Hasta La Gadget!

Summer is a great time to get out on two wheels. Sure, “Summer” means different things in different places — here in Barcelona it means the afternoons are too hot to leave the house. In England it means rain, just like any other day. But it also means more outdoor sports, so maybe you should think about dusting off the bike, heading outside and burning some calories while enjoying the sun. Here are five gadgets that will make the trips even better.

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Wired

Toe Clips

Unless you’re just nipping out to the store, toe-clips and straps can make a huge change to your riding. The metal calipers keep the straps held open so your feet can easily slide in, and they also stop your feet from moving too far forward.

Essential on a fixed-gear where having a foot slip off the pedal could be disastrous, they also help stopping and accelerating by letting you apply upwards force on the pedal.

More important for occasional riders is that they keep you feet in the right place, placing the ball of the toes over the pedal. Most people just sit the centre of their soles on the platform which is inefficient and actually less comfortable. Buy some clips. Any brand will do to start, just ask your LBS (Local Bike Store).

Photo: J Ferguson/Flickr

Pump

Sure, you have a pump, but a) does it really work and b) do you use it? It’s important to keep tires at the correct pressure to protect the rims of the wheels, to keep the bike rolling smoothly (under-pumped tires make for a sluggish ride) and to stop the inner-tubes themselves from being pinched and bursting.

Tires all have the recommended pressure written on the side-wall, and you should inflate accordingly using either a floor pump with a gauge, the kind you put your feet on a pump with two hands, or use a decent, compact hand pump and keep shoving in the air until the tire is hard. The advantage of a portable pump is that you can take it with you and fix punctures on the road. The one you see here is the Crank Brothers Power Pump Pro, a $38 device which can be switched between high-volume and high-pressure, and has a built-in pressure gauge. I have the baby brother of this model and it is sturdy, light and works great.

Product page [Crank Bros]

Water Bottle

You can either throw a bottle of mineral water in the bike’s basket, wear a water-carrying backpack like the CamelBak or use a bottle-cage fixed to the frame. Whatever you choose, take something. Biking will often take you away from urban centers and you can’t just visit a corner store when you’re on a forest road. Hell, if you’re feeling fancy, you can even hack your own holder.

Seat

The seat that came with your bike probably sucks. It will make you sweaty, put pressure on your perineum and generally make you sore. There are a few ways to go here. A noseless seat can be comfier as it doesn’t press on the sensitive baby-maker, but a properly adjusted traditional-style saddle won’t, either. You can go for a heavily padded, wide saddle, but this will still make you sweaty if it is made of plastic.

My choice is the Brooks. I have an old, sprung one on my Dutch city bike, and a new, unsprung one on my fixed. Both are extraordinarily comfortable, and better, both wick sweat away so even after a long ride in Summer heat you step away dry. They’re not cheap — a basic one costs around $70, but it will probably be the last saddle you ever need to buy (just pop the old plastic one back on when you sell the bike).

Product page [Brooks]

Computer

This certainly doesn’t seem necessary, but once you start racking up the miles you’ll want to know just how many you did. A basic cyclometer, like Knog’s NERD, will count the revolutions of the front wheel and use the data to calculate speed, distance and, combined with the clock, a whole lot of other useful info. Go for a wireless version which puts the terminal on the handlebars and the counter down on the bike’s fork, where it is tripped once per revolution by a spoke-mounted magnet.

Higher end models get GPS, Bluetooth and altimeters, but you can get something simple like the Nerd for $50-$60. It’s worth it the first time you can brag to your friends that you broke the speed limit under your own power.

Product page [Knog]
Photo: Leander Kahney/Wired

On paper (or on-screen), the British Eagle Tulsa Mens Bike looks to be a bargain, especially in over-priced, cash-strapped Blighty. The £70 ($115) bicycle comes from Asda, one of the UK’s cheaper supermarkets, and looks to offer free, healthy transport to anyone who can save up a week’s unemployment benefit.

But the trouble begins… immediately. Helen Pidd from the Guardian’s Bike Blog took one in to her Local Bike Shop (actually my old local shop, too, when I was unlucky enough to live in London), Two Wheels Good in Crouch End. The conclusion of the LBS? The bike is junk.

