The knog party coil is one of a range of knog locks. It’s a cable lock with a silicone outer cover available in eight different colours. It looks pretty; it’s very knog. The party coil is 1.3 metres long, 10mm thick and comes with 3 colour matched keys. On the technical side, the party coil is a PVC coated, braided steel cable with a fibre core. According to knog, it’s this fibre core that makes the cable strong enough to offer some security. Apparently this core will result in the cable crushing before cutting, which will make bolt cutter attacks more difficult. I can’t confirm any of that because I didn’t cut into it. I was planning to, however.

When the cable lock first arrived, I had every intention of using it for a few weeks and then going nuts on it with my bolt cutters, side cutters, angle grinder and anything else I could find. The lock initially didn’t impress me very much. Yes, it looked very nice, but it didn’t look “butch”. When I lock up my bike I want potential thieves to see a good quality cable lock (and usually D lock as well) that’s too much trouble to bother with. I know that if someone wants my bike, they’ll get it, but if it’s too much hassle to steal, perhaps they’ll move on to the next bike. There’s a visual component to that security and the knog party coil looks too good.

Don’t get me wrong here, the lock is far from the “dental floss” cable locks you can buy, but it doesn’t look scary hard to cut. As such, I was going to have some fun with it; that is until I started using it. Knog know their customer base and they’ve taken a simple cable lock and made it just that little bit more convenient, too convenient for me to cut up.

According to the instruction manual that comes with the lock (yes, it has an instruction manual), the party coil can fit into your pocket. I tried it out, and it does; it will fit into the back pocket of your skinny jeans and it will also fit into your jersey pocket. The coil is very tight, but it’s not bulky, and it only weighs 300g, so it’s not going to drag you down.

The party coil is short, only 1.3 metres long, which I initially found disappointing. My 1.8 metre cable lock allows my to secure both wheels around a sign post or light pole without too much hassle. The party coil will just fit through both wheels and wrap around a bike rack or railing that’s very close to the bike, or if you’re willing to take the front wheel off and chain it to the frame, you can secure your bike to something larger. I’m willing to trade some slightly limited parking options for the convenience of the party coil and after using it for a few weeks I’m quite used to the getting the cable around my bike and whatever I’m chaining up to.

So my perception changed with a bit of use and the party coil now sees quite a bit of action when I’m out riding. When I have to lock up in the city, I take my shabby commuter bike with the rack and panniers, and I still carry my big cable lock and D lock. Now, however, I can easily take a lock with me when I’m on my racing bike or my fixie, which don’t have racks. I just stick the party coil in my jersey pocket and I can lock my bike up at the coffee shop or supermarket when I need to. Provided I don’t take too long or I’m not too far away from the bike, the party coil gives me enough protection to keep my ride safe.

There we have it, the knog party coil is a really useful lock. It looks good, and it’s convenient to carry with you. It’s not for every security situation, but it’s also not knog’s only lock. Knog have a range of stylish locks, from stylish D locks to stylish wearable locks, providing a range of stylish security strengths (their top D lock is rated 90% and the party coil is rated at 30%, but what that means objectively is anyone’s guess). There’s a trade off between security and convenience with the party coil, but now that I’ve used it, it makes me want to look at the other knog locking options.

Knog put a considerable amount of thought into their products and all they make is common bike accessories, but they make them better. The party coil is a simple cable lock that is just a little bit better, a little bit more convenient, a little bit more…knog.

The party coil can be purchased for $29.95 from knog online or good bike shops. See entire range of knog bike locks online.

When it comes to trainers, the most common questions on cycling forums seem to be about road feel and noise. It’s well documented that wind trainers are loud, magnetic trainers can be loud, and fluid trainers tend to be quieter, at least quieter than the fan you should have in your “torture chamber” to keep your body heat regulated while you train (in which case you don’t have the wind evaporating sweat from you on a trainer, and if you over-heat your performance is going to suffer).

As for road feel, most people seem to agree that fluid trainers are the way to go. Road feel in a trainer refers to the non-linear response of the trainer to the effort you put in on the bike. When you’re on the road, wind resistance will slow you down at a greater rate the faster you go, which means that the faster you go, the harder it is to go faster. Fluid trainers, as the name suggests, use fluid to provide resistance, and this fluid gives you this non-linear resistance change (compared to magnetic resistance trainers where the resistance usually increases linearly).

So, if you want a quiet trainer with good road feel, a fluid trainer is the trainer you want, which brings us to the purpose of this review: the Gistitalia Ride Fluid Trainer. Gistitalia are, as the name suggests, an Italian company who manufacture and distribute a range of fitness products, but they’re not a company I had heard of before. As such, I had to let the product speak for itself, since I had no reputation to go on.

The trainer arrived boxed in a fairly simple white box with a drawing of a woman riding a bike on a trainer. There is Italian and English on the box, but only really enough to let you know what’s inside of it; there’s no hype or gloss. When you open it you’re presented with the trainer stand, a box containing the fluid resistance unit, an instruction manual, a quick release skewer, and some bits to put it all together. The manual that comes with the trainer is in a number of languages, one of which resembles English, but by following the diagrams it was easy to assemble the trainer and in under 10 minutes I had the bike mounted and was ready to ride.

Before I talk about how it performs, let me give you my initial impression of the trainer: cheap. The trainer stand, which is the bulk of the package, doesn’t look very spectacular at all. The magnetic trainer I’ve been using for a few seasons looks like it was worth the price I paid for it, and many other fluid trainers on the market also look like machines that will help you get fit with their sleekness or colour scheme or electronic add-ons. The Gistitalia trainer looked like the type of cheap trainer you’d buy for $50 from a department store or supermarket because you thought you’d try a trainer out but didn’t want to drop big money on it.

This impression, however, lasts only as long as it takes to get the frame out of the box and have a close look at it. While the format of the trainer is very simple, there is no mistaking the quality of the build. All of the welds are solid, uniform, well ground and polished. The metal parts of the stand are well machined and the bolts, springs and adjusting screws are well fitted and tidy. There are no sharp edges, dodgy paint jobs or misalignments. Everything that’s meant to move moves, and everything else doesn’t. It’s a very solid and elegant piece of industrial design and it looks like it’s going to last a lifetime. The trainer is simply built, but it’s very well made simplicity.

The fluid resistance unit is, once again, extremely well made. Every surface has been finished carefully and it feels sturdy in the hand. The only fragile looking part of the whole setup is the resistance adjustment lever, but it seems that this is meant to be a consumable. The frame and fluid unit have a lifetime warranty, but the other parts of the trainer, the ones that actually come into human or ground contact, are available as spare parts quite cheaply. This isn’t to say that these parts are cheap, they don’t feel it, but they’re the parts that will wear out first and it’s quite easy to see, when you examine the trainer, how simple it would be to swap the parts out for new ones when you need to. It really speaks to the longevity of the trainer; you won’t be throwing this one out because one part of it doesn’t work anymore.

So I was quickly impressed by the trainer, but I was yet to ride it, so I jumped on the bike and I settled in for a training session. I decided to leave the resistance set at the “zero” level, with no tension on the cable at all. I did this because many of the top end fluid trainers don’t have resistance adjustment, so I wanted to see if this trainer could give me a real workout just by changing the gears for resistance, much like the other trainers do.

I had read that fluid trainers take some time to warm up and that certainly seemed the case here. With my mag trainer, the resistance is instant and I either have to put it on the lowest resistance setting while my legs warm up, or spin in an easy gear for a while. The fluid trainer starts off feeling like it’s not there at all (with the fan going, you can’t hear it) and the fluid inside the unit warms up as your legs do. I was pedaling with a constant cadence (plus or minus a couple of rpms) and it took about 8 – 10 minutes before I really began to notice that there was a resistance there. I upped the cadence a bit and it felt like I was riding on a good flat road that went on forever. I kept the cadence at that level for a while and didn’t feel any change in resistance at all, much like my mag trainer. Unlike my mag trainer, however, when you increase the speed, there was definitely a noticeable change in resistance.

When I sprint on my mag trainer, I can hit some seriously whacky speeds, speeds that I would never be able to hit on the flat ground simply because I could never get my on-road cadence that high in those gears. While this is great for doing cadence drills, it’s not “real”. On the fluid trainer, you simply can’t get your cadence that high easily because the resistance of the fluid will increase the faster you go; the road feel I was talking about earlier. If you’re doing long consistent efforts, you won’t see a difference between mag trainers and fluid trainers, but if you’re doing intervals and changing your cadence and gearing to simulate climbing, pack surges, sprints and the like, you’ll really want to use a fluid trainer.

What the Gistitalia Ride Fluid has that many other similar trainers don’t have, is variable resistance. Variable resistance is quite common on mag trainers where it’s simple to implement and provides the higher end difficulty that comes naturally on fluid trainers. Variable resistance on fluid trainers is a bit rare and its absence is marketed as a “feature” on other trainers, rather than as something missing. I suspect it’s missing from fluid trainers because it’s quite hard to do right, particularly when you want to keep the fluid inside the resistance unit. Gistitalia seem to have gotten past any difficulties, however, and the variable resistance adds something interesting to the trainer.

According to the Ital-ish in the instruction manual, the variable resistance allows you to simulate hills of up to 5%. This is interesting from a training point of view since simulating climbing on a fluid trainer without variable resistance requires using a bigger gear that’s harder to turn over. There is a big difference between pushing a big gear and pushing a small gear, between using the chain rings for the purpose they were meant for and using them to simply provide resistance. It’s very nice to know that the road feel of the Gistitalia trainer can be maintained while also allowing for some hill training. Leave the resistance at “zero” and you have a normal fluid trainer. Ramp it up and you’re going up a ramp. As Eddy Merckx famously said, “Don’t buy upgrades; ride up grades”.

