Fifty Plus (50+) - A Gadget which I hope doesn't become popular

At least not popular on serene country bike trails. I guess it would be okay in cities, or if someone was out on a lonely back road. Will give them credit for being innovative.

It's an iPod speaker system, that fits into a bottle cage and blasts the sound upward.

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/ihome2go-ih85b-ipod-speaker-system-for-bikers/

Some riders just take great pleasure in annoying other people. My wife and I met such a pair on the Joe Pool dam road the other day. This is a no-motor-vehicles-allowed 8 mile out and back route that we repeat two or three times on weekday evenings, rather than playing in rush hour traffic. On many days, I take off and ride my own speed, rejoining my wife as we pass near the end of the ride. On this particular day, her 12 mph average seemed fine for my recovery mode ride, so I stayed with her the entire ride. Another couple was riding at the same time, and one of them had music blasting. They were riding at a fast enough pace to pass us, but would then take a break at every turnaround, so we'd pass them back. It seemed to me like a conspiracy to annoy me, but I guess that's just what happens when you get old and cranky.

At least not popular on serene country bike trails. I guess it would be okay in cities, or if someone was out on a lonely back road. Will give them credit for being innovative.

It's an iPod speaker system, that fits into a bottle cage and blasts the sound upward.

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/ihome2go-ih85b-ipod-speaker-system-for-bikers/

I'm with you on this one and I do use an IPod on rides. I have a pair of loose fitting Earpieces an a low volume so I can still hear other traffic before anyone moans about using them.

I Do not like a great deal of Music but do have my "Style" that I like. To assault other people in the towns or even up on the hills with my my brand of Blues and Rock would not only be inconsiderate- It would probably get me lynched. (Plenty of of trees out on them thar hills.) If I want to listen to music- I'll keep it to myself and I would hope that others will do the same. If Not- I'll start carrying the rope for the trees.

At least not popular on serene country bike trails. I guess it would be okay in cities, or if someone was out on a lonely back road. Will give them credit for being innovative.

It's an iPod speaker system, that fits into a bottle cage and blasts the sound upward.

We've had some other threads about riders who feel unprepared unless they have a pistol with them. So far I've resisted that trend but, if these things become popular, I may have to rethink my position.

If a tree falls in the forest and Tom B doesn't hear it..... is it noise?

I've thought of putting speakers on a bike, but they won't sound as good as earphones and they would be heavier than an ipod. I forget the number, but an incredible amount of bacteria grows in the ears if you wear headphones. I guess I just don't see the point of playing your music out where other people are subjected to it...it seems so 90's.

Did you see the price on that water cage model???? :eek:

I saw this thing in some closeout place like TJ Maxx and I don't think you have to worry too much. It weighs a ton. I am not kidding the whole thing must weigh 4 or 5 pounds! So unless you are into adding weight to your frame for training forget it. When I picked it up my first thought was that it totally defeated the idea behind the ipod(light, compact, etc.) I think they had them for about $30.

I never understood why anyone would want to play music while riding a bicycle. The sounds of the ride are entertaining enough for me and the sounds of traffic are essential for safety. On long quiet stretches I can play music from my own memory to pass the time.

A cheaper version of this might come in handy for those autumn Saturday rides so I can listen to UGA football games while I ride. Other than that, I have no use for it.

It would have to have some weight to have any quality to the sound. You'd need a decent sized battery to get any volume and you'd need a decent speaker with at least a bit of a magnet on the driver, to get any bass. After all, it is a power supply, an amp and a speaker rolled into a water bottle sized enclosure.

As to listening to games from local stations, a transistor radio works pretty well. You can get armband radios, pocket radios, etc. Radio Shack offers a nice selection:
http://www.radioshack.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2032115&cp=2032054

I have the older version of the $14.99 Radio Shack exclusive one and it works very well.

I'm embarassed to say that I own one of these. :o
I love riding with music but don't want to cut out street noise by using earbuds.
I do a lot of weekday riding where I don't run into many other riders so I don't annoy anyone.
That being said, I only used it one time
and decided that the weight of it and the fact that it took a spot for an extra water bottle was not worth the comforting sound of music.

Wednesday as I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight some kid came by with his iPod in a boom box and he was blasting his music for all to hear. What's up with that? In the day and age of all sorts of nice earphones why would anyone do that????

