Hello! Otaka from the Tokyo shop here!
Out of the blue, but have you ever fitted a WALD basket and found your light's beam blocked by your luggage?
It's a small annoyance, but I'm sure plenty of you have wished there were a product that solved it.
This time, some products that solve exactly that have newly arrived, so let me introduce them.
What is “Takagi Cycle Works”?
We should really start with who exactly Takagi Cycle Works (TCW) is.
TCW is a brand run by its owner, Mr. Takagi.
It mainly builds custom-made racks, and what gets ordered varies from customer to customer, from practical pieces to racks where design comes first.
Anyone who has ever made a rack themselves will know that rack building is seriously hard work. You have to bend the tubes so they're parallel, of course, and weld thin chromoly tubing without distorting it; it's more complex and difficult than building an ordinary frame.
Doing that as custom work tailored to each individual raises the difficulty considerably, and takes real skill and experience.
As it happens, Mr. Takagi was also my teacher at the bicycle technical college I attended, and someone I owe a great deal to: in my student days he gave me technical advice and helped me with frame building.
TCW has now released not only custom-order racks but also a light mount and a mount for WALD baskets, which is how we've come to carry them at the Tokyo shop.
TONGARI Lightmount
TCW's light mount, the “TONGARI” (“pointy”), is, as the name suggests, a light mount distinguished by its pointed teardrop shape.
Where ordinary light mounts are round, this one's teardrop shape stops a band-clamp light from nodding forward under its own weight or being shaken out of position by vibration.
There's no doubt this little point will do away with that tiny bit of stress you've been putting up with.
It comes in two colors, black and silver.
You can use it just like an ordinary light mount, fitted to fork eyelets, to a rack and so on.
Light Mount Mount
I doubt anyone could guess at first sight what this is for.
A curious thing: a mount for a light mount.
And where does it go?…
Here!
Yes, it's a mount made solely for fitting a light to a WALD basket.
Fit a WALD and the light's beam gets hidden by your luggage; or the rack and fork have no eyelets, or they do but the light ends up badly placed.
And so on: the WALD-and-light problem turned out to be surprisingly hard to get away from.
But with this Light Mount Mount, the light problem is solved.
It's a clever product of the why-didn't-this-exist-already kind, born of working with racks and bikes day in, day out.
In fact, this Light Mount Mount has been drawing attention from overseas as well, getting picked up by Bikepacking.com, a major bike media outlet, and it may well become a must-have item for WALD users.
Small flashes of inspiration make bikes more fun and more convenient
I'm looking forward to seeing what TCW comes out with next.
There's something very appealing about products like these, small as they are, that solve a problem.
Is it because they're handmade?
Because I know the maker?
No; I think what I like is the attention to little details, the drive to make things easier to use and more convenient.
Using a valve nut as a spacer to mount a bottle, or modifying a strap to attach a bag: your own small idea might be what makes cycling more fun.
Takagi Cycle works products are available in store at the Tokyo shop.
We look forward to plenty of fitting requests!
Otaka