I took today off from Canootervalve to build a drone that can follow my kids to school. I did all this under an assumed name and pretending to be a guy in Vermont, because I was a little embarrassed to admit that I hate walking outside so much that I built a drone to follow my kid to school.
There’s a good chance I’ll be taking tomorrow off, too, so I can build a drone that goes to work for me.
Cable stops are roughed in.
Let’s build a bike.
Another very long day, so I’ll just leave you with this shot of the most recent revision of the prototype. Getting closer to torch time.
I’d better come up with some slick marketing acronym for that suspension system soon. Always tough when it’s something you actually spent endless hours developing yourself. Easier when you’re just making up stuff and have no idea how the thing works.
Five years ago I wanted to make a bicycle–not just a regular bicycle, but one of those complicated bikes with shocks and stuff that lets you go stupid fast through ugly terrain but pedals without bobbing up and down. I don’t know what caused it, but I grew up riding motorcycles and then ended up being around the bike industry during the birth of mountain bikes and the rise of something we’re still calling “full-suspension” frames. Then I ended up selling and riding most of the best ones available. I got ideas.
Back then, I had a certain preconceived notion about what that process would be like. Mostly, I was worried I’d have to move to California and start wearing my cap flat-brim style. What I couldn’t have imagined at the time was living in Vancouver, Washington and working and seeing my work moving toward prototype stage, all while holding down two other jobs.
I find self-analysis pieces about “life throwing you curveballs” and shit not just unpleasant to read, but genuinely unbearable, so I’ll spare both of us that. Suffice to say, work hard enough to make something happen, and it probably will. So much can change between now and then, though, that if you’re not careful, you might not even notice.
Despite being busy with a whole lot of other projects, the bike I’m taking to prototype stage is my baby. It’s the thing I let myself think about once I’ve done everything else I needed to do. It’s the thing I couldn’t not do. Put me on a desert island, and I’d draw pictures of revised pivot points in the sand.
I can’t help it.
What I’m trying to remind myself at this point, though, is to enjoy the process. Maybe the design I’ve created will work well and maybe it’ll require a lot of additional work and refinement. But just being able to create it matters. I may be taking some time off the blog to dedicate to the bike, but as always, here’s where I’ll be updating anyone interested in the development process.
Here’s the first 3D model of the prototype.
Looks like Project Danzig is officially in the hands of someone capable of figuring out where all the derailleurs and bottom brackets and photon torpedos are supposed to go. In the meantime, I’ve been confronted with an interesting new bike project that’d be about as different from Danzig as possible. Still kicking around directions, but I tagged in my customer service guys today to gather ideas for the ultimate utilitarian bike. In addition to taking care of customers for a bunch of web sites, they also tend to ride bikes. A lot and in ways that are both remarkably practical and wildly impractical.
In short, they’re the type of people who should be involved in designing bicycles. Some great ideas resulted, very few of them the same. Now we must battle.
While Danzig’s in the oven, I’m focused on the marketing side of my life, wherein logic and self-respect are often awkward party guests.
Consider the Miller commercial up top. Personally, I have a rule that if your marketing idea risks insulting all of humanity, you might want to at least get a second opinion. Miller clearly feels differently.
But the real pros have figured out how to insult much more than just your intelligence. It would never occur to me, for instance, to help sell cars by carefully positioning them behind my scantily clad daughter.
According to Gawker.com, though, a guy named Kim Ridley’s somewhat unique eBay used car marketing angle is to use photos of his daughter (and various other young girls/tattoo-practice-volunteers), each scantily clad and posed next to what appears to be the most heavily curated assortment of shitty cars for sale on the Internet.
You know you’ve achieved Twelve Level Ninja Marketing Mastery when you find yourself wondering if maybe that last ass-shot of your little girl with the Nissan might’ve been just a little much, but then using it anyway.
Between the official rise of 650b to electronic suspension to commoners roaming the aisles at Interbike, next year is going to be all about excitement.
