Kona Utes, a wheelie good bike.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30562695@N04/4081319533/

Like buses, i see two vid’s of Utes being wheelied in two days…….never seen it before. Nice work…

Just because its useful, doesn’t mean it has to be dull!

The Kona Ute… Kona as in Kona, Ute as in utility..

Imagine a bike that is lightweight, fast, ‘conventional’ in its derailer gears and disc brakes, imagine that bike but with a longer rack on the back with a whopper of a bag or two.

Is your working day is dulled by your limited pack lunch options? fed up with creased clothes at work? Just imagine a bike that you ride to work that would enable you to transport (if you wanted) a whole french stick, you wouldn’t even have to cut it in half, just tuck it safely into your ute’s long orange bag where it will be kept safe and sound, unsnapped, for when that lunchtime horn sounds.  Imagine how uncreased your suit would be rolled and placed into the into spacious and lengthy bags.

Change the way you think about carrying stuff…instead of the vertical tube shape of a traditional pannier and the way you have to stack stuff onto other stuff, hopefully with your cans on the bottom and your cherry toms on top, a long horisontal bag does away with a lot of that worry. (you probably haven’t lost a huge amount of sleep over that issue but you get my point)
The Kona Ute is probably the most sensible longtail bike there is, it does not profess to be able to carry a lot of weight but does give you a lot of space to carry a lot of stuff….exactly what you need day to day…

It is a great mystery to me that the kona Ute is not a huge best seller, The latest version is cute with a wooden deck, nice paint and the luggage is well thought through (they fit the yuba mundo too).

We have found a boxed 08 Ute whilst having a pre spring clean…we can supply it with 2010 bags, we reckon we can save you a couple of hundred big ones on the 2010 bike price. A demo bike is available too. Its a cracker…Its a nimble bike too, check this out..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BktHUg_8uMY like the lady says…niiiiice!

its nearly spring….

Crumbs, didn’t that happen quickly, its nearly February!

News from the dairy, our frame building jig is in place and work has started on another frame. Our first gazelle bicycle has arrived and it’s very nice, good value if you ask me. Trying to get the stock sorted and uploaded onto our web shop (don’t hold your breath). Shimano hubs, nexus8, alfine and dynamos now in stock to compliment our Sturmey Archer stuff, Rolhoff hubs to order.
We are getting stuff together here, if we are not very careful, we might just be ready for spring.

Giant women love to ride, and not just for sport!

The Taiwanese bicycle manufacturing group ‘Giant’ have a big say in what happens in the future of bicycles.
Bonnie Tu. the chief financial officer of the company gives her vision of the future.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article6946506.ece

It’s great to see an article written with the financial aspects of bicycles in mind,  you cannot deny the passion Bonnie Tu has for bicycles as a business, but reassuringly also as a mover for social change.

She also seems to have hit a global theme, when Bonnie says “in China the bicycle has to regain its status. It is so important. We have to break the view that status only comes from cars” you know that you can apply this statement to the UK too.

She also says that “women have been an afterthought in the male dominated worlds of both bicycle design and use”.  Anyone that looks at the photographs and articles from our friend Amsterdamize will know that a woman on a bicycle is something not to be ignored.

http://amsterdamize.com/2009/12/07/girl-power/

Bicycles are just good!

Bush Telegraph, the message is getting through

I think this point of view is representative of many and shows the groundswell of sensible thinking.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/6724318/Us-Cyclists-arent-a-menace-were-freedom-fighters.html

I would not speak against trains though, they can seriously increase our range.This man brings Lyra and Tweed together with his comments…Viva la common ground.. bravo Andrew Bravo….

English FR8’s

We have a lovely E mail from a recent FR8 owner. Roy Belchamber picked his FR8 up a week or two ago, put it on his car roof bike rack and off he went.
We were delighted when he sent these pictures, With a few carefully chosen accessories his FR8 looks a treat, very english somehow.

His daughter enjoys riding on the back and it now replaces the car for shopping trips.
The workcycles FR8, a most modern bicycle for the modern age.
Thank you Roy for the great Pictures.

Ordinary or Oddity?

It is an eye opener to realise that what one person considers ordinary can be considered someone else’s oddity.
Now i am not talking about the national kafuffle that is the sort of singing, sort of dancing, X factor stars Jedward but predictably enough for a cycle blog i am talking about bicycles.

