Hasta La Gadget!

There are a few ways to travel long-distance by bike, and none of them is cheap (unless you actually ride the bike). To take your ride on a plane you either need to pay expensive extra fees for bike carriage, buy a folding bicycle, opt for the excellent but pricy S&S system (essentially a frame that breaks apart for easy packing) or now, buy the $600 Helium case from Biknd.

The Helium is designed to protect your bike and pack it up as small as possible. You’ll need to strip the bicycle down pretty radically to make it fit, removing not only the wheels but the seat, pedals and handlebar. Once done, it all fits snugly into the tough, flexible nylon and polyester case, cosseted by plastic hub covers, a Cordura nylon crank and chain-stay cover and fork protectors. As this will add 9.5 Kg (21-pounds) to the weight of your bike, you may be wondering why it is called the Helium.

There is some gas involved: air. Once packed, you hook the foot-pump up to the case and inflate it. This provides extra protection whilst adding negligible weight. There’s enough room inside for a 64cm road frame (that’s pretty big) or a full-suspension road bike. There’s even a a pair of wheels for rolling this up to check-in. Just remember to pack a tool kit so you can put it back together.

I’m planning on moving to Berlin for a couple months this summer, and I’ll be taking a bike with me. I’m not dropping $600 on a case, so I’d like some suggestions for flying. The bike is a beater, a track-framed fixed-gear, so stripping it and re-building is easy. Answers in the comments, please.

Helium Bike Case [Biknd via Oh Gizmo!]

Batavus, the Dutch maker of granny-bikes, has teamed up with designer Van Berlo to make the Batavus Utility Bike (BUB). The purpose of the bike is to make the Dutch City Bike a little more suitable for the modern-day city, and it has just won an iF Design Award.

The BUB’s shape was inspired by a paperclip, but despite this appears to be a good design: The front luggage rack, the full-fender, oversized chunky tires and laid-back seating position all make for an extremely comfy ride, even under load. The actual looks of the bike are more questionable, though. Why make the down-tubes that shape, other than because you can? And the brightly-colored, interchangeable plastic parts are likely to just fall off. Finally, what do you think that little plastic widget above the crank might be? It appears that it is nothing more than a bike-smiley, a dial that can be turned to “express” your mood. That’s just plain annoying.

Still, if Batavus can get this in stores for a reasonable price, and lose the Star Wars Sand-Trooper color-scheme, it could make an excellent update for any city-rider, including granny.

Van Berlo and Batavus Win iF Gold Award [Van Berlo via Bicycle Design]

BUB photos [Flickr]

Apart from their tendency to burst when stabbed with glass whilst inflated to 120psi (over 8-atmospheres), bicycle inner-tubes are otherwise almost indestructible. At the same time, they’re very easy to cut and sew and otherwise shape to your favorite design.

Wikkerink Design has taken a stack of old tubes and fashioned them into billfolds and wallets of various shapes, along with belts and credit-card holders. Combined with felt and fabric sections, these look like they would last you forever, and as the rubber is a natural material they should age gracefully, like leather or Sean Connery.

Worried about that old-rubber smell? Don’t be. I have made a lot of things from old inner-tubes and while they do smell at first, the rubber aroma wears off surprisingly fast. Wikkerink’s wallets start at $21, and are apparently treated so they feel like velvet.

Wikkerink Wallets [Wikkerink via Pedal Consumption]

The Factor 001 is a $34,000 bike designed and made by Formula-One engineers at bf1systems. It was built “without compromise”, ignoring the UCI (cycle sport’s governing body) rules in order to come up with what is possibly the most technically advanced “training device” ever. The most amazing thing about the design is that it looks – in essence – just like the bike I used to ride to school as a kid.

A bike’s basic two-triangle design is almost perfect, but that hasn’t stopped the bf1 guys from going all high-tech on its ass. Almost the entire bike is made from carbon fiber, but is still strong enough to take out on a real road (although NYC potholes might prove a problem). The bike also has a lot of electronics inside, from power meters to built-in GPS to a handlebar-mounted touch-screen. This bike isn’t meant for racing: it’s all about training.

There are a few departures from conventional diamond-frame design. The head-tube is gone, and instead the forks go all the way up to the handlebars. Apparently it is more efficient than the standard design, but it looks rather more primitive, too.

Gears? Shimano Di2 of course — the electronic Dura-Ace. These are combined with some truly weird-sounding tech. The aluminum cranks, for example, have an “embedded wireless torque system that is usually fitted to F1 driveshaft systems.”

I’d love to take it for a spin, and the Factor 001 would surely be light enough to carry up the many flights of stairs to my apartment (exact weight isn’t given as it depends on the custom spec). But $34,000 for a bike? That seems like crazy money, and takes away one of the best parts of cycling — you don’t need to be rich to afford the best bikes in the world.

And if you think you might need this to improve your performance, consider the story of Luke Whyte, the British biker who entered a South African road race at the last minute, even though he only had a knobbly-tired mountain bike. Despite this “handicap”, Whyte came in first.

Factor 1 [Factor 1 via Oh Gizmo!]

A team of students at Yale decided to build a spokeless bike for their mechanical design class. One semester later, they had the machine you see here.

The students concentrated on the rear wheel, for reasons of both time and money. The back wheel is where all the work goes on anyway, so if it worked, then the front wheel would be easy.

The back wheel is machined in standard 26-inch size so a stock tire would fit, and inside it you see a belt drive, usually used to replace a chain. The weirdest aspect is that double-crank and double bottom bracket. This was used to get the gearing right: imagine connecting a single crank to that rear wheel and you’ll see why. You’d have the lowest granny-gear ever.

It’s a single-speed, and as is the law of single speed bikes, we have to discuss the gear ratios. The chainrings both have 53 teeth, and the cog has 13.

We dig the look of the bike, too, especially the low-tech, scrapyard aesthetic. The spokeless wheel offers extra space. Zhaolander, the team-member who posted these photos on Reddit, says that the gap could be used to fit a motor or, even better, a carrying basket that would be in the perfect place to balance its load. The only problem seems to be the handling. Zhaolander says that the big rim supports make things top-heavy.

Spokeless Bicycle [Reddit via Engadget]