Saturday, May 21, 2011

progress........of sorts


Things have been a little quiet as far as the blog goes (everything else has been bat shit crazy) but things are moving forward. My computer appears to be on it's last legs (my previous euphoria over it's return was short lived) and I can't spring for a new one as I upended my Bakfiets on the streetcar line a couple of weeks ago and slid gracefully into the side of somebodies truck inflicting some $1200 worth of damage (ouch!). I was unhurt bar a nicely skinned knee but not owning a car I have no insurance and as I rent, guess what, I have no insurance of any kind! And I am unemployed. Double yippee! Well they haven't called back yet but I'm sure they will. In the mean time I am limping along (both physically and digitally) and have made a good start on model No.2 (3). The image above is of the first round and encapsulates all that we have learned from No.1. The big change is to build the seat & chain stays out of stacked laminates rather than trying to torture the side panels around the drive train components. This will also allow us to build sub-assemblies which can then be combined into the whole. This methodology will also be applied to the head tubes. Another benefit of this approach will be that alignment will now be a function of topography and shape instead of us having to squint down the length to see if it's straight. Also on the cards are cable steering, internal storage in the cargo box and possibly an integrated sound system just to show off a little bit.

In other news I was interviewed by Jonathon Maus of BikePortland.org about the project and James Thomas of Bicycle Design picked it up. This has led to a gratifying bump in traffic to the blog. One of the fun things about blogging is checking out who is reading it. I have some fairly regular visits from Malaysia and just recently several hits from Iran of all places. There is also a small cluster of interest based around Slovakia. I am just itching to know who these people are.......so if you live in, say Tehran or Kuala Lumpur or even Bratislava, drop me a line and let me know how you came upon this site and why you keep coming back.

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