Bikes – Page 8 – CanooterValve

Alcohol-related Injuries of Tomorrow

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Aug 242012

While our promised jet packs still haven’t arrived, we have some happy news today in the world of personal hovercraft. An article at InnovationNewsDaily.com details a pretty kickass little personal flying hover thing created by a company called Aerofex. The article likens it to a “science fiction flying bike”–“bike” here being a pretty loose description, based on the fact that it has two enclosed rotors.

I like it.

Best of all, it responds to the rider’s balance simply and mechanically, making it apparently really easy to fly. How easy?

‘Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),’ said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

ATVs, as we all know, are particularly easy to operate.

Something to look forward to, anyway.

Another something to look forward to? With a little luck and some free time, this hunk of metal might be a new swingarm for Danzig.

I recall the last 3D swingarm I built caused me to spend many hours with my head in my hands, weeping, so I’m hoping this one gets built a little easier.

Knocked Off

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Aug 232012

Once upon a time I worked for the Pittsburgh Symphony. I made phone calls to unsuspecting people and tried to convince them to purchase season passes. There were, apparently, “qualified leads” somewhere in the pile of symphony-hating rednecks and dead people (I actually got a “Baroness,” but even the qualified leads were fraught with peril. I, for instance, ended up calling a gentleman who just so happened to not only be a current member of the Pittsburgh Symphony–as in “in the band”–but was also a featured performer and composer who was actually having one of his pieces performed by the symphony that season.

He did not, it turns out, need tickets.

In my own defense, he had a particularly generic name, and I did note how odd it was that the random person I was about to call shared the same name as a guy whose work the symphony was performing. But surely, I reasoned, this had to be a different guy.

When Generically-named Composer pointed out that “we really needed to check our facts,” I agreed as politely as possible, set the receiver back down, and said out loud, “We? It’s your symphony.”

I just worked there, earning $5 and hour as I recall. On the rare occasions when I could park illegally and not get a ticket, I broke even. Getting a ticket set you back about a half a week’s worth of work, but paying for parking seemed to make even less sense. Even though the route would’ve passed the hospital where I was born, I wasn’t courageous enough to ride my bike from my apartment into that part of Pittsburgh at the time. And still wouldn’t be.

I mention all of this–and it ties in with the series of images you see above–because there was a quotation on the wall beside my desk at that job that I’ve never forgotten. I shared my desk with a delightfully daft elderly woman on the day shift, and she had taken it upon herself to decorate our mutual cubicle with motivationalisms. Partially, I’ve never forgotten this particular quote because it’s a sad and undying cliche with a thousand equally saccharine variations, and because I loathed it the way some people dislike eating live animals.

Here is what was printed–in glorious, overwrought calligraphy–on the wall of my sad little cubicle.

One of God’s greatest mysterious is His ability to let ordinary people do extraordinary things!

Understand, I was in grad school and dreaming of being a writer. The guy in the desk next to mine was an accomplished trumpet player, and the room in general–being the night shift–was filled with ballerinas and artists and would-be musicians. This doesn’t excuse what I did, mind you. I was, to be sure, a Grade A Asshole. But some context seemed appropriate.

What I did was very carefully create, using my own hands–hands which had always loved to draw and which had won several half-ass art competitions from an early age through high-school–a highly detailed copy that mimicked the particular calligraphy with a fair amount of accuracy. Only mine read, “Another of his great mysteries is an ability to let extraordinary people do ordinary things.”

I was thinking of this today as I read this piece in Gawker that my friend, Mat–a very legitimate artist–had recommended. It seems an elderly Spanish woman had taken it upon herself to restore a rare work by a 19th Century painter, Elías García Martínez.

Artistic taste varies, but I’d submit that if God called this woman to intervene and restore the once beautiful painting by Martinez, He was only messing with her.

The thing is, you have to actually know what you’re doing. Divine inspiration isn’t really something you should be counting on. At least not entirely. Put another way: sometimes ordinary people shouldn’t fuck with the extraordinary.

