A few links

I am once again in a bit of a hurry, but I just want to quickly share a few links that I have run across lately. First, pictured here, are frame details from a Norco trials bike. Design Sponge recently posted these colorful graphic details, which were designed by Devin Leggett.

The Core 77 blog posted a lock idea that uses a hinged seatpost to lock the rear wheel with the seat. I agree with most of the commenters to that post that the idea is interesting, but impractical. If you only want to lock the rear wheel, a simple integrated wheel lock near the rear brake seems like a better solution. It still won’t stop someone from picking up the bike and walking off with it, but it will keep a potential thief from riding away with the bike. I have seen these types of locks in Holland, where they seem to be fairly common.

Speaking of the Netherlands, a BraIN article points out that a Batavus commuter bike with a NuVinci continuously variable planetary drivetrain was named the 2007 bike of the year at the FietsVak show. The Nuvinci CVP drivetrain system is very interesting to me. I have been meaning to post about it, but just haven’t had the chance. If you have not seen it, read about the system on the Fallbrook website.

Graham pointed me to a post on Metacool about authenticity in design. The post uses a Berkeley bike shop as an example to make his point that a strong point of view is necessary to create something authentic.

This last link is a little off topic, but I want to share it anyway. A recent article in the Greenville newspaper let us in on one of local resident George Hincapie’s plans for the near future. He is going to develop a planned cycling community in the mountains of upstate South Carolina. Greenville is already a great town for cycling and the addition of the US Pro race last fall made it even better. I will be anxious to see what Hincapie’s new development does for this area in the next few years.

Tagged

I thought that I had dodged this meme after it recently made its way though the bike blogs that I read regularly, but Nadejda from Pan-Dan (an excellent design blog by the way) tagged me last week. OK, I have already put it off for a few days, so here are 6 somewhat trivial things that you probably didn’t know (or care to know) about me.

1. I love to buy used books. Usually I go for design, architecture, history, nature, or bike books. I pick them up at thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets, library cast off sales, or wherever I can find them. My wife is not always happy when I bring home books that smell like they spent a few years in a dank basement, but she is pretty understanding.

2. I don’t like to wear shoes. I never wear them in my house and usually not in my yard unless it is really cold. At work, I prefer clogs so I can slip them off under my desk. I usually wear shoes on the bike. Lately I have really started liking my SPD compatible sandals for mountain biking.

3. I like to watch cartoons when I am riding my trainer. Sure, I know I could be watching those bike specific training DVDs, but I prefer to watch old episodes of Woody Woodpecker or Bugs Bunny. I used to just watch PBS shows, but I found myself slowing down or stopping so I could hear the TV. The cartoons are just visual stimulation so I can look at something while I spin away and daydream.

4. I have a hard time letting go of my old bike stuff. I have 7 complete bikes, several framesets and wheel sets, and boxes and boxes of old components. I have been selling some of my old components on Ebay, but every time an auction closes I find that I have a hard time packing up the old stuff. Items like old Cook Brothers cranks, or XT thumbshifters may not be doing me any good stored away in a box, but I always look at them and handle them for a while before I finally can bring myself to ship them out.

5. I don’t have, or want, a cell phone. When people ask for my cell phone number and I say I don’t have one, they always look shocked, like I said that I don’t have electricity or running water. It is not that I am antisocial, but I just have no desire to carry around a phone. I do think cell phones can be useful in some situations. My wife has one in case of an emergency and I have taken it on long rides before just in case. So far, thankfully, I have never needed it.

6. The little troll pictured here has been ziptied to the stem on one of my different bikes for the last twenty years. He currently resides on my single speed and probably could stand to have that faded orange hair washed one of these days.

OK, that’s it. So who is next? I know Graham, Fritz, and Gene already did this recently, so I’ll go to the b-list and pick a few blogs that I like:

Bike Hugger
Neil at Road
Carolina Triathlon
Foldable Walter
Cycling Shots
And the b-list originator Masiguy

No pressure to play along of course, but why not? It makes a nice filler post. Have a good weekend everybody.

The predecessor to the Lefty; remember this?

One of the best things about writing this blog is the email that I receive. Last week, Lee at Cannondale sent me this shot of the monoblade front suspension system (I hesitate to call it a fork) from the prototype Cannondale Magic mountain bike. The idea was that this trailing-link front suspension would absorb bumps like a skier’s knees. Wow, what a blast from the past! I am sure many of you will remember this mountain bike design by Alex and Skooks Pong. I was definitely excited about this concept bike when I first saw it in the early nineties. I hadn’t heard much about it lately, so I was glad to find out that they still have a prototype together at the Cannondale offices in Connecticut. Does anyone besides me want to see a few additional pictures of this bike? If enough of you are interested, maybe Lee will polish this bare aluminum beauty and take a few nice glamour shots that I can post here. What do you think? Leave a comment if you interested in seeing more pictures of this bike, which I think was way ahead of its time.