So I think I’ve done a fair job selling fluid trainers in this review, but what about the Gistitalia trainer itself? Is it better than other trainers? I simply don’t know. This was the first fluid trainer I used and I can see why people often prefer them to mag trainers. On paper, the Gistitalia Ride Fluid Trainer is a comparable product to most of the quality fluid trainers currently on the market. I had a look at a few others in the flesh and think that the Gistitalia product is better built, but I can’t speak to comparable performance. I did get a chance to try a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine for a session and didn’t see any real difference between the Kurt and the Gistitalia, but that’s a completely non-rigorous comparison and not something I would stake my life on. The Gistitalia is certainly not worse and the addition of the variable resistance, which the Kurt doesn’t have, may be of added value to some.

The Gistitalia Ride Fluid, while wonderful as it stands, needs just one more touch to make it a more useful machine. If you are after a trainer that does all that I mentioned above, the Gistitalia Ride Fluid is a complete package, go and get one. If, however, you’re a race tragic like me, then you’ll want to train with power. If you’re even more like me, you’ve got other things to spend your money on than a power meter. That’s where virtual power is a God send. Trainer Road is a subscription service that allows you to wirelessly connect your Garmin type devices to your laptop and then be guided through workouts on your trainer. For best results you use it with a power meter, but if you don’t have one, and you’re using the same trainer setup for all of your workouts (as I am), then you can use virtual power. Basically, you select the model of trainer you have at home from the list they supply and the system uses speed/power calibration curves to map your speed to output power. While it’s not going to be entirely accurate, it will be pretty repeatable between workouts, so you can get a good picture of how you’re improving.

The Gistitalia Ride Fluid is not on that list, but it can be. I contacted the Australian distributor, Velogear, and asked them about it. They did some research on Trainer Road, and they’re now trying to get some calibration curves done for this trainer. In the mean time they pointed me towards some workouts on their website designed by a former Australian Olympic cyclist who used the Gistitalia trainer in her workouts. I’m keen to get the power data, however, since I really want to use this trainer with Trainer Road. My mag trainer is supported there, but I really do prefer to train on the fluid trainer.

There are many fluid trainers on the market, so it’s hard for the consumer to pick a good one without some inside knowledge. Much like bikes, any trainer will do the job it’s meant to do, but a good trainer, like a good bike, will make you want to use it more. I have found the Gistitalia Ride Fluid to be such a trainer, and my mag trainer is now gathering dust in the corner. It’s well constructed, quite in operation and it gives you a good, consistent road feel. The lifetime warranty on the “big” parts attests to the manufacturer’s belief in the product’s quality, and the availability of affordable replacement parts for the wearable components means you’ll have a usable trainer for a long time to come. Add in the variable resistance, which is much more than just a novelty, and I think you’ve got a trainer that’s more than holds it’s own against its competitors.

The Gistitalia Ride Fluid Bicycle Trainer is available from Velogear Australia for $289 and they also provide Australian warranty service and spare parts.

1. Obree, G., “The Obree Way – A training manual for cyclists”, 2012

Let me start this story from the beginning rather than the (almost) end. I have been bike commuting for many years now and I have always used flat touring pedals with toe clips. Flat pedals by themselves just didn’t allow me to ride confidently enough and I understood the value of keeping my feet on the pedals, so toe clips seemed an obvious solution.

So why didn’t I just use clipless pedals? That’s easy: clip stacks. I heard about them on discussion forums, I heard about them from injured colleagues, and I saw them happen at traffic lights. No thank you, not for me. I could get in and out of my toe clips easily (I didn’t tighten the straps) and, even better, I didn’t have to wear “tap shoes” like my friends did.

“But you don’t have to wear tap shoes, there are ones like sneakers that you can wear all day”, they said. “There are double sided pedals to make it easier to clip in”, they said. “There are pedals with platforms around them for more control when not clipped in”, they said. All true, but not for me, thank you very much. My loose strap toe clips work well enough.

And then I started racing and I raced in clipless pedals, SPD-SLs to be exact. Oh yes, they’re so much better; so very, very much better. I tried commuting in my new clipless pedals and I hated it. Actually, the riding part was great, but the constant in and out was horrible. More than that, it’s dangerous when you have to start up a hill at a set of lights with traffic behind you and you struggle to clip in, or when you have to do an emergency stop and all of your attention is in not hitting something and not what your feet are doing. Yeah, clipless are great, but…clipstacks.

The Click’R Pedals

Shimano’s clipless pedals have been evolving for as long as they’ve been making them and you can see the result of this in the Click’R pedals: they are double sided, they have a wide platform, and they have a pop-up cage. All of these features, and combinations of them, can be seen in other pedals in the SPD range. What is not seen in other SPD pedals is what’s felt, or not felt, in the Click’R pedals, and that’s the 60% less torque required to clip in and out.

Shimano have redesigned the pedal’s retention plate and have used a lighter spring. The new retention plate has a release angle of only 8 degrees, compared to the ~13 degrees of SPDs, which means you’re out of the pedals much quicker when you want to be. This is not to say that these pedals don’t hold your feet on properly, they perform that job perfectly, rather they release when you want them to and also when you need them. I’ll talk about the performance of the pedals a little later because I have to introduce the other part of the system, and that’s the shoes. I will end this section, however, by saying that the Click’R pedals are not an incremental improvement with a new name. With the Click’R pedals, Shimano may have finally made the ideal commuting pedal.

The Click’R Shoes

Like the pedals, the range of shoes that complement the Click’R pedals have features that have been seen before, but not all in one place. This range of shoes is designed to take full advantage of the Click’R pedal design and while you can use your normal SPD shoes with the Click’R pedals, there are many reasons why an upgrade would be worthwhile.

The shoes will take standard SPD cleats as well as SPD multi-directional release cleats and they’ll work with normal SPD pedals. They feature a long and deep cleat well which serves to protect the cleat and guide it into the pedal retention mechanism – more on this later. The shoes are sized well in accordance with the Shimano sizing guide (which makes it easier get the right fit) and they have a generous amount of room in the toe. The shoes are designed for walking in as much as riding in and while they have enough stiffness to transfer power to the pedal, they also have enough give to move around in them all day without changing your gait.

Regardless of any technical features the shoes may have, the best thing about them is the style. These shoes really look good. I’m not one to buy things just for the look of them, provided they’re functional, but it’s nice to have both. All of the shoes in the range look great, but the ones I had (SH-CT40) are perfect sports/casual shoes, suitable for the less formal workplace. I have had many compliments from other cyclists who have seen me riding in them and, when I commute between work campuses, I don’t need to change shoes at the other end.

How They Perform

This is the important part of the review, the stuff you don’t get in sales information or technical data. It doesn’t matter what numbers are quoted about the shoes, if they don’t work they’re useless. The Click’R pedals and shoes work.

The first thing you’ll notice about the shoes (aside from looking good) is that they’re really comfortable to wear and walk in. The first time I used them was to ride out to a road race where I was working as a traffic controller. A twenty kilometer ride there followed by 6 hours of standing in the sun, then 20kms back home, and my feet didn’t hate me. It was just like wearing very broken-in sneakers – I don’t think I’ve ever had shoes that felt that good on the first wearing. They haven’t gotten worse since then either, and I’ve been wearing them on every commute since I got them.

Clipping into the pedals with the Click’R shoes is disturbingly easy, perhaps even a little too easy. The way I clip in to the SPD-SL pedals on my racing bikes is to line the cleat up with the mechanism and push down with the ball of my foot. As expected, this works with the Click’R pedals as well, but it’s not the only way to clip in. It’s a little hard to describe, but basically you can wiggle the cleat into the mechanism from a variety of directions. You put your feet on the pedals, wiggle, hear a scrape of metal on metal and you’re clipped in. I often have to lift my foot up a little just to make sure I’m attached. The best analogy I can think of for this is magnets. Obviously, there are no magnets used here, but that’s what it’s like to clip in with this system. The pedal mechanism attracts the cleat like a magnet attracting a nail – bring the two parts close together and “zap”, they’re attached.

I think this has to do with a combination of the redesigned retention plate, the pop-up cage and the cleat well on the shoes. With these shoes and pedals you don’t need to be clipped in to use the pedals confidently. The pop-up mechanism in the pedals is smaller than the cleat well in the shoes and putting your foot on the pedal, without clipping in, will put the mechanism inside that well. This stops your shoes from sliding around all over the pedal, and puts the cleat so close to the mechanism that clipping in is near automatic.

While clipping in (and out) is very easy, your shoes are still held very firmly to the pedals. I used the multi-directional release cleats and these, coupled with the 8 degree release angle, meant that any foot motion in the plane of the pedal rotation was held, but any motion outside of that resulted in a release. This means that pushing down, pulling up, shoe scrapers, knee thrusters, moon walks or any of the other well known pedaling techniques are confidently held, even when you’re applying serious force. I’m a big guy and I can generate a fair bit of pedaling force, but I have never un-clipped when putting the power on.

Clipping out can be achieved with a traditional heel kick-out or, with the multi-directional release cleats, a number of other angled foot movements. It was a bit of a revelation for me to find out how much I roll my left foot when I’m pedaling. I never unintentionally un-clipped on the right, but I did on the left, until I turned up the tension a little. When I did unintentionally un-clip, my foot didn’t go flying off of the pedal. I would feel my foot un-clip and, without missing a beat, I could wiggle it back into clipped position. That cleat well works a treat, and the wide platform doesn’t hurt either.