Seriously, while 2013 products are still pretty boring, 2014 is looking ready going to light shit up. Here’s what I’d like to see.
More of this guy’s work, and more U.S. made carbon fiber. Much more.
If there’s a common theme here it’s that do-it-yourself seems to be going high-tech when it comes to bicycles, and that’s pretty great. We haven’t seen this many genuinely new ideas in a long time. I’m more fond of some than others (I’m just not particularly into electronic suspension, particularly after riding plenty of “analog” bikes this year that pedaled exceptionally well).
But it’s all for the better.
My oh my. So much going on today. As I write this, it’s 10:45pm, November 26th, Cyber Monday, and my ecomm day job is currently showing 936 orders received today. That’s sort of a new record. I may in fact be experiencing a panic attack just thinking about it.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that was a panic attack.
I came home from Cyber Monday madness only to start my night job, wherein the first thing I did was make a button. What do you think?
Then, briefly, the idea that Anonymous may have kept Karl Rove from stealing the last election flickered across my conscious, and I must admit I hoped this was true.
Then I put some time into emailing a guy about a prototype bicycle frame and let him know that, yes, I think 27.5-inch wheels and 161.7mm of travel seem just about right.
Much work still to do after that, when, somewhere in the midst of a bunch of corporate Facebookalating, I noticed an email from Twitter. I’m normally programmed to ignore Twitter emails, but this one was from the Canootervalve Twitter account I never use. It was to inform me that Billy Cobham had started following me. Billy Cobham is a legendary jazz drummer and composer. He’s this Billy Cobham.
While this was just some sort of accident on his part, I spent the next hour or so of work partially pondering the ramifications. Him following me meant I could actually send Billy Mr. Cobham a message.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Probably, I should not have even done it, but I’d seen him perform once, and it was life-changing. Not in that “I mean this figuratively” way, but in more of a “actually changed my freakin’ life” sort of way. Hell, I’ve read interviews with this man that caused me to rethink my life (his interview in Modern Drummer back in the ’80s where he extolled the virtues of a slower, more deliberate European pace, particularly when it comes to eating dinner).
Now that my one son is becoming increasingly involved in playing the drums, I couldn’t help it. I sent a message to Mr. Cobham–under 140 characters–just to let him know I had the honor of seeing him play once, and hoped my son could see him as well.
What else can one type, given an opportunity like this? Personally, I could have Mick Jagger’s cell phone number on speed dial, and I’d never call it. Having Beyonce’s private email address would mean nothing to me. But this was really something. After a very, very long and frantic Cyber Monday filled with pace and panic, this small moment meant a great deal to me.
I was up at four this morning to start a turkey. That’s high noon in London, England, a place that I’m increasingly convinced makes Portland look pretty normal by comparison.
Case in point, this London-based site dedicated to “bike taxidermy.” It seems completely impossible that Portland didn’t come up with this first. In fact, I have my suspicions.
But then yesterday I received an email from my boss that included only a single link. This is what happened when I opened that link:
Yes, that just happened. What’s more, since he first brought it to my attention (thank you!), they’ve sold another 27 or so on their way to a goal of one thousand. Personally, I suspect they’ll do it, if only because they’re featuring a horse mask in their video, and horse masks are the hotness right now. Like London.
So come on, Portland! Let’s get off our asses and start selling nose ring mustaches that look like tiny handlebars, or crowd funding a DIY home kit that lets you build your own 2,000 square foot house out of used inner tubes.
Tomorrow, I mean. Today’s just for turkey.
While I’m by no means a 10-level bike commuting master, riding to work regularly in Portland once the rainy season’s started has taught me a few things about myself and my ability to operate a bicycle at night in the rain. Honestly, it’s not really a terrible exerience. In fact, any parallels I’m drawing here between riding at night in the rain and becoming and/or being attacked by a serial killer are almost entirely exaggerated.
Anyway, I made a mental list of observations on my ride home from work last night.
Even in rainpants.