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Bike Friday customer Colin Freestone is a long time yoga practitioner. "When I did a cycling trip and neglected my practice I became "unco" (uncoordinated)" he said. Read more . BACK from a month of customer evangelizing in Arizona and Colorado I've headplanted myself into a 200-hour yoga teacher training course at a small, Chelsea studio called Joschi Body Bodega . Yup, as I told my Facebook friends, "this is the year for getting certified in everything you normally pay for". Certainly better than sinking money into high risk stocks! I've noticed that my cycling life has probably created, shall we say, certain imbalances in my mortal coil. Crunchy knees , and a stiffish upper body which I sought to rectify by taking up poledancing . Only trouble with that one - you need a pole! I realized I can't be the only cyclist noticing these changes. I decided that with the right education, I could devise a yoga practise suitable for my bicycling br...

So here I am in Boulder, Colorado, for the first time in my life, and direct from another Arizona Desert Camp . My Colorado Schedule I've already been treated to a couple of nights at the home of the Bike Friday Club of Denver leaders Tom and Dianna McDermott, who took me cougar spotting at the local Whole Paycheck on the first day. Cougar spotting? Git thee with the times or, for those too lazy to click: Cougar – an older woman who sexually pursues men at least eight years her junior.[12] The term has been used in (American) TV series, advertising and film. The 2007 film Cougar Club was dedicated to the subject. It is also featured in the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch "Cougar Den". There was only one possible sighting - a woman in a baby pink Chanel-cut suit, big glasses, blonde hair, beige pumps. Let's say, the kind of outfit you would not ride a bicycle in except for a Bond poster. "At 46, your qualify as a cougar you put on that flapper dress,...

Well here it is - some 8 years after landing in the USA on a temporary H1B work permit. In truth, I only started applying for it properly about 18 months ago, under the category National Interest Waiver, which I talked about here . The people I must thank include the referees I had to muster to build my case. Either that or get married, and we can't have me doing that, now can we? Thank you to the following people for providing glowing references: Fred Matheny, RoadBikeRider.com Alan Scholz, Co-founder, Bike Friday Dan Okenfuss, VP Public Relations, Little People of America Douglas Card, Adjunct Professor, U of O Eileen Lafer, Professor, U of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio Fred Iannotti, Life Member, Appalachian Mountain Club Gihon Jordan, Transportation Expert Jackie Huba, Principal, CustomerEvangelists.com Jeff Bernards, Bicycle Advocate Jerry Norquist, CEO, Cycle Oregon Jerry Segal, CFO, Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis, Inc. Jim Clash, "The Adventure...

This is my submission to the Queensland Tourism Island Caretaker Job , along with the 30,000 other applicants (including Dean Martin's son, the Edmund Hilarys and Jacques Cousteaus of the world, and even an hilarious Osama impersonator). I use it now as part of my bio/resume, to demonstrate what I can do in 1 minute with a pocket digital camera, a guitar, a Mac, and an old tatty straw hat. My friend and multi-award-winning Art Director downunder, Sue Carey, challenged me to defend my self-styled title as a Multimediaclast - so this is for you, Sue! Judging from the staggering caliber of applicants, I'll be surprised if it floats (ha!) but oh, I do so love a 1-minute creative challenge. I can also I console myself that I've been doing this exact same job for the past 5 years as the Customer Evangelist and chief content creator for Bike Friday. The only difference is my butt is planted on a bike saddle, rather than a boogieboard. For tech trivia buffs, here's ...

If anyone needs to watch their shekels in this recession it's probably the average New Yorker, according to a recent report from the Center for Urban Future which revealed, among other things: * A New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston. * In Manhattan, a $60,000 salary is equivalent to someone making $26,092 in Atlanta. My NY recession tip of the moment involves saving money on entertainment without really trying, thus: I get the just-expired TimeOut NY dumped in the lobby every week. The idea is that you get so engrossed flipping through it and 'awwww shucksing' over all the things you just missed, you subscribe. The real benefit is that reading it takes so much of your morning you actually feel exhausted like you vicariously partook - but your wallet is intact. But I was foiled: a friend got so tired of me recanting just-missed events he bought me a subscription. Watch out wallet, ...

