Cycling with music - Skullcandy Full Metal Jacket Earphones

I've never ridden with earphones in cause it seems pretty dangerous if you wear both and can't hear traffic, a lot of people do but personally I think its plain crazy riding and not being totally aware of your surroundings. I've tried riding with only one earphone in and it's ok but so much of the music is lost that it's hardly worth it most of the time, until now...

...Skullcandy hooked me up with a set of the Full Metal Jacket for iPhone earbuds a few weeks ago and they kick ass! The sound is great and they come with 3 different ear buds as well as foam ones so they fit so snuggly that even with only 1 side in your earhole the music stays nice and clear whilst you listen for police cars coming up behind you to bust your fun-loving ass for not having reflectors on your peddles. The best thing about the iPhone model is that they have a built in mic on the cable so I can safely and easily answer the phone and chat whilst trackstanding at the lights which I have not had the need to do yet but one day it's going to happen and I will look flipping amazing, haha. The mic has a play/pause/skip button too which turns the iPhone into a usable iPod when you are on the bike.

Another great point about the Full Metal Jackets is that they are fully metal so they are really tough, the cable is real strong too which makes a change, it's also nice and long so the buds don't get yanked out every time you peddle like the pile of crap Sennheiser cx300's did which I had before these.

If you have an iPhone (or a Blackberry) then buy yourself a set of these if you wanna listen to music and talk whilst riding cause I don't think you'll find anything better out there. You can get them from nucleus-online.com cheaper than anywhere else. Be warned though that I do work there so if you phone up you'll have to talk to me :-p (Note: we stock the whole Skullcandy range at great prices, hehe).

If you do actually order something from Nucleus send an e-mail along with your order saying you came from here and I'll stick a Fixed Gear Wales spoke card in the package for you.

Review - Cycling Caps

Let's not beat around the bush, I have a TINY head, it's shocking, even children's baseball caps are too big for me. There is only one brand that fits me ok but they just don't stay on when cycling, as soon as I lift my head up they are off. 

I bought myself a Campy cycling cap a while back thinking it wouldn't fit but they are so bloody cheap that it didn't really matter. It fitted ok and was soooooo good for riding, it did the lot, it stopped my stupid floppy hair from flapping about, it kept my head warm, it kept the rain and the sun out of my eyes, basically it did exactly what it was designed to do. People seem to think that they are hysterical looking and its true, a bit. How they look really doesn't matter though when they work so perfectly!

Campagnolo

I lost the Campagnolo one a couple of weeks ago and have been really missing it, today I bought myself an Assos one from Cyclopedia in Cardiff. This one is even better, its a bit smaller so fits me better and even has a mesh panel in the back for ventilation which actually seemed to work today on the uphill ride home.

Assos
Wikipedia tells me that "a traditional way to keep the head cool when cycling in hot conditions was to put a cabbage leaf under the casquette" so if you see me around and I look a bit like treebeard on a bike don't be alarmed, I'm just keeping it real, yo.

These hats cost anything from £6 to about £10 with more "classy" ones costing much more. Try and get them from your LBS but if you can't try prendas.co.uk or eBay. This is the best one ever:

Review - Monster Track 8

"In the underground world of "alleycat" messenger street racing, one race stands tall among all: New York City's MONSTER TRACK. In the dead of winter each year, the finest city riders from around the world descend upon NYC to battle it out to determine who will be King of the streets in an outlaw bicycle race with one rule: NO BRAKES." Sounds good, right?

Ev pointed me in the direction of this video, the footage on the website was awesome, it was a video we HAD to watch. I got to acquiring it, luckily I acquired it via less than legal methods because if I had actually bought it I would be a very pissed off dude right now cause it sucks. In fact I am still a bit peeved cause it took 3 days to download slowing my connection right down.

Monster Track is an annual alleycat race in New York, riders from all over the world travel to it, it's a big deal. The competition is fierce and would make an awesome film so how could this DVD possibly be so terrible? Well, it turns out that the only race footage is the 12 minutes that is available for free on the bloody website and the rest is some dreadlocked dude just walking around talking crap to people. He just keeps going on and on about this Japanese rider called Shino or "The Fixie King" as he is also called, "do you know The Fixie King is here?", Shino comes FIFTH, HE DOESN'T EVEN WIN! So why the hell does the whole video revolve around him? I'm confused, its just so terrible I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Why didn't they just send out 5 riders with headcams to cover the whole race, have someone with a camera at each checkpoint and edit that together into an hour long video of awesome riding through NYC? Why not put all the interview stuff in the extras where you only have to watch it once? Seriously, don't bother buying this if you want to get amped up before a ride but do buy it if you like seeing the same interview footage over and over split into separate sections. Just go and watch the race footage here and be done with it.

If you wanna watch a really decent alleycat video check out "London Calling" by Lucas Brunelle...


Then go and check out all his other amazing videos here.

End Transmission