STUFFE

POSTER CABARET BICYCLE PRINTS
From Urban Velo, these lovely bicycle prints, produced by the Poster Cabaret company to celebrate Bike Month (May, in the USA).

RAPHA FOR LADIES
Gem at Bianchista has reviewed some of the new range from the big R.

Whatever you think of Rapha, they do little details extremely well - this should be how women's kit works, attention to stuff that matters rather than producing pink flowery versions of mens kit.

COME AS YOU ARE
A good piece for new commuters on the Bike Commuters blog, boiling down pretty much to not worrying too much about bikes, kit &c - just ride!

So, what should a potential new commuter do to give this thing a try? Here it is in a nutshell: find a reliable bike (it doesn’t need to be anything special), take a look at some maps to find an enjoyable route and GO FOR IT.

There's links in the piece to articles about changes to make if you need to carry things, and considerations like rainwear &c too. They also tackle one of my personal bugbears, the notion of the "perfect" commuting bike as a heavy, changuarded internally geared tank.

GIRO D'ITALIA
Yesterday's stage on the Zoncolan was a fantastic day's racing for fans, and Cyclingnews has rounded up some of the rider reaction in this piece here. Cadel Evans seemed to ride so far beyond the pain barrier that I began to wonder if he might just keel over - the World Champion's jersey seems to weigh heavy on him at times, although he's ridden a champion's race every time it's asked of him in this Giro. My favourite piece of commentary came from from the Velocast's John Galloway on twitter;

[J] I don't care if he looks like he's trying to strangle his bike, @CadelOfficial is a GREAT world champion.

I was also pleased to see Sastre put in an amazing ride to recover from being distanced at the bottom of the climb.