First, the women’s model was supplied with a men’s saddle. Second, it just doesn’t work properly. The brake calipers are bendy, flexy plastic, the twist-grip gears won’t actually hold in a single speed for more than a couple minutes (or until the next bump in the road) and hills were impossible: “but tackling them on my weighty (18kg), graceless machine felt like I was scaling Pen-y-Ghent on a pedal-powered tractor,” says Pidd. Even the back wheel came supplied already out-of-true.

Worse, this is a self assembly bike. Anyone who knows enough about building and fixing bikes would know enough to avoid this machine, so therefore the only people who might buy it are not qualified to build it. The tools supplied are inadequate, and taking it to your LBS to assemble will cost £20 and up, or an almost 30% increase on the cost price.

It shows us that “low-priced” is not the same as “value”, and that skimping on a good bike is not only dangerous but it spoils you fun. Our advice? Buy second-hand, or, if you are like Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney, dig around in the hedgerow behind your house. You might get lucky.

Product page [Asda]

Bikes: buy cheap, buy twice [Guardian]

One thing that we learned right off when we decided to build a Gadget Lab fixed-gear bike was that our readers are awesome. 95 comments and counting and most of them are full of very helpful, practical advice. We say most. Here’s one that wasn’t: “Loser!” Thanks, Matt.

The advice boiled down to this:

Frame

Something with horizontal dropouts (or track-ends). Drop-out are where the wheel bolts to the frame, and as the chain on a fixed is not tensioned by a derailleur, you need to be able to adjust it horizontally.

Second was that, if using a road bike built for gears, you need to use spacers to make sure the back and front chainrings line up perfectly.

Crank, Chain-Ring, Wheels

You said not to worry about ratios, and to just use the crank that comes with the bike. Likewise the front wheel, which, on a found or cheap second-hand bike, should be fine. The back wheel needs to be strong enough to handle the extra strain of braking with the feet and chain, and also needs a fixed chain-ring. Use of superglue and a normal free-wheel was definitely not recommended.

Brakes

One on the front, at least.

There was a lot more in there, and you should go back and read the comments on the original post for those, but this list gives the gist of all the great advice.

So why has it taken so long? A lack of donor bikes. Although Barcelona, Spain is full of cyclists and second-hand bikes, almost none of them seem to be track or road bikes. At least not the ones for sale. After lots of searching, I picked up a cheap, and crappy, ready-made fixed, which you saw in yesterday’s post on making a saddlebag. It looks awesome, but the 24-spoke wheels, the heavy hi-ten steel frame and seemingly tin-foil pedals (already replaced) don’t make for the safest bike.

But it’s fun. Amazing fun, and the upright, semi-track geometry and fairly easy gear-ratio it comes with means shooting around town is a blast. But bit by bit things started to go wrong with this cheap bike. The spokes kept coming loose, the brakes don’t really toe-in properly, and the chains are knows to be rather fragile.

In an effort to stop sweaty, chafed buttocks, I grabbed a new Brooks saddle a few weeks ago, like the old one I have on my other bike. And then I thought, why not just upgrade bit by bit until the right frame comes along? The frame of my dreams. The frame I am meant to spend the rest of my life with?

The wheels are the most obviously poor part. The frame, although heavy, is built like a tank (it’s also “wasabe” green and looks lovely). I ordered a pair of Velocity Deep V wheels from Espai Bici, a local bike shop, and they were ready today, strung taut with spokes and a couple of BLB (Brick Lane Bikes) hubs. The front wheel is machined to work with a brake, and the new chain (pink) is designed for a BMX and should be almost unbreakable. The rear chainring has 16 teeth, if you’re counting, the same as the one it replaces, and the front, following your advice of not bothering about ratios, remains uncounted.

These parts will go onto the bike this afternoon, and I’ll post some pics and first impressions tomorrow. The search for a donor frame will continue. And if there are any fixed-gear riders in Barcelona, get in touch.

See Also:

• The Great Gadget Lab Fixie Project: Help Us Build a Better Bike …
• Bianchi to Launch Retro-Styled Fixie in 2010
• Fixed-Gear Bikes an Urban Fixture
• Beer Meets Bike in Limited Edition Pabst Blue Ribbon Fixie …

The iPhone has proved to be rather adept at replacing other pieces of hardware. The combination of portability, a big screen that allows it to mimic any interface and an open (ish) App Store means that we are continually surprised at what people can make it do.

