Hasta La Gadget!

Can pants be a gadget? And can any pants, ever, be better than jeans? It turns out that yes, they can, and they don’t even have to have any dorky cargo pockets to do it.

The new Workwear Pants from Outlier are designed for bike riding, and the Outlier folks (bike riders themselves) decided that they wanted something good looking, long lasting and, most important for cyclists, made from a breathing, quick-drying fabric:

We didn’t study some long dead miner’s trousers and then carefully distress the garment to match. We didn’t track down some antique loom and use it to make our fabric exactly the way it was back then. You don’t need to wear our pants for six months to break them in just right.

The result is a $190 pair of Cordura canvas (80% Nylon, 10% Polyester and 10% Spandex) pants which you can wear for weeks without washing (just like jeans) but that keep you dry when riding (not like jeans). Still not convinced that these trousers are a gadget? Try this: The fabric is treated with a self-cleaning nano-coating that mimics a lotus leaf. Spills just shake off, including red wine and coffee (lucky for me, as they’re the only things I drink). Finally, it has a “gusseted crotch”. Not particularly gadgety, but the schoolboy in me just likes to say “gusseted crotch”. Available now.

Product page [Outlier. Thanks, Tyler!]

You arrive at work and, climbing sweatily off your bike, you look for a safe place to lock it up for the day, somewhere that it will hopefully still be when you want to go home. You then walk into the office and, in the restroom, try your best to cool down and squeeze your sticky body into its work clothes.

Rewind.

You roll up near the office, hop off your bike and push it into the Bicycle Cellar. Leaving your ride on the rack, you hit the shower and grab some clean clothes from your locker. Fresh, you leave for the day, the bike secure. Bonus: if you work out of town, the Bicycle Cellar is almost on the platform of local railway station.

If you live in Tempe, Arizona, then this dream is real. The Bicycle Cellar sits next to the Tempe Transportation Center and the main ASU campus, nestled up to the Sun Devil Stadium, and contains secure bicycle parking in a wide-open studio along with showers, changing rooms, bike-repairs and bicycle rentals.

It’s a fantastic idea, and it solves pretty much every problem of bike commuting in one go, although by riding slower and using good locks you can arrive dry and safe at any destination. Yearly rates start at $110 and rise as demand rises. Monthly plans can be had from $25, and for emergencies or for infrequent use, you can pay $3 for all-day parking. If you do sign up for a monthly or yearly plan, you get a card which can be swiped to enter 24 hours per day. Lockers cost extra.

This is the sort of thing that should be built into every office building.

Product page [Bicycle Cellar via Bike Hacks]

Reelight, the Danish maker of magnet-powered LED bike lights, has announced a new handlebar-mounted version of its set-and-forget lamp.

I have had a pair of Reelights (the SteadyLight) on my city bike for almost a year and I love them. They don’t buzz and grind and slow you down like a bottle-dynamo rubbing the wheel, they’re glowing all the time you are riding, so you can never forget to switch them on, and they are utilitarian enough not to be a thief-magnet.

The one problem is that they sit down by the wheel hubs. The lights work by generating energy from magnets hooked onto the spokes. As the magnets are near the hubs, so are the lights, and down there they aren’t as noticeable as they could be.

The new lamps have a cable running from the generator to the light, which now sits up high. Same battery-free lights, same always-on behavior, only now you can see them properly. If these work as well as the regular low-riding Reelights, and you don’t care about bolting bits to, and running cables around, your bike, there is no reason not to buy a pair.

Reelight at Eurobike [Rad Spannerei via Cyclelicious
Photo: Red Spannerei

Manufacturer site [Reelight]

See Also:

• Reelight: Magnet Powered LED Bike Light
• Hands-On with the Knog Frog Bike Light
• LightLane: Personal Laser Bike Lane

Dahon, maker of folding bikes, has shown off a rather ingenious and incredibly useful little gizmo at the Eurobike show. The BioLogic FreeCharge is a little silicone-encased box which hooks up to your bike’s generator hub and siphons off power for charging your gadgets. The unit comprises a battery and circuitry to both store electricity and to smooth the inevitable bumps and spikes in the generator’s output.

Then you simply plug in your cellphone or iPod to the USB port, juicing the GPS as you ride. The time to a full charge is three hours, but the most likely use for this is topping-off, keeping your gadgets going indefinitely as you trundle along. And think about cycle touring: you can charge iPods, phones and even camera batteries, freeing you from the tyranny of camp-sites and power outlets. Fantastic, and $100 when it ships in March 2010.

Charge your iPod with your bike [Bike Hugger]

The YikeBike could more appropriately be called the YikesBike. The small front wheel, upright position and hands-behind stance all say one thing: pothole-faceplant.

The little electric penny-farthing (or P-Far, as the Bike Snob would call it) is on display at the Eurobike show right now, and looks like a lot of fun. It has a 1kW motor driving a 20-inch front wheel, and the carbon-fiber body means that it weighs just under 10kg (22 pounds) — good for acceleration and also good when you carry it, for the YikeBike is a folder which ends up not much bigger than the wheel. One charge takes around a half hour and juices you for a 7-8km (5 mile) run at up to 20 kph (12 mph).

Downsides? For something designed as a traffic jam beating runaround, it looks a little top-heavy. All your weight is above the wheel, raising the center of gravity. It looks easy to jump off in and emergency, though. Also, once the battery dies, you’re carrying it. At least an electric bike can be ridden home when the power runs out.

We dig it, though, and we can’t wait to see Woz on one, playing YikeBike Polo. There’s one more thing that might make you say “Yikes!” The price, when it ships next year, will be €3,500-€3,900, or $5000-$5570.

Product page [YikeBike]