At the beginning of this review I talked about clip stacks. I firmly believe that Click’R is the solution. As mentioned, any movement outside of the plane of the pedal (plus 8 degrees) means a release, especially with the multi-directional release cleats. I don’t see how anyone can stay attached to these pedals when they don’t want to be. The natural and unconscious motion of the feet and legs in an emergency situation will release you. They even work in those situations where you have to pull out both feet at the same time because you don’t know which way your bike is going to lean. In those situations you aren’t thinking of how to move your feet, you just move them; with Click’R pedals you will be un-clipped.

I’m completely taken with these pedals and I don’t want to commute in anything else. I even put them on my racing bike when I was trying to get some more training miles on it to and from work, and they felt every bit as good as my racing pedals . You get all of the benefit of clipless pedals without any of the risk, without any of the downsides. Well, almost no downsides.

The Down Side

The shoes aren’t waterproof. That’s it. I can’t find anything else wrong with these pedals or shoes except that. In the hot weather, such as Sydney’s summer, the shoes have enough ventilation on top of the toes to keep your feet relatively cool. On rainy days this ventilation lets the water in. The solution is to either wear booties on wet days, much like every other shoe out there, or learn to enjoy wet feet. That’s all I’ve got. Over a thousand kilometers,  hours of standing and walking, extremes of temperatures, multiple bikes and all I can come up with on the down side is the shoes get wet when it rains.

The Click’R pedal and shoe system look set to become the standard for urban cycling and commuting. They are the ideal commuting setup. Use your SPD-SLs for racing, your SPDs for mountain biking and your Click’Rs for commuting (and the sooner they get widely used, the sooner we can start calling them “clickers” the same way that SPDs are called “spuds”) .

Click’R pedals (the PD-T400′s were reviewed) are available in black or white from Shimano stockists worldwide and they retail for around $50. Click’R shoes (the SH-CT40′s were reviewed) are available in a range of smart styles from wherever you buy the pedals. They retail for around $100. Online info about the Click’R is a bit scarce though you can find your nearest dealer on www.shimano.com.au

And then he disappeared. He resigned as CEO of Bicycle NSW, sparking rumours and confusion among the members, many of whom did not renew their memberships or transferred them to other cycling organisations in other states. People wondered what would happen next, but no one knew what Omar had in store – maybe Omar didn’t either.

Omar reappeared on my radar via a mutual contact, with something called the Go! Alliance. Nothing more was forthcoming about this venture until Omar contacted BNA about joining the Go! Alliance. Since we had interviewed him before, we jumped on the opportunity to interview him again and find out more about what he was doing. Like the first time around, he was eager to engage with us and gave us this frank interview via email.

BNA: As the head of Bicycle NSW, you were vocal and pro-active on cycling issues to the point where the cynics were paying attention and smelling some sort of change in the winds – a cycling Barrack Obama of sorts. And then you vanished, almost overnight. What happened?

Omar: It was a great opportunity to lead BNSW and put into practice what I (as a previous member) thought the organisation lacked. I believed I had the mandate and full support of the board to do this. But that turned out not to be the case and there were numerous divisions within the board and with the future of BNSW and its strategy and culture that I ultimately could not see myself being able to work through. As I was only ever there to make a difference, I chose to leave on good terms rather than be left unable to carry out the rest of what I came to do.

Nevertheless, we did turn a lot of things around including flagging membership, gaining better media visibility, improving financial sustainability, better online interactions, more progressive advocacy, better regional presence and turning around our ride event strategy. I was fortunate to have a team that was really enthusiastic and supportive of this new direction. I hope things did improve but I leave it to your readers to decide.

Still, I certainly enjoyed getting to know a lot of wonderful people and a whole different side of cycling and advocacy and so have decided to try to carry on in a different way. Oh, and I became captivated by the amazing history of cycling in Australia!

BNA: I know through mutual contacts that after Bicycle NSW you re-emerged with something called the Go! Alliance. Tell us about that.

Omar: When I left BNSW I was urged by some to start a new organization to compete with BNSW or to run for a board position and to help reform it. However, taking on the organization or the board held no interest for me. I was motivated by all of those folks I had engaged with to take my insights and to see if there was another avenue that would help make a difference for cycling and cyclists.

For starters, I had come to appreciate that:

1. Individuals, BUGs and other groups working at the local or regional level were under-resourced and often struggled to engage broader support or even modest financial backing for their initiatives. We are a sorry bunch in this way – often leaving a few amazingly dedicated people to do a lot of the tedious and under-appreciated work that benefits us all.

2. While new online petition and fund raising tools were coming online, that little effort had been made to re-purpose them for advocacy activities for improved cycling and other transport options – locally or nationally. Resources to help advocates were not easily found when needed.

3. There was no coordination among the various state and national groups across the sustainable transport sectors. Some even undermined each others’ efforts to get their agenda at the head of the queue.

4. With leaders like the Lord Mayor of Sydney making a push for better transport choices in the face of strong opposition; and some states balking at doing more, this was the time more people had to be engaged to help see things through.

5. Australia had a fantastic cycling history – a now nearly forgotten time when cycling was at the centre of every day life and sport and quite literally helped build this nation. This was a legacy that deserved to be celebrated and also honoured through our actions today.

After engaging with others and wondering who else would address these issues, Go! Alliance was formed. It is an online based initiative focussed on helping others activate change at the community and national level through leverage of tools, information and one another.

It is by financial necessity a modestly scaled effort that will seek to be responsive to changing needs and using primarily an online engagement approach. Our constituents will by and large be reached through existing online communities and other organised groups. We hope to attract all forms of resources that will donate time (legal, financial, design, sponsorships) or effort towards the goals of Go! and to share both the challenges and successes of group effort. We have already suceeded in securing matching funds from BIKESydney for crowd funding projects there and hope more will do the same.

Success is not certain in any new initiative, but if the community finds that we can accomplish more working in this new way, then it will have been well worth the effort.

BNA: You mentioned the goals of the Go Alliance; What are they? What does the Go Alliance do and plan to do?

Omar: Go! Alliance’s purpose is facilitating effective transport and mobility solutions through collaboration, funding and information sharing. Enhancing the capacity and capability of individuals and communities to enhance travel options. Inspiring, mobilising and activating change. Our motivation is that effective and efficient transportation, travel and mobility options are essential elements of our everyday lives and key to the vibrancy of our communities, our cities, our economy, our health and our natural environment.

Go! will also strive to fill the gap between online communities, BUGs and clubs and finding new ways to achieving results – a critical missing link. The scope is national and includes all transport modes as we are about re-balancing not exclusion.

BNA: So how does the Go Alliance sit on the organisational spectrum? Is it a non-profit? A consultancy? A community voice? A tool of big business? Basically, who is behind it and how does it operate?

Omar: As a starting point, Go! has been registered as part of a business though profit is not the primary motive for doing this. We do want to have the flexibility of a business and be able to finance what we need. While I suppose that we are indirectly advocating a general direction the primary output of Go! Is to make it easier and more effective for others to get involved themselves or to support activities of others. Part resource centre, part consolidator, part adviser but 100% about achieving better outcomes.

Our advisory board is headed by the former mayor for Bogota and world-reknown advocate for better urban transport, Enrique Penalosa. We also have CPF board member and ex-professional cyclist Stephen Hodge; previous Sydney Councillor John McInerney and Cycling evangelist, Nick Bonich. A number of others have made themselves available to help out and I welcome approaches from others who believe they can contribute.

BNA: BNA has decided to join with the Go! Alliance. Why should we (BNA) or other organisations be involved in it? What are we going to get by allying?

Omar: BNA has a great national following and is a natural constituency for Go! Alliance to be engaged with. We look to support those who will be inspired to take action. Whether it is a local issue or a national one. An invention or a new guide book. So, rather than looking for members, we are looking for those willing to either lead or support others who want to take action towards our overall stated purpose.

So far we have helped raise money for a CPF campaign, paid for a talk by cycling historian Jim Fitzpatrick, and helped fund a new pedle tram for Sydney. Through an online petition we have also helped overcome a decision by North Sydney Council to shut down its sustainable transport advisory group and are now doing a submission to the Commonwealth in the petition format.

We are hoping to ad legal support to assist assessing or challenging counterproductive measures. We are also hoping to have in kind support from transport consulting companies that may assist in design issues. We also invite suppliers of products and services that can help to play a part to make themselves known. By consolidating we can expect to leverage everyone’s efforts.

We are also open to ideas from the BNA community on how else we can be effective – at the end of the day this really is about being effective. We will not solve everything or much right away, but we believe that we can help do more.

BNA: On the BNA forums, one user (jules21) has opined that, with most cycling advocacy, there is an elephant in the room: “the embedded cultural tendency for Australians to view cyclists as second class road users”.

Omar: While I can empathise with that view, I don’t buy in that this has to be the way it is. Cyclists once created and ruled the roads and trails of Australia. Most of today’s roads were classified as cycle tracks first. Australia grew on the back of a bicycle in the early 1900′s and kept us entertained, took us to war, challenged and answered the characteristic wanderlust we have always had as a nation. The fact that bicycles were shunted aside with the advent of the motor vehicle does not mean it needs to always be so. The returns are fast diminishing for more cars and more roads. That monotheistic approach has quite literally run out of road.

However, he time is now to find a new balance and to help create a base of support that is not only about cycling but about more liveable and sustainable places to live, work and play. This is what is happening in Sydney and in a few other areas but it won’t happen with much enthusiasm if it remains without galvanised and ongoing support.

BNA: While developing cycling infrastructure is a useful way forward, how is the Go Alliance going to address the battle for hearts and minds?