And what does any of this have to do with bicycles? Very little, except that I had a fantastic conversation with a guy in Taiwan tonight, and it wasn’t–as you might imagine–all about making bicycles in Taiwan. It was about making bicycles correctly. Much still needs to be done, but I think I know my best course of action now when it comes to making a new bicycle happen. We’ll see.

Bump

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Aug 222012

Yesterday was the kind of day that just won’t quit. Any time I ride home from work with my phone beeping and buzzing the entire way, I know it’s going to be a long night. It was.

What I need, preferably by the time you read this, is a car that could drive me to work. Yes, it’s true. Despite working in Portland and riding my bike to work every day, I haven’t come to hate cars yet. It’s just that driving mine is a huge pain in the ass.

Sure, my car isn’t exactly indicative of most automobiles these day. I can’t get in the driver’s door any more, so I climb in the passenger’s side. And the dry erase board that’s been my rear passenger side window since the day I left Pennsylvania keeps heating up in the direct sunlight and sliding slowly down the side of the car, leaving a disgusting trail of Gorilla Tape glue everywhere. My wife and I have decided it’s time to donate the poor Outback to public radio–the automotive equivalent of taking it to a nice farm update where it can play outside all the time, in the fresh air, with the beloved Toyota Forerunner I’d donated half a dozen years ago.

But I hate driving it. It seems to take me longer to make the 12-mile trip to work in the car than it does on the bike. Maybe that’s an illusion, but, given the traffic, I doubt it–and even if it is, I’m happy to live that delusion. The bike’s faster.

I also feel strung out when I arrive at work in the car. Awkward, too, as if I’d worn clown shoes to work. I’m self-conscious trying to park it. That’s partially because it makes horrible screeching noises due to what I suspect is a dragging rotor or bad wheel bearing, even though I’d just had those checked at two separate places and was told both bearings and brakes are “good.” Maybe that’s why it gets like seven miles per gallon these days.

On my bike, I’d never tolerate a brake dragging like that, but in the car, you just roll up the window and screech away, driving to work with the brakes on and getting single-digit gas mileage.

Now, if I had a new car–one that drove itself and/or talked to me the whole way? That’d be an entirely different story.

According to Dara Kerr at CNET, if I were in Michigan, I might be able to arrange that.

While Google’s (nightmarish) self-driving cars are still a ways away (I hope), the “smartcars” being tested in Michigan by the Department of Transportation are simply connected to a network. This means two potentially amazing things:

First, WiFi cars equipped with fancy GPS devices could literally refuse to crash into one another. Pretty slick, that. They could “talk” to one another, exchange data like Bump, that app where you touch two smartphones together to exchange generally useless information. Just think: your car could be doing that.

Second, hacking is about to get a hell of a lot messier.

Which is why I’ll likely stay with the bike, no matter what jetcars show up.

Spacial Public Relations

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Aug 212012

Ahab had his whale. Me, I have the perfect box size for shipping bicycles. It’s something I never quite perfected in my previous life–at least not for reasonably shipping bikes under $1000. It’s a little easier to absorb $50-100 shipping on a $4000 bicycle. On a $500 bike, that’s not ideal.

Actually the analogy doesn’t hold. Ahab at least knew his white whale existed. Me, I strongly suspect the magical “sub-130 dimension, safe for 60cm cyclocross frames with minor disassembly required” box is a complete myth. So it’s a little like I’m sitting in a cold drizzle on Loch Ness, shaking my fist at shadows on the waves.

It’s come to that.

Some sort of form-fitting foam shell, maybe. Still processing.

I think it’s cool that for like $300 Competitive Cyclist will ship your bike in a coffin-sized slab of cardboard, delivered by tractor trailer, completely and utterly assembled so that you never have to meet anyone at your local bike shop–presumably until you flat three miles from home and are rendered utterly helpless, or you run into them on a group ride and are “savaged.”

In the interest of one-upping even that, admittedly posh delivery method, I’m considering offering a Rapha-designed 1,000 square-foot gold-plated shark tank bar signed by Lars Ulrich. Reinforced internally and externally with carbon fiber and lined with brushed smoking jackets and discarded facial hair of Bradley Wiggins, it will also incorporate a suspension system made from 200 custom 500tpi Dugast bouncy balls and recycled breast implants (keep it green, people), and will be delivered by a black helicopter with a single, pink landing gear rail. Or one of those elephants from Lord of the Rings, if it’s an Open O-1.0, because those guys think differently.

