Friday means fish and chips for the Singletrack office, but our week-ending eating habits aside it also means you lot can read Fresh Goods while you try and draw out your lunch break for as long as possible. Here’s what’s landed in the office this week…
Genesis Vapour Disc
If fancy a ‘cross bike but can’t justify getting something that only fills a tiny niche in the big wide world of niches that is cycling, then this might be the middle way. After the UCI’s disc brake ruling, Genesis set about redesigning their Vapour aluminium ‘cross frame with disk mounts. The result is something that’s just as happy racing round a field with the stench of embrocation and rain beading off shaved legs, to a town centre with a nice high vis band keeping the oil off your trouser leg.
It’s going to be going head to head with the Cotic >X< ‘cross bike sometime around Issue 74…
Price: £1,199.99
From: Genesis Bikes
There’s a Shimano Tiagra 10spd drivetrain with CX50 ‘cross specific chainset. Brakes are Avid BB7 cable discs and the fork is a carbon fibre and aluminium mix.
There are full rack mounts should cycle touring wanderlust take hold or if you just want to carry some heavy stuff without hurting your back.
We like the graphics…
FSA Afterburner & Gravity Light MegaExo cranks
A pair of pairs of cranks from FSA landed the other day. On the left hand side in black we have the Afterburner crankset with a 40/28T double using FSA’s three bolt rings. The arms are hollow forged from lightweight AL6061-T6 aluminium. On the right hand side we’ve got the new tougher and lighter for 2012 Gravity Light double and bashguard. The arms are again hollow forged, this time from AL7050 aluminium but they retain the neat features such as steel pedal inserts and removable inner chainring. Both cranksets use FSA’s MegaExo BB system but you can get them in a number of differing axle standards.
Price: Afterburner £189.99, Gravity Light £249.99
From: Windwave
The neat removable inner ring spider bolts on using the chainring bolts…
FSA Gravity Light Carbon DH Flat and Afterburner bars
If you need to keep your front end low, whether it be for a proper racing snake XC position or to stop the front of you DH bike looking like you’ve drawn inspiration from Josh Bender, then a flat bar is what you need. Here we’ve got both ends of the scale – the nu-skool 740mm wide carbon-fibre-over-aluminium Gravity Light and the triple butted and tapered aluminium, 670mm wide Afterburner Flat.
Price: Gravity Light £TBC, Afterburner £64.95
From: Windwave
FSA Gravity Light stem
A shiny stem to go with the bigger bars – you can get this 3D forged stem in 45/60/75/90mm lengths with a 6° rise and there’s even a 1.5″ version for anyone on big single crown forks.
Price: £54.95
From: Windwave
FSA Afterburner stem
A slightly lighter duty and lower priced stem than the Gravity Light, the Afterburner also has a 6° rise but comes in a bewildering array of lengths, with 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120 and 130mm options.
Price: £49.95
From: Windwave
FSA Afterburner MTC seatpost
This 350mm long post is forged then CNC machined from a single bit of aluminium. There’s no layback at the new ‘MTC’ head and it comes in 27.2, 30.9 and 31.6mm diameters.
Price: £74.95
From: Windwave
EDZ 165g Merino Base Layer
Jenn’s out of the office so Jon had to dress up like a lady in this women’s base layer. He took to it like a duck to confit du canard – it’s probably the long hair. Anyway, this base layer is a super thin item with a non-scratchy marl finish. We’re liking the blue colour a lot. It’ll be just the trick for fending off chilly spring mornings without overheating by lunchtime.
Price: £40
From: EDZ
Halo headbands
While externally similar to the headgear beloved by outdoorsy Swedish men and US gang members, they’ve got a rather neat ‘Sweatblock seal’ whichs sits above the brow and directs any exercise-juice to the sides of your face rather than down into your eyes. Halo do a wide range of styles, from the simple headband to skull cap with flat seams to prevent rub. they’re nice and thin so they should sit well under helmets and there are loads of colours to pick from, so displaying your gang affiliation should be as easy as throwing a complicated hand sign and then getting into a messy turf war over trail access.
