MOBs bicycles - Road

MOB's shop carries a large inventory of bikes. Of course, MOB rides road racers, he is primarily a roadie, and so you would expect the store to be a great place to test and buy a road bike. You would not be disappointed.

There are lots of brands, but the big three are Cannondale, Trek, and Wilier (in alphabetical order). There are a few Giant bikes around, but he is no longer handling them. And the bike I rode on our trip through the marshlands north of Bremen one afternoon was a nice Ridley gravel bike.

But Cannondale, Trek, and Wilier are the main lines of bicycles.
As you may know, bicycle manufacturers offer pricing discount/rebates to stores that sell large numbers of their machines, so a retailer needs to focus in order to get favorable/competitive pricing. The fact that he has 3 major brands ... unlike the "all Trek" store I go back near Komazawa Park, for example, is a testament to both MOB's sales volume and his customer focus.  (Of course, in Europe Trek is not just Trek, it is their subsidiary/affiliate Diamant, which offers many kinds of bikes other than road racers. And even if MOB loves to ride and sell road bikes ... in fact, there are more people coming to his shop to buy Diamant city bikes than there are high end Trek road bikes.)

MOB had very nice things to say about all three of his major brands.

MOB has always liked Cannondale bikes -- he rode an olive green Cannondale when we started riding together in Tokyo, and he also had a Cannondale "bad boy" one-armed-fork MTB as well.

As a dealer, he say that Trek's Switzerland-based team stands out for its wonderful service to its retailers in Europe. The bold colors are, well, very nice, even if not so Germanic. And the Diamant bikes fill out the line.

Aero, direct mount brakes.

Madone -- a classic name. Project One - customization.

These are new since I last bought a road bike - internal cabling adjusters.

Trek even offers subdued colors. They have everything.

And Wilier is his new love -- Wilier make beautiful racing bikes that are very fast and light. The company has revived an old Italian brand in recent years and is based in the countryside north of Venice. French Team Total Direct Energie rode Wilier Cento10Pro bikes in this summer's Tour de France.

Another adjuster for internal cabling ... on the down tube.

The Wilier HQ building -- Italian style.

Next post -- something about the non-road bike part of the shop.

Cyclyng Bike and Cafe

Part, only part, of the Cyclyng Bike & Cafe shop.

MOB's shop is located at Silbermannstrasse 2, in the Uberseestadt, which is a newly developed area on what was once a major industrial site within the port are of Bremen, Northwest of the Center City. The River Weser runs on one side, while an inlet for mooring ships is on the other, separating this manmade isthmus from the rest of the city. Many new, upscale apartment blocks are built or under construction in this area, with the population going from zero to tens of thousands in the past few years, and office and retail space mixed in. There are nice walkways (bikeways?) along the river, and a manmade beach. Importantly, this location allowed MOB to get plenty of space for the shop in a nice, new building, decent parking for customers who pick up/drop off bikes by car, reasonable rent, and it is not too far from the city center.

Cyclyng signage

Another interesting feature of the location is the proximity of Stadler, a HUUUGE warehouse store for bicycles. This building is, literally, the largest bike shop I have ever seen, and it is just at the entrance to the Uberseestadt. We are talking Home Depot or Costco size! I guess if someone wants to shop for a bicycle in Bremen, ... they are likely to come to this area, and if they do, they will check out both shops. More often than not, someone who appreciates a personal touch, and excellent mechanics, with competitive pricing, will end up buying from MOB.

MOB's shop is the red pin drop. City Center is at the lower right.

Like most bicycle shops, MOB's business will make some money selling bicycles, but eventually he hopes to build a large customer base who rely on his shop for maintenance, upgrades and consumables. He has an excellent full-time mechanic already and will add another, with a nice space for maintenance ("to-die-for," as they say). He did an incredible job in getting my Ti Travel bike ready for Paris-Brest-Paris.

The Wilier mats kept me from drooling on the floor as I looked at the racing bikes.

When I think of MOB's philosophy of this shop, it reminds me of Tsutaya's T-Site in Daikanyama. Apparently the founder of Tsutaya/Culture Convenience Club decided to make his own "dream store". He did not worry about whether it would make money, about how much revenue each section would generate. He made a store he loved ... and as it turns out, everyone loves it. It is always full. And the sales, well, they take care of themselves.

