Category Archives: Bike Gifts Items

Good Bike Accessory Sale at Performance (but not everything)

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I was at our local Performance Bike store yesterday and saw that they were having a sale. When I was working on this site and checking prices online, I also saw that the Performance Bike website has huge banners about the sale that is going on now (thru Sunday 6/26) also.  

I always try to find out when the higher end bikes for sale on this site are on sale at Performance, so I checked the prices some of our bikes and found that they were still the same.

So my point here is that there is a good sale going on at Performance Bike right now, but it is not on everything (as the banner says, since most of the bikes are not on sale). There are quite a few Bike Accessories on sale at Performance right now though.

See the Performance Bike links on our Bike Accessories page for more info and to check out this sale.

Note: The Performance Bike site slows down a little, due to all of the additional website traffic when they have  one of these sales, so be patient…

Elliptical Bike Reviews

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We now have a whole new and exciting category of bikes available thanks to a need and some good old fashioned yankee ingenuity!  Elliptigo’s Outdoor Elliptical Bikes are now being manufacured and sold online and at selected retail outlets.

Elliptigo Elliptical Bicycles

These machines can truely be called “bikes” or “bicycles” (they have 2 wheels and are self propelled) but they are really quite different than just about any other bike that has come before them. Elliptical Bikes use the same design as indoor Elliptical Trainers but the pedals are attached to the bike crank, chain, gears and wheel of a bicycle to allow you to get an excellent aerobic Elliptical Trainer/ Running style of workout – outdoors!

I had an opportunity to ride and review the Elliptigo Elliptical Bikes recently and have just posted a couple of reviews on these new machines. See the Elliptigo 8C Review and Elliptigo 3C review for the details.

Overall, these bikes are very easy to ride and provide an excellent, low impact, runner style workout. These bikes are especially well suited for cross training but I can see how some people may even like this kind of bike just for the excitement of trying something completely new and different and/or for casual trips around town. 

I was very impressed with the Elliptigo Elliptical Bikes and I think that we will be starting to see a lot more of these around very soon!

2011 Bike Trail Calendar and Free Calendar Generator

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I am a little late on this, since we are already into the 9th day of the new year, but I needed a new wall calendar at home and I usually generate my own each year.

For 2011 I have generated a Bike Trails and Events Calendar, in PDF and Excel formats that I am offering on this site for free. I just finished the web page with the Excel and PDF Bike Calendar Links.

See  Bike Trail and Events Calendar for a PDF or Excel copy of the calendar. Both versions of the calendar include 1 page per month. The calendar includes the standard US holidays for each month and a Bike Trail photo on top (or you can choose the pre-made generic calendar with no bike trail photo).

Since I am so late on this, I have only included 1 Chicago bike trail event (so far) which is the Bike The Drive event. I will probably add events to this calendar through out the year so if you know of events that would fit this format, please send the event and date to me.

In addition to the pre-made calendars (with bike trail photos (Illinois and Wisconsin)) and the generic calendar (no photos), I am also offering the Calendar Generator program which is an Excel VBA program that allows you to generate a calendar (with or without photos) for any year that you select, with standard US holidays and customized events that you can enter yourself.

The PDF version is probably the easiest version. The Excel (no macro) version is a little more complicated but allows more customization (you can replace the photos with your own) and the Excel VBA Calendar Generator version is the most complex but allows the most flexibility.

I don’t want to make it sound like any of these are that complex or difficult to use but there are quite a few people out there with many levels of PC expertise. I’ve tried to keep options available from very simple to more complex and powerful.

Well, if you are in need of a 2011 calendar, I hope that some of you find the calendars and programs offered here to be helpful.

Now we can at least have some bike trail photos on the calendar to remind us of riding season all year long even when we can’t be out there on the trails! Have fun!

Once again the link for the calendar programs is: Bike Trail and Events Calendar

Best Gifts for Bike Riders (Cyclists)

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OK, since it’s officially the Christmas shopping season now, I just have to write something on gifts for cyclists. If your searching for an excellent gift for someone  that is a fairly serious bike rider (or serious cyclist), here’s a few suggestions.

For a fairly low cost gift, I would consider Bike Electronics like a Bike Computer (i.e. a bike speedometer, odometer (and more!)). Most serious riders already have one of these but some do not. Bike Computers are pretty easy to install and there are huge selections online to choose from.

Although, many cyclists may already have a bike computer, many have not sprung for a Bike GPS Unit! These are going to be more expensive than a cycle computer but they are really the ultimate in bike electronics.

Another great gift that most cyclists use are Bike Bags.  There is also a great selection of bike bags online and just about any style and price range that you are interested in.

For the cyclist that is really into getting a great workout or training I would consider either a Bike Trainer, which is a bike stand that you use for your regular outdoor bike or an Indoor Cycle (exercise bike).

And for something that is just a fun gift for a bike rider, check out the Monkey Bike Light and Down Low Glow bike Lights! These things are a blast and are not the kind of thing that a lot of bikers go out an buy for themselves so it would be a very unique gift. Not only are these lights a lot of fun but they are really a good safety item too.

Well, there you have it. There are really a ton of other gifts for cyclists but I’ve tried to at least get some good ideas out there for gifts in various price ranges. I know I would sure like to have some of the items here (that I don’t already have).

2010 Bike GPS Updates

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The 2010 biking season has definitely begun here in Chicago now and I have spent many hours reviewing the latest cycling GPS units again this year.

I am considering a new bike GPS unit for this year and I think I pretty much know what I personally would get but in the process I have also reviewed quite a few biking and handheld GPS units in order to keep my Bicycle GPS page  up to date.

