Tag Archives: Accessories

Specialized Alloy Bottle Cage

First, not my photo. I’d have moved the keyboard and mine are white.

I have these from my first tour, they have been used on all my tours. I thought about buying some King Cage bottle cages because they are made in USA. Chose not to because I wrote them an email and they never replied so, no I’m not going to call or go to your website and give you my credit card number if you can’t answer one simple question in an email.

King Cage is based in Colorado if that says anything.

I would like to support a US company producing goods in the US but in this case I’m reusing three cages I already had. And it looks like mine are 3g lighter/per than King Cage’s listed weight of their $17/each Stainless model.

Maybe I’ll try them again if one of my Specialized ever break.

I bought these years ago at a local bike shop.

Cost: $4 each x3

Made in Japan

 

NYC Tour Brass Bell

I guess in some cities, like NYC, it is a ticketable offense to ride without a bell on your bike. I mean safety’s great and all but I ring the bell for other reasons.

I think of bells on bikes like horns on autos. They communicate thoughts, they express ideas, they say something.

I have some other bell on my work bike but for my touring bike I went the brass bell route. I think what I like about the other bell is that I can ring it with a trigger and the back and forth is a ring with each movement. So it has a lot of control over the sound. 1 ring, 2 rings, 1 ring then 3 real fast, whatever.

I guess I bought this brass bell because it’s got some old style to it. And it’s louder. It comes in 50mm or 55mm versions, I think I have the 55mm. But this thing has a hammer strike so the tempo control is limited but it gets easier with practice.

I mounted it sideways to the quill section of my stem and the hammer lever sticks up above the flat part of the stem. It takes a pull/release motion to ring.

I bought this at a local bike shop.

Cost: $12

Made in Japan