Price: Headband £12.95, Skull Cap £18.99
From: Halo Headbands
Bontrager RXL Mountain shoes
Looking slightly like something Vivienne Westwood might fashion, these are the top end mountain bike slippers from Bontrager. They’ve got the requisite carbon fibre sole and they use a heat mould-able footbed. The heel piece is also adjustable to keep it from lifting and the instep ratchet can be micro adjusted using a pair of tiny buttons on the fly, so you can get the sweet, sweet pain just right. Chipps will be now safe from any mad haired old ladies accusing him only being able to afford affordable clothes and having no taste.
Price: £159.99
From: Bontrager
The Feed Zone Cookbook
It’s not easy being a top level cyclist. Convention says that you need to survive on energy gels and bars made from brown mush inbetween rushing from race to race. This new book from chef Biju Thomas and Dr Allen Lim aims to offer fast and nutritious meals from Real Actual Food. Inside there are 150 recipes that they say take less time to prepare than it takes to do a warm-up and there are even gluten free and vegetarian options. Chipps is keen to try it out but Matt and Jon suspect there may not be enough butter and salt in the recipes…
Price: £17.95
From: Cordee
Teva Mush Frio shoes
These are possibly the lightest shoes we’ve ever touched; made from Teva’s soft and comfortable Mush material. They really are extremely relaxing to put on and you can squash them down to fit them into a bag or similar for travelling. In a more trad style, they make excellent slippers. Yes, we’re unfashionable, we know that.
Price: £45
From: Teva
Continental X-King 29er 2.2″
Continental have got big wheel rubber! This is the X-King, which despite the squarish tread is said to be a fast rolling tyre for all round XC as well as racing duties. Should the big wheeled craze be rolling over your head (at a shallower angle, obviously) then they also do this tyre in 26″ with a load of different casings, including a tubeless version and the much loved Black Chili sticky rubber.
Price: £29.95
From: Conti Tyres UK
Spank Spike 777 bars
After last week’s Spank bars only came in at a paltry 747mm wide (!) Martin from Hotlines decided to send us some full fat tree catchers in the fork of these 777mm wide items. They use Spank’s proprietary ‘XGT’ system of gradually tapering the wall thickness to reduce weight while keeping strength where it’s needed. The wall thickness rises back up at the ends to prevent them being damaged when you’ve got rid of the bike to pull a sweet scorpion. They come in rises from 5 to 50mm and a whole load of colours too.
Price: £59.99
From: Hotlines
Chromag Toque
Wooly hat (or toque if you’re ay Canuck, ay) season is drawing to a close, which is a shame because soon there will be no good reason to wear such a lovely thing as this. It’s available in creamsicle (above), rasta and royal/mint flavours…
Price: £22.99
From: Shorelines
The Ride Journal
If you like a high quality read and you’re already a Singletrack subscriber then The Ride Journal is probably right up your street. There’s an absolute load of high quality writing, photography and illustration from the likes of Dan Barham, Seb Kemp and from every possible corner and aspect of cycling. It really is a lovely thing…
Price: £10.50
From: The Ride
Singletrack Issue 72
Did we mention that we do a magazine? What? How did we forget that? It’s the magical new Singletrack Issue 72! Your life will be better with it.
[issue_72_offer]
Comments (8)
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The Mountain King looks very similar to the X King.
That’s ‘cos the wrong photo is in there… 😉
Oooh that Genesis is a rather nice and a cracking price.
Did Jon make a special trip to the clinic to have breasts fitted for the baselayer photo? (Or at least a breast – look under left armpit)
Right elbow methinks, still bloody disturbing though…
all that fsa gear is overpriced and not even great looking.take the names off it and its the same as lots of other makes.
That’s my elbow – I think. Or I need to drink less beer.
Halo headbands are great if you have no hair, greatly reduces the sweat running in your eyes. I use the skullcap and bandana ones. Can feel like you head is cooking sometimes but realy do work.