I ride with a club occasionally and one of the old timers rides with a boom box on his bike. He can't understand why no one will ride with him. I don't want to hear music while riding especially someone elses music. It is just rude... sorry it just irks me!!! :mad:

I'm embarassed to say that I own one of these. :o


I'd love to get one of these for RAGBRAI. That way, I can annoy the maximum number of riders with my idiosyncratic taste in music (there's one guy on RAGBRAI every year who has a cheap, old school cassette player bungee'd to his handlebars, and does the whole ride listening to classical music; love him to death.) What is the sound quality like?

To each his own. This last summer, I came upon another rider who was riding a three speed with a wire basket up front. He had a transistor radio in the basket with the local baseball game tuned in. Far be it from me to tell him how he ought to be enjoying his ride. The fact of the matter is that I was a bit jealous. He was doing two things that I love to do at the same time! I figure the same goes for music. At least on a bike you can pedal away, or let them pedal away if it annoys you. In many ways, I don't see how this is different than having a group of young guns pass me talking about their conquests the night before. Understand they are talking loud enough to hear one another two and three riders back. Frankly, that would annoy me more than music.... unless it was Lawrence Welk music.

Wednesday as I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight some kid came by with his iPod in a boom box and he was blasting his music for all to hear. What's up with that? In the day and age of all sorts of nice earphones why would anyone do that????

An urban version of marking his territory?

it could be worse, check this (http://kanardo.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/boombox-bikes/) out

An urban version of marking his territory?

I find pee-ing on luggage a quieter mode of marking territory at airports.

A few years ago during a cross state ride, I came upon some guy who was loudly singing, chanting, and praying, while riding erratically and excessively slow. At first, as I approached from behind, I thought it was a wayward cow who had lost her calf or a bull who had felt the veterinarians knife.

I think this was in poor taste and was infringing on others rights, although it did give me a chance to work on my sprint.

Encountering a soul or two blasting their music wouldn't be that irritating. But if this kind of thing really caught on and became commonplace, it would be quite annoying, at least to me.

I admit it would be neat to hear someone going past to classical music.

I admit it would be neat to hear someone going past to classical music.

I always listen to classical when I ride. Yo Yo Ma, the most. I guess I assumed most people do, or to soundtrack music. I makes your ride seem like a movie.

I hardly ever listen to the car radio.

To the best of my recollection, I have never listened to music while on a bike ride in my life. I can't even remember even once having considered it. The two things just don't go together for me.

And in riding this past year, I can only remember a couple of times when I saw anyone with headphones or earbuds on while riding. Guess it's just not something that many people do when riding on a peaceful rail trail.

I see and hear this old guy on the Jordan River Trail every once in a while. He is obviously tone deaf, but he "sings" at top volume constantly. Good for a laugh when I pass. I can drop him easily, so I don't have to listen long, which would probably cause me to go berserk and commit mayhem. :)

Guess it's just not something that many people do when riding on a peaceful rail trail.

Rail Trails are where I do it the most... In the woods, there's a lot to hear, and lots of critters, and windy roads that you want to be careful on. But on those rail trails, sometimes you're just going flat for 40 miles. I like to listen to soundtracks, because there are these "building up suspense" songs, and when the climax hit, it's really funny depending on what you're looking at.

I also like music for hills, because it keeps me going.

Rail Trails are where I do it the most... In the woods, there's a lot to hear, and lots of critters,.

I had to read this twice, because what you were writing was a contradiction to my experience. Our rail trails are in the woods and have lots of critters. I've seen rail trails that were miles and miles out in the open, but I've never ridden on one like that. Some have been through wetlands, where there were no woods, but there was still lots to look at and there were lots of birds singing. I love the sounds I hear when riding the trails, that's why I feel listening to music would diminish the experience.

But if I was on some long, flat road that went though miles of cornfields ... bring on the iPod!

Prairie. Cows. Rinse. Repeat.

Lets see, about 45 years ago while number of people were encamped about every 50-100 yards or so in a well known national park in Colorado enjoying solitude and the sounds of nature a horrible thing occurred... This horrible buzzing rasping noise started up just after daybreak. It continued for most of the day. You must realize that back in those days nobody disturbed the peace with generators or boom boxes. Nobody even listened to the radio with an ear bud. The horrible noise was being produced by a pair of small motorbikes. About half of the adults in the campground converged on the ranger's office that evening demanding that something be done about the racket. The ranger wouldn't do a thing so most of us moved out to quieter places. The fiendish noisemakers took over and it has been the same every since.

The last time I visited that place 33 years ago it was wall-to-wall RV's with generators rasping and TV's going. Nor even enuf room left for trees. I didn't even stop and kept going, sick to my stomach. If people really want to camp like that they should stay home, run the car in the garage with the door to the house open, fire up the hibachi inside, and slop some Pine-Sol around occasionally while they watch the big screen. It is a horrible situation. Bike and walking trails were some of the last places where someone could get away from the majority of the noise while near a city.

