Ciclostura is the Spanish name of the art of making accessories from parts of bikes. Have you ever dream about a belt made of a tyre and a sprocket, or a backpack which most of its parts come from tyres? It sounds crazy and yet is possible. Each and every part of a bicycle can be recycled. In this case, the world of fashion is enriched with the variety of accessories and styles which are offered by Kaiowa. This Valencian company takes advantage of those bike objects which are rejected as the bicycle gets old. Tyres, inner tubes, bearings, sprockets, chains, trouser clips, you name it, are given a second life in order to allow more people benefit from bike. Usually, bikers have an ecological thinking and try to cooperate shoulder to shoulder with actions to reduce waste, noise and pollution, and improve quality of life.

The Critical Mass started in San Francisco (USA) in 1992 and since then it has disseminated for more than 300 cities around the world. It is impressive how this monthly event has spread up to the five continents (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Masa_Crítica_por_país, in Spanish). Bikers meet and ride the city in a good mood demonstrating that a different way of transport is possible even in the most extreme circumstances. Kampala celebrated the first Critical Mass in Uganda at the beginning of this year. Good for them! The desire of pacifying traffic, claiming for space, infrastructures and respect for bicycles, giving visibility to bikes, protecting the environment or making relationships are some of the targets it follows. Hence it is opened to everybody who loves these principles. Furthermore, it has a political point in favor of the issues I have indicated and above all the use of bikes. Conflicts between bikers and cochistas took place specially at the beginnings. Thus, the more bikes on the roads, the more respect we have.

On the other hand, there are countries which celebrate a national, annual Critical Mass. Well, in reality the national adjective here means one big Critical Mass in a country, although riders from other countries are welcomed. I talked about the Criticona. Today I am going to expose what the Ciemmona is. Basically, it is similar to the Criticona since both events offer routes, workshops, meeting places, accommodation, etc., but in Italy. 1,500 bikers joined the last Ciemmona. The 2018 edition consisted in the Firenze (monthly) Critical Mass on the 18^th of May; workshops on the morning, the Ciemmona on the afternoon and a street party in the evening of the Saturday 19^th of May; and a beautiful route on the Sunday morning.

If you want more information, you can check the Ciemmona official blog (mainly in Italian).

From a historical perspective, a jousting is a combat in which two jousters on horses try to impact each other with lances. In the bicycle word, this concept has been adapted so that instead of using horses, bicycles are ridden. Lances have been substituted by plastic sticks in order to avoid serious injuries and contenders carefully respect the rules.

The Black Label Bike Club is internationally famous by its bike jousting. Once a year, they make a huge party on Brooklyn, New York, in which this event takes place. Although all the bicycle types can be used, tall bikes are employed to add more emotion to the combats here. Surprisingly, they have not had problems with the police even when alcohol is present.

Bicycle jousting can also be seen at Voldenpark, Amsterdam, each summer.

The term monster bike refers to constructions relatively similar to bicycles but different than ordinary bikes. A monster bike has more or less the same elements as theirs: chain, wheels, handlebars and so on. Some of them are modified on purpose just to show off or to create a sense of illusion or amusement when people see them. I wrote about the tall bike ridden by Quico and this is a kind of monster bike. One only needs imagination, the appropriate parts and perhaps a blowtorch in order to create monster bikes such as the following.

More elaborated monster bikes look like this: