Cycling with music - Skullcandy Full Metal Jacket Earphones

I've never ridden with earphones in cause it seems pretty dangerous if you wear both and can't hear traffic, a lot of people do but personally I think its plain crazy riding and not being totally aware of your surroundings. I've tried riding with only one earphone in and it's ok but so much of the music is lost that it's hardly worth it most of the time, until now...

...Skullcandy hooked me up with a set of the Full Metal Jacket for iPhone earbuds a few weeks ago and they kick ass! The sound is great and they come with 3 different ear buds as well as foam ones so they fit so snuggly that even with only 1 side in your earhole the music stays nice and clear whilst you listen for police cars coming up behind you to bust your fun-loving ass for not having reflectors on your peddles. The best thing about the iPhone model is that they have a built in mic on the cable so I can safely and easily answer the phone and chat whilst trackstanding at the lights which I have not had the need to do yet but one day it's going to happen and I will look flipping amazing, haha. The mic has a play/pause/skip button too which turns the iPhone into a usable iPod when you are on the bike.

Another great point about the Full Metal Jackets is that they are fully metal so they are really tough, the cable is real strong too which makes a change, it's also nice and long so the buds don't get yanked out every time you peddle like the pile of crap Sennheiser cx300's did which I had before these.

If you have an iPhone (or a Blackberry) then buy yourself a set of these if you wanna listen to music and talk whilst riding cause I don't think you'll find anything better out there. You can get them from nucleus-online.com cheaper than anywhere else. Be warned though that I do work there so if you phone up you'll have to talk to me :-p (Note: we stock the whole Skullcandy range at great prices, hehe).

If you do actually order something from Nucleus send an e-mail along with your order saying you came from here and I'll stick a Fixed Gear Wales spoke card in the package for you.

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Review - Cycling Caps

Let's not beat around the bush, I have a TINY head, it's shocking, even children's baseball caps are too big for me. There is only one brand that fits me ok but they just don't stay on when cycling, as soon as I lift my head up they are off. 

I bought myself a Campy cycling cap a while back thinking it wouldn't fit but they are so bloody cheap that it didn't really matter. It fitted ok and was soooooo good for riding, it did the lot, it stopped my stupid floppy hair from flapping about, it kept my head warm, it kept the rain and the sun out of my eyes, basically it did exactly what it was designed to do. People seem to think that they are hysterical looking and its true, a bit. How they look really doesn't matter though when they work so perfectly!

Campagnolo

I lost the Campagnolo one a couple of weeks ago and have been really missing it, today I bought myself an Assos one from Cyclopedia in Cardiff. This one is even better, its a bit smaller so fits me better and even has a mesh panel in the back for ventilation which actually seemed to work today on the uphill ride home.

Assos
Wikipedia tells me that "a traditional way to keep the head cool when cycling in hot conditions was to put a cabbage leaf under the casquette" so if you see me around and I look a bit like treebeard on a bike don't be alarmed, I'm just keeping it real, yo.

These hats cost anything from £6 to about £10 with more "classy" ones costing much more. Try and get them from your LBS but if you can't try prendas.co.uk or eBay. This is the best one ever:

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Review - Monster Track 8

"In the underground world of "alleycat" messenger street racing, one race stands tall among all: New York City's MONSTER TRACK. In the dead of winter each year, the finest city riders from around the world descend upon NYC to battle it out to determine who will be King of the streets in an outlaw bicycle race with one rule: NO BRAKES." Sounds good, right?

Ev pointed me in the direction of this video, the footage on the website was awesome, it was a video we HAD to watch. I got to acquiring it, luckily I acquired it via less than legal methods because if I had actually bought it I would be a very pissed off dude right now cause it sucks. In fact I am still a bit peeved cause it took 3 days to download slowing my connection right down.

Monster Track is an annual alleycat race in New York, riders from all over the world travel to it, it's a big deal. The competition is fierce and would make an awesome film so how could this DVD possibly be so terrible? Well, it turns out that the only race footage is the 12 minutes that is available for free on the bloody website and the rest is some dreadlocked dude just walking around talking crap to people. He just keeps going on and on about this Japanese rider called Shino or "The Fixie King" as he is also called, "do you know The Fixie King is here?", Shino comes FIFTH, HE DOESN'T EVEN WIN! So why the hell does the whole video revolve around him? I'm confused, its just so terrible I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Why didn't they just send out 5 riders with headcams to cover the whole race, have someone with a camera at each checkpoint and edit that together into an hour long video of awesome riding through NYC? Why not put all the interview stuff in the extras where you only have to watch it once? Seriously, don't bother buying this if you want to get amped up before a ride but do buy it if you like seeing the same interview footage over and over split into separate sections. Just go and watch the race footage here and be done with it.

If you wanna watch a really decent alleycat video check out "London Calling" by Lucas Brunelle...

Then go and check out all his other amazing videos here.

End Transmission

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Review - Bicycle Gear Calculator for iPhone / iPod Touch

Every fixie rider likes to have a gear ratio chart to look at every 5 minutes, if you also happen to own an iPhone or an iPod Touch then you can fork out £2.99 for a great app called Bicycle Gear Calculator by a developer (and fixie rider) named Jean-Pierre Martineau.

From his site: "Evaluate current or potential Gearing Ratios, calculate Gain Ratios, Gear Inches, and Development. Use the Skid Patch Analyzer to visualize and minimize your fixed-gear's tire wear. Explore equivalent gearing configurations that let you reuse parts you already have."