At ‘really useful bikes’ we pride ourselves on stocking or trying to stock bicycles that fulfil a function, bikes that will help you go about your business more quickly, in a more society friendly way, keeping you fit, low maintenance and always ready to ride, you might think is a silly thing to say when a bicycle’s prime purpose is to provide mobility, all bike shops sell bikes like that don’t they?…

Historically the bicycle in the UK was all about going from A to B, my granddad rode a bike to work, used to tell me a story about being strafed by a Messerschmitt in a south coast country lane, he ended up unharmed (but shaken) upside down in a ditch, it was one of my favourite stories…bikes were part of the everyday… ye olde shoppe keepers delivered things with bikes, they were essential transport to get to work, bikes were an essential tool for social mobility and a definite business advantage.
These days the UK cycle shops contain mainly sports cycles, cycles that my granddad would have marvelled at and indeed i too am in awe of some of them….wonderful things made of angel wings and showered with a lusty techno dust, ride down glaciers and up walls, very clever, very sexy.

What i am getting at is that what was common place 50 or 60 years ago is now out of the ordinary, there are few ’sit up and beg’ bikes on the streets, no magazines for practical bikes, no forums (a bad thing?) and very little provision for them in shops. On the continent the design of their cities and an educated euro mentality has meant that bicycle design there has continued mainly in the ‘city bikes’ guise with sports bikes taking a back seat (but still definitely catered for). In the UK the emphasise is definitely on sports bikes to such an extent that a rack on a bike is often an afterthought, a basket on the front is a quaint addition to put your gingham teacloth and carafe of Pims in
Maybe this is a little to do with our terrain but I suspect more to do with fashion and the lure of the filthy lucre, we live in a society that craves technology and newer sparklier things, modern sports bikes pander to that fashion. Successive governments have not helped and we have seen the rise of the motor car used as a indicator of national success to the detriment of our local quality of life (IMHO) but let’s leave that one alone…

The bikes we offer you are not oddities, they are out of the ordinary but with a traditional and simple function, we see bikes as practical transport, as part of the everyday. We hope that what you see on our website and our slightly dishevelled show space is a catalyst for a new way of living, a snapshot of the future. a modern practical future for bicycles that have their foundations in the past.
The bikes we offer you are not oddities, you’re just not used to seeing them.

Workcycles FR8 universal

We have Workcycles FR8 (universal) in stock…

with this beauty you have a good selection of purpose built racks too…
take up to three kids on this bicycle with ease..the Rolls Royce of the dutch bike world, solid dependable and comfortable.
One size fits all so great if you need to share a bike to take the kids or get the shopping…test rides encouraged.

This is not the best pic of an FR8, but its honest and shows it in a simple guise in its home city of Amsterdam…you cannot beat a nice box up front..

Stereotyping, BBC radio 4 show, accurate or outdated?

I listen to radio 4, i like it, i cook the evening meal with a bit of comedy at 18:30… sometime its funny, sometimes not good at all. Sometimes its just cringy. Listening to ‘Rudey’s rare records’ on radio 4 is not a enjoyable experience  at the best of times, i’ll give it credit for one or two funny lines just for balance. This week was about Lenny henry (his character) getting fit, his way of doing this was to buy a bike and with it lots of lycra…(you see where this is going!!).

There follows lots of jokes about his lycra covered package, his dodgy riding style, not being able to find his brakes etc…

I found it all a bit much, very stereo typical and not really very funny…but then i think and this probably is how non bike users see bike users (cyclists). When you mention cyclist what does that conjour up in folks minds, probably the lycra, geeky technical stuff and then sweat probably….basically an object of ridicule…

I could bang on about it…..have a listen to the show on the BBC listen again (you can fast forward through bits), see what you think.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkb2s (3 days left to listen)

Its fashionable to get a bit chopsy when you feel misrepresented, start a campaign and call it a word ending in ‘ism’. Lets just say that this program is a great advert for why bike users need to use things like cycle chic, amsterdamize type media and of course your own good self when picking up the kids or going to the shops on your own practical transport looking like a normal (although enlightened) person.

All these  things can help to redress the balance.

P.S. a conundrum, I ride a bike but am i a cyclist?

Bakfiets in stock for test rides.

We have taken delivery of our latest bakfiets, both long and short version. both are available for test rides. We also have in stock rain covers from Clarijs arguably the best covers available. We hold stock of the biggest range of colours, with not just the standard UK red and black, but also cream, silver gray, pink, orange and blue. Individualise your bakfiets.
bakfiets are not just good for kids but for business and for general getting about. I take the dogs to the walk destination in mine…
We also tweek them here so that they suit the undulations of the Uk, it makes a hell of a difference.
test ride them at the dairy.
07801 150727