Pictured: Cheryl Lead took this shot of the coverguy admiring his cover! FIVE YEARS after the first edition of my book, Then Handsomest Man in Cuba , people are still somehow finding well-thumbed copies in doctor's waiting rooms (even a hostel bookshelf in Nepal!). It's gratifying to receive the occasional email from a reader who liked it - even a few who didn't . It's just been released in Germany as of 2009, thanks to my agent Peter McGuigan of Foundry Media - and I'm glad my German is rusty - I can't imagine how some of my Aussieisms like "threw a pickle in the cheesecake" came out of the Google Translator. Please ask for copies at your local bookstore - it really helps keep an author stay in the $1 bins inside the store rather than outside - soggy books are indeed sad. Dear Lynette, I just finished "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and loved it, loved it, loved it!I THANK YOU for sharing such a wonderful adventure. I just wanted you to know...

Getting the full knee-down from bike fit guru  Andy Pruitt , knee guy to the cycling stars (including the US Cycling Federation).  A-fitting we will go...  Watch  VIDEOS See  PHOTO GALLERY TODAY I received some good news - and in this recession, any news is good news. My knees, which were starting to sound like I was hiking through granola when descending a stairs, are not falling apart after all. I merely have a relatively benign form of crepitus . Wiki it and you'll see it's a term for anything that leads to innoisy knees. In my case, no bones or diminished cartilege seems to be involved - just fluid. The ass-ometer measures, well... I consulted RoadBikeRider.com's Ed Pavelka on this last year, who wrote: Lynette -- you need to see a cycling medical specialist. The best in the business is Andy Pruitt at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine . If you can't go to Colorado maybe he can recommend someone in your area. Generally, ...

This morning I switched on my Blackberry Pearl and clicked on a link a customer Leon in South Africa sent me. His email simply said: When we tend to complain how bad things are sometimes we do not know how fortunate we are. This is an article out of today's Sunday Times . The first thing displayed in my little handheld window onto the world was the above picture with this caption: No grocery deliveries: Food is much scarcer in Zimbabwe’s rural areas than in the cities. Kudakwashe Chiveura prepares to catch a cricket he has dug up to eat in Mutoko, northeast of Harare. Picture: AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi When I switch on to a news site from the west, like NYT or CNN, the first thing that's windowed is "Democrats set to offer loans to Carmakers". Even on a salary of $1 a year, think of how infinitely better off an auto exec is compared to the above gentleman about to breakfast on a cricket. How ever hard it may seem, we must try to be thankful. Thank you Leon for you...

Strewth, you learn something new and wierd every day ... I just posted this video of myself getting a haircut (for NY) in Chinatown for my upcoming Cheap'n'Choosy blog post and noticed almost 900 hits on it within a day of posting. How odd ... I used YouTube's handy Insight tool and found that a large chunk of views came from the clip being linked at The Shampoo Forum . Reading through some of the posts there reveals a foamy fetish - people who love getting their hair shampooed, brushed, combed ... Now we all love that feeling, just like a dog loves a good scratch, and especially when comes with a free scalp massage - but I never thought of it as being discussion topic. The internet never ceases to amaze, eh. On this forum, "blow job" takes on a whole old meaning! Well, at least unlike porn, it's all good, clean fun, and the participants have little chance of getting pregnant or catching any communicable diseases. I wonder when the Proctor and Gamble's w...

Dumbo Feather is very nice to touch-and-sniff coffee table mag featuring interviews with people who've spent a bit of time physically and/or mentally outside their own postcode (or zipcode as they say upover). If your internet connection doesn't complain about downloading the very stylishly art directed PDF, do avaread . You can find this link to it buried in my bio . They've made some of my snapshots look very arty indeed, including a classy cropping of the above shot, which is simply a close up of a topo map of the Nanawale Estates subdivision where I have my sliver of foliated lava on the Big Island of Hawaii . I was contacted by Kiwi editor/owner Kate Bezar while downunder 2008 , and she came over to my apartment and let me ramble into her little dictaphone. Since it came out I've received emails from some wonderful people from my past: Sue Carey and Gigi, from my days at Saatchi. And some coincidences: I was wandering down 19th street in Chelsea, Manhattan a mon...