This seems like a pretty perfect app to me, it has everything you could possibly need. The only thing that's not so great is the £2.99 price tag which is pretty steep for this kind of app. At the end of the day though this is waaaay better than a jpg in your Photos folder and costs a penny less than the awesome "16 cans of Diet Coke for £3" offer that I took advantage of in Asda today. Check out the screengrabs below.


Gear and Crank selection


Tire selection


Skid Patch Visualizer


Speed Analysis


Alternate Gearing
For loads more info visit the developers site here then click on his link to go and buy it in iTunes, you wont be sorry!

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Review - Bootleg Sessions v.1 & v.2

There are still a fairly limited amount of fixie videos available on DVD, as far as I know Bootleg Sessions is the only one to have made a sequel to date. I'm gonna review both of these at the same time because they are very similar, which I'm not sure is too great of a thing really. The Bootleg Sessions videos are very much trick based, there's not much in the way of traffic dodging or hill bombing, it's all bar spins and wheelies. They use a similar structure to skate videos, each rider has an individual section which is the best way to do it I suppose but I find that both of these videos suffer from less than great camera work, in fact they both look like some of the lenses were smeared with spittle! There is some debate as to whether the skate video structure works for fixie videos and I'm not sure what the answer is. I think it works to a degree but 'freestyle' trick based riding needs to be shot well, maybe locked off on a tripod with a nice depth of field etc, otherwise it just looks like some dude bouncing up and down whilst his mate films him with his camera phone, fine for youtube, not fine for DVD. MASH is a good example of how some decent camera work can really lift a video from just guys riding fast down a road to a very enjoyable thing to watch.

Image ©bootlegsessions.net, click on it to go to the order page.

All that said both of the Bootleg Sessions videos feature some really insane tricks, if you are into technical stuff and can't tell Coronation Street from Citizen Kane then you'll love them. They feature street stuff and a fair amount of skate park action too from riders from all over the world, I'm really loving the style of the Japanese riders although they ride some ugly ass bikes! The first section on v.2 is some guy who rides UP a big set of steps and even rides down steps backwards, its absolute madness. The back of the v.2 box says "Bootleg Sessions v.2 details the efforts of a globally diverse group of wayward cyclists as they attempt to prove one thing: there is an infinite number of ways to have fun on a bicycle" and they accomplish that, albeit with a lack of camera steez.

Image ©bootlegsessions.net, click on it to go to the order page.

I know this was more of a rant about shooting style rather than an in depth review of the videos but I think it is justified. Bootleg Sessions is paving the way for it to become the 411 (skate video magazine) of fixed gear videos but in order for it to accomplish that the overall aesthetic of the project could do with some cleaning up. Early skate videos weren't exactly very well shot but that was the 80's, this is 2009 and it is now very easy to get professional results with consumer equipment, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all the guys shooting around the world start to wipe their lens and hold the camera straight for future versions on this series.

Check out the trailers for both the videos below and then head on over to bootlegsessions.net where there is a ton more footage for you to shout "nooooo waaaaaaay" at as well as some killer photos...

V.1 Trailer


V.2 Trailer

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Review - Knog Frog LED Lights

At this time of year in wales you are gonna need a set of lights for your bike. I went the cheap route and spent about 3 quid on a set of crappy ones from Tesco, they lit the place up well but the front one kept falling off, one night i skidded up outside my house and it went flying off, hit the road and never worked again.

JT had these right snazzy looking tiny little rubber things so when I was up in that London to see The Residents I took a trip to Brick Lane Bikes and the only thing I could afford (and actually needed) was a set of the rubber lights, the Knog Frogs! I paid the extortionate price of £17 but you you can pick them up for about £13 in most places outside of London.

They are really small as you can see in the photos and made of a very grippy, flexible silicone outer that contains a small but powerful LED. To attach them to your bike you just pull the stretchy loop around your bar or seatpost and clip it to itself, I thought that they'd probably pop off but they seem to be holding fast. Knog reckon that they will burn for 80 hours (steady), or 160 hours (flashing) which is pretty impressive, to replace the batteries you just pop the electronic section out of the casing, nice and simple, elegant, hassle free, awesome! Another claim by Knog is that they put out 10,000 millicandelas which equates to being visible at up to 600 metres away!!! I'm not sure about that, in theory maybe but under normal riding conditions I'd imagine it's quite a bit less, either way you need to know that they are a "safety light" so if you actually want them to light up where you are going then you better get some "proper lights" cause these things won't light up any more than about 2 feet ahead of you unless you are riding down a pitch black lane. I think they do a perfectly good job of making you visible to all but the most ignorant driver, and make you look pretty, pretty, pretty good too so who cares if you can't see where you are going?

They may do their job brilliantly but if you are scared of being looked down upon by 'real fixed gear riders' you must be aware of their hipster status, in fact Bike Snob NYC uses the charming name of 'Hipster Cyst's' when referring to them. Yes they are unbearably cool looking but would you use a Dell rather than a Mac just because you were afraid of looking fresh? I don't fink so.

All in all I would highly recommend the Knog Frog lights, they come in 12 colours, are water resistant, probably wouldn't break if you drop them (unless they land on the bulb) and are as light as a feather. Check out the shopping page for bike shops in your area that might have them or failing that try eBay or something innit.

Check out the official web page.

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Reviews

If you are an experienced rider and would like to do a good old-fashioned in depth review of something then please get in touch. Even if you aren't experienced but still fancy submitting a review then please do!

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