April showers

Posted on Apr 1st 2008 | Bike Life, Blog,

Heavy rain and occasional hail on the evening commute last evening forced me to tie on the classic DIY dry-foot solution: plastic bags.

Two Wheeled Way Of Life

Posted on Mar 25th 2008 | Bike Life, Blog,

Below is a picture of the Planet Bike employee parking area. It isn’t uncommon to see it jammed full of our bikes. Today is a special day for me as all of these bikes are made to not just ride, but haul stuff. (I’m kind of into that kind of thing.) Both Chris and Erik are big fans of the Xtracycle Free Radical, I’ve g […] read more...

Big news for our ‘Cross Team

Posted on Mar 20th 2008 | Blog, News,

The deal has been in the works for a few months, but it was official today when JP posted it on his blog. We’ll have more details soon as we finalize a few more things on our end. We’re also pleased to announce Madcross presents: Jonathan Page’s Planet Bike Cup a two day UCI cross event in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin this […] read more...

Dick Burke Part 2 – Revolution Now, The father of bike advocacy

Posted on Mar 15th 2008 | Advocacy, Bike Life, Blog,

Thanks for the nice emails and comments about my Dick Burke blog. Beyond the personal stories about Dick, I did mention he was a visionary and that is the subject of today’s blog. I consider Dick the Father of Bicycle Advocacy in the bike industry. Many do not know this about him, but here is why I feel this way. Dic […] read more...

Bob’s Planet Bike blog

Posted on Mar 12th 2008 | Bike Life, Blog,

I guess I am compelled to write my first blog on a very sad note. Yesterday the founder and owner of Trek Bicycle Dick Burke died after complications from heart surgery. I have been depressed about this since last Friday when I learned he did not have long to live. The reason this affects me so much is that I spent ov […] read more...

Spring is in the air!

Posted on Mar 6th 2008 | Blog, Product,

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been ramping up for spring. Trucks have been dropping by to deliver new products and more trucks have been leaving with that same new product and lots of our old favorites bound for a shop near you. We’re excited about a bunch of new products that will be hitting the shelves this […] read more...

Warm fuzzy from Vancouver

Posted on Feb 25th 2008 | Bike Life, Blog,

Hello Planet Bike, I was stopped by the police last night; me and another guy riding up adark street (we don’t get much winter here, so evening rides in Februaryare often fun). There was a car coming toward us, so we were making room for it whensuddenly it started flashing lights and gave us a couple of whoops ofsi […] read more...

Planet Bike’s Jay Ferm in the news

Posted on Jan 22nd 2008 | Advocacy, Blog,

Advocacy Coordinator Jay Ferm has been busy outside of his work at Planet Bike as a board member of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, and as a co-chairperson of the Madison Platinum Bicycle Committee. Since last spring, the City of Madison has been working to achieve Platinum status from the League of American Cyc […] read more...

Keepin’ the pedal on the metal

Posted on Jan 3rd 2008 | Blog, News,

Came in today to find my inbox full of emails from all over with links to this picture below of Planet Bike’s Tristan Schouten lined up with Jamey Driscoll behind Sven Nys of Rabobank. Nys, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is currently the guy to beat in World Cup cyclo-cross. You can see more shots from the GP d […] read more...

Tristan in Belgium

Posted on Dec 28th 2007 | Blog, News,

For most of us, the cyclocross season ended with States or Nationals, but Planet Bike’s Tristan Schouten is still going. Just this last week, he’s already hit 3 world class events in about 5 days. On the 23rd of December, he finished 28th at the Grand Prix Montferland in the Netherlands, on the 26th of December he DNF […] read more...

Planet Bike Goes Solar

Posted on Dec 21st 2007 | Better World, Blog, News,

“Going Green” is a pretty popular buzz phrase these days. It seems like you can’t swing a bag of recyclables without hitting something that is Green lately. There are many things a company can do to go Go Green such as composting, buying off-setting carbon credits, going paper free in the office, or installing motion a […] read more...

Planet Bike team heads to ‘Cross Nats

Posted on Dec 17th 2007 | Blog,

The Planet Bike Sprinter van headed south last Wednesday for Kansas City for the 2007 National Championships of Cyclocross. If you’ve been following the weather, you’ve probably heard that area of the country has been getting slammed by snow and ice for weeks. The race course took a pounding all week, and by this pas […] read more...

Xtreme office work

Posted on Dec 6th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

Last night we had the electrical hooked up for our new ten kilowatt solar panel installation. How much power is ten kilowatts? To my dismay, not enough to send Marty McFly back to the future. It will, however, reduce 15 tons of carbon emissions annually. We had to cut the power to Planet Bike HQ to set up the electric […] read more...

New cyclocross photo gallery

Posted on Nov 29th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

2007 marked the first year Planet Bike sponsored a racing team. We started small, and with a type of racing that is close to our hearts: cyclocross. We hit up races all over the country, grabbed a few podiums, got muddy, and had a blast. Thanks to Mad Cross, Robin Davies and Djonn for the photos.Here are a few photo […] read more...