Omar: The current model of advocacy is running out of time. Many leading advocates have told me that there are few young people ready to step up to replace or help them – through the countless submissions, council meetings or planning briefings. The “clock speed” for many people today is just too high for accommodating or supporting this engagement approach.

The large cycling organizations are effective in some states and not in others. At best, they can focus efforts on large impact priorities but must defer others. This leaves much of the needed work still undone and too often just single transport mode focussed.

Go! is about supporting incremental change backed by pervasive change. My hope is that at the very least, Go! prove that there is value in new approaches to activating change and to appeal to people like the BNA community to get more involved. But Go! can’t do this alone, we need people who want to help with financial support, matching funding or in-kind services and heaps of individuals willing to lead or support actions. We will soon see if this formula works!

BNA: So if traditional advocacy is dying off, what can the motivated individual do? Are there avenues for small voices, or do they have to ride the coat tails of a bigger organisation and hope they get where they want to go?

Omar: There will always be a role for people to do the hard yards at council meetings and gathering information at briefings and leading protests. However, the influencing side is clearly moving in the direction of effective campaigns that mobilise people quickly and for a clear purpose. Politicians Tweet and engage much more dynamically and want to be seen being sensitive to the pulse of the people.

Reports and submissions are ineffective tools for politicians – unless they want to delay things or look to have been listening even when their minds are already made up! GetUp! has clearly demonstrated that motivating a lot of “small voices” to sing together rather quickly can deliver a strong message to politicians and their departments that they cannot ignore. It has broadened the base of those who are aware and engaged than would have been the case previously.

BNA: The Pirate Party has just been registered in Australia for the 2013 elections, and while small/single issue parties have had some impact on Australian politics, this is really the first time we’ll see a much younger, digitally connected and widely distributed voice. Do you think it’s time for cyclists to use the new advocacy to have their views better represented politically? Will the Go! alliance ever become the Go! party?

Omar: First let’s consider if there is indeed such a thing as a “cycling community”? We are a very diverse set of individuals with different cycling interests and affiliations that just so happen to ride a bike for one reason or another. For many (and this often comes as a shock to some) it is not the most important thing in their lives. Most are not affiliated with any cycling group, a few with BUGs (more so in NSW), some with state organisations and some with racing groups. While there is some common ground there is little to unite us in or our actions and that and that’s not even including looking at other modes of transport. The truth is that we seldom back each other up except in places like BNA. But even then we often fall short of taking united action.

On the other side of the table we LGA’s, road and transport authorities as well infrastructure authorities and Commonwealth departments. They are constantly engaged with an array of providers and those advocating more of the same. Is it any wonder that we don’t get a clear message across?

I believe there are three ways to come to terms with this:
The Shooters Party approach. Go for representation in a seat that can be won, hope for a coalition government that needs your vote and push a narrow agenda with great leverage. The Shooters could not have dreamed of a better situation to get support for changes that are abhorrent to most people.

Pick a party approach. Select one party that we believe most closely aligns to cycling and have them push the agenda and hope they get into power. The problem with this approach is both picking the wrong horse and then when in power, will they stick to their promises? The NSW Labor Party spoke the language of cyclists but did precious little in reality and the participation rates went to the bottom of the table. The Liberals came in and appeared to revel in the fact that they owed nothing to cyclists and in fact looked to be trying to reverse gains at first.

The mainstream, City of Sydney approach. Make the size and enthusiasm of an online and savvy coalition seeking a different approach become a well recognised lever that no party at any level of government can ignore. This is an apolitical approach that presses all parties to come up with ideas and solutions to ensure they don’t lose your vote. This removes the possible stigma of being a “niche” or “green” issue and the knee-jerk reaction that can cause even turn off some cycling supporters. This approach also implies creating a broader consensus that does not exclude other transport modes and attracts more people to want to be a part.

All approaches have their merits but the latter one means that a broader constituency could be built that ensures change comes no matter what party is in power. (As happens in Copenhagen I would love to see a competitive benchmark evolve of how many of each party cycle – or don’t drive – to their offices!). There is no reason that it should not become seen as arrogant and out of touch to be continuing to promote the dominance of traditional motor vehicle use. That’s where I hope Go! can come in to help inform and empower to get effective campaigns going at all levels even nationally as well when required – to help activate change. However, ultimately this will only work if a large enough number are willing to engage and that is far from certain.

But I do have to say I like the ring of a “Go! Party” and we could have some fun with our manifesto!

BNA: So what is Go! doing now? What will they be doing in the near future?

Omar: Go! Has already been testing the basic concepts of deploying petitions and crowd funding in support of community activities and the response has been encouraging. We are going to build on that and hopefully create a supporting web site that brings together these tools and the information and resources to enable more people to engage and activate change. It is our belief that unless we build a constituency that is ready to take action and back action that we are unlikely to motivate governments at any level to do much towards transitioning transport priorities.

So Go! will back others and look for opportunities to engage with those who believe in this approach and would also like to help the community. It could be a business or a BUG or even an LGA that commit in-kind or matching funds to promote activities that help make a difference. Already, BIKESydney is offering to match 1:1 moneys raised in any crowd funding initiative that affects cycling in Sydney. I think this is exciting as a model to get highly leveraged results to do so many things!

BNA: As individuals, how do we get involved with Go! ? If we do join the alliance (sounds like Star Wars, doesn’t it?), how do we get our views heard?

Omar: I think its about being motivated to help change the dynamics that got us in this transport mess in most parts of Australia. The momentum built up from decades of singleminded thinking that placed the motor vehicle at the top of the food chain needs to be thrown into reverse – at least to the point of achieving a more sensible balance in transport spending and options. We also realise that politics and means of influence has changed dramatically and yet little has been done to put those forces to use in this area.

All tha Go! Is trying to do is facilitate a new way for us to build and grow that support base by leading on some issues of broad importance (like the current Yes, Minister! Petition) or an event that may help promote the concept, but mostly by helping individuals, BUGs and others in the community to figure out how to take action, to get the funding and to attract the support that contributes to the common purpose. Over 300 individuals contributed to a Go! assisted online petition to retain the sustainable transport advisory group for North Sydney Council recently. It was a success.

Part of this approach is dependent on bridging the gap with online communities that often talk about issues but seldom have an outlet to truly take it to the next step in a coordinated way. It is a often discussed issue that online social groups are not good at getting behind things together.

I also hope we help those who don’t see themselves as advocates but want to get something done that would help – a bike rack for a school or a transport guidebook for the aged or designing a new mobility aid for someone with a physical challenge. We just helped fund the Pedal Inn, a bar on wheels that is propelled by the guests pedaling!

In the end it is not really so much about single or integrated transport modes but about the other side of the same coin and that is building friendlier and better functioning communities and cities that are healthier, kinder on the environment and a whole lot more fun to live in or visit. It won’t happen if we don’t begin to back ourselves and each other to activate the necessary changes. So, I guess I am just saying it is time for your readers to consider what they can do and how Go! could help them do it.

BNA: I need some straight answers from you Omar. Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance?
Omar: You should speak to my doctor, Mr. Lamborghini. He’s got all of the fast answers you could ever need.

BNA: Did you ever blood-dope, or use blood transfusions to enhance your cycling performance?
Omar: I have certainly been called a dope, does that count? If anything I took was meant to enhance my performance then I’m clearly not going to be asked for an endorsement. I mean the Bloodmobile felt so sorry for me that they offered to give me blood.

BNA: Did you ever used other banned substances like cortisones, testosterone, or human growth hormone?
Omar: This is beginning to feel like water boarding… alright already, someone call Oprah and let her know that I want to come clean but it will take three episodes minimum and I want soft lighting and angels singing in the background!

BNA thanks Omar for his time and for being a good sport. Omar is keen to answer your questions and you can engage him in a discussion in the comments below.

More information about the Go! Alliance can be found on their site.

Motor assisted bicycle laws originally had a purpose – to assist people who wanted to ride bicycles, but who lacked the desire or ability to travel solely by pedal power; it was enabling legislation. Somehow along the way, however, we’ve ended up with a situation where people are attaching internal combustion engines to cheap mountain bikes and riding them on bike paths. While I don’t have any hard statistics, anecdotally the number of these vehicles is increasing, and a lot of people aren’t happy about it; they have good reason.

For a few hundred dollars you can buy a well made imported engine specifically designed to be attached to a mountain bike. With a few hours and a bit of mechanical knowledge, you’ve got a vehicle that can do around a 100km on a litre of petrol. If you don’t want to go to all of that trouble, for just a little bit extra you can find completely converted bikes openly traded on eBay and Gumtree. It’s not illegal to make them or to buy them, but it is illegal to ride them, at least sometimes, and in some states.

And there lies the problem. In states like Queensland,  the law is very clear – bikes do not have internal combustion engines, period. If it has an internal combustion engine, it’s a motorbike and it has to be registered and has to conform with Australian standards for motorbike design. All laws relating to motorised bikes in Queensland relate to bikes with electric motors, everything else is a motorbike.

In other states, the laws are often confusing because they don’t always clearly differentiate between electric motors and internal combustion motors. It’s a mismatched collection of maximum wattages, requirements for cut-out speeds and obscure terminology. Are you allowed to have a motor on your bike? How many cc’s can my engine have before it reaches 200 W? What’s a road related area?

While it’s up to the individual to make sure they know and comply with relevant laws, in practice that simply doesn’t happen, especially when they’re updated regularly. Being confused about the law probably isn’t a valid legal defence, but it’s likely a mitigating factor, especially when you can buy and sell these bikes quite legally. If they’re illegal, why are you allowed to buy them?

