What do you get for the cycling fashion victim who has everything? Look no further than a gold plated Charge Plug. That ought to turn some heads in Hoxton.
For a bike that normally costs £399, they’ve certainly managed to add some extras to bump the cost up including Velocity Deep V rims (naturally), “custom” chain, seat and bars. By “custom” they mean stuff that normally doesn’t come with the bike, rather than stuff that has been custom made. This includes what looks like a white KMC “Z” chain, white Charge Spoon saddle and Charge Slice “track” handlebar with white bar tape.
All of the above can be yours including the finish; copper plated and finished with 24ct gold, since you asked; for an eyewatering £9,500 - or you can enter the competition to win the bike on ETA’s website (the fools who commissioned this lunacy to promote their bike insurance). Unsurprisingly ETA’s insurance policy does not cover bikes of this value.
ETA are on your side though - they have attempted to reign in the price slightly as for your money you do not get a front brake and they’ve also seen fit to retain the cheap and nasty standard stem, chainset and pedals.
Ordinarily we quite like Charge (no idea who ETA are) but to our eyes this bares a passing resemblance to chavy yoofs driving around in “upgraded” Nissan Micras with tinted windows, non-silencing exhausts, boom boxes and bucket seats.
More info on the gold Plug over at the Charge site, if you have the time to kill for their overly slow flash movie to load.
Ever since seeing Charlie The Bike Monger wearing a tweed cycling cap at SSUK this year (pictured below, mixing mojitos), I’ve been getting the feeling that tweed is going to be very big this summer.
I’ve just come across this rather interesting website - Dashing Tweeds. They make a selection of modern tweed garments, some aimed at the sporting lady or gentleman. What is particularly interesting is their use of a reflective material called “Lumatwill”. It appears to be a Teflon coated tweed with reflective thread woven into it, creating the effect shown below when a bright light shines upon it:
The suit on the right looks like a particularly stylish way to cycle to work.
Seemingly as proof that if you throw enough technology at a problem, some of it will stick; the BBC have an article about the winner of the James Dyson Foundation Award for Project Design who fitted accelerometers and tilt switches to a cycling jacket which are in turn connected to a set of LEDs.
The sensors change the colour of the lights in response to the rider’s movements - the ones on the back go from green to red when braking and the ones on the arms trigger when the rider raises their arms to signal that they are turning left or right.
The video below shows the jacket in action. Sadly it looks like it’s still got a way to go as the lights don’t seem to trigger very reliably and the main panel will be obscured by even the smallest bag - fitting the brake lights at the bottom of the rear of the jacket would have been far more sensible.
The designer, Michael Chen, is planning on selling the jacket in the UK by the end of the year. There is no news on whether he is working on a matching pair of gloves that light up like a Christmas tree when flicking a v-sign at the SUV that just cut you up.
Since we’re not a courier, nor have we ever been, we don’t know Canadian Ryan - but we do like good t-shirts, particularly when they display something we’ve all wanted to do at one time or other: stick it to the man, or rather stick it right through his windshield. Unfortunately he’s got into a bit of trouble over the whole affair and needs your help.
From next week (hopefully) you will be able to purchase a t-shirt from courier run design/screen printing company House Of Pistard with the rather excellent graphic shown above, the proceeds from which will go towards paying off Canadian Ryan’s debt to society, whereby keeping him in the country to hopefully continue living out our red mist induced cycling fantasies.
We are currently laid up with a broken leg (unimpressive mountainbike crash) so we can’t make it to the John Snow but will be waiting for the mail order option to appear with interest.
