Author: Jim Hodgson

I have owned a couple of Polar products and been pleased with them. The company appears to have a healthy relationship between industrial design and functionality that is rare. Consider the M400 here, alongside a wrist-mounted spaceship from a fruit-based gadget company. You’ll notice that the Polar has some of the same swoopyness without looking, …

Everyone, it seems, loves video of their ride, and the current gold standard for video is 4K, even if certain technical writers have called 4K a “dismal failure” of 2015. Whether you agree or not about the state of viewing 4K video, I think we can all agree that if you want to sell an …

The Cycliq Fly 6 is a rear-facing HD camera built into a red blinkey light. It has a sibling, the Fly 12, which is an integrated white spotlight and HD camera. Cycliq markets the system mostly to road riders and commuters. The idea is, if something happens to you during your ride, you’ll have video …

The Italians are a stylish and attractive people, but they’re also passionate about cycling. Ever heard of a little mountain range called the Alps? What about the Dolomites or the Appenines? They have those. And they ride mountain bikes on them. Who better to turn to then, for an ultralight MTB helmet, than our old …

The biggest problem with owning a bike shop is that you have to own a bike shop. I’m talking about the actual brick-and-mortar sign-in-the-window the-bank-wants-its-payment bike shop, otherwise known as a big ol’ pain in the buttocks. The margin on bike shop ownership is thinner than a roadie’s pants, and yet, in order to make …

It’s my unofficial job here at Singletracks to seek out and describe the weird and the wonderful. This is a job I take very seriously. And so, when I saw the Reeb cycles Donkadonk, a fat bike with Gates Carbon Drive mated to a Rohloff hub, I knew I had to turn its cranks. Behold, …

Ancient alchemists were pretty weird dudes. For example, in 1669 Hennig Brand was searching for something called the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which is not a Harry Potter novel. The Philosopher’s Stone was said to be able to turn lead into gold. In his efforts to find the stone, Brand hit upon the idea to boil urine. …

I’m just going to put on my robe and wizard hat right now, because this article is going to talk about a full suspension mountainous bicycling contraption, and as we all know, mountain bike geometry and suspension are wizardry. Okay, good. Got that handled. On to business. I’m going to tell you about my ride …

Yes, that’s right, that Putin: Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Whatever else you may think of him, we have him to thank for the modernization of the GLONASS satellite system, which, working in tandem with GPS, can provide faster location fixes than GPS alone. If you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, I don’t want to use …

See what I did there? Get a grip? Because this article is about grips. Don’t roll your eyes like that. Bad puns are required by law in this bicycle journalism game. Ask BikeSnobNYC if you don’t believe me. But now, to business. If you’re experiencing fatigue on the bike — and aren’t we all? — …

There’s nothing cyclists love quite like mixing disparate pieces of their culture for dubious reasons. That’s why, when someone came up with the idea of adding a MTB Crit to the Athens Twilight weekend of bike racing, the sport of cycling responded with a resounding, “Sure, why not?” That’s how cycling should be, after all: …

You may recall that just twelve days ago we reported that Competitive Cyclist and Strava had teamed up to reward cyclists with store credit for documented hours on the bike. If you missed it, that article is here, but for the moment the program is on hold for what sounds like one simple reason: too …