So what’s the problem with petrol powered bikes?
In theory, nothing. Everything that’s good about pedal powered bikes is also good about motorised bikes, with the added benefit that you don’t have to pedal. Cycling can be hard work, especially when the geography doesn’t  cooperate, so having motors on bikes is often a great benefit. In fact, this is how motorbikes were invented, both petrol powered and electric. But the lessons learned in early motorbike development seem to have been forgotten in the past century, and so we may be doomed to repeat them.

To explain what I mean, I’ll go back to the very clear description of motorised bikes in Queensland law: if you want to ride it on the road, a bike with an internal combustion engine (or an electric motor over a certain wattage) must comply with the Australian Design rules for motorbikes. To put it simply, putting an engine on a bike may exceed the design specifications of the bike.

That’s what this all boils down to: putting engines on bikes that aren’t designed for engines is dangerous. The brakes, the body, the drive train and the wheels of modern bicycles are simply not designed to deal with the stresses and forces produced by attached internal combustion engines. Backyard bike conversions, while fine in theory, are accidents waiting to happen, and they’ll happen to either the rider or to some other member of the public unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. This is why motorbikes need to be registered, why there are design standards for them and why there is a whole collection of safety gear available for them – they may have once been bicycles, but they’re not any more.

And so there is a line, but it’s not clearly drawn. Electric motors in bikes have followed a very different development pathway to internal combustion motors, but the same danger exists there as well. This is why there is strict legislation about power limits and pedal assist technology. Applying the same laws to internal combustion engines on bikes, as some states seem to do, should provide the same sort of safeguards but, unfortunately, I still don’t think the technology of the internal combustion engine is safe for bicycles.

Regardless of whether you’re for them or against them, whether you want them stopped or you want them regulated, there are grey areas in the law, and it’s in those areas that potential disaster lies. We need new, clear and standardised laws and we need them to be inclusive of everyone who wants to ride a bike. We need to outlaw the danger, but we need to embrace the desire.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author in this opinion piece do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Bicycles Network Australia.

Photo 1 © Paul Keller, Photo 2 © Brian Hansen

Before I begin the review, let me set some context for this bike. Start by imagining the most basic idea of a bike, now put that basic bike in an environment where bikes are considered an essential part of the transport infrastructure, where there are more bikes than cars and where bikes are considered just a faster way of getting around than walking. Further, imagine that the bike’s “natural” predators have be tamed by legislation and common sense. What do you get? You get the Orange Plus Innergy XT – it’s a bike that has evolved, and it’s evolved in one of the most bike friendly countries in the world, the Netherlands. A review such as this would be considered crazy over there, why would someone get so excited about a bike? But here in Australia, this bike is a breath of fresh air and it’s definitely exciting enough to review in depth.

The first thing you will notice about the bike is its style. From front to back it’s a well integrated and thoughtfully designed machine. A quick visual tour around the bike will reveal the name Gazelle stamped on almost everything. This is not a hodge-podge of components thrown on a generic frame with a sticker on it, this is a bike where every part of it has been designed to mesh with every other part. Not only is it a synthesised bike, it’s a synthesised electric bike; the front wheel hub motor, battery and controller are as well integrated as all of the other components; the bike was built to be an electric bike.

After you’ve noticed the whole package, your eyes drill down to the details. Swept back handlebars, big comfortable seat, flat pedals, rear rack, built in lock, full chain guard, integrated lighting, mud guards – it even has a skirt guard! Basically, this is a bike designed to be ridden, and ridden without thinking too much about it. You jump on it wearing whatever you have on and you ride it.

All of the styling and careful design of a bike amounts to nothing if the bike doesn’t ride well. I rode this bike to and from work every day and I rode it on the weekends. Each time I rode it I was wearing whatever I had on, usually jeans, a shirt and sneakers. Essentially I used it the way it was meant to be used, and I did this for over a month, riding with the motor off about half of the time, to get the fullest picture of the way the Innergy performs.

When I set off from my house to work, the road is downhill and it’s very easy to pick up speed on any bike. Without turning the pedals over, I will hit 40 kph before I have to make a left into a slight uphill before heading downhill again to reach speeds around 50kph. After that there’s a sharp stop, several traffic lights, a main road and rolling hills. I present all of this detail to demonstrate the types of terrain I tested this bike on, that is, pretty much all of the common terrains in Australia’s major cities. Weekend rides were around Sydney Olympic Park, which is about as flat an area as you get in Sydney.

It took me about a week of riding to get used to this bike, not because it’s a bad bike to ride, rather because it is so very different to ride compared to a drop bar or a flat bar bike. Once my brain adapted to the differences, I was moving the bike around with as much verve as my regular rides.

The most startling thing about the way this bike rides is how well it handles. I was riding the large version of the bike, which puts me a fair way above the ground. Despite this, the weight of the hubs, the long wheel base and the big tyres meant that this bike handled better than my regular commuter. The centre of gravity of this bike is very low and this means you can take corners at speeds you wouldn’t think about taking them on a racing bike, especially when you’re sitting almost upright. The bike sticks to the ground and responds smoothly. The Innergy is also stable and manoeuvrable at low speeds, so it’s perfect for riding along crowded shared paths. The only time it wasn’t stable was when it was stationary, or very near to it; I couldn’t track stand this bike at all, despite trying the whole time I had it (but that’s just me playing silly buggers).

The suspension seat post and front fork suspension absorb all of the minor bumps in the road and even out parking lot speed humps. The hand grips are comfortable and support the heel of your hand to keep that comfort long term. The internal gears in the Shimano Nexus 7 speed rear hub are changed via the right grip with a twist shift; you can see which gear you’re in through a small window in the shifter. The left grip has a similar form factor to the right, but instead of changing the gear, a twist of the left grip rings the bell. Of all of the cool integrated features of this bike, this one made me smile the most. The roller brake in the back and the v-brake in the front give confident and well modulated stopping power.

Engaging the motor on the bike requires a simple button press on the control panel, accessed with your left thumb. The electrical system goes through a number of quick self-checks before the motor smoothly and definitely kicks in. As per Australian law, this bike is a pedal assist set up, so the motor will only work while you’re pedalling the bike. The Innergy has both torque and cadence sensors, so you don’t need to pedal too hard or fast to get the motor to help you along. The pedal assist cuts out after you’re travelling about 25 kph, so it gets you going, but it’s not a motorbike.

The motor works in three modes: eco, normal and boost. I tended to use only normal and boost; normal for flat riding and boost for the hills. If my journey to work is mostly downhill, it stands to reason that the journey home is uphill, and I found myself using boost quite a lot coming home. According to the specs, the battery will give you about 30 kms worth of constant use in normal mode, but I found I got about 50 km worth of use out of the battery using a mixture of normal and boost. This was because of the 25 kph cut-out; I used the motor to get me started on the flats and then kept the speed in the low 30s where the motor doesn’t operate. The battery recharges in about 3 hours and it doesn’t have memory effects, so I could just plug it in at the end of each journey and have it ready for the next.

One of the counter intuitive things about the Innergy is that you don’t really notice your speed. I spend a lot of time on the bike and I’m pretty attuned to how fast I’m travelling when my legs are turning at a particular rate and I’m in a particular gear. On the Innergy, with the motor on, I’d be turning my legs over at a rate that would have me riding at about 10-15 kph, but a glance at the speed on the control panel would show I was travelling closer to 30!

The motor, in boost mode, really makes a difference on the hills. When I found myself struggling up a slope, a quick press of the button on the control panel and the boost mode kicks in with more power. Having that extra power really flattens the ground out and gave me a good 5 kph over the speeds I take these hills at on my normal commuting bike, and the best bit is that I didn’t have to kill myself to do it – I just pedalled the best I could and the motor did the rest.

The best evidence I can give for the quality of the motor is running it along the street I live in; it’s over a kilometre long, has an average gradient of 12% with a “wonderful” 21% section. Running the motor in boost mode got me home easily up sections around 10 and 12%, but continuing up the street to the 21% section…well, it was slow, but I was able to do it without killing myself, as I normally have to do on my other bikes. Yes, it did require significant effort from both me and the motor, but not nearly as much as it should have. It took me around 6 months to get enough fitness to do that climb on my regular bike, a moderately fit person riding the Innergy could do it first go.

About the only thing I have against the pedal assist system is that the mode switch for the motor is located just below the on off switch for the system, and you only need to touch it to turn it off. There were several times where I felt the wonderful helping hand disappear exactly when I needed it most, much like the hot water all of a sudden being turned off during a shower. If only they made you hold the power button down for a few seconds to turn it off, this would all be avoided -take note Gazelle designers.

Without the motor operating, the Innergy rides very comfortably on the flats, a lot better than I expected. The gear range has enough to get you to some good speeds, but the relaxed nature of bike means you’re not going to be standing and sprinting to get there. Cruising along in the mid 20s is an easily achievable scenario without needing to put too much effort into it or use the motor.

Where I found myself really struggling without the motor was when it came to the hills. Even on the lowest gear it’s hard work. If I were buying this bike to ride in my area, I would be getting a bigger cog on the rear hub, something which is trivial to change but which would make a good bit of difference. Of course, that would knock some off your higher end, but it’s not often you’ll be riding in the highest gear, so a bigger rear cog would give you a much more usable range in Sydney.

A lot of thinking has gone into this bike so that the rider doesn’t have to think about it. Ride with whatever shoes you’ve got on? Check, you can even ride barefoot (don’t ask, it’s a long story). Ride without changing clothes? Check, you don’t even need to roll your pant legs up. Bike lock? Built in. Pump? There’s one that fits into the standard rear rack.

