Bikepacking circa the 1950's

Signal Cycles wine rack

Another favorite product from NAHBS.

Signal Cycles wine rack.



Not much need be said here. Brilliant, elegant and practical too. I'm sure it holds water bottles or even nalgene bottles as well as it holds wine bottles, though if I was to use it I'd certainly have a bottle of wine on it as well.

Touring with style. :)

My one comment as to the practicality of this is it could stand to have the ability to mount a pannier bag on the right and the top of the rack while big enough for a bag lacks any mount point or verticle support. But heh, why split hairs. It's absolutely beautiful.

A word about Signal Cycles. They're located in Portland Oregon, only build racks for their own bikes which are clean, modern, elegant and beautiful with amazing attention to detail. Also they love Simon and Garfunkel. And so do I. :)

Random bits from the NAHBS

I have LOTS I wanted to post about from the North American Handbuilt Bike Show, so what I'm going to do is post a bunch of random posts focusing on individual builders and products.

First mention goes to, Velo Orange's VO Retro Cage, for most best new old school accessory.



This was not only my favorite, but a favorite of my friends as well. We saw these throughout the show and I personally fell in love with them.

I'm a HUGE sucker for old school designs that still hold their own against the latest materials and designs and this design has been around since the 1940's! It's ability to SECURELY hold a water bottle or even an oversize thermos is obvious. It's lightweight, versatile, flexible and yet durable.

To quote from VO's website.

These cages are based on an old French design from the '40s or early '50. In our estimation they are the best looking bottle cage of all time.

The Retro is a regular one-handed cage; you put in the bottle just like on any other cage; but it holds the bottle very securely due to the spring-like shape. The little tabs allow you to spread the cage for an oversize bottle. You can also squeeze the cage inward for better fit with a metal water bottle.

You may find a better race cage, but $18.50 is a darn good price for the best touring cage ever. :)

This is such a superb design it occurs to me it would work well made out of titanium. Would love to see that. Then again, it is a touring cage and traditionally steel has been the prefered metal for touring.

A word about the company. Velo Orange is definitely on the cutting edge of touring gear employing quite a few innovative production and development practices, hopefully I'll get to blog about the company more but there's so much yet to post.