Hello there!
My name is Nikos and I am the host of Bicyclosis. I am an outdoor lover, passionate bicycle tourist, DIY advocate, illustrator/designer by profession and sports /martial arts enthusiast. Except from cycling, I have been heavily involved in other sports and activities like trail running, boxing, judo, BJJ and winter swimming, but cycling and especially bicycle touring is for me something truly extraordinary. Traveling by bicycle in beautiful places in nature, is one of the most magical and enriching things a person can experience in his/her life. It’s truly one of the things that I couldn’t live without.
By combining my passion for bicycle travels and camping (mostly without a tent), I have managed to explore and experience a big part of Greece’s most beautiful and wild places!
Judging from my own experiences in nature, the combination of fresh air, exercise and crazy beautiful views is nature’s remedy for melancholia, boredom, tiredness, stress, obesity, dry or tired eyes, broken heart, low self esteem depression and a lot more.
This blog used to be all about bike hacks, until I decided to share also my bicycle trips around Greece, cartoons, ideas and other DIY projects.
It became also the medium to share my advocacy for the underrated ability of the bike to carry humans and other things. A bicycle is a utility vehicle first and then anything else. You can see at the end some pics to get an idea of what I carry with my bike everyday =)
You can also read my post about the DIY bicycle pegs, an addition that truly changed the way I see my bike.
Bicyclosis is about the importance of being kind and respectful to the magical places we visit and enjoy (leave it as you found it – and even cleaner if you can), the bliss to ride and explore on this miraculous machine that’s called bicycle, the magical feeling when you create useful stuff with your hands, the beauty of sleeps in nature and anything else that inspire us and make this world an exciting place!
If you are planning to do some bicycle touring in Greece and need some info about places, roads etc, don’t hesitate to send me a message and I will try my best to respond.
Be safe and let the mighty bicycle take you to beautiful places! 🙂
Nikos from the mountainous Greece
Bicyclosis : Oldschool Cycling 
Hi Nik,
I stumbled upon your blog when searching for bicycle lights. I really enjoyed reading your ‘about’ section of your blog a cannot wait to read about all of your hacks. How exciting. As for me, I’m Mike, and I live in beautiful Japan. In the coming months I will gear up my son (12) and I for our first cyclocross tour of Miura Peninsula. I hope this tour will get my son hooked on cycling, and myself reacquainted with the sport I loved when I was about my son’s age. But before we shove off, it’s safety first, and with that said, I plan to build two rear bottle lights like yours! Yes, safety first, but a very close second is nature and living light on the land, and your light is just the kind of light I’d like to have for our spiffy new cyclocross bikes! Thanks for posting this. If you don’t mind, I’d like to swap design notes with you. In my humble workshop, I’ll get going with my trial and error approach to design 😉 Like yourself, though I have a background in industrial design, I aspire to be an illustrator and maybe even an animator. If I had more time, I’d enroll in animation classes with AnimatorMentor.com –an online animation school that is just the bomb! Check it out if you’ve not already. Anyway, great to have stumbled upon your awesome blog here in cyberspace. Starting today, I’ll be exploring all the electronic options that come with living in Japan and see if I can’t find cool components to consider when building my own (and my son’s) bottle cap bike light. I’ll subscribe to your blog here so we can stay in touch.
Happy trails,
Mike
Kamakura, Japan
Hello Mike,
Thanks for reaching out! The cyclocross adventure is such a beautiful idea. Your son is a lucky kid! I really hope that this adventure will make you ride your bike more and slowly start abandoning the car 🙂 I’d love to help you out with the light or exchange ideas about its design. It’s extremely easy to find the materials (most of them are very very basic electronic stuff). I’m 100% sure you can find them in your area (if you can’t find the led, there is always ebay). Also, it’s quite easy to make and it looks beautiful. I’ve made around 10 of them from bottles I found on the side of the road (while I was cycling). The second version even has tinfoil to make the light stronger 🙂
I will be here to help you if you stuck somewhere.
I will patiently await for the final photos of your lights on the bikes!
About illustrating, I would advice you to start practicing with comics to get a good feel of perspective and character design and then animation will come naturally. I’d say GO FOR IT now. I know animation mentor and it’s an awesome school. Unfortunately I’ve never done 3d animation. Maybe I should start thinking about it!
Anyway, you can always contact me through contact form!
Take care,
Nik