Let's do a product review! Canclaw Bike Can Holder [UPDATED]

Being the inventor of the original on-bike beverage-transport system, the DIY Cooziecage™, I felt that I should be the one to volunteer to purchase and review the Canclaw, a $23.00 (+$5.00 shipping) 3D-printed on-bike beverage transport system akin, if not in design then no-doubt in spirit and intention, to the Cooziecage™.

Seeing as how spring has just-now finally arrived in my neck of the woods, this past Monday morning I removed the Cooziecage™ and mounted my recently purchased Canclaw to the downtube of my Coconino singlespeed for an early-season early-morning sortie into yonder public lands.

Together (my bike, my beer and I, natch) we rode exactly 9.4 miles, up singletrack and a wee bit of forest-road, to "the top" of the day's loop wherein (no matter where "the top" may be) it has long been my habit to stop and sit, atop a humpy rock, or upon the bark of a blown-down tree, or nestled within a tuft or two of brownish braken or bunchgrass, to imbibe a favorite bevvy (thanks always, up 'til today, to my Cooziecage™) whilst contemplating the brevity of my existence, or the shapes of the clouds over head, even perhaps just to anticipate the soon-to-be-had thrill of the downward-facing homeward-bound trail that awaits me.

Let's listen to some records!

System specs:
Fluance RT80, Ortofon 2M Red
iFi Zen Phono (balanced), Denon AVR-1804
Paradigm Mini Monitors (v.3)
Discogs/rockychrysler

I listened to a ton of FM radio growing up, you probably did, too. I also had a small record collection in my bedroom, and a stack of tapes in a big tattered case in my car.  As a result, I was slow to adopt digital music, CDs, MP3s and streaming content, not because I was an analog purist, mostly just because of the cost of conversion. 

I have always enjoyed listening to music, not so much for the sake of the lyrics, but quite simply as a background soundtrack that permeates nearly every moment of my life. As I see it, life flows better, most things are a little easier, food and conversation are more enjoyable, and I am more productive when there's music playing.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I listened to a whole lot of mainstream music during the early period of my life, Journey, Elton John, U2, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Prince, ELO, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., Van Halen and the like. These bands and artists, and this sort of easily accessible music-for-the-masses, was the gateway through which my musical tastes have since expanded and become enriched throughout the couse of my lifetime. In fact, many of these same groups still have a well-deserved place in my music collection to this day (in truth: all of the aforementioned do). The music of my youth is still on regular rotation in my life, not for the sake of nostalgia but because, at least to me, a lot of it is still quite diggable and good.  Still very diggable and very good, in many cases.

Let's adopt a rezdog!

Nellie

Skadi

A few years ago the Internet introduced my wife to the plight of the abandoned pets at Dead Dog Beach on the island of Puerto Rico. As her awareness and concern for mistreated and misbegotten mongrels grew, she and my daughter both became occasional volunteers at a local no-kill shelter.  It was a short distance between this formative experience, helping in the recovery, care, and re-homing of unwanted animals, and the adoption of our own first rescue-pet, an adorable-but-feral little black puppy. She had been found a few weeks prior by some travelers, wandering alone and mortally ailing on the roadside not far from the town of Kayenta, Arizona.  Her bowels distended and  infested with worms and infection, the travelers took her straight to an animal hospital here in Flagstaff where she received emergency surgery to repair her destroyed prolapsed rectum, and intravenous antibiotics for several days.  Her care was made possible by High Country Puppy Rescue, from whom we acquired her.  We call her Nellie.

Our younger dog and her sole surviving sibling were clever enough to be able to evade capture by the good people at the Tuba City Humane Society for several days after they were first reported as strays to them.  Just another set of feral black puppies scavenging, motherless, in trashcans near the center of town, but my wife and daughter immediately fell in love with them the day their pictures were first posted to the agency's website.  After a brief in-person get-to-know-you session, they brought the more gentle of the pups home.  As with our first rezdog, she's quickly socialized positively into our domestic life, though, because she's still not quite a year old yet, she continues to be inclined to be cautious and nervous when out in the world beyond our home. She is never far from Nellie’s side no matter where we are.  We call her Skadi.

Let's roast coffee!

Green beans are shipped in sealed plastic bags

I've been roasting coffee at home for at least 15 years, probably longer. I can't exactly remember when I began to do so, but I think it was my friend Mark (the same guy who sold me my Rock Lobster) who first clued me in to how to do it, way back in the early 2000s, before our daughter was born, when we were still living simple in the barrio on the other side of town.

Here's the lowdown on home-roasting coffee: It's really fun, and it's also a very satisfying thing to do, in that putting-your-hands-to-really-good-work sort of way, same as fiddling with your bikes in the garage, or pulling dandelions out of your lawn, or spending a few hours flipping through crates of old vinyl in your favorite used record store. I dig things like that, especially when I've been able to take the time to perfect my process for doing so over the course of time for many years.  Home coffee roasting is also a little bit cheaper than buying your coffee already-roasted from the coffeebar down the street, so that's another advantage for sure.  But the very best reason of all for roasting your own coffee at home is how it tastes.  There's really no comparison.  None. 

