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On weekends, the hub of the Silicon Valley biking scene is Woodside Bakery, en route to the winding, pine-covered hills that loop down to the Pacific Ocean. Tim Eades, chief executive of a computer security company called Silver Tail Systems , comes here on weekends to ride with his wife and their friends. But two mornings every week, he is here early, before there is light in the sky, riding with several dozen investors and executives.

“You’re going up this hill, in the dark, and people are talking about the Java abstraction layer,” he said. “It’s a great workout.”

High-end bikes like those ridden by Mr. Eades and others here are among the status symbols favored by those in the Valley who like the signs of their wealth to be a little more subtle than, say, a red sports car. And sellers of such bikes are among the many kinds of enterprises here that are cashing in on Silicon Valley’s gilded age.

Matt Berger, a bike aficionado and lawyer who represents several tech companies including Facebook, described it as part of the periodic “renewal of the Valley.” He said Facebook’s blockbuster offering would lead to demand for a lot of things: “Housing everyone talks about. Restaurants too, and I imagine bicycles.”

Mr. Berger bought two Colnago bikes this spring at VeloTech Cycles in Palo Alto, whose owner, Mark Richard, has been posting record sales lately. The Colnagos can easily cost $22,000 when fitted with the right wheels and other equipment.

Cycling is to Silicon Valley what the country club is to Connecticut: popular mostly among men, and mostly in their 40s and 50s. It is more recreational than utilitarian — Mr. Berger drives two miles to work in his Audi — though that seems to be slowly changing, thanks to the pressures of traffic congestion and parking woes in these fast-growing suburbs. There are bike lanes on many major thoroughfares. Most major employers in the Valley have showers, lockers and bike shelters to accommodate employees who prefer to ride their bikes to work.

It is not unusual to find chief executives here clearing their meeting schedules for a midday race through Palo Alto. Or to find on a Tuesday morning a gaggle of venture capitalists, dressed in cycling shorts brighter than the colors of the rainbow, racing past the horse stables of Portola Valley. Details of each ride are uploaded onto iPhones: who was fastest climbing a certain hill, how many miles had one cyclist clocked relative to another, whose heart raced fastest on this Tuesday. Naturally, there is a social network that caters to this constituency, called Strava.

Some describe cycling as meditation. Others see it as exercise. Still others regard bikes as a middle-aged distraction — “a pleasure machine,” in the words of another Silicon Valley bike merchant.

It is also, Mr. Eades says, a great way to solve one of the biggest challenges in the Valley: filling job openings. He says he has found a half dozen employees through his cycling networks. He has even hired people who are faster than he is.