GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

The Galfromdownunder rides with the Man from All Over in Singapore First published 10/6/2009, with updates below MOVIE: Meeting Mark Mobius in Singapore   I've just landed in Singapore and hit the ground pedaling, meeting and riding with customers Mark Mobius ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Mobius ) and Richard Piliero from Franklin Templeton  (the "Gain from our Perspective" people). So who is Mark Mobius, and more importantly, what am I doing hanging out with the likes of  him? Mark is considered "The Father of Emerging Markets," credited with coining the phrase that refers to investing in "developing" countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). Of course, this acronym is becoming obsolete as these economies rapidly accelerate towards first-world cushiness. He travels globally and constantly, frequenting 24-hour gyms while investigating promising companies - and rides his small wheels whenever he can. Mark with his third F...

Rare footage of Havana, Cuba in the 1950's. For more videos, visit our site:  www.CasaDelCarajo.com Here, captured on film, is the drama, passion, intrigue, and opulence of a legendary city during its heyday-before the Castro dictatorship obliterated it. Travel back in time to a bygone era, where glamour, elegance, and class once ruled. Every so often I receive a nice email from someone in the world who's stumbled across The Handsomest Man in Cuba  either on Amazon, in a local library or on a friend's bookshelf. They've usually enjoyed it (except for this reader ) and in some cases, have taken it to Cuba with them, visited the many Cubans I listed in my book, and in one case,  actually hunted down the Handsomest Man . Today's email was from Eric in San Francisco who just happened to be looking at Cuba and Bike Fridays and apparently couldn't believe his luck on finding a book that married the two together: Hi Lynette. Just read The Hand...

Patience , one of two lions guarding the the Beaux-arts building of the NY Public Library, knows that it's only a matter of time before folders may pass into the library unscathed ... My somewhat ballsy Tikit on Trial experiment spanning 2007-2010, which   tested whether I could ever so politely sashay my way into office buildings with marble front desks and starched uniformed gatekeepers - is now archived off the Bike Friday website. The links below are copies saved by that giant, silent hoarder of everything ever blogged, the Wayback Machine. The articles are mostly intact - but for a quick pictorial tour, check out the Photo Gallery and YouTube movies. 0.  Summary  (archived) 1. The experiment  (archived) 2. The results  (archived) 3. Photo gallery  (current) 4. The movies  (current) In a nutshell, it was an experiment to see how the the  tikit , the Bike Friday commuter folding bi...

UPDATE: Sold, 6/28/11, to Janine who says: I love riding road so needed a more speeding type of tikit it's 24 miles to work and I work around 13 hrs a day so take the bus and train both besides the bus as I live rurally. +++ Alan Scholz, CEO of Bike Friday zips along on Cycle Oregon 2003 - on an Air Friday with me trying to chase!  I have a new Bike Friday Speeding tikit. Thank you to Rob ,   Alan , Hanna and the Production team at Bike Friday for speccing out such a spiffy machine, and especially  Merle and Bethany for the cute note on the box when it arrived at bfold ! My princess pink Model T Speeding tikit is for sale. Hence, my previous one, about 18 months old, is spruced up and for sale to someone smallish with a penchant for pink (dusty rose, my friend Cheryl calls it) and a fast commuter folder. New, this bike retails for around $2300. David Lam at  bfold.com  is selling it - completely overhauled - for $1600. Me wit...

Laurie Anderson with her Explorer's Club certificate of appreciation, while hubby Lou Reed looks windswept and interesting.   The Explorer's Club  is officially busting out of its extreme snowshoe and crampon mold: Last night's event - a surprising detour from summit-talk and diving bell banter - was a discourse between famous avante-garde composer Laurie Anderson and experimental muso and "philosopher-naturalist"  David Rothenburg . And what's this ... DJ Snoopy slated for an upcoming talk on the calendar? Edmund Hillary eat your stuff sack out! But even more surprisingly, Lou Reed was in attendance. More about that in a moment. For the uninitiated, the Explorer's Club is an oak-clad clubhouse hung with the stuff of "distinguished" hardcore adventure - dug out canoes, sleds and snowshoes worn by someone with Wikipedia creds. It's where scholarly thrillseekers rub ice picks under the watchful eye of a giant, gnashing, taxidermied pol...

It's the end of the first week of my post-Bike Friday life, and I yet I still find myself subconsciously doing things one could call "work related". Since May is National Bike Month, I came up with the idea of giving the seniors at the Hudson Guild - where I volunteer teach yoga - a little thrill by riding it around their lunchroom. "Great idea!" said Yehudit Moch, the activities director, tasked with the tireless work of coming up with programs to keep seniors active and engaged. "Let's called it Folding Bike Fun, and do it at 12.45pm, towards the end of lunch, before they disperse." For disperse they do - the attention span is short, and hearing and vision loss doesn't help. The night before the demo I had this last minute idea to invite some local senior cycling friends to the show. Four names came immediately to mind: Tod Moore (72), a bicycle tour guide who rides every year in France; Jesse Brown (70), former president of t...

I took my tikit to the annual  Blessing of the Bikes . "Need a top-up from my water bottle?" I asked the Rev Tom P Miller, as he sprinkled holy water on the hundreds of assembled bicycles. But apparently it was like the loaves and fishes ... plenty to go around, and then some. Don't forget to bless the folder! I said. And he did.

I'm thrilled to be part of the the team tha made this happen: About the ad Thanks to the many customers and supporters who funded this ad!

Bike Friday Desert Camp 2010 is done and dusted. Check out the full montymedia . I should say "done and frosted" - for the first time in my 7 years of attending this camp, the weather was chilly and ominous, threatening to force us jointly and severally into the luxe sag wagon. Which of course we did - the tour leaders scooped us up in the van as we struggled along in amazing Scott-in-the-Antarctic headwinds.  Just look at this sky ... I taught a morning yoga class each morning and in the afternoon on 2 occasions. It was quite an eye opener to note very fit cyclists struggling with even basic flexibility - which makes me even more determined to develop my cyclists' yoga class ... I held the class form 7-7.30am, which provided time to do little more than a warm up and some standing poses. On a couple of days I offered a 1 hour class in the afternoon. The routine included lots of vinyasas (knees/chest/chin to make it easy), and lots of twists: Ujayi (ocea...