Power Trio Preservation Vacation

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Nov 122012
 

I’ll be away most of this week, catching up on a bunch of work and taking a small vacation. We’re driving up to Seattle to see Rush. That means me, the wife, and all three kids. I’m aware that taking seven-year-olds to a full-on virtuosity nerd-fest likely to drift dangerously close the three hour mark is pure madness, but I figured what the hell. Geddy, Alex and Neil aren’t going to play forever, and my hope is that taking the kids to see Rush play will mean never having to endure “Big Time Rush” or any other mediocre pop-rocking bullshit around the house. Like them or not, these guys have chops.

Besides, this is one of those ridiculous stories that might get passed on from generation to generation. Ideally, long after Rush is gone, and I’m gone, the kids can sit around and say things like, “Remember when Mom and Dad took us to see Rush in Seattle?” and “What the hell was up with that?”

Fafunding

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Nov 092012
 

A while back I asked for some opinions about launching Project Danzig, my little bike design, on Kickstarter. While I consider both of the guys who read these posts to be infinitely wise and well-traveled in the world of bicycles, making sense of the responses has proven difficult. I got a lot of responses (OK, there are more than two of you out there), but zero consensus. Like a total 50/50 split.

Now I know some of you just vote the “no” ticket across the board, from supporting cheesy-sounding new “social micro-financing invention sites” to rescuing a bus filled with puppies from a volcano, but for the split to be so balanced wasn’t expected.

What’s up with that?

Either way, I’m taking a break from banging my head against the keyboard to point out one particularly upscale Kickstarter project, Fabike (I don’t know either–it’s like a cross between “Fabio,” the designer, and “bike”).

To my thinking, Fabike marks a few key changes to the bike projects I normally see on Kickstarter.

For one thing, most Kickstarter projects tend to skew toward hippie-capitalism–“it’s about all of us, man” kind of vibe. In contrast, Fabio’s baked his name right into the bike. He’s bringing a little bravado and swagger to the party, and why the hell not? If my name were Fabio, I would, too. There’s no “i” in “teamwork,” but there’s a lot of “fa” in the “fabike.”

More importantly, this is clearly a company, not a dude. You don’t set out to “fund your little labor of love” by offering a carbon fiber frameset and a full assortment of private label branded parts, from crankset to wheelset–to laser-etched BB30 adapter cup set.

I’m not for or against here. I’m just curious to see what’s clearly a company using Kickstarter to fund what appears to be a pretty sophisticated project. Why half of you don’t like Kickstarter, I may never know (unless you comment), but I’m wondering how Kickstarter has changed in the last year. I suspect it’s become a target for companies capitalized enough to have developed something without it, but using it to hedge their bets.

Interesting to see how all of this will change in the next week, let alone the next six months.

Still drawing.

Fine Tune #9,493

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Nov 082012
 

So what I discovered when I reviewed the patent on this thing last night is that the forward lower pivot does not need to be below the rearward lower pivot. Does that make any sense, or have I gone full redrum at this point? I had to impose constraints about the relationship between the upper and lower pivots, but not the vertical relationship between pivots on the same rocker. OK, I’m pretty sure that one didn’t make any sense. Redrum.

Basically, I can rotate the front of the lower linkage up, away from the bottom bracket shell. There are some interesting things that happen when you do this but overall it’s just an option, and I’m at the point where design options damn near make me weep. Right now options are cause for celebration the way finding out you can scratch your nose against the ground when buried to your neck in sand is cause for celebration. A little wiggle room when you thought you were all out of that sort of thing can be a pretty big deal.

Still no magic wand, though. Because the real beauty of the system is how the lower link tracks right along the chain, you really can’t just go putting it anywhere without screwing up the system.

Anyway, back to the drawing board.

Dear Diary

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Nov 072012
 

Dear diary,

A very good friend of many years suggested I should begin a blog entry with “Dear diary,” so there it is. It’s kind of nice, you know, writing notes to yourself. Except I find me so boring that I hardly ever read anything I’ve written, as anyone who reads this blog has already realized.

Looks like we elected a president again last night. I did my part. Other than hoping he also carries the popular vote to minimize the chance of a shooting spree or two over the coming months, I keep politics well out of my Canootervalve. Let’s all agree to dislike one another while hoping for the best.

Also on the subject of writing notes to oneself, I ended up having to read my own patent tonight. Hard to believe I didn’t drink back then.

The good news is that I learned something that will make creating bikes a hell of a lot easier. It’s like the me of 2007 knew the me of 2012 would be a distracted dumbass and would need clear instructions–written in legalese or not–regarding the removal of one’s head from one’s ass. Go me!

What I discovered should go a long way toward solving the pivot size and front derailleur issues, and sort of gives me a whole new parameter of adjustment I didn’t realize was available. It’s like being a painter for twenty years and then discovering the color blue.

Lots of drawing to do.

Optimal Placement and Suing Toward Viability

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Nov 062012
 

Two posts today? Yep. To prove I was sufficiently exhausted when I queued up yesterday’s post late Sunday night, I ended up failing to actually post it. I believe I fell asleep on the keyboard, woke up and went to bed.

