Fresh Goods Friday 116

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This week’s Fresh Good Friday is brought to you by the letters R, A and D and the number 116. It’s also brought to you by bikes, jackets, helmets, pastries, inner tubes, lights, pedals, dirty playing cards and road works outside the office.

If you had a warehouse full of machines what would you make? We’d be tempted to go all Tony Stark and build ourselves an anodised exoskeleton and go fight bike thieves on the mean streets of Calderdale, or throw ourselves out of a balloon for a laugh. Hope have probably already done both those things, got bored and decided to just make bike bits instead. Their latest CNC’d widget-bobs to land here at t’office include a natty chainguide and intergrated ring/bashring combo and some blingin’ jockey wheels. These are probably going on Chipps’ CX bike for his forthcoming IRN BRU ‘cross Rampage throw down contest. Watch out for some massive dismounts. Epic.

They’ve been a long time coming but at last they are here, the Hope F20 pedals. 20 replaceable pins per pedal along with cartridge bearings and a cromoly steel axle mean they are tough enough to last and easy enough to rebuild. As with everything Hope theres every colour of the anodised rainbow as long as your rainbow only has black, silver, red, blue, gold and gunsmoke.

We know when summer is truly dead and gone when the first lights start to arrive for Fresh Goods. Welcoming in the dark is the Electron Terra Mini, one of those flexible kind of lights that can be used on your commuter bike as a main light or offroad as a helmet light. As it’s USB chargeable you can also have the best executive desk toy in the office.

We get sent a lot of tyres to test which is great as the aroma of rubber helps to mask the smell of fetid poodle and damp cycle shoes. What we don’t get so often is inner tubes, so when we do get sent some there is much rejoicing throughout the office. These fine band of rubbers come from the lovely people at Zyro who heard of our butyl poverty and sent a big box of Panaracer tubes our way.

With the temperatures starting to drop we’re noticing a few more softshell jackets coming in (which is handy as we have a jacket test in issue 78) and that woodland creatures have started to carry nuts in their cheeks. Matt is holding the dhb Momentum long sleeve jacket in his hands and a stash of walnuts in his pouches.

Everyone is into road bikes these days and subsequently there are a lot of men appearing in public wearing tight clothing when they really shouldn’t. Here’s one of them. The dhb Minima is a lightweight waterprood designed to be stuffed in your back pocket for when the rain comes in.

We’re big fans of whoever is in charge of colours at Altura. No ‘any colour you like as long as it’s black or fluro’ here. Proper bright exciting colours. Nice one. The Altura Attack is a robust waterproof that we’re hoping works as good as it looks.

More glorious Technicolor from Altura in the form of the Mayhem jacket. Looks like the kind of jacket you’d be happy to use for other sports or in sports bars. The Mayhem has a hood, which we know is a love/hate thing with riders, but it is removable, again helping make it a bit more than just a bike jacket.

Wanted: Princess whose head will fit the glass slipper Urge Endur-o-matic helmet. GSH ALAWP PnP WE. Matt had a go and was disappointed to find out he may just be an ugly sister. Tough breaks for Matt but hopefully no breaks for the helmet. There are more of this style of helmet appearing, aimed less at XC racers and more at those who don’t need or mind less venting in preference to more protection all round their noggins.

Sporting possibly the longest peak ever seen on a helmet is the Fixer from Sweet Protection. It seems optimistically long for a helmet coming from Norway, not typically known for its blinding sunshine. You may not have heard of Sweet Protection but they are kind of a big deal in the kayak world and have expanded to take in snow and bike protection too.

On the first day God created light. And presumably an alarm clock to get him up for the second day when he was supposed to create a firmament between the waters. What do we have here between the waters of the canal and the river Calder? It’s a Genesis Day One Disc of course! £699 gets you a classically lined array of Reynolds 520 tubes all sprayed in a particularly fetching blue. It also gets you a set of Avid BB7 disc brakes and Genesis have even removed all those unnecessary gears you don’t want. Want the gears back? You’ll want a Day One Alfine 8 or Alfine 11 for £1149.99 and £1749.99 respectively.

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