Today, it’s the turn of the bicycle. It turns out that many of the geegaws you might buy at the LBS (local bike shop) are already available as downloads from the iTunes Store. Here are our favourites.

CycleMeter

CycleMeter’s hideous interface contrasts with its truly astonishing Rube Goldberg setup. The app works as a cycle computer, showing a readout of your speed, distance, average speed and trip time. It works with any iPhone and also the iPod Touch. That’s right, the GPS-free iPod Touch. How on earth does it do that?

A cycle computer counts the revolutions of your wheels and, because you have already told it the wheel’s circumference, it can work out the rest. Purpose built devices use a magnet on the spokes and a detector on the fork.

CycleMeter uses sound to accomplish the same thing. Put a small plastic tag on one spoke so it hits the fork on every revolution. Then run the cable of your earbuds down the fork and secure the microphone next to this point. The tick, tick, tick of the plastic tab is picked up and the rest is done in software.

A truly heroic hack, we think you’ll agree, and just $0.99 (plus the cost of replacement earbuds after every passing shower). It can’t be long before there is a Bluetooth spoke-widget that can talk directly to the iPhone, though. Combine with proper trip-log software and you’d have a real winner.

Product page [iTunes]

BrakeLights

Just as ingenious as CycleMeter, although slightly less jerry-rigged, is BrakeLights. It adds a brake light to your bike, whether using cantilevers, side-pulls, disk or running a no-braked fixie. Strap it to your bag or back, screen pointing behind you, and ride. The app uses the accelerometer to detect when you slow down and flashes a red light on the screen. $1.

Product page [iTunes]

Back Light

Similar to BrakeLights, the awkwardly named Bicycle Back Safety Flashlight is another $1 lamp, but this time it stays on all the time you are riding. It also lets you write messages to those following you. The suggestion is the word “STOP”, but we imagine that you, dear reader, could manage messages both more creative and abusive.

As an everyday light replacement the battery drain might put you off. But in an emergency, why not? Especially if you have an always-connected iPhone. Imagine: “Damn, I forgot my back light. Wait, I’ll just download a new one.” $1.

Product page [iTunes]

Gear Calculator

Bicycle Gear Calculator is rather specialized, but if you need it, it may just beat doing hard sums in your head. The application works out gear ratios for you, based on crank lengths, wheel sizes and cog/sprocket sizes. It’ll even tell you what ratio you should ride to maximize tire wear based on the pattern of skid patches on the tires themselves. $5

Product page [iTunes]

Speed

Speed is a more practical speedometer, although you’ll need an iPhone 3G or better to use it. Instead of the dangerous sounding wires-and-plastic approach taken by CycleMeter, it uses the iPhone’s GPS to work out your speed. It also has a rather lovely interface, although it might be more suited to a car dashboard than a bike’s handlebars. Works in both kph and the obsolete mph. $1

Product page [iTunes]

If you were in the SoHo district of NYC on Saturday, you may have wandered into the Apple Store. If you did, you would have been greeted with this beautiful bike, the Dutch Master, a limited edition of cruisers hand built in in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which was enjoying its launch event.

This project was put together by the design lovers at the Core77 blog. Parts from around the US were sourced and sent over to the Bushwick Bike Shop. These were then bolted on to the classic Worksman Newsboy frame, a bike made in Queens, New York for over 110 years. A Worksman bike is the bike Jimmy Olsen would have ridden before he landed his job at the Daily Planet.

As if the gallery of close-up pop-shots weren’t exciting enough, the design details and specs are enough to send you into a frothing frenzy. There’s a Brooks Saddle (a Lady Approved® brand, incidentally), Sturmey Archer hubs, Schwalbe Fat Frank balloon tires, and pedals and stem by Brooklyn Machine Works.

The whole thing is a curious mix of BMX parts, classic components and modern tech. Somehow, this odd combo seems very appropriated for a New York bike. The price is similarly New Yorkian, at $1560.00 plus shipping, but considering the parts and work that have gone into the making of the bike (check the site for a video of the wheels being built) the cost seems pretty reasonable. Especially as the only way you’ll ever need to replace this machine is if you forget to lock it properly. Only 25 are being made, so if you want one, hurry up.

Product page [Core77]