“Commuter bikes are very popular but practically 99.9% of commuter bikes are made overseas,” says Brent Foes, designer of Foes Racing full suspension mountain bike frames that start at $3,000 and go up from there.

Foes has applied his expertise in high performance mountain biking to create the Foes Pasadena Crown City Commuter Bike.

“I am hoping that there is a customer who will recognize that a frame hand-made in the USA is something really special. To stand out in the crowd I have taken care to create a distinctive and recognizably American style frame and built the complete bike with excellent components,” says Foes of the Pasadena.

According to Foes, he designed the bike to be light and agile but with enough give to make it comfortable on urban streets.

“Even the very expensive aluminum commuter frames felt pretty much like riding around on a coffee cans,” says Foes. The frame he created for the Pasadena is “the perfect combination of lateral stiffness for acceleration and small bump compliance for comfort.”

This bike will be available after September 1 at Foes dealers. MSRP $1,199 frame only, with different build options at $2099 and $2599.

MTBR has video and photos of Pasadena prototypes that were shown during the Sea Otter Expo last spring in Monterey, California. I’ll try to look this bike over at Interbike.

You’re a miles from anywhere and you get a flat tire on your bicycle. The glue in your patch kit is dried out, you’re out of CO2 cartridges, and you don’t have a spare tube. What do you do?

The usual recommended solution is to stuff your tire with dry grass and leaves. I’ve never had to do that personally, but people who have done it tell me it can work well enough to keep from damaging the rim, though shoving the tire onto a grass stuffed rim can be a challenge.

I have tried this solution offered on Life Hacker, which is to tie the leaky area off with some string. I wasn’t able to make that trick work, but Your Mileage May Vary and if you’re desperate it doesn’t hurt to try.

You should avoid riding on a flat tire. You can damage your rim — if you flat it’s likely the rear tire and the wheel is generally the second most expensive part of your bike after the frame. Your tire will also easily roll off of the rim, causing you to lose control even at slow speeds.

Wearing earphones while bicycling in traffic can be dangerous and is possibly illegal where you live. You want tunes while you ride. One possible answer is this Soundwalk Audio Vest.

The Sound Vest holds your portable audio and the speakers built in to the vest straps provide the sound.

More about this in this video from The Gadget Show.

Another wonderfully poetic bicycle video from Andrya Dorfman.

See Andrya’s more recent work here.

I saw this unusual tandem bicycle in Santa Cruz last week. I’m trying to figure out some of the weird features of this tandem.

For example,

• How does that big ring inside the timing chain stay in place?
• What is that extra set of cranks under the stokers bars for? Russ suggests these might be hand cranks, but I think they might allow a very short rider to pedal recumbent style.
• What about that handle that appears to stick out obliquely from the stoker’s saddle? Another hint that this might be for a short rider?

Your thoughts?

No matter where you stand on the facilities debate, I think you’ll find the beginning of this video interesting, which shows how Amsterdamsestraatweg — the road to Amsterdam — has changed since its beginning in 1812 as Napoleon’s Imperial Route Number 2.

The sidepath reminds me of the two way sidepath along West Cliff Drive and Beach Street in Santa Cruz, California.

Via How We Drive and Hembrow.