Fresh Goods Friday 568 – Vive La Revolution!

Welcome to the corner of smug. Hasn’t it been a great week? All that sailing past queues of cars, all that totally not worrying about fuel because you don’t need any and you’re not actually that sure if your car still works. Some of you city tenement dwellers may even have forgotten where you left the car the last time you went out in it, dropped the bags at your door, and then circled outwards in search of a space.

Yes, it all feels rather nice, in a slightly unpleasant schadenfreude kind of a way, doesn’t it? Except, shine a light on us and…erm… driving to the mountains? Carbon fibre this and that? A flight to the Alps? A CO2 canister or two? Yup, none of us is perfect, or blameless. But as Marc Maron notes in End Times (it’s on Netflix), when the sky catches fire we’ll all know that we did what we could. We took our own bags to the supermarket. We did what we could.

But hey. In a slightly uncomfortable juxtaposition to the preamble, let us move on to the Fresh Goods of Friday!

Kirk Revolution

• Price: A return train ticket to Edinburgh plus an undisclosed sum of money
• From: The Bike Station

It’s a purple magnesium retro beast, unusually still whole and in an especially fetching pink and purple colour combination that might just make you think you need leg warmers, a shell suit and a ski holiday with Lizzie.

7MESH Glidepath Trail Pant

• Price: £150
• From: 7MESH

Available in both a men’s and women’s cut, these take many of the features of the Glidepath shorts and add long legs and slightly stretchy cuffs to give you a bit more coverage. It’s a 4-way stretch water repellant fabric with all the usual 7MESH clever pattern cutting to give you articulation around the knees and hips, reinforced knees, and pockets where you can use them.

Klean Kanteen TKWide Insulated Wide Loop Cap

• Price: £10.99 (members get a discount)
• From: Singletrack Café Deluxe

Charlie says… The Klean Kanteen Loop Cap is a super handy upgrade for your already turbo handy Singletrack Flask. You see the solid lid is extra deep and actually vacuum insulated to keep your mid-ride snack hot, or cold, for even longer. It turns your drinks flask into a food container and it is bang on for soups, stews, stoups (that is a soupy stew), curry and even bangers n mash with gravy – simply use a nice long spork so you can get to the bottom. The only thing stopping you taking ice cream on a ride is your overly conservative and misplaced food riding etiquette.

Personally I found it mega handy for Michelados, Margaritas, White Russians, Bellinis , Old Fashions, Mojitos, Bloody Marys, Moscow Mules, Penecillin, Gunfire, Brave Bulls, Sumatra Kula, Cuban Sunsets, Vampiro, Churchills, Kalimotxos, Brass Monkeys, and Tijuana Hookers*.

*It is a real drink, I don’t just make this stuff up.

Zoe’s Birthday Super-duper Deal – Singletrack 20th Birthday Jigsaw Puzzle

• Price: Was £24.99… birthday ‘duper deal is £14.99
• From: The Puzzling World Of Singletrack

Charlie says… I found a random piece of a jigsaw in my car today and I’ve no idea where it came from. It’s a bit of a puzzle.

Hey, stop it. Singletrack Zoe is the designated grown up at Singletrack Towers and looks after all the boring things that makes Singletrack a business and not just a bunch of middle aged kids playing out on bikes… and it is her 40th Birthday this weekend. Every time a Singletrack staffer outlives a pair or extra soft grips, we like to do a special offer, and this time it’s a whole tenner off our awesome 1,000 piece 20th Birthday Jigsaw puzzle.

Zoe likes all sorts of puzzles, such as jigsaws and crosswords, but dot-to-dots is where she draws the line.

Premax Winter Protection

• Price: Anti Friction Balm £20.00, Chamois Cream £24.00, Facial Cream £21.00
• From: Premax

As winter approaches, you might be busy trying to remember where your waterproofs and base layers are, but keeping warm and dry isn’t all you should consider. Our skin is exposed to cold temperatures, wind, rain and often the contents of the trail ahead, so some Weather Defence facial cream might be a nice treat to help encourage us to get out on that first bad-weather ride. Premax have a huge range of performance skincare for men and women, and these samples have arrived in time for us to reluctantly slap it on our arses and head out into the apocalypse.

Osprey Raptor Pro

• Price: £190
• From: Osprey

This is the first time Osprey has made a backpack with spine protector in it. Made from D30, it’s designed to protect your back while also carrying All The Things. Available in one size (18 litres) and one colour (black), it’s a new line for Osprey and they want to see how it goes down before expanding the range. Since Trek team members and Tracy Moseley have been involved in its development, they’re hoping it’ll go down very well indeed. A special tool pocket with integral tool roll on the bottom of the bag is an interesting touch, and it’s been designed to carry a full face helmet and set of pads between those enduro stages. A bladder isn’t included, but it is compatible with one.

Alva Lost 1979 Leopard Skateboard

• Price: around £150 (to £5,400)
• From: ebay

Charlie says… The old guys at Alva Skates have had a dig around out back and discovered the original master templates for their 1977 to 1979 boards. These reissue “lost” models occasionally become available and allow almost fifty something year old kids to have the board they dreamed about back when The Boomtown Rats were on the radio. This was intended to be a “wall hanger” but resistance is futile.

The retro skate scene has gone bonkers and old Alva decks from the 80’s are on ebay for over £5,000! Meanwhile one of Tony Hawk’s personal boards, with the scribblings of Paul McCartney on it, sold at auction for $27,116. Now, if we can get Chris Eubank to sign that Kirk Revolution (I recall a daft MBUK feature with Chris on his Kirk Revolution, and maybe bike jousting with boxing gloves on cardboard tubes?) maybe we can then sell it for more than the price of a train ticket?

Now to really screw with your heads: Lemmy with bongos.

Peace out. Enjoy the weekend. Ride your bike to the shops!

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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