Quick note to SF Bay Area: The atmospheric river of moisture that inundated the Pacific Northwest on Monday arrives here Thursday, with up to two inches of rain forecast for the North Bay, and 1/2″ to an inch around the Bay and into Santa Cruz along with gusty winds. As always, you can check South Bay Trail status here.
A few of you have noticed that I track top-selling bicycle products in various categories as reported by Amazon.com. These lists showing bikes, accessories, books, and so forth are updated weekly. I recently added streaming video and mobile apps to this tracking utility.
When I created this tool in 2008, I included DVD videos and PC Software categories. I finally updated these last night so they show streaming video and mobile apps instead. Among the gems I found was this British documentary outlining the history of bicycling in England.
Top billing is given to American mountain bike legend Gary Fisher, who is a wonderful story teller, along with British cyclng coach Sir David Brailsford. Other credited individuals include Chris Boardman, Ned Boulting, Sir Chris Hoy, Tracy Moseley, and Mike Burrows, though another familiar name — Carlton Reid — contributes significant historical background, and John Grimshaw talked about Cyclebag and the founding of Sustrans.
The pacing and editing needs work, and I suggest skipping the two full minutes of animation during the opening credits, but otherwise this video is a decent collection of vignettes of various aspects of cycling in Great Britain from the Victorian Era to the modern day. “Bicycle” is free for Amazon Prime members. Non-members can rent for $1.99 or buy for $9.99. Click here for full video details. To see the full list of videos, click here.
The other category I added was mobile downloads, which lists apps in Amazon’s Android App Store. So far, I don’t see anything worth the effort of a download bu feel free to browse this category if you’re curious.
Finally, I’ve also created a cycling rain gear category so you can see what kind of rain gear people buy when they shop online. As with anything, read the reviews and always remember that you get what you pay for.