Catching up

I’m back from another week of traveling. This time, I had some laptop problems on the road, so I have even more unopened email to get through than normal. Once I get my head above water at work, I will take a look back at some of the bike content that I missed last week. Traveling is fun, but I am definitely ready to stay put for a while.

Of course, I didn’t miss all of the bike content on the web. This morning, by way of a Technorati link, I saw several interesting bicycle concepts on an Im Conciencia blog post. The post, primarily about electric bicycles, is written in Spanish. Even if you can’t read the text, the post features several pictures and renderings that are worth a look. The bike pictured here, a concept rendering by designer Sacha Lakic, is the one that stood out to me. Check out more of Sacha’s diverse design portfolio, including more bike concepts, on his website.

OK, it’s back to catch up mode for me. Posting will probably continue to be light this week, but will be back to normal soon.

Strada concept bicycle for G2

Sorry that I haven’t been able to post for a while. I have been on the road and extremely busy with work lately. This week will be the same, so posts will continue to be light. Please bear with me.

While I was away, I received a design submission from Jacob Feldman. Jacob developed this concept bicycle while he was a student at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden. Nice work Jacob; thank you for sharing the concept.

Following is an explanation of the design in Jacob’s own words:

The shape of the bicycle is based on an idea to make a bicycle frame that looks like one solid part instead of having a lot of parts that are welded together. I tried to keep the "feel" of a traditional bicycle but at the same time creating something new. By almost keeping the basic outline of the "double triangle" frame I feel that the frame is still pursued as a bicycle as we know it, which is important for the segment of city racers. At the same the frame has its own expression. I worked a lot with the overall expression of the bicycle trying to make it feel flexible and fast in the city context.

The concept is made for people who care about their bike a bit more than the usual day-to-day biker, they live in the city and value the bikes speed and it’s light weight.

I worked together with a small Swedish brand called G2 to make the concept more real. Therefore I have incorporated G2s values into the frame and made it suit their target groups

I made a full-scale model to visualize the project and give it a more “real” feeling. .

Strada was my bachelor project in industrial design at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden 2006.Any questions or comments are gladly received at my mail: jacob.feldman@konstfack.se

A few Friday links

Next week, I will be traveling, so I have a lot of work to finish today. I would like to elaborate on some of the bike design content that I have seen lately, but in the interest of time, I will just pass along a few links.

Pictured here is a partially fuel cell powered concept bicycle for the Italian motorcycle company Aprilia. It was designed by Sweden Design, a design group based in Hong Kong that is a collaboration between 3 Swedish design firms. This picture came from the group’s website; check it out for more info.

Alberto Villareal, a designer at Lunar Design, won a red dot award for his bike helmet concept that features two LED light modules that snap into the helmet. I heard about this on Lunar’s podcast, which I would recommend to anyone interested in design

Cool Hunting posted their top 5 bike products of the year. These probably wouldn’t be my top 5, but the post is worth a look, so I’ll pass the link along.

Finally, last weekend, I took a camera along for a ride on my cyclocross bike. You can check out some of my pictures, tagged “onthebike” on my Flickr page. As I was riding and taking a few pictures, I thought it would be neat to have a tripod style camera mount with a tube clamp on the other end. I like the idea of being able to fix a camera to the top tube and take pictures of the trail or road ahead with the handlebars included in the shot. I don’t think a product like that exists (and I really doubt there is a market for one), but I might try to rig up something. Has anyone tried anything like I described. If so, I’d love to see the resulting pictures.

