Product Showcase

This past summer we had a Brompton learning seminar with our Brompton Agent Ed Rae. We learned lots of new info regarding the phenomenal folding bikes (we love them), ate some great pizza from Lucé and finished off the event with some friendly competition:

Who can fold a Brompton bicycle the fastest?

Here's a video of the fun race.

Minnehaha Bag Co. make a variety of well made canvas bags with a classic look. We have enjoyed selling their bags since they were first introduced two years ago.

One minor issue we've found is that their Small Saddlebag mounts to saddles with one strap, though when mounted to a saddle with saddle loops (think Brooks), it looks as though 2 straps were used. We created an instructional video to answer the inquiries about the bag mounting set up.

A local big miles rider was in this week and when we noticed his new wooden seat we all fell in love. Nice work Gary. This was his practice model and he had another shaped "blank" that would become his new seat after he works out any glitches with the one pictured.

He integrated a sweet bag carrying system as well. Easier to get at than an under-seat rack, but also keeping the weight well forward of the rear axle. Very nice.

It's pretty obvious that Gary's a high mileage rider that is willing to put some thought and energy into perfecting things for his commute. Here are some pictures of his bike.

Ahh yes, it's a wet time of year in Minneapolis. The folks splashing me in their cars may not realize it, but I do. Because regardless of the weather, I'm on my bike. Over the years, I've used a variety of fenders on a variety of bicycles. In search for perfection, I've even made some of my own. (A set of pretty cool aluminum fenders and even some carbon fiber ones, yessir. I realize I may be more particular about fenders, than most.)

It hasn't always been easy to keep me covered, but my fender of choice these days, the Planet Bike SpeedEZ, is doing a spectacular job on a couple of my favorite bikes. If you haven't seen them, I highly recommend them. The SpeedEZ are a full coverage fender set that mount to a wide variety of bikes. I road in today with a set on my  Airnimal Joey. The SpeedEZs on my Joey are actually designed for 700c tires, but they mounted very nicely to cover the 24-inch wheels of my Joey.  I had to play with the radius of the fender to get a perfect match, but it turned out great.

I have several thousand trouble-free miles of the SpeedEZ on my Joey, and have since mounted a set to my Bacchetta Corsa as well. The SpeedEZ also fit nicely on the 26-inch wheels of my Corsa. I'm using the 35mm wide SpeedEZ Road on  the Joey (37mm wide tires) and 45mm fenders Corsa (35mm wide tires). Planet Bike recommends the 35mm wide SpeedEZ Road will take up to a 28mm tire. I think they're a bit conservative to cover the range of width in some knobby tires. I'm getting fine coverage on my bikes.

Here are some pictures of the SpeedEZ on some different bikes. The first ten pictures show the SpeedEZ Road (45mm) fenders on my Airnimal Joey and my Bacchetta Corsa. The last two pictures show the SpeedEZ Hybrid (45mm) fenders on a different Airnimal Joey with 1.5" wide tires. Note that the SpeedEZ Road has a little different mount compared to the Hybrid and ATB models.

The coverage of the SpeedEZ is very good (no complaints) and they've proven to me to be durable. They are incredibly versatile, and relatively easy to fit to a wide variety of bikes. Sure, we spend some time "optimizing" to get things just right. But quite frankly, all fenders a just putzy to install. If they advertise to be 'easy' or 'quick', it more accurately means that it can be done.  I haven't used the elastic bands to hold the fenders in place, so I cannot attest to that method. I have used zip ties to secure the fender mount to the frame (or fork) of the bike, which works great.

You can find fenders for your own ride: HERE