There’s this ideal I’m drawn to when I see it in other people and their bikes: authenticity. There are lots of ways that can be interpreted, but I think it boils down to a true reflection of a person in the bikes that they ride and how it matches the requirements of the task: bikes and bits that fit seamlessly into their owners’ existence.
This year is one that has seen my riding stats hit new lows – bouts of sickness and sadness and travel and the base-level chaos of parenthood – although the number Strava spits back at me doesn’t include the bikes I’m using the most at the moment. It is what it is. But there’s a paradox in that, because that type of riding – the school dropoffs and the grocery runs and the head-clearing rides around the block for no reason – feels closer to my present ideal of integration of bikes into life than squeezing into lycra for exercise. Not that I don’t miss that, too.
Every year, I love writing these pieces and reflecting on what bikes mean to me in a given year, and I love looking back and realising how multifaceted bikes are – and continue to be – for me. After a 2024 marked with ups and downs, bikes are a constant. That’s something to celebrate, this year and every year.
1994 Cannondale M800 Beast of the East
I suppose, with the above in mind, I should start off with the bike that most stole my heart this year. As an individual product recommendation it’s both so specific and so obscure (and 30 years old!) that it’s largely irrelevant, but as a recommendation for a category of bike … well, that’s really what we’re getting at here.
26” mountain bikes from the 1990s like this – a 1994 Cannondale M800 Beast of the East – are near-perfect for cruisy short-distance urban jaunts, with robust frames, big cushy tyres, a comfortable riding position and a low cost to entry. This thing came to me via a retro MTB aficionado on Facebook for a few hundred bucks. It has interesting brakes that work well (when they work) and give new appreciation for engineering choices of 30 years ago; it has weird geometry with a high bottom bracket; it has a heap of character, a beautifully elegant stem, and wears the perfect graphics of that era of Cannondale. I could look at it for hours and not get bored.
But all that’s window dressing to the fact that it’s a great bike for a decent chunk of my everyday riding at the moment. I’ve got a $12 rack from AliExpress on the front (love that thing), a basket cable-tied to the top, and for little quests like supermarket runs and rides with the kids, it’s endlessly smile-inducing and makes me feel like I’m riding a big whippy BMX.
Sometimes you just want a bike that fits seamlessly into your daily comings and goings, and with my latest trusty, crusty red Cannondale (I maintain you should always have a couple of those in the rotation) I have found it.
Price: Not much, other than a bit of persistence and luck on the used market.
Framework Designs Sight Seeker bag
How often do you pick up a product that makes you wonder what you were doing before you got it? This randonneur/basket bag has proven itself to be just that. Framework Designs is a one-woman operation from Melbourne, with its proprietor Tia handmaking a small but complete range of bikepacking and commuting bags that have an elegant, pared-back aesthetic and some clever tricks up their sleeve.
The Sight Seeker is Framework Designs’ mid-sized option, designed to fit perfectly into a Wald 137 basket (attaching via a buckled strap looping through the front and back, with reinforcement from velcro straps at the side pockets). That would be good enough, but it also fits on my SimWorks Obento front rack via the tombstone and velcro straps at the bottom, and – if you want a less-permanent carrying option – has straps spaced to fit the Jack the Rack easy-on/off front rack too. For me, that kills a few birds with one stone, making it a great bag for shopping trips close to home as well as a one-and-done commuter bag for my occasional trips into the office.
You have no idea how smug it makes me to fit my laptop and a full change of clothes into this elegant little bag, hook on the shoulder strap at the destination and wander around with a little satchel for the day. Probably my favourite bike thing of the year.
Price: AU$295
Wilde Rambler
It’s not often that I get a new-new bike (old fixer-uppers is a different story), but when my trusty CAADX got stolen in May (😢) my insurance company presented me with a generous valuation and the opportunity to get something a bit special. I ended up turning to Off Course Cycles, an iconic Melbourne store for bikes of an interesting and practical persuasion, who helped put together a lavish new commuter (sure, it’s a bit nice for pub-bike duty, but my other big bike acquisition of the year solves that problem).
There are enough lovely things on it that I could probably fill this list with parts from this bike alone – things like the Velo Orange snakeskin mudguards, or the Schmidt SON dynamo and lights, or the colour-matched Spurcycle bell, or the new 12-speed Shimano GRX groupset. But in the interests of brevity, the whole bike can act as a proxy for all of that.
It’s a Wilde Rambler, the all-road/gravel model from a new brand created by the founder of All-City as his ‘love letter to cycling’. Although it’s relatively early days for me to have definitively wrapped my head around it, the geometry numbers are a pretty good match to the CAADX it replaced. I set it up squarely with year-round practicality in mind to differentiate it from my Ritchey Outback (which I still love as much as ever, but use as a bit more of a pure gravel bike). The Rambler is a steel frame with a lovely segmented steel fork so with all the bits hanging off it, it’s not super light (especially when it’s got a bag with a laptop in it perched on the front). It rides lighter than it is, though, and there’s something wonderfully pragmatic about being able to just grab it and go without worrying about charging anything or getting wet from road spray. And, with its glittery ‘ocean sparkle’ paintjob and shiny silver bits, it’s just so damn pretty.
Price: AU$2,000 / US$1,200 (frameset only); also available as complete bikes. ~AU$7,500 as pictured.
Ritchey Classic components
I originally chose for the bike above to come with a black stem, seatpost, spacers, and top cap. This was a terrible miscalculation on my part. Now it has Ritchey’s Classic silver components. This is much better.
(Non-vanity comments: the C220 stem is great and gives a nice secure fitment, the seatpost head is rock-solid, and the spacers are spacers. I’m a big fan of Ritchey’s Butano bar, but unfortunately they don’t make it in silver, hence why I’ve got a black bar here.)
