A velomobile on the Seattle-to-Portland run. Tres chic. I am fascinated by these. They’re like the future… today!
There’s one in town a local gentleman made. I have pictures, but I’d like to get an interview.
I originally saw this in the “Biking with dogs” group on Flickr. I wish there was more activity on that group… (hint hint).
Casey and Duncan, originally uploaded by Watson House.
I’m very excited about the announcement of the next Oregon Manifest Constructor’s Challenge. I covered the 2009 Manifest for Bicycle Times. Modeled on the French Technical Trials of the 30s, the Manifest seeks to encourage innovation, and then test it with a road trial.
Here’s what the Manifest organizers have to say:
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I was inspired by this gallery of a French Jacques Schulz porteur bicycle, to copy its rack with some changes to its mounting points. I also connected the swoopy bit at the back, so you could hook a bungee and carry a jacket or sleeping pad. Or maybe a can of coffee.
I think the attachment scheme has some potential, but probably needs refinement. The bottom and seat collar mounting points are slotted, and the collar would mount with the bolt at the front or back, giving a wide range of angle adjustment to mount the rack flat.
This isn’t tinkering – this is engineering. I saw these pedals on Flickr a while ago, and was quite taken with them. For about £300 (a million American monies), you can possibly have a pair of these produced.
Geoff Apps, the designer, has this to say (or just click the picture and read it for real on Flickr):
A re-design of these swing pedals is now complete and the drawings are with the engineer machinist. The bearings are slightly bigger and have full shields on both sides; the bearing is almost flush to the crank, so Q-factor is reduced. Additionally the platform is wider (fore/aft).
No, I didn’t invent this type of pedal; for possible patent purposes I carried out some research, and the earliest version I can find dates from 1904.
However, this particular design is my own work and came out of my head.
The design has a number of advantages:
The name Haworth is in honour of the engineer who made the first prototype pair; he hand-made the pedal threads in stainless steel!
I thought it may be possible to market these, but haven’t found anyone who is vaguely interested in them ~ too unconventional, I suppose.
Will need buckets of dosh to get them into any form of production.
If you know a machinist, I could send you drawings and you could get some made up (mine cost about £300, was quoted up to £1,200).
In return you could make a small donation to my Prototype Fund!
My RBW list (and etsy) friend TapeBubba modified his Rivendell/MKS Grip King pedals to have more lateral support. Watch the video and see how he does it.
I think it’s a great hack. I’ve had that ‘roll off the side of the pedal’ feeling myself, and my feet are fairly narrow.
He removes the cage pieces from the pedal, makes a U out of aluminum strap to go around the body of the pedal. The bottom of the U makes an outside edge for the pedal, and the cage pieces are screwed back on, sandwiching the strap in place.
redline junior and dog, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
Bike is sold, and soon will have a new home with a new kid!
The kid has had this bike since he was five, and the seatpost is about six inches past the min insertion mark. There’s still about four inches in the frame, and he’s not racing it, so I’m not worried.
It’s a big jump from a 20″ (ISO 451) tire to a 700c, but that’s what we’re doing.
Pictures to follow. I’d do it now, but it’s dark and cold. Plus I forgot to buy headset spacers and mountain brake cables when I bought the shorty stem for the new bike.
quickbeam and dog, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
I sometimes I vary our walking routine with a fast ride around the neighborhood. She’s running further, and going faster overall, so I think she’s getting back in shape after the sedentary summer. We actually get out more in winter.
I’m only holding the leash this way for the picture.
The leash-end is usually in my right hand, tight around the back of the stem, and held again in my left hand against the bars. There’s not enough slack for her to get ahead of the bike, it’s pretty stable against jerks and lunges, and I can reel it in a bit to make passing drivers more comfortable.
It’s hard to get a picture of the bike-leash-hands setup without an assistant.