Writing this will probably cause Google to display those Competitive Cyclist ads that follow you around everywhere to appear in my sidebar. Using the phrase “Competitive Cyclist ads” will probably cause Google to blacklist me, steal my identity, rip out the stereo, take the wheels and burn what’s left.

Alas. Boxes. They haunt my dreams.

That, and the thing you see above. It was in the refrigerator when I opened the door tonight. I think my wife is going to turn it into food of some sort, but really, the severed head of a gremlin would’ve looked less out of place in the refrigerator. Assuming it isn’t the severed head of a gremlin, I mean. I didn’t touch it, but here’s what it looks like with glasses photoshopped onto it:

Ah, and the factory meetings are beginning for Project Danzig, wherein one person assures me that the factory being recommended by another is completely incapable of making anything more complex than an aluminum can. This is going to be interesting.

Time Out

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Aug 202012

Difficult to believe my posts could become even more rambling and disjointed than they’ve been lately, but the next month should take chaos to a whole new level. Quite a few things are happening all at once. Got a site to launch. Interbike meetings are already scheduled, including meetings for Project Danzig. Last year, I went to Interbike as Press. This year, I’m there for Retail, Wholesale and Manufacturing. My evil plan to work in every separate part of the bike industry is right on schedule. Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh.

It’s going to be a wild ride. Fortunately, it seems I have some rest coming up.

Just when you thought the Mayans were done declaring apocalypse, another one rolls around. The apocalypse du jour, so to speak, is scheduled for December 21st, meaning we may all be able to get some rest before the year’s out.

And if not, I’m sure we’ll come up with another one within minutes of discovering that life as we know it has stubbornly gone on going on. In an article that showed up Friday on Wired.com, Matt Ridley has used the term “apocaholism” to refer to our seemingly endless desire to predict the End of It All. It’s a pretty beautiful term, and succinctly captures the weird fascination with human finales.

Ridley’s an interesting fellow thinking interesting thoughts, and more of his writing can be found on his site. One of his primary arguments is that, rationally, the sky isn’t actually falling. Compelling, but way less exciting than the alternative a lot of us seem to prefer.

Me, I’m hoping that once again the Mayan calendar turns out to be just a little inaccurate, so that I can finally get to test the new frame design.

New Dimensions

Bikes, Gadgets 4 Responses »

Aug 172012

I think the 3D printed layers of titanium thing Charge is up to is just plain great. I’m also glad Bikerumor posted it, because I would definitely have missed it. Charge makes some pretty cool bikes, but I wouldn’t have expected the next stage of bicycle frame production to happen on their watch.

But this is it.

When I first starting working on a frame design back in 2007, I got to spend some time with an engineer who was developing vehicles for the military. The things she was helping to create were incredible, but the materials she was describing were off the charts. Their fabrication process sounded like carbon fiber, but they were metal. What’s going on in Charge’s video bares a strong resemblance to what she was describing.

Combined with an increasing realization that America has to wake up when it comes to manufacturing, these entirely new ways of creating bike frames are pretty interesting. Will you be manufacturing your own frame with an in-home 3D printer in the next few years? No chance. But things are changing.

It occurred to me today that there might be some shorter distances between points yet on Danzig, and that I just might’ve been a little too conservative with the amount of tubing. If you’re going to have to machine something anyway, I think there’s a real benefit to putting all your pivots onto the same piece. Might change my mind once I see the price tag for machining that section, but here’s the last shot of Danzig’s main triangle for a while. Have to put some more time into the meetings necessary to bring this thing to life.

I Heart Customers (Seriously)

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Aug 162012

I miss customers.

There, I admit it.

Cyclocross.com hasn’t launched yet, but I’ve already exchanged emails with three customers looking for bikes. And I’m not in sales. Whatever it is that’s wrong with me, I really like helping people buy bikes.