Let's make a Burton DIY Throwback snowboard!

To spice things up a bit this winter, rather than, you know,  just going out to snowbike on the Pugs, or just doing your basic cross-country ski loop out in the woods above my neighborhood, I determined to try to find a few other fun things to do when I'm out in the winter snow when I'm not skiing up at Snowbowl, 'cause, well, I'm 53 now. I really do need to find new innovative ways to hurt myself.

Mounting a Cooziecage™ to the downtube of my Pugsley made beer-drinking in the winterwoods possible and, so, that was a great and rewarding first-effort in this regard.

I've also been doing some fun multisport snowbike-to-xc-ski excursions up Schultz Creek toward Schultz Pass.  Probably got the first-ever ski descent of Kentucky Waterfall in the process. Wasn't pretty. Hellno! But it definitely happened.

Let's build a Cooziecage™

The original Cooziecage™ and the Cooziecage™ II are both tested-and-perfected on-bike beverage-transport systems.  Follow the step-by-step DIY instructions below to make a Cooziecage™ of your very own.

*A Creative Commons License

has been applied to these instructions.

 

Afterwards, I hope you enjoy many a lovely bevvie

all alone
in "silent lucidity"

(ride the whims of your mind)
or when hanging out with your pals
whilst sitting atop big rocks,
or blown-down trees,
or in grassy meadows,
or on snow-covered stumps out in the woods. 

In my experience/opinion, these are things almost everyone likes/needs to do.  

I hope these free* instructions help to make all your rides more enjoyable, and this crazy world we live in a little bit better, too, one beverage and one bike ride at a time.

---

I like beverages!  I like bikes!  And I think bike rides and beverages go well together.  

Thanks, Cooziecage™

If you do too, you should build a Cooziecage™ (or a Cooziecage™ II) and conveniently take a beverage with you on your next ride. 

Heck, you should take one on every ride!  I do.

Tired of waiting until your ride is over to enjoy a lovely beverage? With a Cooziecage™ attached to your bike you'll be able to crack open one of your favorites the next time, and every time, you get to the top of your ride.  

Just imagine how refreshing that will be!
 

Maladroit is not manly

I am not a handy guy. In fact, it's been said I'm "not mechanically inclined" much, if at all. As an appraisal of my innate skill with tools I'd say that's probably an accurate assessment. And, on a day-to-day basis, I bear little shame for my ineptitude.

It's only when I have to ask my more-mechanically-inclined friends for help that I tend to get a little frustrated. I wish I'd been trained as a youngster to do mechanical things. In fairness to my excellent father, it's probably because I was too busy playing with legos and video games, or riding bikes and climbing trees, that he never had the chance to show me how to fix a leaky faucet or change-out an ignition switch. But now, well into my adulthood, the window of opportunity to be trained to do needful things has long-since closed. Now I learn while doing. Or I hire the job out. Or I let the task languish. Either way, I often find myself frustrated; I've just never liked asking for help. As my brother, who naturally has the same DNA as me, but who once built a whole house mostly by himself, once said about learning-while-doing, "The really frustrating thing about doing these things for the very first time is, just about the time you've figured out how to do it right, you're done." True that.

But I'm not a complete maladroit. I'm a cyclist. And I own more than a dozen bikes. Bikes I like to keep in running-order. And so, over the years, I've learned my way around bikes and bike tools. Not with the finesse of a real mechanic (I'm clumsy and ham-handed as a rule), but enough to suffice in order to maintain and repair my own gear. I like working on bikes. I like the smell of them, the feel of them, and how time and life's many other concerns just fade away when I'm working on them.

But even more than that, I'm a dad and a husband. And every so often the urge to plan and build simply overwhelms me. I can't explain it beyond that. Fortunately, it's not an urge I have very often. I could probably do a lot of damage. But when it strikes, I've found that it's best to indulge it.

About a year ago I more-or-less completed my daughter's playhouse, just in time for her 4th birthday. It came out pretty good, I think. It's sorta like a miniature version of our townhouse. I'm actually kinda proud of it.



I designed it so that she could access it right off the deck in the back of the house. And, in order to make that possible, I had to take the hand-railing off that side of the deck.

For the last year, the railing's just been sitting in the back yard. Several times over the course of the past months I got out the electric drill and the Phillips bit to take the railing to pieces and put all the wood under the deck with the rest of my moldering scrap lumber pile. But each time, I decided to wait. I don't know why.

And then today it hit me. With just a little jigsaw work I could easily reuse the railing. As a handy ski rack in the garage. It was a perfect fit: one railing, nine pairs of skis, four pairs of poles, two sets of climbing skins, a pair of gaters, and a avy shovel.



Voila!