GPS Gadgets, French Toast Gel, and Hope's Enduro Bike - Interbike 2018

Sherlock is an Italian company that apparently has a thing for electronics, and especially for GPS tracking units that can be hidden. The 50-gram Bike (that's really what it's called) unit slides up into the end of the handlebar on your mountain bike or road bike (it's flexible to go around bends) and works in tandem with an app on your phone to tell you where your bike currently is. There's a GPS / GLONASS module hidden inside, as well as a SIM card that comes with two years of internet access, and a GSM / GPRS unit for cellular connection.

Battery power lasts two weeks, so it will need charging, and the idea is that you turn it on if you're leaving your bike somewhere sketchy. If some jackass cuts your lock and takes off with the bike, you open the app, track down your baby, and dish out some vigilante justice. Or just call the cops.

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Did you know that Pioneer's power meters aren't bothered by a bit of wet weather? The above display shot a constant stream of water directly at the drive-side computer all day during every day of the show, which sort of drives home how water-resistant the little red unit is.

Pioneer uses a sensor in each crankarm (for their dual setup) to give you independent numbers and a power balance comparison, and it reads the forces you're throwing down in twenty-four different spots around your pedal stroke and nearly 400 hundred times per revolution. ANT+ or Bluetooth BLE let it talk to your trainer or phone, and they have a ''force vector graph'' display that tells you how you're utilizing your power and the loss in each pedal stroke. Science.

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This little gadget from AirWinder is probably better suited to commuters than mountain bikers, but it's neat enough that it's worth taking a look at regardless. A peristaltic pump is hidden inside the AirWinder tube, and when activated it'll up your tires to as high as 72 PSI... Without you pumping them up at all. How does it do that trick? Peristaltic pumps depend on alternating compression and relaxation of a hose to pull air into the system, and the hose is actually the inner tube in this case.

So when you're rolling along with the AirWinder in your tire, the special tube is being compressed and then relaxed by the weight of the rider pushing down on it against the ground, and then it's relaxed as the wheel roates around. Repeat this process a bunch of times, just like when you're pedaling around, and your tires are constantly being topped up to the desired pressure. This probably doesn't make a ton of sense for the stuff that we do, but it could be a huge boon for commuter or ride-share bikes.

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French toast is an excellent alternative in the absence of pancakes, and GU's newest gel flavor embraces the breakfast-at-anytime ethos that I live by. There are 100-calories per pack, and they've been made to maximize carbohydrate absorption and are also full of sodium to lessen the chance of those hamstrings locking up. Ingredients aside, GU is donating 10-percent of the french toasts gel's sale to NICA, a program develops and supports mountain biking for middle and high school students in the United States.

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DeFeet also does socks for your hands, with the Duraglove being made from Nylon, Polyester, and Lycra to keep your digits warm in cold-ish temps from 4c to 16c. The $19.99 USD Duraglove is made for fall weather, but it's still thin enough that you don't feel like you're wearing oven mitts on your hands, and rubber grippers on the palms and fingers should provide the required traction. They'll work with your smartphone, too, thanks to Silver Ag yarn in three of the fingertips. Sizes run from extra-small to extra-large, and there are too many colors options for me to list out.

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The crew at Hope have been working on a six-piston brake designed for e-bikes, but that powerful stopper wasn't in Reno. Instead, they had a gorgeous HB160 on display that was, as you'd expect, covered in a load of Hope components. The carbon HB160 frame is made by Hope in the UK, as its aluminum rear-end that's 130mm wide and employs a 17mm diameter axle. There's also a radial rear brake mount designed to accept Hope's own calipers that sits perpendicular to the hub, allowing you to simply add or remove spacers under the caliper to adjust for whatever rotor size you want to use.





Hope is only making 500 hundred of these things, and at £7,500 / $9,663 USD approx, they're probably going to be quite rare out on the trails.

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Reviews and Tech Interbike