From this article by Nicolai Ouroussoff : "But traumatic events have a way of making you see things more clearly. When Rem Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in SoHo three months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was immediately lampooned as a symbol of the fashion world’s clueless self-absorption. The shop was dominated by a swooping stage that was conceived as a great communal theater, a kind of melding of shopping and civic life. Instead, it conjured Champagne-swilling fashionistas parading across a stage, oblivious to the suffering around them. The Chanel Pavilion may be less convoluted in its aims, but its message is no less noxious." Maybe it's just as well I didn't go inside! Here's my take on something even more noxious

Thank you to Peiheng Tsai for this cellphone image, taken in Union Square, NY, 1:18am on November 5 It's the day after the election. With the line "the election wasn't about color, it was about the economy" being bandied about, I, as a person of color, beg to differ. BARACK OBAMA: The Power of Positive Discrimination is my take on my FastCompany blog. In that post you'll see I also mention Little Person (that's dwarf or short statured person - but never midget) Dan who, like Obama, is doing great things for his minority group - by being out there, and being successful. Celebrate our differences, because as Obama shows, they're the true catalysts of change. Watch Dan in action . Speaking of little people, I saw one enter the same pizza place I was in. I found myself avoiding looking at him for fear of being rude - how many of us know that feeling? OK, now imagine you are that little person, feeling people's eyes shift away from you but knowing you are...

Pictured: Not doing a century in Alaska with winter riding expert Simon Rakower of All Weather Sports I DON'T do centuries. I find lotsa miles boring. I generally do the middling option - 50-60. Even on PACTOUR events (but for that, I am always working in some capacity so can usually wag out and save face). My technique for a) getting fit and b) meeting almost everyone at some point and c) getting back early enough to still have most of the day at my disposal - is to only do the 50-60 option. The drill: leave earlyish but not real early. Hammer with the fast guys as they catch you, hanging on for long enough to impress (but BEFORE you start slipping back). Bid them adieu, drop back, take a rest, mingle and chat with different groups bringing up the rear. Wait for the next fast group. Repeat until you've worked yourself all the way to the back. By this time you've finished early enough, you've had several good hard sprints, which are better than one long middling slog (...

I've just posted some multimedia about this intriguing, outspoken and let's face it, super buff Aussie social activist, Peter Melov: MOVIE: Peter Melov Live Food Cooking Class - 3-part video showing us how to make his signature chocolate balls, loaves and not fishes Photo Gallery of the class Melov's credo: Coconut! "A medium chain saturated fat that is understood by the human body." However, he is adamant his cooking is really just to sweeten people up for his real message, that of social awareness about the sinister politics of the food pyramid - and what he believes are the lies and propaganda we ingest along with bad food, thereby supporting big Pharma, conglomerates and other organizations that feed the need for greed. "My family think I'm crazy," he says. His family are medicos and apparently "obese, got acne, health issues ..." I met Peter after eyeing off his caco-nib-studded chocolate balls at the Bondi Junction weekend market...

Fashion designer Telfar Clemens tests out the Bike Friday tikit PHOTO GALLERY    Small wheels, tall models MOVIE CLIPS   Playlist The casting (7 mins)  Young NY models audition for the show, including riding the tikitTM! The show (10 mins)  20 minutes of fame as 250  fashionistas converge on Telfar's lunchtime showing I just finished filming a collaboration between Bike Friday and young fashion designer Telfar Clemens at New York Fashion Week. No, that's not Telfar above, that's Pavel, one of the young models at the show, who you may see brooding from giant CK billboards. The photo is meant to show our comparative heights: if he's the Empire State Building, I am in comparison, the illegal taco cart in parked in the cutter. Below is a shot of me and Telfar Clemens, with one of the monogrammed tikits we loaned him for his show. Read the full monty below ... JUST WHO IS TELFAR, I hear you mutter as you tuck your Arm...