Stealth Belt Drive: Spot Ajax Belt
This showed up when I did my monthly search for belt drive gear hub bikes.
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/04/spot-ajax/
A very nice looking 7005 aluminium belt drive commuter/urban bike with carbon disc-brake forks. The Spot website even claims enough bidons/mounting-points for fenders AND racks. This I have to see.
Spot Ajax Belt on Spot’s website
Unfortunately it seems to be a new release (2011) and I’ve not seen any of them guarded and racked up in slick urban bike goodness.
My only gripe is the rather Hipster-ish moustachio handle bars. The option for drop bars with Versa or Essex brifters would be very nice. It’d look quite nice with Thickslicks on those rims, too.
Hey Spot Bikes: send me one for review in Melbourne, Australia. I take my bikes on trains with hundreds of people on-board that have nothing to do but play with their phones. If it’s better than the Cannondale Bad Boy 8 I’ll upgrade!
Other reviews:
Front Light Stolen
Someone stole the front light off my bike. Some rotter who thinks they have the right to take anything not secured well enough to prevent them taking it – and the person who didn’t secure their goods, it’s their fault. By their logic if I had a tow truck I could take their car and it’d be their fault. What annoys me the most is that I lost three of my Eneloop batteries, too.
Bye bye little Spiderfire B200. You served me well. At the very least I hope you save the thief’s life so that they realise what a grave thing they did in stealing my light.
Boutique Beer: White Shield
William Worthington’s White Shield is an India Pale Ale. It is labelled as a “Defiant survivor of 1820’s IPA traditions…”
It is a defiant beer. IPA have become quite hop driven but this IPA is not really so flowery or sweet. It has a slight bitterness but that mostly comes from the in-bottle conditioning and the head. It was a tight foam with a feisty scent. I had to scoop the head off the ale as its odour was too much for me. Once done I found the White Shield a very fine drop and heartily recommend it. This IPA can be shelved and will continue to improve for up to three years.
Remember: don’t tip the last drops into your glass – this is bottle conditioned. The sediments are the dead yeast cells and other bits you don’t really want to drink.
Runjikol’s Score: good & recommended.
Bike Dreams
Securing a contract has me dreaming of a new bike. It would start off like this but have a Rohloff internal gear hub added in. I think it’d be damned sexy and run like a dream.
However, I’d have to drop about $6,500 to get it done. Not money I have for such a dream.
So the next best thing comes to mind. A lugged cro-mo steel frame, modified for belt drive, with disc-brakes and lots of bidons for guards, racks, and such. Something like the Americano Rohloff, below, but with a nice Rivendell style lugged frame & trekking bars.
What is a minor bummer, the Rohloff shifter only comes in twist type – like a Nexus. I’d much rather a rapid-fire type shifter like the Alfine and almost all the Shimano mountain-bike stuff.
Guess this will all stay a dream for some time.
Want to be part of an Experiment?
A Tale of Rum Town is a book I’ve written and published on Kindle. I’m running an experiment with Amazon’s algorithms but I need some help. If you’ve got a spare 2 minutes go to my Kindle book page for A Tale of Rum Town and add some tags. Put in whatever you think appropriate and any, or all, of these tags:
low magic
less than epic
criminal fantasy
fantasy adventure
fantasy
Tell your friends to jump on and add tags. I’d like to see how many tags can be added in a week.
