There’s a 2x scale wooden model of a bicycle at Philadelphia International Airport. The wheels on this bike are nearly five feet tall.

This post (with more photos of this bike) is from last June, but the bike is reportedly still on display.

I just watched a short, 14 minute promotional film about Brooks England, the famous bicycle saddle manufacturer in Birmingham, England.

The company was started in 1866 as a leather trading company. In 1878, the company founder and president, J.B. Brooks, was riding his horse to work when the horse died. He couldn’t afford a new horse, so he borrowed a friend’s bicycle to get around and was immediately horrified at the uncomfortable saddle. He created the B-1, the B-2 and then finally the B-17 was introduced in the 1890s. The B-17 is now the oldest saddle design still in production.

Brooks uses only British cows (yes, they really said that in the video) to ensure the highest quality, consistent thickness and the “finish we require.” The saddles are assembled by hand in their ancient factory in England; they even drive the copper rivets in with hand held hammers and polish the finished saddles by hand.

If you subscribe to Momentum Magazine before October 15, you can be entered to win a Brooks B-17 saddle and the Brooks Challenge Tool Bag.

My young daughter had some blood work recently as part of a physical. She’s apparently inherited my good oxygen delivery genes: her hemoglobin measured at 15.2 g/dL and her hematocrit is at 42.8%. These levels are very close to those measured in professional cyclists, and we live at an altitude of about 500 feet above sea level.

My photos don’t do justice to the true beauty of this Italian designed steel bicycle. While the fast and lightweight carbon fiber bikes and frames are gorgeous in their own right, the Bianchi Dolomoti stands out like a prince.

Chromed lugs work well with Bianchi’s classic Celeste paint scheme, while Campagnolo’s midrange Veloce 10 speed gruppo and Bianchi’s old logo from the 50s highlights Bianchi’s Italian heritage in this classic road design. MSRP $3,299 with carbon fork; available now.

Thank you all so much for your comments about your feeling on electric bicycles. Electric assist bikes were huge at Eurobike and they were pretty big at Interbike this year. A lot of you expressed interest, so I went around and talked with several of the electric assist bike vendors including BionX, Currie/iZip, Schwinn, UltraMotor/A2B, and even Tianjin Flying Pigeon Electric Bicycle Manufacture Co., LTD. Surprisingly, Flying Pigeon wouldn’t allow me to photograph their electric bikes, which were among the nicer looking e-bikes at the show.

I didn’t see bikegonewild’s favorite — Pi in San Francisco — but I tried out a BionX equipped Specialized and one of the UltraMotor A2B e-bikes. There’s some question on whether these powered devices are “bikes” or not, but there’s absolutely no question that these are tons of fun. Here’s Annie Fike of The Bike Rack in Washington DC trying a BionX equipped bike. Her shop serves the messenger and urban cyclists in DC, and even she thinks these machines are fun.

Tim Grahl and I talked about electric bikes, and we decided we’ll cover them in a series of articles over at Commute By Bike in the coming weeks. We’ll profile some of the products that he and I think are interesting and we’ll talk about how bike retailers are responding to (or resisting) this growing market.