And now we come to the point where I have a bit of a problem with the Innergy; it’s only a minor one that requires some thinking around, but it is a concern. Because of the electric motor and the internal rear hub, taking the wheels off the bike to fix a flat is not something that can be done quickly or easily. What this means is that you will either have to learn how to repair a flat without removing the wheels, learn how to remove and reattach the wheels (it takes a little learning) or you will have to work out some way to transport the bike home. Fortunately, Gazelle have thought about this: firstly, the tyres used, Schwalbe Marathons, are the most puncture resistant tyres available; secondly, in the unlikely event you do need to transport the bike, there is a towbar mounted carrier available that will hold the Innergy for a car ride.

There are simply too many features on this bike to cover in an article like this. You can read more about the Orange Plus Innergy XT on the Gazelle website. What’s not mentioned on the web site, but is worth mentioning, is the dealer servicing of the bike and, importantly, the motor. When you take the bike back to the dealer, they can plug the pedal assist system into their computer and get a complete history of how the motor has been used, how the battery has been performing and can diagnose any problems the system has been having. They can work out how the bike is being used and adjust the power profile to better match the terrain you’re covering. This is exactly what they do when I take my car in for a service and it shows just how far from a “normal” bike the Innergy is.

If you’re ready to take bicycle transport seriously, and if you demand utility, efficiency and style, the Orange Plus Innergy XT is highly recommended. It’s not a cheaply hacked together bike shaped object, it’s a well constructed and thought out vehicle; the Orange Plus Innergy XT is a genuine car replacement option. It’s available in a variety of sizes and in men’s and women’s models. At $3000, it’s well priced to recoup its purchase price in insurance, registration, parking and fuel costs within months.

There are Gazelle Innergy dealers across Australia, specialised bicycle shops who sell and service these eBikes. Gazelle bicycles are imported into Australia by Gazelle Australia.

Title photo by Stuart Low.

O-tus mini-speakers are just that: mini speakers. They attach to your helmet near your ears and, while they look a lot like earphones, they definitely do NOT go into your ear canal; they’re surround sound speakers and they project sound powerfully. It’s the speaker’s ability to project sound that makes these speakers work – you need it to project because the speakers are away from  your ears, and because they’re away from your ears, you can hear the traffic around you. A sensible solution indeed.

Of course, you also need something to play that music. If you have a light weight mp3 player, you can attach it to the back of your helmet and then connect it to your O-tus mini-speakers. If you have a smart phone, you can attach a bluetooth receiver to your helmet and then “beam” music to your O-tus mini-speakers via that, provided your phone has bluetooth, which most do. You can then leave your smart phone in your jersey pocket or mounted on your handlebars and still get music. So, in theory, O-tus have taken care of a problem for people who want that problem taken care of. The devil, of course, is always in the details.

I first became suspicious of this product when O-tus suggested I use a particular brand of mp3 player to test the mini-speakers. It was a brand I knew about, but one that I didn’t have (and no, it wasn’t a player from the orchard). I did a search for the mini-speakers online and discovered on the O-tus web site a video that showed you how to increase the volume of the songs on your iPod/iPhone so that you can listen to these devices properly on the mini-speakers. There was obviously a known issue with the mini-speakers, so now I definitely had to try using them with these devices. I don’t own any Apple products, but I do have a an ever increasing collection of cheap, but really good, mp3 players. I  borrowed an iPod nano and an iPhone to test the speakers out, but I mainly tested them using the mp3 players I had in my possession.

The previous paragraph makes it sound like there is something wrong with the mini-speakers. To save you some time wondering about this, there ultimately isn’t, but they do have a weakness and that is that they’re not “out-of-the-box” easily usable. You have to spend a little bit of time setting them up properly to make them work correctly. That’s the price you pay to get safe music, I suppose. If you want good music quality, use noise cancelling in-ear buds. If you want safe music, you’re going to have to work to get it sounding good. Essentially you can choose any two of the following: good, safe, easy.

Let’s look at the mini-speakers straight out of the box. The speakers, as previously mentioned, look like earbuds with some sort of velcro on the back of them and with only a short cord. You also get some sticky patches with velcro like material on one surface. This isn’t your normal hook and loop tape, rather it looks, and operates, like the love child of velcro and Lego. You push the two surfaces together a lot like Lego blocks, but they hold together like velcro. It’s not really that complicated; you stick a patch to the bottom edge of your helmet on each side, just in front of your ears, and you stick a patch on the back of your helmet and on the back of your mp3 player. You attach the mini-speakers to the mounting patches near your ears, run the cable to the back of your helmet, attach the player to the helmet and connect the mp3 player. All relatively simple to do, but this is where the fun begins.

When I first set the mini-speakers up (quickly, but as described in the instructions supplied with the mini-speakers), the music was barely audible. I fiddled around with it and, finally, I managed to get some quite good volume sound. The trick was to angle the speakers so that they “shot” the sound into my ear. Let me explain that a bit further.

The mini-speakers are built with a lip on them, a sort of funnel, with the big end on the speakers and the small end coming away from them.The funnel seems to focus the sound into a beam. That beam has to be positioned and angled so that it goes into the bowl of your ear, not past it. Once I worked that out, the speaker set up became obvious, but even then it was quite a delicate job to maximise the sound.

Once I had it, I proceeded to remove the speakers and try it again – they’re meant to be removable, after all. It was much easier now that I knew what to listen for and how the speakers were delivering the sound. I just imagined beams of light coming from the mini-speakers and made them “shine” into my ears. Yeah, I know it sounds fanciful, but it worked for me and each subsequent removal and re-attachment was aligned in less time.

After the alignment issue, I had to deal with the volume issue; I didn’t seem to have one. I am an avid mp3 listener, but because I often lose or damage my players, and because I don’t have the desire for social acceptance among the young and trendy, I am comfortable buying cheaper mp3 players. The chipsets in these devices are the same as the chipsets in more expensive ones, at least for sound quality, and a quick search on google will show you which cheap no-name device is equivalent in sound quality to which expensive player. Provided you don’t mind horrible user interfaces, you’re set. The two cheap players I used delivered good quality sound at a good volume. They were a Dolphin brand player and a Dick Smith brand player.

The sound quality through the mini-speakers using the cheap players was the equivalent of what you’d get from simple headphones or from ear buds that sit on the edge of your ear rather than go into the canal. When riding in traffic, you can hear the music as you would with simple headphones, that is: reasonably well most of the time, but almost not at all when there is traffic around. That’s fine for music, though if you were listening to an audiobook or some stand-up comedy, you would miss a lot of detail.

When listening to music, I had to have the volume up near maximum to get it audible. I don’t consider that to be a real problem; these mini-speakers require a lot of power to drive them and the players can only deliver so much. I couldn’t ramp up the volume to the point where the traffic noise was blocked out. I don’t think this is a feature of the mini-speakers, rather it’s a limitation, but one that’s beneficial.

The sound from the mini-speakers is also very directional. If you don’t have them pointed towards your ears, you will find it hard to hear anything from even a small distance away. I doubt someone riding next to me would stand a chance of hearing anything, even if we were riding in absolute silence without traffic. They’re very personal mini-speakers.

Apart from fiddling with the set up, the only other issue I have with the system is that the player is mounted on the rear of the helmet. This means that you have to turn the music on before you put your helmet on and then you don’t touch it again until you take your helmet off. There are probably some mp3 players that you can operate easily behind your head while riding, but really, it’s not an option. You have to make sure you choose a play list that you like, because you are going to have to stop and remove you helmet to change it.

Having the player mounted on the helmet also means that if it comes loose, your player is probably going to get damaged. This didn’t happen to me, and I have no reason to suspect it will, but it could happen. The velcro-like material does bond the speakers and mp3 player to the helmet quite strongly. Of course, you now have velcro-like pads stuck to your mp3 player and helmet, even when you’re not using the O-tus system.

So I’m happy to state that the mini-speakers work the way that they’re intended to work if they’re set up properly, with the players I tested at least. Given the player suggestions from O-tus and the video on their site, I had to test the mini-speakers with an Apple device. I borrowed an iPod nano and an iPhone to try them out, but I didn’t ride with these devices (they weren’t mine), I just compared the players in my office.

The mini-speakers with the iPod and iPhone did not perform well initially, but this didn’t surprise me. Apple are known for beginning-to-end product integration, so these players are designed to work with very specific output devices. The mini-speakers are not such devices. You either need some sort of amplifier or you need to increase the volume of the songs. The video on the O-tus site shows you how to do this in iTunes, but you can do it better and quicker in other music programs. Suitably amplified, the mini-speakers do work with the Apple devices I tried, but the sound quality of these amplified songs seems lower. I suspect it’s a side effect of the amplification process. While I didn’t ride in traffic with these devices, I think the sound quality would be sufficient for riding with and at least as good as that from the other cheap players I tried.

The other thing I didn’t try was using a bluetooth receiver. If I did have a smartphone, I wouldn’t be riding with it stuck to the back of my helmet and, given that smartphones can be used for navigation, displaying speed, and controlling your video cameras, I would prefer to have it mounted on my bars or stem. A bluetooth receiver would mean I could control the music from my bike’s cockpit, which is something I can’t do with the player mounted behind my hear. If the bluetooth receiver also had an amplifier built into it, then problem solved!

So, after all of that, here’s my verdict: these speakers are no good for blocking out the world around you and sailing away on an awesome guitar solo while riding. The moment you have a car or truck anywhere near you, you can hear it. That’s the point, you’re meant to hear the traffic while riding. Where the O-tus mini-speakers would be really good is in situations where there’s a bit of quiet. I’m thinking of Sunday rides along bike paths, long tours on quiet country roads, riding the streets at 4am to get to a group ride, and doing laps on the velodrome. Team the O-tus speakers up with an iPhone mount and a bluetooth receiver and you have a whole entertainment system on your bike.

