The Wheelie Good Round-Up

ShareThis

Here’s our usual mix of bite-sized bike-related items that we hope will bring a smile to your weekend.

Handlebar hang

We bought you DIY clothes hangers made from bicycle parts in last week’s Round-Up. This week we’re continuing on a similar vein with a DIY wall mounted bike hanger made from an old bicycle handlebar, a quill stem and other bicycle parts. The bike hanger is the work of illustrator Kyle Wilson, who provides a tutorial on just how to build the handlebar hanger on his website.

The sounds of a bicycle

We came across Stephen Meierding’s stunning musical film when we were looking at the competition entries for New York City’s six monthly Bike Shorts film festival. Called Bicycle Sounds, the sounds were created using various bicycle parts. The film itself is strangely mesmerising and must have taken some time to put together. Don’t forget to check out the rest of films on the Bike Shorts site as well.

Fancy a cocktail?

We’re in British summertime and that should mean rising temperatures and warm sun. As we know the recent weather has suggested otherwise. But that won’t stop us recommending some summer cocktails to enjoy on the post ride comedown when there is better and warmer weather. Don’t worry these cocktails are not alcoholic but come with ingredients and mixers with health benefits to aid your recovery from that bike ride.

Roadie air

Road bikes are not meant to go off road nor are they built to do airs or flying backflips. These manoeuvres are usually only attempted on much beefier equipment like BMX and freestyle mountain bikes though that didn’t stop US American eyewear brand SPY using a production model road bike to do those very same moves in their recent US TV commercial (see below). They would have you believe that 2011 USA Road Race Champion Matthew Busche performed the freestyle tricks on the road bike in the ad when in fact it was US mountain bike freestyle rider Mike Montgomery, who stunt doubles for Busche. SPY have just released a film about the making of the commercial which is well worth a watch for more footage of Montgomery doing flips, flicks and drops on a road bike.

Now that is tall

There are tall bikes than there are tall bikes. The bike of Felix Guirola (see the photo below) is 13 feet (4 metres) tall. Felix and his bike have become quite the regular celebrities in the Cuban capital Havana where Felix goes on a daily ride on the streets. To get on the bike, other people need to hold up the bike while he scrambles up to the top. If he has to stop riding, he has to lower himself down while the bike’s still in motion and grab the frame before it topples when he gets to the ground. Felix has a bit of history of building tall bikes and plans to build a bike that will challenge the current world’s tallest rideable bicycle - a 5.55-metre tall bike made and ridden by Canadian Terry Goertzen.