Anyway, tonight I received the optimal location of my pivots in light of clearances and structure. Or something. Basically, the pivot locations you see above would play nice with things like front derailleurs, bottom brackets and giant pivot axles.

They just wouldn’t work right from a suspension standpoint.

So the challenge now becomes how to provide as much room for derailleurs and everything as possible, while staying true to my design. The pivots really do need to be in very specific locations for this to work. There are little pockets, though, small ranges of potential locations.

That’s what I’ll be doing with my late nights for a while now. At least I know now that any problems I have with the design I can blame on the UCI.

Seriously, happy as I am to see the vultures descending on Messrs. McQuaid and Verbruggen, they are still vultures.

The Fine Tuning Month

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Nov 052012
 

November’s really the perfect month for messing around with a suspension system. I’m in the middle of a few optimizations of Danzig’s pivot locations to improve shock and front derailleur clearance. I was really happy with the results of some initial work I did over the weekend, but working with a fabricator is a little like working with an editor. I create. He critiques. I go back to the drawing board. I’m ready for that process to take a while, but “move the lower pivot forward a quarter inch” is the type of casual request that takes about twelve hours to really make possible. (Front derailleur blues.) Overall, I’m really enjoying learning everything I can about the process.

Then there’s the green light on a major site redesign I’m helping make happen. It’s going to be difficult as hell, but very worth it I think. Consulting, programming, writing copy and “curating content” (whatever the hell that really is) every night makes for an interesting part-time job. Also makes for some long days.

On the day-job front, there’s the looming dark mass of obligations that are The Holidays. Spread across three sites and a whole lot of responsibility, opportunities for the mind to wander to thoughts of frame designs are few and far between.

At any rate, the results of the Kickstarter poll are decidedly inconclusive–about half of you don’t recommend going that route, while the other half think it sounds fine. Anyone who’d like to offer some insight into his or her vote, please feel free to comment.

Meanwhile, I have some pivots to move.

The Look In Your Eye

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Nov 022012
 

Forget Google Glass, Oakley has started off the post-Lance era with a bang.

Heads up display is comingg to ski goggles, though I suppose you could ride in them if you wanted to, or sit around the house in them, pretending to be rad.

The feature list includes just about everything except laser beam incineration, and I’m damn glad I’m not an actual journalist so I don’t have to list all that bullshit out here, but suffice to say, you can do some freaky shit. Sync to your iPhone, is one example. Track friends and get GPS display to help you find your way home are some others.

Being officially Old and Cranky, I’m bound to be a little snarky about this sort of thing, but less so than some. Surely (or “surly”) anyone who believes something as quaint as riding while wearing headphones to be a sin will have to feel wearing these googles is tantamount to full-scale Satanism.

Just how much is packed into these goggles? According to CNET, they’re pretty “boss.”

Featuring a passel of sensors including GPS, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and more, the Airwave is meant to give skiers an entirely new level of information about where they are and what they’re doing than has been possible before.

Like it or not, you have to admit this looks a lot like the future. The semi-intrusive, blinky and beepy future, wherein one gathers a great deal of information about what one is currently doing, as opposed to doing it.

Finally for this long, long week, a truly bizarre opportunity presented itself for Project Danzig today. I can’t talk about it, which is good, because probably nothing will come of it. If it did, though, two of my planets would align. I’ve heard good things about that happening.

Either way, more Danzig next week, assuming I make it there to join you.

New Scats and Old Thumpers

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Nov 012012
 

Well then. Here on Bikerumor today’s pretty much the carbon disc ‘cross frame I was considering bringing to market, except Performance made some frame decisions I would not have made–and I think putting white bar tape on a ‘cross bike makes about as much sense as bathing in your toilet.

But really I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged. I’ve sort of made a habit of always doing the exact opposite of anything Performance does (including make shit-tons of money). Now my life is in turmoil or something.

Certainly looking like 2013 is going to be the year of the photocopied carbon fiber disc ‘cross frameset instead of the year we spend wading through endless clones of 650b carbon hardtails. But I’m OK with that. I really like frames like this. I just want to make a nicer one.

Meanwhile, can anyone tell me why Hammerhead Bikes has a page dedicated to Charles Coker and the great Titus-derived bike he created, and then offers a 29er? Coker’s 100x was a long travel Racer-X. It still had 26-inch wheels.

But Coker wasn’t nearly crazy enough to create a Titus Racer-X with 29-inch wheels. Convincing Chris Cocalis of Titus to build not only a new front triangle, but also an entirely new chainstay and seatstay assembly for bigger wheels would’ve been the work of a madman, and building a bike like that more than a decade ago would’ve been pure stupidity. Only a raving lunatic would think to put big wheels on a Racer-X to create some unholy monster truck of a bike that absolutely hauled ass through the medieval graveyard-looking rock gardens of Southwestern PA. Frankly, it’d be tough for me to even imagine a bike like that if weren’t for the revolutionary new Hammerhead Thumper 29, or this bike I keep in my garage for old time’s sake.

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