Here’s how to mount two dynamo-driven E6 halogen lights to a Nitto M-12 mini front rack. This older-style M12 has two mounting points, but they’re on the same side – one is for an m5 bolt, the other an m6. The newest version of the M12 has two light mounts, and they’re lower.
Mounted in the normal way, the lights stick up above the edge of the rack. To keep using the rack to carry things, you have to mount the lights upside-down, BUT 
when the lenses are upside-down, they have a bad beam pattern.
So, you need to turn the lenses over, but you have to modify them a little to do it. There is a large ‘ear’ and a small ‘ear’ on the lens that fit into notches in the light body. Use side-cutters and a nail file to trim the larger ear down so it fits in the smaller notch.
You need two 3″ m5 bolts, and about 6″ of aluminum tubing. The tubing at ACE wasn’t all the same, so I used a long m5 bolt to check the fit. Use the snuggest tube that doesn’t bind.
The right mount goes together easily, and looks legit. Measure and cut a piece of tubing long enough to stand the light off the rack, but engages all the bolt threads in the eyelet. Line up all the holes and tighten it up!
The left mount looks… quaint. Use a stainless P-clamp, an m5 Nylock nut, and about 8″ of cotton bar tape. Remove the rubber from the Adel clip, and put about five wraps of tape on the rack rail. It is a sturdier mount than just the clamp with its rubber sleeve.
The left mount is sketchier than the right, but the second light is very nice at speed. I understand that an LED light like the Cyo or Edelux puts out more light than both of these together, so if you’re setting up one of those, just use one bolt and spacer and keep it clean. I plan to replace these two with a single Cyo LED light in the future.
I hate cluttery cables, which is why I like multi-speed fixed gears.
Trim the wires to length, and tie them down. I used a plastic cable tie at the top, and copper wire on the fork leg. If you think you’ll ever want to mount your lights on the bar, or sell them to someone with a bigger bike… do something else.
That is insane.
It’s like a Yeti. Not the bicycle one, the Abominable one.
Creamsicle
It was frosty cold this morning, and the backs and tips of my fingers and thumbs hurt like crazy on the bike.
Really painful, and my right thumb still feels burnt. So I’m going to make some reverse-o bike gloves with just the fingers and thumb. An elastic strip will connect the thumb and pinkie together, and each finger-end will have a short section of elastic connecting to the next one.
Yes, this is kind of a joke, but it’s a lot like short sleeve jerseys and arm warmers, right? Fingerless bike gloves… and finger warmers! Shorts and knee warmers. Those weird sock-shoes with the toes built in…
Last Friday, Bike Snob linked to one of my pictures as an answer the a Friday quiz question. The results were pretty spectacular. 2700 views in 12 hours.
It looks like the Monday Wave of people reading Bikesnob at work overlapped with the rush of bike nerds looking at my pictures from the Oregon Handmade bike show… on Monday, at work.
I had a fantastic long weekend of bike fun, starting with Thursday’s Builders’ Bike Ride, courtesy of the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show and the editors of Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times (thanks Karen!).
The ride wended around Portland, starting at UBI and ending up at Strawberry Cyclesports, which is also Andy Newlands’ home. The builders on the ride included Tony Pereira, Wade (Vulture) up from Bend, and Andy Newlands himself.
The first stop was the shop that Joseph Ahearne (Ahearne Cycles, duh) and Mitch Pryor (MAP Cycles) share.
We looked at Ahearne’s cycletrucks, which are made by Co-Motion to his design, and Mitch’s loverly custom randonneur with the top-end racks. Zow. We worked our way from the front of the shop where the tomato-red show bike was being built up, through the work area, the cycletruck storage and other-bike storage to the very back of the space, where they used to have an archery butt. 
Opening all the intervening doors turns the shop into a 30-yard indoor practice range. I was telling my nine-year old son about it, and he thought it was cool until I mentioned they used to find stuffed animals and use them as targets. Oops. His eyes narrowed. “Those guys are jerks!” He believes toys have feelings, and stuffed animals are only slightly less noble than cats. Sorry.