So MOB's store is designed the way he loves it. Others will also. And the business is off to an excellent start and on a good track.

MOB's 2008 JCRC Champion Jersey

Plenty of supplies - consumables, gels, bars, etc.

Helmets, saddles, shoes, bottles, tools, some kit, etc., etc. All you need.

Does that say America?

Color coordinated cable-end covers!

Very Nice Trackstand

The store seems very much a family operation, and Kazuko is in charge of the cafe side of the operation. The cafe is spacious, the food delicious, coffee tasty, and there was plenty of cycling literature to browse ... enough to keep a customer coming back over and over. I've just sent several years of Bicycle Quarterly issues to add even more to the collection.

Some of the cafe seating area

Food and drink preparation with a smile

Bicycle postcards?

Salad for lunch

Catalogue of the leading bicycle collection in the world ... recently sold off by the collector!
(The postcards were inside here.

The Cyclyng Logo.

Next post -- some discussion of the bicycles themselves!

The Cyclysts of Bremen

As longtime readers know, Positivo Espresso expanded from a local to a global phenomenon when many of the core members left Tokyo in the last great exodus of expats -- generally 2008 to 2011. This exodus has somewhat (well, severely) limited our initiatives within Japan over the last decade, but it has given us a core/founding presence in diverse locations such as ... London, then Mallorca, and Bremen.

Reunion of the 2015 Bremen B Team for the Giro del Dolomiti
(That is me across from MOB in the front, with the muscular arms and flat stomach.
No, actually that is Jochen, who placed on the podium in 2015 Giro. I am at the back,
my usual location for riding up mountains with this group).

Our founder (I won't call him our "bicycle leader" in German, since the word for "leader" reminds people of a very dark period in German history), Michael O.B. Kraehe (aka "MOB") is now the Bremen leg of the Positivo Espresso tripod ... After spending most of the last decade running an international business program in a university, MOB in 2018 opened a bicycle shop. The shop, "Cyclyng Bike and Cafe", quickly established itself as one of the leaders in Bremen, a city that was recently rated the most bicycle friendly city in Germany of over 500,000 persons. Perhaps Cyclyng Bike and Cafe" pushed it into the top spot, ahead of Hanover.

At dinner with MOB's family (Kazuko, Henry, Karin) -- even the teenagers showed up.

Why does MOB spell Cyclyng with a "y" instead of an "i"? His award-winning German cycling blog is titled "There is no "i" in Cyclyng". MOB tells me that he based this on a Facebook post he saw long ago where one friend wrote "There is no 'I' in happiness", and someone else answered "Well there would be, if you spell it right". But I always think of it as a play on the old high school sports team coach's entreaty for players to be less selfish -- "There is no "i" in team" (apologies for crude language in that excerpt).  The classic comeback is, of course: "There is no 'i' in Team, but there is an 'M' and an 'E'!")

Of course, there IS an "i" in cycling, and a lot of "me" at least in cycle racing, as Lance Armstrong, Bernard Hinault, Eddie Merckx, and other aggressive, not-so-friendly champions have shown over and over.

Anyway, at long last I was able to visit MOB in Bremen and to enjoy Cyclyng there. I had a great stay in Bremen and these posts present a long overdue report to other members and our long-neglected readers, mostly in the form of photos.

The famous "musicians of Bremen", and a couple of humans.
Not as impressive as the similar animal statute in Bolzano ... but more famous.

This post starts with some general tourism. The following ones will focus on MOB's incredible shop, and our afternoon ride outside of the city.

It is a little known fact that MOB is not "of Bremen". No, he is a Rheinlander living in a foreign land. These city-states go way back to the middle ages, and the Rheinlanders in Bremen sometimes feel a bit like foreigners. They retreat to the informal "Rheinland Consulate", which serves the right kind of beer. We went there.

Warning -- place your coaster over your empty beer glass, or it will be swiftly refilled. House rules.

Rheinlanders -- Look for the sign of the winking owl with a finger/feather to the head.  ... or so I am told

Roland of Bremen, Protector of the City, this statute from 1404

MOB as tour guide, at Roland's knee, across from the old city hall.