If you really want music while you ride, the O-tus mini-speakers might be the option for you. They’re not as simple to set up and use as a set of earphones, but they do the job safely – provided you have a music player that will give you enough volume and/or you’re willing to modify your music. If you’re willing to go to the effort, you will reap the melodic benefits.

O-tus speakers come with enough mounting blocks to fit two helmets and are available from www.o-tus.com for $39.73 (shipping to Australia is between $6-8). Mounting blocks for tricky helmets are also available at no extra charge. The mini-speakers are available in black or white.

I’m never going to win any sort of award for (good) style, but I do need to look presentable for work, and when I venture between work sites I prefer to ride. For me this means putting my carefully rolled work shirt, pants and shoes into my panniers and riding in my lycra (for long distances, anyway). I get where I need to go, lock my bike up, freshen up and change – but then I’ve got to carry my panniers around with me for the rest of the day. My touring panniers, while great for touring, basically look like Santa sacks and they’re certainly not something that are easy to carry. I was desperate for something that looked good on and off the bike.

Timbuk2 seem to specialise in solving these sorts of problems. The Goody Box and Shift Pannier Messenger bags that we recently reviewed are great examples of this, but for me the Tandem Panniers fit the bill. As the photos show, the Timbuk2 Tandem Panniers are conjoined bags and require a rear rack to carry them. You can tell they were made by people who understand cycling, and it’s in the little details that this is shown. Firstly, the bags are stitched to the joining piece at an angle, which means that they’re tilted back slightly when they sit on the rack. This gives you clearance for your feet so you don’t get “heel strike” against the panniers while riding. The bags also have a small rear reflective strip on each side, which are quite inconspicuous until light is shone on them, but these strips are also “loops” that allow you to mount small rear lights on each pannier. You probably won’t need these, however, since the bags sit with a low profile on the racks, which both lowers the centre of gravity and allows your seatpost mounted lights to be seen quite clearly. Little touches, but they make things so much more convenient.

When you get to the end of your trip you pull the panniers off the bike and “clink”, the two halves join together with a magnet and you have a single two sided bag. The joining piece tucks neatly and invisibly between them and you can carry the bag either by the handles or by attaching a shoulder strap. The magnet holds it all together quite well and it takes a bit of intervention to get them apart to reattach them to the bike. It’s not a hassle though, far from it, since it means that your panniers now look something like a Gladstone bag. There have been many times when I’ve walked into an office and been asked if I had caught the train in that day, basically because they couldn’t see anything “cycling” about me (though they all know I cycle). I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it does make me look a little more professional (though I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, either).

I guess by now you want the tech specs, but they’re best viewed on Timbuk2′s website. On it you’ll also find the dimensions for the laptops that the panniers can carry as well. According to the sales literature, the tandem panniers can carry up to a 15″ laptop, though I didn’t try this out. Inside each bag is the main compartment, which takes up most of the space, and a pocket at the rear of each bag, which I believe is where they suggest you carry your laptop. There is no extra padding in this section, so you would probably want to encase your laptop in a protective sleeve before putting it in.

The material the panniers are made from is waterproof, but the panniers themselves are noted to be weather resistant. The contents of the bags are protected by the main flap on each one, but water could get in if the rain was coming at the wrong angle. The internal compartment can be drawn smaller at the top, but this won’t cover all weather contingencies. Given that, I have ridden with these panniers in the rain and didn’t have any problems with water getting in. I have a couple of plastic bags in there just in case, however. I won’t be riding with these through rivers, so I don’t even think about it if it rains – they haven’t let me down yet.

Despite using these every day for the past 6 months (with every intention of using them for all of my commutes until they wear out), there is a catch. Actually, the lack of a catch, or I should say too much catch – let me explain. The panniers did not have any mounting instructions with them when they arrived, nor did their web site that I could see. You wouldn’t think that mounting panniers would be a problem (I’ve been using other panniers for years), but I was a bit confused. There are velcro straps on top of the joining strip – are you meant to attach these to the rack or is there a clip somewhere that I can’t see? I searched YouTube and found a Timbuk2 video of how to mount these panniers and it’s done using hooks.

The panniers have, on the back of each bag, an elastic strap with a thin metal hook on the end. According to the video, you put the bags over the rack (that was always obvious) and you attach the hooks to the chain stays on each side of your bike. If you just raised one eyebrow and made a strange noise, then you’ll understand my similar reaction when I saw that. I thought, however, that these guys obviously know what they’re doing and so I went ahead and mounted it exactly like they suggested. Going downhill out of my front door was fine, but on turning left and heading uphill I quickly found the panniers had shifted back and the hook on one side had come off and lodged itself in my spokes. I’m glad this happened as I was starting to accelerate after a hard turn since the sudden stopping of the back wheel almost caused me to crash. I thought I had done something wrong when I mounted the panniers, but having a look around on the Timbuk2 site I found that many other users had a similar experience. Either the hooks went into the wheels or the panniers simply slid off the back of the rack and onto the road.

The solution to this was simple – remove the hooks and use the velcro straps to hold the panniers to the rack. Apparently these straps are meant to hold items on the top of the rack, which is a great idea, but they now also stop the panniers falling off. Fortunately, I had the ability to do that on my rack, but I have seen racks where you can’t do that and I don’t know how you would mount them in that case. I asked Timbuk2 about this and they acknowledged a problem and have re-designed the mounting. I haven’t seen the modified design, but I was impressed that (a) a company would keep negative consumer feedback on their site and (b) they respond positively to that feedback. So not only do they make good looking bags, they try to make the bags suit the consumer. Timbuk2 also offer a “lifetime guarantee” on the materials and workmanship, use ethically treated labour and have a bag recycling program which will get you 20% off of your next Timbuk2 bag.

After using these daily for six months, they still look great and they’re holding up very well despite being put on and taken off at least twice a day (usually more). If you have to carry a bit of kit around with you while you’re off the bike and you want to do it with a bit of a casually professional look, then this bag is for you. If this isn’t your thing, then Timbuk2 probably have a bag that will suit you and solve your carrying problems. I’ve been impressed by both the bag and the company and I’ll be looking at their range when I’m next in need of a good cycling specific bag (though I think that may be some time off, since it will take a while to wear this one out).

The Tandem Panniers retail for around US$129. Timbuk2 bags are available through your local bike shop, or give the importer, Phoenix Leisure Group, a call on (02) 9552 6900 or send them an email: info@plg.com.au

I wandered between groups of riders and found John (almost 45) who raced in D grade alongside (or more realistically behind) BNA’s Christopher Jones who placed second. John is a relative newcomer to the sport, having competed in 7 or 8 races with the Waratahs since February of this year. “I wanted some competition, but not too much”, says John, “I took up riding again about eight years ago because I didn’t enjoy going to the gym. My wife and I bought some cheap mountain bikes because we didn’t know if we’d like it or not and didn’t want to spend too much money. But we did like it and we kept it up.” John and his wife now have three bikes each, four of which live in the dining room.

When he went out for his first group training ride with the Waratahs he realised he was quite a bit younger than most of the guys in the group. “They weren’t the fast bunch”, he confesses, “but they rode at a higher speed than I was used to and did more climbing, which I was feeling two days later.” Racing has gotten to him, though. “There’s a lot to learn. Racing isn’t just about aerobic fitness and power, it’s about using your brain as well. These older guys have got the experience, so there’s a lot to learn from those guys. Some of them are very, very fit because they ride so often and look after themselves. It’s pretty impressive to see that. I’d like to continue racing for some time yet, at least another 20 years.”

Richard (aged 45) and Paul (aged 39) are of a similar opinion to John, though it’s only their first race today and they rode in E grade. Richard has two years of regular cycle commuting on his tyres, with some recreational riding with family on the weekend, while Paul describes himself as “a bit of a hacker out to have a bit of fun”. Paul rates his first race as “hard, with a lot of pain, but it’s addictive”. Richard agrees with that. Both of them promise that they’ll be back; “It’s worth getting into trouble with your family for”, Richard adds.

Dr. Peter Reaburn is an Associate Professor in exercise and sport science at Central Queensland University. He’s also 54 years old and has been a competitive athlete for most of his life. He wasn’t at the Waratah’s race, but he is well known as an expert on masters athletes, in particular cyclists.  I contacted Peter to ask him for his thoughts on masters cyclists.

“When we look at national and international performances, it’s the 25-35 year age groups where cycling performance peaks. In general, the longer the event, the more important experience (peaking, pre-race prep, and pacing) become. This means that in road events or longer track events, the older the 25-35 year olds are, the better they will go.

This said, it is never too late. There are always exceptional athletes in any age group who, if they train smart by using scientific training principles (as espoused in my book “The Masters Athlete”), together with the principles of listening to their body and learning from experience, will outperform younger riders on any given day. We all know people like that.

Successful aging is about not only physical health but also being mentally stimulated and socially engaged. We cyclists know that our sport gives us all of these. While many masters sports can also give us this, there are few sports where 60 year-olds can train and race with 20 year olds on an equal footing. Mixing with younger riders keeps us young and the young inspired!”

I like that phrase, “successful aging”; it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something by not dying. Obviously, it’s more than that, so I asked Peter about any drawbacks he sees with being a competitive masters cyclist.

“Drawbacks? Maybe the risk of crashing might increase as reaction speed drops and sight or hearing becomes impaired. However, experience can usually make up for this if we are smart and pick the right wheel, foresee what’s ahead, and stay vigilant and focused in the bunch.

My strongest advice is to ensure anyone, cyclist or not, gets along to their family doctor for an annual check up. I do every year. My doctor is pro-exercise, open-minded and supportive of aging being no barrier to exercise, and he has a small hand!