My B-List

As I mentioned earlier today, Masiguy just posted his B-List, the bike related blogs that he reads on a regular basis. Tim's list is a take off of the Z-list, which you can read more about in his post. At any rate, I thought it was a great idea. Before I list mine, here is Tim’s original Masilist of 29 blogs:

Bicycle Design
Bike Portland
Bitch Kitty's Scratching Post
Cornerstone Life
Crooked Cog Network (main page for a series of great reads)
Crooked Cog Podcast (I was the first interview, by the way...)
Cycle-Licious
Dave's Bike Blog
First And Last And Always
Go Clipless
Guitar Ted Productions
iheartbikes
Interbike Times
Ladyvelo (maybe this will get her to update her blog...)
Langkjoring
Missing Saddle
Panther City Blog
Professional Bicycle Support
Blue Squirrel (my best friend... so go easy on him...)
Skibbysez; Shut Up and Ride!
Smithers Minneapolis
Spinopsys
Super Rookie's World
Surly Blog
The Canari Blog (go comment and tell them to update the thing...)
The Life and Times at SockGuy
Tidbits and More
Ugly Bike
wherethehekismarkman

To add to Tim’s list, here are the bike blogs that I try to take a look at on a weekly basis. I subscribe to the feed on these if available; otherwise I just check the links when I think of it (I really prefer blogs with feeds though).

So here is my list with the URLs for easy cutting and pasting:

Bike Hugger http://www.bikehugger.com/
Bike Portland http://www.bikeportland.org/
Biking Bis http://www.bikingbis.com/blog
Blue Collar Mountain Biking http://bluecollarmtb.com/
Carolina Triathlon http://carolinatriathlon.wordpress.com/
C.I.C.L.E http://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/index.php
Cyclelicious http://www.cyclelicio.us/
Cycling Photos http://cyclingshots.blogspot.com/
Fat Cyclist http://www.fatcyclist.com/
Foldable Walter http://bikefridaywalter.wordpress.com/
Go Clipless http://www.goclipless.com/
Guitar Ted Productions http://www.g-tedproductions.blogspot.com/
Gwadzilla http://gwadzilla.blogspot.com/
How to Avoid the Bummer Life http://www.howtoavoidthebummerlife.com/weblog/
Human Powered Transport http://www.humanpoweredtransport.net/
Interbike Times http://www.interbiketimes.com/
Khabar bike http://my.opera.com/badmadcyclist/blog/
Light-Bikes.de http://www.leichtbau-konfigurator.de/
Masiguy http://masiguy.blogspot.com/
Neil at Road http://www.neilroad.blogspot.com/
One Less Car http://www.onelesscar.blogspot.com/
Rad Spannerei http://www.rad-spannerei.de/blog/
Salsa blog http://www.salsacycles.com/amigos/
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid http://bicyclemarketingwatch.blogspot.com/
Spinopsys http://www.spinopsys.com/
Tour de France blog http://www.tdfblog.com/
The Brad Blog http://thebradblog.cannondalecommunity.com/
TreeHugger (bike tags) http://www.treehugger.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=bikes&blog_id=1
Velorution http://www.velorution.biz/

In addition, these are the bike podcasts that I subscribe to with iTunes:

Crooked Cog podcast http://crookedcogpodcast.com/
Cycling News and Views http://feeds.feedburner.com/CyclingNewsAndViews
The Spokesmen http://www.the-spokesmen.com/wordpress/
Specialized Bicycles Podcast http://www.specialized.com/media/podcast/rss.xml

Finally, these are blogs that I used to check pretty regularly, and would like to see updated. Hey Lincoln and Cory, can we expect new content on these blogs?

Bicycle Tech http://bicycletech.blogspot.com/
The Biking Hub http://www.thebikinghub.com/

Whew, that’s all for now. Maybe later, I will post a list of the general design blogs that I read regularly, a D-list perhaps.

Road Magazine’s blog

Yesterday, Masiguy posted a list of the blogs that he reads on a regular basis. I was happy to see that Bicycle Design was included, but I was also unaware of several of the blogs on his list. Thanks for the list Tim; I am anxious to check out some of those bike blogs that I hadn’t seen before. Sometime soon, I will post a similar list of the blogs to which I subscribe with RSS and check at least a few times a week.

One of the blogs that I check often is by Neil, the editor at Road Magazine. Yesterday, I noticed that he linked to a new official Road Magazine blog. Neil points out in his post that some of the stuff that they do “slips between the cracks and doesn't make it into the magazine. This might be interviews with athletes that are time sensitive. By the time it would hit the newsstand, it's old news.” Personally, I think Road is one of the best bike magazines out there, so I am excited about the new blog. Based on the first few posts, it appears to be one that I will want to check often. The bike pictured here, Paolo Bettini’s new Quick Step issue Tarmac SL, will interest most readers of this blog. Sure, Bettini's bike, with its Olympic themed paint job, upstages my own Specialized road bike which is pictured in my last post, but I’ll get over it. I would be jealous, but based on his achievements, I think Bettini has earned a pretty nice ride. Check out this Road blog post for more pictures of the Quick Step team bikes.