This is the finished version of a four-day project that included one trip to a local residence and half a dozen trips to four different bike shops. I got it all together and color-coordinated before Lily got back from visiting family though, so it was a success.

This is the beginning. I picked up this Masi frame and forks with wheels, stem, bars, and seat post with my own Grocery Bike. This set-up was the basis for this build (Thanks, Jimmy!).

On the stand at Clown Dog

Next I put on a short, BMX-style Origin-8 stem, trimmed-down Origin-8 Urban Riser bars, Origin-8 cranks, Fly platform pedals (that match the stickers perfectly), nickel-plated chain, a freewheel, and front and rear brakes.

It features a flip-flop rear hub (Lily is fixed-curious), front and rear Spok lights, and the whole thing clocks in at 21.13 pounds.

Many thanks the bike’s to previous owner Jimmy, John at Clown Dog, Tommy and James at Ozone, and A.J. at The Peddler.

And if you’re more interested in the evolution of bicycle technology and what it meant for women, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (MIT Press, 1989) edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch has some great essays concerning both.

Thanks to Laura Brown for the link. Onward.

That is all.

Happy 2011, everyone.

[Art by Cartlon Reid]

On a Bicycle:

1. Assume You are Not Welcome: No matter what the signs or laws say, motorists do not want you on the road. Keep this in mind and ride accordingly. Obey the laws, observe the lanes, be aware, and keep in mind that they can kill you.

2. Do Not Switch Roles: If you cross in a crosswalk or “become a pedestrian” for any reason, do it for real: get off your bike and walk it. This simple move could save your life.

3. Respect the Pedestrians: Remember that in most cases, sidewalks are for walking. In areas of high pedestrian traffic, bicycles should react as such (see rule #1).

4. When in Doubt, Get off the Road and Walk.

On Foot:

1. Beware of Bicycles: A lot of people on bicycles don’t know that they’re not supposed to ride them on the sidewalks and in crosswalks. They just don’t. To me, the hierarchy of the road goes Feet, Bicycles, and then Cars, but not everyone agrees with me. Keep this in mind. Also remember that sometimes cyclists are just trying to get away from speeding cars and out of harm’s way. Often the sidewalk is the only (somewhat) safe place to be.

2. Obey the Law: The laws for pedestrians are more clear-cut and better-known than those for bicycles. Follow them and keep yourself safe.

3. Stay Off the Roads Whenever Possible: Cars will kill you. They won’t mean to, but you’ll still be dead. Stay away whenever possible.

In a Car:

1. Assume Cyclists are Idiots: Give them as much leeway as you can manage. In a lot of cases. they know not what they do. Just treat all of them like the lose cannons some of them are and remember that you can kill them with one misstep.

2. Slow Down: In most situations where you’re likely to meet a cyclist or a pedestrian in your car, you shouldn’t be going very fast. As a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I find cars careening frighteningly fast through neighborhoods, near institutions with frequent and large pedestrian traffic, and cyclists in the mix as well. Slow down, especially in these cases.

3. Know the Law: Right of way is a lost art. In most cases, you’re the last in line, but will be yielded to by others (i.e., cyclists and pedestrians) because you’re driving a lethal weapon. Keep this in mind when you mingle with the unprotected.

——–

These few ideas don’t cover everything, but they do address a lot of the issues I’ve confronted trying to get from A to B on foot and on wheels. Let’s keep an eye out and try to keep each other safe out there.

This build centers on a Spalding “Blade” ladies hybrid frame that was left in the garbage at my old place here in Austin. The geometry is not super aggressive, but it’s very up-right — definitely not a “cruiser.” That helps when tackling the small but frequent hills in Austin. It’s a single speed but pretty easy (170mm cranks, 39-16 gear ratio), which also helps. This thing is set up strictly as an around-town bike and not one that you would consider taking on long treks.

The front end sports a basket I found on an old Schwinn someone left by a dumpster here in Austin (that I will likely rebuild later), handlebars from a mountain bike someone was throwing away in Dothan, Alabama (I used to run them on my old Schwinn fixed-gear), and front and rear caliper brakes (from the parts pile).

I’ve had these rear baskets since the eighth grade. I believe they were left in the garage of the house my family moved into then. Somehow they’ve survived fifty-odd moves and are now firmly affixed to this build. There are lighter, easier ways to haul things on one’s bicycle, but this bike was built for next-to-nothing and is probably the most useful bike I have. I rode it everywhere exclusively for two weeks straight after I finished it, and I have to say that it’s perfect for running errands around town — and damn fun to ride.