The other advice I’d give is to ensure the older you get before you start endurance exercise like cycling, even if you’ve come from other sports, is to ensure good bike set-up, start slowly and build distance progressively, then frequency, then intensity of training. The other thing I always believe is listen to your body. And for the guys, listen to your wife!”

I was going to end this article with a quote, something trite like The Man in the Arena, but I decided against it. Rather, in the tradition of old men everywhere (oops, I mean masters), I’ll finish with a story about my youth.

My first real job after I finished university was at the CSIRO. I was young and full of enthusiasm and I was working with men who were very near to retirement age. They were still very active researchers and they in turn worked with men who were older than they were, and retired to boot. I thought it was a bit sad that these old guys didn’t have anything else to do with their lives and they still wanted to come in to work everyday. When I started to work with them, however, I saw that the fire that burned within them was as strong as the fire inside me, but better tended and controlled. When I went back to uni to do further study I encountered the same situation, retired professors who maintained active links with the university and who were always willing to give guidance and advice while still working on their own new ideas. I realised what it was that these people had, they had passion and that was a real lesson for me.

You can see this same passion in people who restore old cars, who build wooden toys for kids, who put together model railways, or who bake for the CWA charity stall. And it’s the same passion you see every Sunday in the men and women who wear the yellow and orange lycra of the Waratahs. They may be further down the road, but they’re riding strong.

The Waratah Masters Cycling Club holds regular Sunday morning races for riders over the age of 30. They can be contacted through their website.

Dr. Peter Reaburn’s book, The Masters Athlete, can be purchased through his website which contains lots of useful resources for cyclists and other athletes.

Photos © Mark Gunter Photography

The Hornit is a battery powered warning device that mounts on your handlebars and is triggered via a pressure switch that you can mount close to your hand grips. On your bars it looks a lot like many front lights, which is to say it doesn’t look out of place on a recreational or commuter bike. It runs on 2 AAA batteries and weighs, all up, about 100g. The main unit is easily removable from the mount (well, easily with a little bit of practice) and is just as easily reattached. So, as far as commuter utility is concerned, the Hornit ticks all of the required boxes. I’m saying all of this about the Hornit to get the basics out of the way before I get down to what I really want to say: the Hornit is loud.

When I say the Hornit is loud, you really don’t get a good idea of what I’m talking about. If I put “loud” in all-caps, it would visually represent some sort of loudness, but still wouldn’t get the idea across. Likewise, if I told you that the Hornit’s loud mode is 140 dB and its soft mode is 130 dB, that would be just numbers. So what I’ll do is get you to imagine a car coming up behind you while you’re riding and giving you a blast on their horn. If you have ever ridden on the road, you’ll know what I mean. Now double that loudness. That’s loud, right? Good, now double it again. Wow! Pretty good, eh? That’s the Hornit’s soft mode and also the threshold of pain. Now double it yet again and you’ll have the Hornit in loud mode – 8 times louder than a normal car horn. The manufacturers claim it’s the loudest bike horn in the world and I’m not going to argue with that.

So, it’s loud. Very loud. Very, very, very loud. Very, very, very…well, you get the idea (it’s loud). But that’s not what you’re reading this for. You want to know if it works. I wondered the same thing, so to give it a fair trial on busy Sydney streets, I’ve used it on my commutes every day. I have also used it on some pedestrian populated shared user paths, which I normally avoid. Here are my findings:

The Hornit vs Pedestrians

As mentioned above, the Hornit is loud and it’s also quite directional. When you’re in front of the Hornit you’ll really hear it. What this means for you is that the pedestrians on the path ahead of you are going to hear you a long time before you’re near them (at least in theory). The Hornit operates in two modes (130 dB and 140 dB) and these modes have different sounds; the quiter mode is a single high pitch tone and the louder mode is a two tone twittering sound, sort of like a car alarm. I used both tones in a variety of circumstances and had some mixed results.

On the positive side, the Hornit is loud enough to be heard over personal music devices, telephone calls and conversations. On the negative side the sounds the Hornit make are not immediately associated with a cyclist coming up behind. Pedestrians are used to a lot of loud noises when they’re walking around, and everyone is used to car alarms going off. It’s been ingrained in people that bikes have bells or horns and that’s the sound they identify with, when they actually hear it. This isn’t to say the Hornit is not effective, you just have to be aware of how to use it.

A short single blast from the Hornit, in either mode, didn’t seem to make an impact on many pedestrians, but multiple short blasts, in either mode, seemed to make a difference. It’s really about creating something different in their heads as they’re walking/wandering and getting past the programming that immediately ignores loud alarm like sounds. A few short blasts does that since it’s not a “natural” suburban sound.

Obviously, if you snuck up behind a pedestrian and gave them a blast on the Hornit, they would “react”, probably right into your path. The benefit of the Hornit is that you can actually do it from a lot farther away than you can with a bell. It’s easy to tap out a little tune as well, since the push button for the Hornit can be placed right under your thumb and you don’t need to move your hands off the grips to use it.

 The Hornit vs Animals

One thing I noticed when using the Hornit is that dogs really don’t like it. A blast or two of the Hornit stopped a couple of annoying dogs in their tracks. They didn’t look like biters, but I’ve had my fair share of those in the past and I’d rather keep any sort of angry dog at bay. I know they’re only protecting their territory, but so am I.

By the way, cats don’t like it either. They really don’t like it. No, I didn’t meet any cats while out riding, but I do have some cats at home and while I didn’t deliberately chase after the cats (my wife wouldn’t let me), while I was showing the Hornit off to the kids the cats decided to bolt like there was a hell hound chasing them. The wife wasn’t impressed by the Hornit, but the kids loved it.

The Hornit vs Motorists

Pedestrians and dogs are one thing, cars are quite another. Bells and yells don’t always work against cars, where they almost always work against people and animals. I began my experiments against my wife in a stationary car. She had just dropped the kids off at school and I was heading out late to work. She had just parked the car and was looking through her bag when I rode up behind her and gave her a short blast of the Hornit on the soft mode. She was slow to look up, looked around and then noticed me. I was a bit dismayed by this and she said that it sounded like a car alarm, so she ignored it. Given that this was the first time I had used the Hornit against a car, I wasn’t impressed.

A few days later I had occasion to use it again against a car reversing out of a driveway. They stopped before they saw me, which made me feel safe and a little bit empowered. The Hornit this time was on loud mode, the twittering mode, and I gave it a good long blast. Later the same day I had a taxi turn across double white lines in front of me, attempting to do an illegal three point turn. I slowed, gave him three blasts on high mode and he stopped reversing while I was still a good distance away. I passed slowly behind him and gave him a death stare. A few cars had caught up to me and also passed behind the taxi, keeping him there for a while. Shame there weren’t any cops in the bunch.

I’ve used it several times in the way described above against motorists in a variety of circumstances, all to good effect. I also found it good for drowning out “conversations” such as “Keep off the r-TWEET-TWEET-TWEET. You’re a TWEET-TWEET”. So, the Hornit works, but it doesn’t give you the same sense of power that a car horn would. You can use it to identify yourself, to say that there’s something there that they didn’t see, but you really can’t use it to get rid of your frustration or express your annoyance. It’s too high and twittery to sound angry, but experience has shown me that it does work a lot better than a bell, and a whole lot better than nothing at all.

Sound like a good idea?

The Hornit is a very well designed warning device, but it’s not a horn or a bell and it’s not a sound that people immediately associate with a bicycle, whether that person is in a car or on foot. If you use it in repeated short bursts, it seems to get through to people that there’s something they should be looking at. Because it is so directional, people will know where it’s coming from when they do hear it and decide to look around.

As a commuter device, the Hornit is quite easy to use and has a few nifty features that show that it was designed by a commuter. The trigger switch on the Hornit is a great innovation. The button is attached to the handlebars via a Knog light style rubber band “thingy” which means it can be attached almost anywhere. It’s connected to the main unit via a wire and plug which you have to remember to plug in when you attach the Hornit, otherwise you’ll be pressing the button and nothing will happen (guess how I know this). If you frequently take the Hornit off the bike, as I do every time I lock it up, it doesn’t take long to incorporate the extra device into your routine.

The only thing I would change on the Hornit is the length of the trigger cable. As is, it’s fine for flat bars, but I ride drops and I would love to have the trigger near the hood where I can hit it without moving my hands from them. It took me a few days to work out a good position for the trigger, one that I wouldn’t hit accidentally while moving my hands around, but when I finally did find it the cable just wasn’t long enough. If I put it under the bar tape, it might just reach, but I want to be able to move it between bikes and a slightly longer cable would be a better option for me (that, or flat handlebars, and that’s not happening). I think I’ll just add a bit to the cable myself, since I really like the trigger idea. In fact, I would love to have something like this to control my lights and enable me to switch modes.

The inventor of the Hornit was inspired to create it after experiencing London traffic. According to the company, it works in London. I’ll confirm here that it works in Sydney, at least as well as anything else does. The Hornit is functional and sturdy and it certainly lives up to its promise of being loud. While it’s not going to make everyone on the road or path aware of you, it’s certainly better than a bell or a yell in many situations.

I typically wear hi-vis clothing when I ride and when it gets dark, along with my lights, I also throw on a safety vest with lots of reflective material on it. I’m always brightly coloured and I try to ride visibly and predictably. Obviously, all of these things won’t save me if I get hit, but each one of them gives me that extra little bit of presence that will hopefully keep me safe on the roads. The Hornit means that I can ride both big and loud.

The Hornit is imported by Cassons (enquiries@cassons.com.au) and available through all good bike stores.