Welcome to our second installment of Wish List, where Radavist contributors share their dreams of things that don’t exist, but maybe should. Some will be slightly niche but perfectly reasonable ideas that have every right to exist. Others will be impractical, expensive, and/or dangerous fantasies that probably should remain fantasies. Travis is back with another stack of requests, some of which go well beyond the bike industry.

Travel Case Exchange at Airports

Of all the luxuries I’m fortunate to own, a bike travel case is not one of them. Partly because I don’t really have room, partly because I don’t think I’d use it often, partly because I’m pretty good at packing a bike into a cardboard box. But travel cases are nice. They’re durable, easy to use, and they have wheels. There are ways to rent them, but that only solves part of the problem. If you’re lucky enough to have access to a rental service, you still have to deal with an empty bike case for your whole trip. And it’s utterly useless if you’re traveling somewhere for a point-to-point tour. It was just that scenario that got me thinking about this idea. What if you could ride to an airport, rent a box, load up your bike, check it on your flight, and return it at your destination so you could be rid of it?

If you’re just flying somewhere to ride for a week, you won’t have to worry about cluttering up a hotel room or a generous friend’s garage. Or, if you’re touring, you can ride straight from the airport and either start your long journey home, or pick up another rental case at the next airport where you’ll catch your return flight. Maybe the airlines could subsidize the logistics by getting a cut of your rental fee when you check the case. I picture some airports in major cycling destinations would get together with ones in major population centers, and the major airlines would jump at the chance to add another line item to your fare.

Quick-Release Bar Ends

I miss having bar ends on my mountain bike. It was a nice place to rest my hands, or to yank on during high-effort climbs. But after nearly three decades without them, I can’t imagine dealing with something nudging up against my hands, or shortening the effective width of my bars. So, the idea of hide-away bar ends has always been on my mind. Something that could slide into the bar, then pop out and fold forward when you need them. But they’d have to be skinny. Maybe there’s some sort of butterfly-folding action that could expand them, but let’s get real. Wish List entries have to be at least somewhat realistic. So, my idea is a quick-release design. Either you’d leave them at home for the sorts of rides where you’d want bar ends, or you’d bring them along and stash them in your pack for the descents and slide them in for the climbs.

They’d start with a hollow, expanding receiver inserted in the end of each side of the bar. Then, attached to each bar end, there’d be a shaft that would slide into that receiver and lock in with something like a “ball lock,” which is like how air-compressor couplings work. Push a button on the end of the extension, and some balls or tabs would recess so you can insert and remove the bar end. Maybe that shaft would be a simple 22.2 mm peg so you could clamp your bar end of choice, or maybe it’d be integrated. I think the perfect brand to pick up this torch would be Redshift. They’ve already got quick-release aerobars. Might be a good entry to the MTB space.

Rack-Equipped Ridesharing

There are so many uses for a rideshare service offering drivers with bike racks. There are fun ones, like skipping some of the junk miles at the beginning or end of a big road loop. Or maybe getting you to the airport once they adopt my brilliant case-rental service. But the most fun is probably for shuttles. Personally, I’m not into spending more time in a car than on a bike. Especially if it’s gonna cost me $30 plus tip. But there are a lot of places where it’s helpful to get a little head start on your elevation. In the San Gabriels, I’ve done plenty of shuttles with over 6K of climbing. And they usually end in the dark. Not having to drive back up to get the car when I’m supposed to be home making dinner could easily be worth $30 plus tip.

And then there are less fun uses. Not sure if you’ve ever had to call a rideshare company to rescue you mid-route, but they got a little miffed the one time I did. I made sure it was an Uber XL, and I already had both wheels removed when they arrived, but it was clearly an inconvenience to drop the back seats. Not to mention deal with a dude in Lycra sitting next to them in the front seat. One of the rideshare companies could launch it as a pilot program in big bike cities. Below the options for luxury cars or SUVs, there’d be an option for a vehicle with an external bike rack. Maybe one with two or four. I don’t picture it happening in LA, though it should. We’ve got a lot of junk miles.

High-End Seatpost Rack

This is one I’ve been dreaming about for a while. I just wrote a whole Bike Hack about finding a way to get my front rack off the unsprung portion of my fork. There’s just not a good way to do it in the rear. Of course, saddle bags have been around for decades. But I don’t like them for singletrack. They limit the travel of my dropper post, for one. And no matter where the saddle is, they’re always right back there, limiting my mobility. Plus, even with minimal weight in there, a dropper post is always gonna move slow. Add enough weight, and it won’t move at all.

Seatpost-mounted racks exist, but they’re flawed. They have minimal weight capacity, and don’t work well with full-suspension bikes. At bottom-out, even Topeak’s arched “A-Type” MTX rack buzzed my tire when I tried one. But if a rack used thinner, chainstay-like tubes, it could have a flatter central platform without compromising strength. Also, my concept wouldn’t clamp only the seatpost. To add 20 or 30 mm of real estate, the rack clamp would double as the seatpost clamp. The vast majority of aluminum and carbon mountain bike seat tubes have a 34.9 mm outer diameter. The lower third of the rack clamp would be 34.9, and the upper two thirds would be 31.6. Granted, it wouldn’t fit on every bike. Long travel and aggressively laid-back seat tubes could pose issues. But those are more common on enduro bikes, not the trail and XC bikes I’d use for bikepacking. It’d be a niche market, though. So maybe, just hypothetically, there could be a small builder in Los Angeles who’s working on one for me as you read this…