Portland is a serious bicycling community. But not so serious that it can’t have some fun with its bike lanes. Some wag painted a whole bunch of Mario Kart items along a stretch of North Williams Avenue in the city.

The symbols include speed boost arrows, bananas, mushrooms, and stars. So far nothing exotic or offense-based, like the shells. They’re there to provide a little humor and inspiration to cyclists commuting home.

Here’s the full story.

Full article in Wired.

I rode into my secret world.
With my bike.

Along the bike path, and up the hill.
Buchannan Street. Up the hill north of Columbia Pike.

I passed a sight beneath the street lamp light.
Five perfect logs with straps stapled on like they were suitcases. I
keep on going, with a stomach full of food and wine.
Wow… I must tell my friend Roni about that fantastic “trash pile” of
logs with straps like little gifts to the world who might pass by.

Where am I ? Yes… between South 6th and 5th on Buchannan.

Keep on going.. up the hill. No.. I must turn around. I must
sacrifice the uphill for downhill, which is so hard to do. I have to
witness the special passing gift.

Yes… they were what I saw. Five logs in a row with handles stapled on.
I threw one on the back of my bike, so I have some kind of proof.
I rode back up the hill, in the opening where the trees separate and
the light of the sky finds me, and there ahead was another bicyclist
riding past.
We were alone at 10pm, riding in the dark and passing in the night.
I waved, she, SHE said HI… and we knew we were part of the secret
night time bike club.

Cynthia Connolly

In the early 90s, AT&T ran a series of commercials that posed some futuristic, technologically enabled task (e.g., “Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?”), and then answered it emphatically (”You will.”), claiming they’d be the company to technologically enable such a task. I believe they’ve all come to pass except one. As Stewart Brand once said, “Technology marches on, over you or through you, take your pick.”

I can’t help but think that many of the technological advances we debate and marvel about were downright inevitable. In 1982, when I first got a computer, one of my main intentions was to get a modem and connect to databases. My eleven-year-old self wasn’t as hungry for information — I could’ve gotten the same stuff from the “database”  down the street known as “the library.” I was hungry for the idea of connectivity. The idea that I could connect my computer to other computers and exchange information. The idea was exhilarating.

Doesn’t that feeling, one that I shared with plenty of people by then, make the internet inevitable?

Didn’t your first unassisted ride on a bike feel like flying? Riding that two-wheeled bridge of balance is like taking off on wings of your own. In more sober tones, Marshall McLuhan (1964) aligned the two activities as well, writing,

It was the tandem alignment of wheels that created the velocipede and then the bicycle, for with the acceleration of wheel by linkage to the visual principle of mobile lineality, the wheel acquired a new degree of intensity. The bicycle lifted the wheel onto the plane of aerodynamic balance, and not too indirectly created the airplane. It was no accident that the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, or that early planes seemed in some ways like bicycles (p. 182).

Supposedly birds evolved the same way. Dinosaurs became bipedal via their large, counterbalancing tails. Eventually the same concept morphed wings.

Karl Popper (1968) called it “exosomatic evolution” (p. 238), adding that now we don’t grow faster legs, we grow bicycles and cars; we don’t grow bigger brains or memories, we grow computers. McLuhan continues, writing, “The transformations of technology have the character of organic evolution because all technologies are extensions of our physical being” (p. 182). Software and city blocks are as natural as ant hills and broccoli.

The argument that technology is organic begs the question of what to do about it: How do we maintain control over our contrivances?

The argument that technology is organic answers the question as well: We maintain control over our contrivances in the same way that we maintain control over our lawns. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.

References:

Brand, S. (1988). The media lab: Inventing the future at MIT. New York: Penguin.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Popper, K. (1968). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. New York: Oxford University Press.

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And here they are, the AT&T “You Will” commercials from 1993:

]]> http://www.headtube.com/bicycles-and-inevitable-technology/feed 0 http://www.headtube.com/new-cruiser-project http://www.headtube.com/new-cruiser-project#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:56:02 +0000 Roy Christopher http://www.headtube.com/?p=131 Here’s a new/old Schwinn we’re working on for Jessy.

I’m not sure about the model or year, but it has five speeds (soon to be reduced to one), fenders, a rear rack (steel), and had a built-in light set-up with a generator running off the front wheel. We found it on Craigslist.