Which isn’t to say it’s easy. I’m sitting near our company’s customer service guys these days, and I promise they’re fielding some strange stuff. And yes, the expressions on their faces as they speak to people trying to return year-old tires exactly resembles the positively elated CS agent at the top of this point.

We’re really in the home stretch for the new site launch at this point. Can’t wait.

And lest anyone think I’ve backburnered Danzig, I’ve carved out a good bit of room for the shock placement at this point. I’ve made my bearings enormous here, too. The idea was to create a worst-case scenario in terms of clearances and placement, but now it’s time to look at some actual numbers and see where some material can be shaved. I also think the final upper link design is going to be pretty cool. Uber minimal.

Pakled Design Works Initiative

Bikes, Swine 1 Response »

Aug 152012

It’s become pretty popular to hate on pampered underachievers–the kids being praised for C- grades and an ability to reach age fourteen without a serious drug problem. Feigning indignation at privileged kids who’re fed a constant stream of positive reinforcement is nearly as popular as vampires and photoshopping stupid shit into the first photos of the Mars rover.

Also popular: wondering where this mindset came from, as if it’s some new social construct, a by-product of high fructose corn syrup and violent video games. My own admittedly simplistic explanation involves apples and trees. From what I can tell, that mediocre kid’s undeserved sense of entitlement got passed down directly from Mom and Dad.

I run into The Gifted Mediocre pretty much daily among the 35 and older crowd, and I’m not even including web designers in there–a group filled with people who routinely turn “on the job training” into careers.

No, I’m talking about the Joe Dumbass Six-pack you traditionally see in the position of upper management, running a company, or starting one. Case in point, I have this friend who works as a phone tech for a major component manufacturer. Let’s call him “Kyle.” Kyle was kind enough to share snippets of a conversation he had today from a gentleman building his own full-suspension mountain bike. They went like this:

“Hi, I’m designing a full suspension mountain bike frame. What type of rear suspension would you recommend.”

Mind you, “Kyle” does not work for a company that manufactures frames, meaning Mr. Asshat isn’t just searching for someone smart to sort his shit; he’s searching in the wrong place, too.

Asshat goes on to ask if the eye-to-eye and stroke of a rear shock is “the diameter” and ask if the different types of suspensions are patented before uttering arguably the best two sentences ever spoken to tech support:

“What width should I make the mounting brackets? I’m getting it molded out of carbon fiber so I can’t machine out pieces afterwards.”

Clearly Mr. Asshat chose to move directly to carbon fiber for his project shortly after mastering the phrase “carbon fiber.” Go big or go home.

Here’s the thing: I know guys running companies who could be this guy. And I admire all of them, all of these incredibly, flamboyantly, stupid people. I wish–sincerely I mean–that I had the sac to ask someone what suspension I should use on my bike.

Why? Because those are the fuckers who Go Somewhere in Life. They have a vision for what they want out of life–grainy, with misspellings and plans drawn in crayon, but a vision nonetheless, and they’re not afraid to use other people to do the shit necessary to realize that half-ass vision.

Any sense of entitlement found in Little Lord Fauntleroy’s self-esteem have nothing on these people–grown-ups, all of them–whose one true gift, really, is sucking other people dry.

Who am I to tell them they’re wrong? It always seems to work for them, this “asking stupid and embarrassing questions” technique. They do seem to end up running companies and helping to bring horrifying shit into the world and figuring out a way to prosper off of it.

I, for one, am not fighting it any longer. Starting immediately, I’m letting it be known that Canootervalve’s launching the Pakled Design Works Initiative, dedicated to helping these mega-successful underachievers–particularly when they want to build full-suspension bikes but don’t know their ass from instant center.

And I’m not just talking. I plan to periodically offer free, innovative and “rad” full-suspension designs to the world. Open source. Shareware, bitches. You want go flat-brim hat and hang out with guys who get paid to drink Redbull even though you drive a Lexus? I’m your ticket.

Are you sitting down, Mr. Asshat? I hope you are, because I am about to drop the knowledge on you–and let you walk away with it completely free, as in without having to “know anything” or “do anything,” just like you like it. Win!

