I was pleased to see at the Tokyo Cycle Mode, Yoko Aoki presenting the latest from London’s cycling culture. If you look closely, the picture on the screen is the Blackfriars Bridge protest. It’s great to see the influence of the protest spreading this far across the world.
Aside from that nod towards London, there was plenty of interesting products. As London Cyclist mostly focuses on bicycle accessories that’s what I’ve picked out here.
The first quirky idea that at first I laughed at but then took a closer look was the Valve Light. It’s a bike light that fits on top of the tyre valve. As the tyre spins it creates a circle of light. This is a clever little way to improve side visibility. A quick look on Amazon turned up the same product available for sale in the UK.
The other product was this smartphone bike mount by Ibera. It has a similar design to the Topeak iPhone Drybag but with three alternative mounting styles. The first is the standard attachment to the handlebars. The second has an additional bar behind the mount that creates more room to attach a bike light. This is a clever addition for anyone lacking in handlebar space. Finally, there’s the version shown in the image above that attaches to the top cap. The Ibera mount isn’t currently available in the UK but I’m going to look into it and see if we could add it to the London Cyclist Shop.
Sticking to smartphones there’s also an interesting app available in Japan called Navitime. It is similar to Bike Hub and offers 5 different routes. Including avoiding major roads, avoiding hills and including as many hills as possible. The app is currently only available in Tokyo and it doesn’t yet make proper use of cycle pathways so there’s still improvements to be made.
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Hi Andreas,
I picked up a ‘windy flasher’ years ago in Tokyo. Terrible name, but a great product. It was a small see-through plastic windturbine, powering two small LED. Even at very low speeds it lit up beautifully. Alas, the prop got taken and I have yet to find a replacement 🙁
If you see one, I will pay handsomely!
Do the wheel lights fit both types of valves, presta and the other ones?
David, I don’t know about England, but here in the United States they sell the wheel lights at K-mart and Wall Mart stores and they have a adapter that will fit either valves. I bought a pair for my Grandson about 5 years ago and they are still working. At the time I paid about US $ 2.00 (1.255 Britch Pound-GPB)