Salsa Bicycles has issued a recall on stems that were sold on complete bikes and aftermarket. Salsa has received three reports of broken stems, one resulting in a broken wrist. More info here and here.

Jake Scully, co-owner of our local bike shop PC Bike, is joining a friend of his in a cross-country adventure. They are cycling 3100 miles from San Diego, CA to St Augustine, FL. You can follow their adventure at their blog.

Jake and his cross-country rig

You may wonder what would possess someone to embark on such an adventure. The answer? Jake’s a serious cyclist. And I have yet to meet a serious cyclist who wasn’t a little odd… so cycling across country makes sense. That plus he’s raising money for the Flagler County Education Foundation.

What does it take to cycle across country (besides being a little odd)? How physically fit do you have to be? How much time does it take? What sort of equipment do you take? Well, Jake’s “planning” on spending about six weeks on the road – we’ll see. Answers to the other questions will come in future posts.

As a brief introduction, I am a mechanical engineer by education, tinkerer by birth rite, sarcastic by environment, and bicycle component designer by choice. The editor of thebikeframe.com saw fit to ask for my contribution. Having never really worked on a writing project whose publishing circle spread beyond refrigerator magnets, I thought I’d give it a stab. Bear with me, I think the photos will be enjoyable.

As luck would have it, I had a trip to Taichung City, Taiwan in the works. As part of designing products in the US, and having them manufactured elsewhere, communication is a huge hurdle. Being on site for final approval is a must. I really try to fool myself into thinking I can do it with email, web-based project management, Skype, video conference, and a silent prayer… but it never works as well as being there and seeing everything that is not said first hand. (And when the first saying is Mandarin, well…) So, I thought taking the camera and notepad to the birth place of many a bicycle component would be enjoyable for TBF readers.

My travels started February 4th. Up at 5 to fire off emails and then get to the airport… (and reading up on how to fix a broken SCUBA mask buckle. Never know when that could come in handy.)

While I was getting ready, United called just to let me know my flight was on time. How nice of them…

I arrived at the airport and checked in, no problems… I didn’t think to take a picture of it, but the monitor on the OTHER side of the security screening said the flight was early. One hour delay. Oh well, still had 2 hours in SFO for the connection, all was fine.

Nine hour flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. Books and movies… and the luxury of “Economy Plus”.

After 9 hours in this position, it was through Tokyo International Security screening, an hour sitting around, another 3 hour flight…then arriving at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei…2 hour car ride to Taichung… which put me “home” around 11pm Thursday night – almost exactly 24 hours after I left home. Exhausting.

Lucky for me, I had an alarm clock at 7am on Friday! Construction. Damn. Having a small sense for how things happen on the Island of Formosa, I went to investigate and brought the camera. I found this clever fellow working a jack hammer, and pretty happy that he doesn’t deal with OSHA.

More to come…

This recall is about a month old and we missed it as it does not appear on the CPSC site. We’re posting it here just in case you missed it too. The recall info is here.

Mavic is recalling all models of the the R-SYS front wheels due to the possibility of the carbon tubular spokes breaking. Besides replacing the wheel, Mavic is also offering a set of Aksiums for use while you wait for the new wheel. And you get to keep the Aksiums…should see a lot of Aksiums on Ebay in a few months.

And the reason it doesn’t appear on the CPSC site? “For US consumers, the following action plan is subject to review and approval by the US consumer product safety commission, which is currently pending.”

Due to the expanded recall by Peanut Corporation of America, Clif Bar has added more of their products to their recall list. For more information, check the FDA site or the Clif Bar site.