Nowadays it is hard to get away from the horrors even in the back country. Some moron comes thru with an ipod or boombox or a God cursed cell phone with ring tones blaring or talking at the top of their lungs. Why do they even put cell towers out there? Why can't people just enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. The open spaces, the rushing stream, wildlife, the smell of the pine trees, the wind in the aspen, the smell of grasslands, the buzz of a hummingbird or calls from birds, the sweet smell of clean moss and mud, etc.

Where is my portable EMP generator when I need it???

I see and hear this old guy on the Jordan River Trail every once in a while. He is obviously tone deaf, but he "sings" at top volume constantly. Good for a laugh when I pass. I can drop him easily, so I don't have to listen long, which would probably cause me to go berserk and commit mayhem. :)

This made me laugh. When I was a kid I worked in a sweatshop shoe factory. Granted it was boring work, but there was a guy that whistled bird calls every day for 8 hours straight. It was maddening. Half the people that worked there would have offed the guy for $25.

An old college professor of mine was a bag pipe player. As you might well imagine, he didn't have many places where he could practice without disturbing people. Hence, he got into the habit of taking his dog and pipes in the back of his station wagon to a rail line across the river form the town in which he lived. He, the dog and pipes would walk along the rail line while he would practice for and hour or so every day. If you went to the town side of the river at the right time you could barely hear him off in the distance. Of course over time the rail line fell out of use and was turned into a multi-use trail. He continued to take his new dog (the old one had died by then) and his pipes across the river and practice for about an hour every day. I'm sure there were people who used the trail now the it was complete who were annoyed with this guy, his dog, and the loud music from his bag pipe playing. I suspect that if any of them had ever complained to me about this, I would want to have had the presence of mind to reply, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, get over it."

I'd love to get one of these for RAGBRAI. That way, I can annoy the maximum number of riders with my idiosyncratic taste in music (there's one guy on RAGBRAI every year who has a cheap, old school cassette player bungee'd to his handlebars, and does the whole ride listening to classical music; love him to death.) What is the sound quality like?

Sound quality? It depends on your "ear".
I wouldn't listen to it other than during a ride.

An old college professor of mine was a bag pipe player......I'm sure there were people who used the trail now the it was complete who were annoyed with this guy, his dog, and the loud music from his bag pipe playing. I suspect that if any of them had ever complained to me about this, I would want to have had the presence of mind to reply, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, get over it."

Where I used to work, there was bagpipe practice one night a week in the lot next door to us. We loved it... we'd pack a dinner and spend an hour in the warm summer nights, watching the sexy men in kilts.

At least not popular on serene country bike trails. I guess it would be okay in cities, or if someone was out on a lonely back road. Will give them credit for being innovative.

It's an iPod speaker system, that fits into a bottle cage and blasts the sound upward.

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/ihome2go-ih85b-ipod-speaker-system-for-bikers/

Isn't that what frame pumps are for..... :rolleyes:

It's always kind of fun this time of year to see the noobs out trying to work on their New Years resolutions to exercise more. I passed a guy out at the park where I do intervals, and he was tooling along intently with his iPod earphones in when I smoked past him. I alway announce my presence when passing, but he didn't hear and I think he almost crashed.

I suppose you could turn the volume down on one of those waterbottle cage speaker things so as not to be too annoying, but listening to the wind is so much better.

I've tried several iterations of music on the bike during long trips. At one point I created a design for an FM transmitter and small receivers. The idea was ..each bike on the pace line would have the small radio attached to the stem. The bike with the transmitter would chose mutually agreeable "workout music" and transmit it to the radios. The whole pace line would breeze through the countryside listening to Beethoven's "Pastoral" or something. Never got agreement from an interested group and dropped the whole idea.

I have used the speaker system below inside a special mesh pocket on top of my tank bag during our annual WI trip. But I have realized that mostly nobody else wants to hear coming from my bike. I consider it rude to presume such. I only used it during times when the group was stretched out and I was completely alone on rural highways (would never take it on a trail where I might pass other riders). But during those alone times I have enjoyed it. The year I rode a bent it was much closer (tank bag directly behind ny head) to my ears. When I was alone on a regular bike and cranking hard, it isn't so useful way back there on the tank bag. Mostly I end up not taking it along at all. Not worth the very few moments where it would be great.

Some riders just take great pleasure in annoying other people.

More people just enjoy their music and it cannot occur to them that you might not like it too.