Price: Varies.
Wald 137 basket
There are few products in the cycling industry with category supremacy quite like Wald baskets. I mean, sure, there’s not all that much to them: they’re just a well-made basket – and even then I can’t say that I can tell all that much of a difference between them and other baskets. And in Australia they are relatively expensive as far as baskets go (I’m led to believe that in the US, where these are made, they’re cheaper, which perhaps explains why they’re basically a no-brainer for the basket bike folks over there).
But despite just being a basket, they are admittedly pretty fantastic at that job. The holes are spaced well, and the wire used is pretty sturdy (which is not something I can say about some other baskets and porteur racks I’ve used). The size of the Wald 137 is pretty spot on for the small shopping runs I use it for, and because the brand has such market domination there is a range of bags (including the Framework Designs Sight Seeker mentioned above) made to perfectly fit its dimensions. Sometimes I use this with a basket bag and sometimes I use a cheap Topeak net over the top to keep stuff from bouncing out. In any of these scenarios, I am delighted.
Price: AU$70 / ~US$26
A Safety Jogger promotional umbrella
Out of all the cycling team sponsors in the weird world of cycling, Safety Jogger is maybe the one that has most captured my imagination. Makers of aggressively functional work boots, Safety Jogger is also one of the big sponsors of Soudal-QuickStep. But while I’m not in a place profession-wise (or style-wise) where I would voluntarily choose to wear any of their shoes, I have a concession to make: these guys know their way around a promotional umbrella. I’ve never splashed out on a nice umbrella before (still haven’t, I guess, seeing as this one was free) but this one is nice. (Yes, I get that this is cycling adjacent, but bear with me.)
The origin story: Spring Classics, 2024, me and Jonny at a QuickStep press conference. A train from Kortrijk to Oudenaarde; a walk through the town and an industrial estate with no footpaths to the Safety Jogger factory. I took a clandestine piss in some bushes next to an abandoned, graffiti-covered electrical substation near a canal while a family of birds rustled in a nest over my head. Finally we arrived at our destination, marked by a selection of QuickStep team cars and a big steel corporate statue out the front with interlinking rings marked ‘customer’, ‘people’, and ‘supplier’. Sculptural #synergies, folks.
After walking through the foyer and up some stairs and through an outlet store, there they were: the Soudal-QuickStep boys sitting up the front of a room half-full of cycling journos, Safety Jogger executives, and team management. We watched Patrick Lefevere react in real time to the bad Basque Country crash, asked irritating questions of the Safety Jogger CEO who was wearing a suit that looked like a fancy curtain, got to know Nice Danish Man Kasper Asgreen, and on our way out were handed goodie-bags full of Safety Jogger merch. Inside were a pair of socks (super plush!), a beanie (extremely cosy!), and an umbrella with a satisfying ‘swoopffff’ noise and a strong-enough structure that it held up to the ravages of the Belgian winds down the river on our walk back to central Oudenaarde.
All these months later, it still holds pride of place in my household’s umbrella department: not yet broken by small children, a memory of a funny and surreal afternoon with my little friend Jonny.
Price: An afternoon of your time at a factory/priceless.
Honourable mentions
Shimano PD-EH500 pedals
I’ve long been a Shimano PD-M520 (M540 if I’m feeling flashy) kinda guy, finding little reason to justify an upgrade when they just work so well. However, as my riding morphs toward less clipped-in and more clipped-out applications, I’ve started dabbling with Shimano’s platform/SPD combo pedals on a couple of bikes (including my Wilde Rambler). Breaking news: riding in sneakers is easier on platform pedals!
Focus Mares CX 4.0
A few jobs back, in, oh, 2013 or so, I got a cheerful orange and red Focus ‘cross bike in for a review. I fell in love with it – a bit for its fast and snappy ride quality, and a lot for its colour scheme. Ever since, I’ve remembered it fondly.
In the aftermath of my recent bike theft, when I was spending a lot of time scouring Facebook Marketplace in search of that stolen bike, I found the same orange/red Mares model for sale locally. It cost not much money and I was in a suitably emotionally compromised state to justify snapping it up. I’ve since swapped out the wheels for some Easton Ascents I found on the roadside, converted it to SRAM 1x, and gotten it ready for a new life as a bike to live at the family beach house where it will handle a mix of lumpy road riding and glorious gravel.
Because of that it doesn’t get ridden much, but it still makes me ridiculously chipper every time I see it. No regrets.
Uniqlo Ultralight Down shirt jacket
For years this has made its way onto my short list, but for various reasons – mostly including the fact that it hasn’t existed in Uniqlo’s range for at least half a decade – it hasn’t made the final cut. It’s a light, down-filled shirt jacket (shacket?) that folds up to very little, dries quickly if it gets wet, is warm without getting clammy, has hand pockets to keep my fingers warm, and is almost on its last legs after years of faithful service. Still, it remains a casual-wear staple for me on the bike, and I’m dreading when I have to say goodbye. If you’ve got a recommendation for something similar, let me know.
A cat called Toby
A recent arrival to the family: a beautiful and affectionate rescue cat that just hangs out on my desk, keeping me company. Such a smooshy little man.
And … the music that made the biggest impression of 2024
- Sadness – any of their three 2024 EPs
- Ital Tek
- Arooj Aftab – Night Reign
- Christian Löffler – Parallels and A Life
- Blanck Mass – Animated Violence Mild (another year as undisputed champion when I just need to get shit done)
- Christian Lee Hutson – Paradise Pop. 10
This is the second in our annual ‘Favourite Things’ series, which we’ll be rolling out into December. You can read Dave Rome’s instalment here; up next is Suvi Loponen.
Any thoughts/comments/recommendations? Let me know in the comments below. And finally: thank you for reading (and caring about what we do here). 🧡
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