As I have mentioned, I have spent hours researching this subject. There is a lot of good information, comparisons and videos on the Garmin site and I have also reviewed countless entries in Bike Forums and reviews on other websites.

What I have found is that the Edge series is probably still the most popular cycling computers although some bikers do not really need the bike specific functions and still go with the hiking and handheld models like the Etrex series, GPSMAP 60csx or the Oregon or Dakota series.

Even though you know you are in the market for a cycling GPS unit, there are still some additional decisions that will need to be made. You need to consider if the mapping and advanced navigation options are important to you or if you would rather keep the costs down and are primarily interested in  the workout and training data. Also, if you are a mountain biker, you may have other requirements and priorities.

If you are primarilary interested in the training and workout data and would like to keep the costs down, the most popular units are the Edge 205 and Edge 305 units. The main differences between the 205 and 305 is that the 305 has barometric altimeter, heart rate and cadence where as the 205 does not.

If you are looking for a higher end unit with more navigation and mapping options then you will probably be more interested in the Edge 605 and Edge 705 series. The main differences between the 605 and 705 is that the 705 has barometric altimeter, heart rate and cadence (and a few other options)  where as the 605 does not.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Garmin EDge 705I pretty much know what I would want (for my particular riding style and preferences) and I would choose the Edge 705. Even though I am really not that big on the heart rate and cadence attachments, I would like the barometric altimeter and you can also get the 705 bundled with Street Maps SD card which I would want and have to buy separately anyway.

As for the handheld and mountain biking GPS units, the GPSMAP 60CSxm eTrex Vista HCx, eTrex Legend HCx and the Oregon and Dakota units seem to be the most popular. The Oregon and Dakota are a little more expensive but they have the touch screen capabilities.

As you can see from this post, selecting a bike GPS unit can be a complicated process. Even though I have a good idea about what I would choose, I am also trying to keep the GPS page on this website up to date and help to simplify the process as much as possible for those who do not have the hours to spend researching bike GPS options.

I have just updated the original Bicycle GPS page , on this site, with the latest 2010 information and links so this page has some good current information and links for places to buy these units online.

I hope this helps a little bit for now. I am not done with my research for this year yet, but I did want to share what I have discovered so far.

More Bike Trail Gift Items (T-Shirts, Mugs, etc.)

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wanted to create some additional Chicago Area Bike Trail Gift Items (for more trails), and I just completed the design of more items for two more trails.

The new gift items are for the Chicago Lakefront Trail  and the Busse Woods Trail. There are links at the bottom of these pages for the new items. I have also created a page to include all of the gift items in one place and that is the Bike Trail Gift Items page.

These designs are all from the Zazzle.com site and it is pretty easy to design your own items, but it does take a little time and you need the photos to begin with so I put these together for those who might be interested in these kinds of items and don’t have the time, tek experience or the photos. There are always people looking for a lot of unique things in the holiday season anyway.

I had planned on doing quite a few additional trails but unfortunately I have run into a little bit of a problem. The web pages that I did on many of my earlier trails I used still pictures that I created from a camcorder tapes so these photos are very low quality. 🙁 For example, the Elroy-Sparta trail, the I&M canal trail, the Palatine and Deer Grove Trails). The photo resolution is fine for the web pages but I do not want to try to use blown up version of these for the gift items due to the reduced resolution.

For some of the other trails, I just could not find the kind of high quality photos that I would like to use so I will be going back to many of these trails to try and get some better photos that really capture the feel of the each of the trails.

So many bike trails… So little time! (especially with the peak bike season ending here in the Chicago area).

Well, we’ll see how the gift items go for now and I know that I will be getting out to the bike trails asap for more photos!

New Bike Related Gift Items on Zazzle.

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I have been wanting to add bike related gift items, like t-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, etc. to the about-bicycles site for quite a while now but have never had the time to make the arrangements.

Since there are already plenty of these types of things available on the Internet, I thought that it would be nice if there were gift items related specifically to Chicago area bike trails, since this website has such a large selection of Chicago area bike trail pages, photos, videos, etc.

Well, it hasn’t been the best riding weather, here in the Chicago area, so I did some searching and just found a quick and easy way to design and make these items available.

Keep in mind that I am rarely on the leading edge of technology and by the time I discover something, it is probably already popular with most people. Anyway, I just discovered the Zazzle.com website, which allows you to design and sell (or buy) your own gift items.

Well, I just designed my first t-shirt and have made it available for purchase on Zazzle. I decided to start simple, just to see how it works and selected the Fox River Bike Trail to start with, since it is such a popular trail in this area (and I could not find any FRT related items already available with my Google searches).

It turns out that it is a little time consuming, especially if you want something that looks pretty nice, but I was able to get a t-shirt designed, with an existing FRT photo, in a relatively short amount of time.

I think that this might have some potential to provide Chicago area bike trail related gift items to people that might want them (if there are people out there looking. Who knows?). The items get a little expensive because Zazzle sets the base price, which is kind of high, and then I add a very small percentage (royalty they call it) for putting the design together.  This provides a nice way to see if there is any demand for this kind of thing and if there is, I could see about producing the items on my own and for a (hopefully) much lower cost.

I hope to be adding quite a few more gift items out there, with different bike trails as the primary theme soon and I’ll probably post updates here when I do.

So just for starters, I have added the new FRT t-shirt to the following pages if you would like to see what this is all about:

The Fox River Trail North, The Fox River Trail South (see the bottom of each page for the new t-shirt)

The Zazzle site can also be handy for just creating your own, very customized items, as you choose.