Pick ’n’ Mix
Stuff that Christmas stocking
1 SUPACAZ FLY CAGE
£59.99 each, cookecomponents.co.uk There’s a reason why carbon bottle cages are so expensive. It’s because the moulds used to make them are more intricate than that annoying metal puzzle you get in your Christmas cracker every year. At £120 a pair, the Fly Cages push the limits of this explanation but, since they come in a range of popping colours and weigh just 28g each, we’ll forgive them.
2 FABRIC LUMARAY LIGHT
£27.99, fabric.cc Many hands make light work, which is why you need at least two people to change a lightbulb. The Lumaray, however, is a much more streamlined operation – a 30-lumen, Usb-charging front light that clips into any quarterturn computer mount, but has its own quarter-turn mount on top, onto which said computer can attach. The wraparound lens boasts 270° visibility and the battery lasts up to 7.5 hours.
3 GOPRO HERO 6
£499.99, gopro.com It’s alleged there are a dozen Hasselblad cameras on the Moon, abandoned by the crew of Apollo 11 as they were too heavy to cart back. If only Neil and Buzz had used Gopro Hero 6s, which weigh just 118g. Plus, with the new GP1 chip offering exceptionally high resolution and superb image stabilisation, there would be no Moon-landing conspiracy debate, because with the Hero 6 you’d see all the wires and papier-mâché.
4 RAPHA BREVET FLYWEIGHT JACKET
£120, rapha.cc Rapha’s new reflective-striped, packable jacket is a marvel, folding away to a size smaller than an inner tube. It’s also misleading, as a common housefly actually weighs 15mg, whereas this jacket weighs 74g. Interestingly, despite Team Sky’s Kenny Elissonde being the lightest rider in the peloton at 52kg, it would still take 5.2 million houseflies to get him airborne, as a housefly can lift around 10mg.
5 VREDESTEIN FLOWER POWER TYRE
£TBC, cookecomponents.co.uk Communist Russia was a resourceful place. The youth got around the ban on western music by pressing bootlegs onto used X-ray film, known as ‘bone records’, while the state, desiring a domestic source of natural rubber, extracted the ‘milk’ from the Kazakh dandelion. It’s this that Vredestein has used in its new tyres, which it claims provides better grip and is more sustainable than rubber trees.