Peace sign in the city square. Bremen has been ruled by the Democratic Socialists for many decades.

Leaving the square.

These incredible buildings are a legacy of Ludwig Roselius, the inventor of decaffeinated coffee, a local.

More from the coffee king.

Coffee tastes good, morning, noon and night! Decaf!
Bremen also hosted the very first coffee shop in German speaking countries, 1673.

Scary statues, interesting fish tank.

After the in town tour, we went to a lovely restaurant in the countryside along one of the many rivers and marshlands near Bremen. It is over 65km from the North Sea, but very much a coastal city, with its shipyards, and links down the River Weser to Bremerhaven

Approaching the restaurant

Setting sun on the marshlands.

A feast for two. Those are small local shrimp (ebi) on my plate.

Serious berries for dessert ... and not the only berries on this visit to Bremen.

As we were ready to leave the restaurant ... last light.

Enough of tourism. Next post -- the bike shop!

Swim and Bike day - to Chichibu and Takasaki with Peter - SRAM Etap Fail

Hydrangeas still blooming in July along the slopes of Nariki-Kaido
Deep green with running water -- beautiful in every season.

Last weekend I could not get out on the bike. Rain, work on Saturday, and a barbecue for my students on Sunday (not work, but workplace-related), all prevented it.

So I looked forward to trying a mid-week ride. 

I had been talking about trying to ride with Peter W. I met Peter when he gave me a lift to and from the Fuji Hill Climb.  (I offered to drive or be driven ... just to cut down the number of cars going with the Tokyo Cranks and avoid sitting alone in traffic. Peter loves to drive, ... but he is the first to admit he would not make a good passenger, so the bikes went on top of his sportscar. I am more flexible in these things.) Peter has a flexible schedule mid-week.

Anyway, we settled on yesterday, Wednesday, to try to ride, and the weather forecast was for cool, cloudy, but dry -- as good as it gets near Tokyo in July, I think, though a bit of blue sky might have been nice also. 

I suggested 3 possible routes, all starting from Oume and ending in Karuizawa or Sakudaira. And I had told Onikata-san, the cyclocross racer I met on the way back from Karuizawa a few weeks ago, that if I got back to Gunma I would let her know and see if we could ride with her when in her home territory (she and her husband are in Annaka). She reported that she should be able to ride some in the afternoon.

After morning swim practice, I headed to Tokyo Station where I met Peter, and we boarded an 8:30 Chuo Line rapid train that would continue to Oume. The train starts at Tokyo Station and ends at Oume, so this assured we could fit our bikes even during rush hour, and get a seat the entire trip. Peter would rather have driven (did I mention he likes to drive?).  But we needed to go by train to Oume so we could come back a different route. Frankly, in Japan train offers much more "optionality" than car even if it can sometimes be slower. 

South entrance to Chuo Line platform, Tokyo Station 830AM weekday -- not so bad, though
now that I think about it, the sign does say "don't put luggage in front of here".

My first choice is to ride the entire trip, but if distance and time do not permit that,  I prefer train to car. My fast, minimal "rinko" preparation makes train easier, also -- 5 minutes and my bike is in or out of the rinko bag and ready to go. Again, Peter is more deliberate, and more careful, but it takes him much longer to pack or unpack his bike, even though it is a "rear wheel on" rinko bag (no grease on the hands from removing the back wheel, but takes much more space on the train).  

Takes a bit of time to get this bike ready out of the rinko.

Anyway, we were at Higashi Oume and on the road by 1015am. 

Another view -- always beautiful ... near the start of the Tokyo Hillclimb

We made decent time to the "Holy Fountain", where we had a quick water stop, then climbed Yamabushi and were at the top by Noon. 

The shrine of the holy fountain - fresh water before the climb

Arai Fudou-son shrine - the "holy fountain"

Peter is taller and thinner than me, and has a lighter carbon Specialized "S Works" Roubaix bicycle. But I am still a faster climber and waited 4-5 minutes at the top of Yamabushi. He is relatively new to road cycling, and if he rides regularly I expect he will at some point improve and get up the hills faster than I do, at least he will do so unless I lose some weight. Physics and the magic "power to weight ratio" make it highly likely. So for the time being I enjoy every hill that I summit ahead of him.