Blaze light in the media

Posted on Oct 25th 2007 | Blog, Product,

We’re very proud of the Blaze head light. Bang for the buck, I feel it is our best light. Now that it has been teamed with the Superflash in the “Super Set” we’re starting to see more and more of them head out the door. We were delighted on Monday when it showed up in the December issue of Bicycling Magazine in this […] read more...

Super Commuter Albert Bouchard

Posted on Oct 22nd 2007 | Super Commuters,

NEW YORK, NY – How do cyclists resemble the stars of popular music? Consider a racer in skintight, multicolored outfits, who might correspond to 80s hair-bands like Poison or any bands with “white” in their name. A triathlete or recumbent rider obsessed with the newest, lightest technology could stand in for the elect […] read more...

New Aquilo gloves in stock!

Posted on Oct 9th 2007 | Blog, Product,

Inspired by our heros of great cold weather races like Paris-Roubaix and The Iceman Cometh, the Aquilo glove will keep your fingers warm, when the weather turns cooler. Designed as a cool weather glove for early morning training rides and late season ‘cross races, the windproof Aquilo is named for the Roman personifi […] read more...

Limited Edition Pink Cascadia Fender Sets

Posted on Sep 20th 2007 | Blog, Product,

We decided to do something fun this fall and offer a limited edition version of our Cascadia fender sets in pink. How limited is the run? We’ve got maybe 10 sets of each size left (road, hybrid, mountain, and 29er). We don’t have them up on our online store, so if you want a set please call us toll free at 866.256.8510 […] read more...

Fall is here, and that can mean only one thing!

Posted on Sep 13th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

Its true. The time has come once again to put in the toe spikes and dust off the cow bells for cyclocross season! And once again, Planet Bike is proudly the title sponsor of the Wisconsin Cyclocross Series. There are 11 races slated for this year, and it’s going to be awesome!You can go to the WCA cross page for all t […] read more...

News You Can Wear

Posted on Aug 7th 2007 | Blog, Product,

We often get requests to do T-Shirts. Its been a while, but we’ve got a new design in stock as of this week.

Aero Monday

Posted on Aug 6th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

Dan found a way to reduce the drag caused by a full inbox this Monday morning. I wonder how many watts his fingers are generating on the keyboard?

24 Hours of 9 Mile

Posted on Aug 2nd 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

It’s officially mountain bike season around Planet Bike HQ, so last Friday we loaded up the Planet Bike Sprinter Van and pointed it northward to the 24 Hour National Championships. Once again this year, the 24 Hours of 9 Mile was the arena where solo riders and teams met to duke it out for the coveted stars and stripe […] read more...

New Swag For Your Feet

Posted on Jul 23rd 2007 | Bike Life, Blog, Product,

We just got a shipment of new red wool socks from Sock Guy today. I’m pretty stoked about how they turned out. You can buy a pair for yourself, or for the feet of someone you love.

Roadie Pump Review

Posted on Jul 5th 2007 | Blog, Product,

Our product design philosophy consists of two main tenets. We realize that sometimes it’s hard to get up the motivation to ride, so the first rule is that our stuff should be easy to use in order to make riding more simple and enjoyable, never more complicated. The second is that everything should be rebuildable in o […] read more...

Second City, first rate

Posted on Jun 19th 2007 | Advocacy, Bike Life, Blog, News,

About a week ago, we got a call here at Planet Bike HQ informing us that we were winning some type of award. We were all pretty perplexed, but after a few hours of phone tag, we figured out that indeed, we had been tapped to receive an award from the City of Chicago. Mayor Daley’s Bicycle Advisory Council 2007 award fo […] read more...

Busy busy busy

Posted on May 25th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog, News,

It’s been a pretty busy time around Planet Bike World HQ the last month or so. It’s finally spring, well, now it’s almost summer and we’ve been riding, and working like crazy. We hired a new member of our team, Chris Follmer, to handle our warehousing and shipping duties. Chris has a background in warehouse manageme […] read more...

It Makes You Think

Posted on May 8th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

I happened across a series of images by artist Chris Jordan that depict various statistics (fifteen million sheets of office paper are used every five minutes) in a very striking way. I encourage you to let the images load and scroll down through the series. […] read more...

A Dirt Sweat And Gears Race Report

Posted on May 2nd 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

Lee Unwinn has spent the last few seasons trying to break himself and a few handfuls of our products in the insane arena that is Endurance racing. We listen to his feedback to help design better products for you. This season, aside from being sponsored by us, Lee is also riding for Van Dessel bikes and Ergon grips. He […] read more...

SlowFastSlow

Posted on Apr 27th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

Most of the time we aren’t really car guys at Planet Bike. But living in Madison, you kind of have to have a soft spot in your heart for this guy As you can see, Erik couldn’t help taking a run at the champ. […] read more...

Planet Bike Races Into Spring

Posted on Apr 20th 2007 | Bike Life, Blog,

The first Planet Biker to hop into a road race this year was Founder and El Presidente, Bob Downs, who rode in the Great Dane Velo Club Criterium. He managed to get into the breakaway group and snag a podium spot in the sprint. You can check out the action below (Bob is center in the first shot and far left in the s […] read more...