Having tunes playing while riding a bike is nothing new, but the mechanics of getting tunes and biking together often meant single handed riding or cables to contend with. The Cy-Fi wireless speaker ($199) aims to make this much easier, and more modern than a hoisted boom box, by providing a wireless speaker system that mounts on your bike of choice.
The unit tends to lean toward minimalist perfection, and such items as a Driver CD or USB chord will not be found in the box. Instead you will find what you need to charge it (a wall charger), what you need to mount it (two mounting clips) and what you need to use (in this case an iPod transmitter, but there are Bluetooth models as well, which I would expect to use the A2DP profile). To use the speaker requires you to only attach the transmitter to your iPod, and the transmitter only adds about an inch to its length. This will keep your iPod pocket friendly, and not add excessive bulk to it.
The speaker itself has buttons for volume adjustment as well as play/pause and track selection. The really cool thing about the setup is that you can get off the bike and walk around with the iPod securely tucked away in a pocket while the speaker is playing. This gives you a virtual remote controlled sound system, and the transmitter is rated for around 30 feet of travel from the base unit. The system uses "Kleer" sound transmission technology which claims low power consumption and 100 percent lossless sound, which at least sounds very nice (and if it uses a digital process no doubt there is very little degradation in the audio quality from the transmission process itself).
The wireless speaker system is rated for six hours use from a single charge, and for most people this will probably work quite well. The exception will be for those people who travel cross country on their bikes- But then again six hours of music may be enough on a given day. If you travel in fairly tight groups while biking up to four units can be connected to a single transmitter. This lets you share you music across everyone's mounted speaker.
The Cy-Fi is Apple Certified and it is available online, so a new method of bike tunage is as close as the buy button (well, that and the delivery van, but you get the ideal). Just be SURE that the music is used in a sensible fashion, and not in areas where the sound could mask out other vehicles that you should otherwise be aware of. It would seem that an external speaker system turned down low would be a bit safer than earbuds, since they do not actually block other noises out completely.
Cross Country Bike riders would need more than 6 hours
Cross Country riding, where you take a bicycle and head out across the highways and byways, appears to be a popular way of seeing the country. One such example of this type of marathon biking can be shown by an intrepid traveling parrothead (and coincidentally my brother), whose log of biking adventures can be found at www.parrotpartyadventures.com. For these hardy folks six hours of charge would not be enough to accompany them the entire day, but could no doubt be a welcome treat on some of the more open travels.