Elev 600m, or 608m, or 610m.
This sign serves as SR600 Fuji proof of passage ... only the framebadge is missing. 

Peter arrives at the top of Yamabushi ...
He grumbled about it being 30 meters lower than I had represented, as his Garmin still registered under 600m.
... Said he was "saving his energy for the last push".

I got way ahead again on the downhill, and I do not expect this will change. I drop like a rock and am descending well this year, picking my line carefully and trying to stay off the brakes--eager for Alpine descents. My knowledge of these roads, heavier weight, and Peter's upright riding position give me the advantage on the downhill.  Plus I had my mini aero bars on the bike, which pull in my shoulders and cut drag. Near the top of Yamabushi the pavement was wet and we were in mist from the clouds, but the lower part of the descent to Route 299 was dry, and once we joined 299 (this stretch aka the "ajisai kaido"), it was very fast all the way into Chichibu.

On the Fuji Hill Climb weekend Peter had brought all his own food -- a bit fanatical, I thought. Perhaps excused as a by-product of years living in China and Hong Kong, where food safety and quality can be an issue? I was glad that once we reached Chichibu he seemed eater to eat a regular meal, in fact said he preferred a sit down lunch. We went to an Italian place with good pizza and pasta, full of local ladies at Wednesday noon. The food was tasty and prices were reasonable--not a tourist stop.

From Chichibu the ride went downhill, figuratively and, mostly, literally. I was riding my SRAM Etap setup. I love this wireless electronic shifting. But last week I had a dead rear derailleur battery, way too premature. I figured the battery had a problem, or maybe I had done something to it. So I swapped out the battery for my spare. I put the same battery back in after recharging -- better check to make sure it was not my imagination. Sure enough, on Tuesday when I checked it was dead, so I used the spare battery. But that battery was ALSO dead when I left swimming to ride to Tokyo Station yesterday morning. Hmm. I almost went home ... would have missed the train, so instead decided to swap front and rear batteries and limit myself to a single chainring. Big ring, but I could temporarily change the batteries and use the small chainring on the Nariki Kaido climb and on Yamabushi.

Anyway, this worked fine until one of the sections a few km after Chichibu. The last battery died. I was stuck for the rest of the ride in a 50-23 gear. If you needed to pick one gear for the rest of this ride, it might have been 50-23 or 50-21 -- just enough to get over the last few hills until the climb to Usui Pass, and just big enough to make OK progress on the flats, even if I would "spin out" as soon as I exceeded 28-29kph.

With this gearing, Peter went ahead and soon had a few hundred meters lead on me. ... I could not tell him to turn left for one last hill that would have taken us to Oni-ishi and Fujioka. In the end, we just kept going down a valley to the Northeast and emerged to the flats of the north Kanto plain.

We contacted Onikata-san, whom we had planned to meet at Tomioka and ride with as far as Karuizawa. Instead we headed for Takasaki, a major station. She came by and we could at least get some coffee at a Starbucks. Annaka, Tomioka, Takasaki are all close and all her riding territory. She told us about her Sunday group rides -- typically they train on Jizo Touge, or Mt. Haruna, or a few other places. She said there was lots of repetition, always the same 3-4 routes. I guess I am envious, since living in Annaka puts you close to plenty of nice riding territory, far better than Tokyo. But to get variety you need to go a bit further afield. Or rinko, as we did. Her husband apparently was a serious bike racer -- won the Japanese national championship in his university days. And a friend of theirs runs a bike shop next to her hair salon in Annaka.

Post-coffee pre-train photo.

Anyway, it was a good, active weekday. Even though we could not make our goal of Karuizawa, I still rode 87km with good company, nice roads, and did one of the classic Kanto passes (plus I got in another 10km in town, and a morning 1800m swim).

Also, importantly, my etap failed BEFORE my Europe trip, with still time to put on a mechanical groupset -- better safe than sorry for PBP. Mark Thomas and Lois Springsteen, two winners of the "American Randonneur Award", both warned me off of electronic shifting systems for long events ... and I guess, despite my happy experience in Tasmania, they were probably right. I will submit a warranty claim for the SRAM rear derailleur, but meanwhile will likely be riding good old trusty mechanical shifting in France, cable splitter, spare cables and all.