As I’ve been preparing for my upcoming Hennepin Canal Trip, one of the things that has been on my mind is security for my Catrike Expedition. With a few exceptions, most of my riding takes place starting and ending from my driveway. Still, when I do have the opportunity to use my trike as transport and I have a situation where the trike is going to be out of my eyesight, I always lock it up. But those situations are few and far between, and they are situations where the Expedition is only out of view for a few minutes.

For my upcoming trip, however, I’ll have a couple of nights where I’ll be asleep with the trike in a more or less public view, and I’m hoping for at least an opportunity to stop somewhere in the Quad Cities to get some lunch. I’ll lock it up, of course, but these situations made me start thinking about a means to find my machine if it were to “walk off” on its own.

I’m largely an Apple guy when it comes to technological solutions, so when the AirTags came out it was a natural fit for this type of need. Not only does the AirTag allow you to track a device that is missing, but it also has a “Notify When Left Behind” feature. This gives an alert on the phone if you are moving away from an item that is expected to be within a certain proximity of yourself. Or - more importantly - if that item is moving away from you. This feature has saved my AirPods Pro from disappearing on more than one occasion, and you can picture the application here - you’ll be notified if your machine is unexpectedly moving away from you.

The challenge was finding a way to hide or attach the AirTag to the trike without it being easily found and removed.

Enter the TagVault: Bike by Elevation Lab. Elevation lab is a Portland, Oregon, based company that makes a variety of accessories, mostly (but not exclusively) for Apple products, and that includes products designed to securely contain AirTags. In addition to the bike mount, they have them for your keychain, wallet, and even for your fine, furry companions.

The TagVault: Bike is designed to hide in plain sight by sandwiching between the bottle mount and the bottle cage. Elevation Lab indicates that it is lightweight (26 grams) and waterproof. It came out towards the end of February this year, just around the time I started to think about this trip, so when the company sent the promotional email it hit my inbox at just the right time. I ordered up two - one for my Expedition, and one for My Lovely Wife’s Catrike Pocket.

I ordered them not long after they came out, but it’s taken me a little while to get around to installation. It comes with pretty much everything you need to get it put into place:

What you see here is the TagVault itself, plus the two titanium torx mounting screws, and a torx driver, along with the envelope they came in. It also comes with a second set of shorter mounting screws, which are not shown here.

The AirTag is not included, of course. You’ll have to order that separately, either directly from Apple or a third party like Amazon (you’ll probably find them slightly cheaper thru the third party options).

Installation is pretty straightforward. The black TagVault: Bike separates lengthwise, which exposes the holding center for the AirTag. Once you place the AirTag inside you can close it up and line it up on the bottle mount.

AirTag in the TagVault. And like so many Apple products, the AirTag is a pretty thing, but immediately takes on fingerprints…

I placed the first one on my Expedition, which currently has the Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount in place. This is what it looked like before:

I pulled the mount off and lined the TagVault up with the mounting points:

Then I returned the Adjustomatic Bottle Mount on top of it (I had to take the bottle cages off so I could get to the screws to remove it - that’s an Adjustomatic thing, not a TagVault thing).

Once it was all lined up I screwed in the new screws using the included torx driver. The screws are longer than standard to compensate for the additional distance the TagVault adds to the arrangement. Then I added the cages back on:

For easier comparison, here is the before and after, top to bottom:

I think it’s relatively unobtrusive - it raises the bottle mount about a quarter of an inch, but I don’t think that’s going to be noticeable in day to day use. I like that the screws are titanium, and I would note that they are a different size of torx drive than the size on the Park multi-tool that I carry in my pannier bags. Because of that, for just a second I almost added the driver to my kit, but then I realized I probably did not want to have it with me - otherwise the prospective trike thief would have a tool at hand to remove it. As noted before, the company heralds it as being waterproof, and it doesn’t add much weight to the trike. They also describe it as being “aerodynamic”, which is, perhaps, why it is rounded along the sides.

I’ve used a number of products from elevation lab in the past. They’ve always been high-quality, and this device also fits that bill. If there is any critique to give, it would just be that they have “ELEVATION LAB” carved into the top of it. I understand being justifiably proud of your product, but part of the point to this is that it’s supposed to be something you don’t really notice…

But some of that is an artifact of using the Adjustomatic Bottle Mount. One a more standard mount the bottle cage covers the TagVault more completely, as you can see on the Pocket:

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault- From the side

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault - From above

The TagVault:Bike is $19.99 thru Elevation Lab’s website, with free ground shipping. It’s also available thru Amazon, but it’s oddly a little more expensive there. The AirTags run $29 each, and you can usually get a bit of a discount if you buy them in a four pack. Overall, it seems to me a pretty good deal for some added security.

Applied Life

Tagvault: Bike by Elevation Lab /May 22, 2022 by Erin Wade

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