cycling enthusiasm!

What do you think? Have you been to Flagstaff before or would you like to visit? Do you live in a place that has similar cycling enthusiasm? We would like to hear from you. Let us know in the comment box below. Happy trails!

About the author:
Pete Prebus has lived in Flagstaff since 1997 and is the mountain biker at MountainBikeRiding.com.  See the website for more about him and mountain bike riding and maintenance tips.