After the Ahearne/MAP shop, we had some stressful round-abouts because the itenerary had been changed at the last minute to send us out to see Tsunehiro, instead of Metrofiets. We went by the back wall of the new Vanilla shop, but didn’t stop in. I ended up losing a pedal platform sprinting across a sketchy street while a firetruck stopped traffic for us. (Did I tell you I got BikeSnobbed on Friday?)
We arrived at a big building that houses a large screenprinting operation (it’s where all the amusing and offensive bumper stickers in the world come from), a traffic-cone factory (wtf?) and Tsunehiro Cycles, Ruckus Components (more on him later), Portland Design Works, and a new messenger-bag and soft-goods company called Blaq.
A lot of the builder chatter was about milling machines as everyone admired Robert’s new horizontal mill. The non-builders ate donuts, drank beer, and tried not to touch the pair of very pretty show bikes. I had an epiphany: I’m a bike geek, and some of you may be bike geeks, but the people who build bikes… are milling machine geeks. Makes sense. Art connoisseurs talk about composition and color, while artists talk about paints and brushes.
As the tops were popped off some 22 oz brews, suddenly new faces appeared at the door, apparently drawn by the beer sound. “Like cats to a can opener,” someone said. They were the 3 guys from Blaq, and Shawn of Ruckus Components. The highlight of the whole ride was probably Shawn (Ruckus) making vast inroads into converting Tony and Wade to the potential of carbon. Wade said later, “Man, Tony and I went in going, ‘steel is real,’ and we left going, ‘whoa.’”
We finished up at Andy Newlands’ Strawberry Cycles shop-and-home for some amazing homemade salsa, beer, bread, and cheese. 
We saw more machinery (Andy is the North American distributor for Marchetti frame building tools), and some Argonaut frames that Andy’s shopmate builds. Argonaut had some of the tightest bikes I saw at last year’s show, and I was sorry not to see his work at the 2010 show.
We also got to see a beautiful and intricate wishbone stay lug. Maybe it has a special name, but it’s an elegant little number, and I’d be proud to have one on my bike.
After a really nice social around the chip bowl, sampling Andy’s arsenal of Ninkasi beers, I said I had to get away to meet a friend to see a concert at the Crystal Ballroom. The ride leader Evan Ross (Portland Bicycle Tours) gathered us all up to head down to the ArtCrank poster show. I really did have to jet, so all I could do was glance in at the ArtCrank bicycle poster show. Ah irony, thy taste is metallic.
Evan loaned me his own bike map in case I got lost, and I was pleased to return it at the show on Saturday. The City prints them! So cool. They fold up to about the size of a credit card, and show the streets and public transit infrastructure. I highly recommend his company as a tour leader, and he says he does a lot of tours for city planners from other places, showing off the Portland infrastructure.
Friday was a Builders’ Social, a party at the exhibit space with free beer and unsupervised poking of show bikes.
I got to talk to Shawn of Ruckus for a while one-on-one, which was instructive. He’s a young man from Wisconsin with a degree in composites engineering. He believes the bike industry should be leading the aerospace industry instead of “copying stuff that’s like 20 years old.” His business repairs failed carbon bike parts, and he says carbon is infinitely repairable. “You can make a roadside repair with fabric and epoxy, and make it home, or someplace safe.” According to him, carbon is completely misunderstood by the bicycle industry. He wasn’t talking about retrogrouches who hate it, he was talking about the people who design bicycles with it! “If you make anything as light as it can be, it’s going to fail.’
He wants to make a carbon fiber Pugsley one day.”Oh man, snow biking is so fun!”
Saturday was the show, where I took a lot of pictures.
I discovered a few things going on the Builders’ Ride. The first one is that I’m a bike nerd, and I know some bike nerds, but the builders who make the bikes that bike nerds swoon over… are milling machine nerds!