You know how bicycles have to have seatpost collars? What am I thinking? Of course you don’t know that. Well, they do, and seatpost collars have to have bolts in them. They tighten and keep your seatpost up, but in the history of bicycles no one has ever thought to use that shit as a pivot.

That’s right: you want lightweight long travel, you have to get your system integrated. Check it: the world’s first “seatpost pivoting full-suspension system.”

Here’s what to tell your marketing people for the catalog: travel? We don’t think so much in terms of how much travel it has. Rather, we prefer to think in terms of cubic inches of displacement. If the whole thing were submerged and then pushed through it’s travel, it’d displace a “perfect” metric pint of displacement fluid. No other design can say that. Oh, and the big gear is “pedal-driven” and “ultra-stiff,” and–get this shit–it doubles as a bash guard! How? That jumbo chain is fixed, so it’s always protecting the ring. And I mean protecting. It’s a larger chain for maximum durability, but for real performance it can be upgraded to a competiton-grade chainsaw chain! Trail mainenance, riding? Fuck it: you’re doing both. Put that you recommend wearing a protective cup when riding in the small print.

Someday, I’ll even tell you the width of the shock mounting brackets.

Nothing on TV

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Aug 132012

One of the kids busted a 46-inch HD TV over the weekend. No excuses, just pure and absolute bad kid behavior. The remote he threw–ostensibly at his sister out of sheer anger over a channel debate–busted the screen. By the time I got to the TV, it was clear that yes, he had roasted it.

This gave us all pause.

Though I wasn’t in the mood to look up legal precedents, I’m pretty sure Washington State frowns on both child abuse and manslaughter, limiting our available response to talking. And taking all the money he’d saved. And banning him from all video games and most forms of fun until further notice–and of course from TV, which wasn’t hard to do, given that the living room TV now displayed a serious of unappealing vertical lines where a picture used to be.

We aren’t a big TV-watching family. In fact, we’d bought the recently destroyed TV for $200 from the previous owners of our new house. It was the biggest TV we’d ever owned. In fact, it was about twice as big as the biggest TV we’d ever owned. It was nice. We’d watched the Muppet Movie on it. Good times.

Our lives still didn’t revolve around it or anything, but seeing it broken definitely got our attention–particularly once the time of death had been officially called and the cracks were visible. My wife and I were quick to start comparison shopping and scouring the Internet for replacement options. “Not a big TV family” or not, this was the living room TV.

But then we got to thinking. Somehow the last thing we wanted to do was show the kids that things as expensive as TVs–the nicest one we’d had–were just instantly replaceable. There are no magic elves that replace things you’ve destroyed thanks to your own stupidity. Put bluntly, when you screw up to that degree, you go without for a while.

Work on Danzig has been relentless at this point. Lots of refining. The key now is shock clearances and making the most of the space. Things are packed pretty tight around the shock and upper pivot, which is a good thing, but I don’t want to run into any clearance issues once we go to production on the prototypes.

Here’s the spacing situation on the rear shock that I’m obsessed with currently.

I’m all about the upper rocker and shock orientation right now.

Magpie Attacks, Stompies and Evolution

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Aug 102012

I have a great deal of respect for all the things in Australia that can kill you. I have to admit, though, I wouldn’t have guessed even the birds attack you. According to an article on the BrisbaneTimes.com.au, cyclists trying to ride through a place called Manly, near Sydney’s northern beaches, are routinely violently attacked by magpies this time each year.

I’m not sure what to be more impressed with: the fact that even the birds are dangerous in Australia, or that fact that they have towns with names like “Manly.”

Luckily, when the birds finally mount their all-out Hitchcockian assault, we’ll all be traveling in giant robots.

“Stompy” picks up where Kuratas left off, and adds the magic of Kickstarter, which is really how all giant killer robots should be funded.

I’m starting to think building a giant robot might be faster than this latest round of revisions to Danzig. My friend Josh pointed out a potential clearance issue yesterday (and thanks for the shock files!) which got me thinking about some ways to improve all kinds of other details. So here’s the snap shot du jour, but this weekend is going to be a big chance to tackle a bunch of details I want to work out.

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