Light photo

Playing with my bike, playing with my camera.

Why it makes no sense for car drivers to lecture cyclists about “the law”

and the importance of obeying it.

Wonderful cargo bikes

I like my bike, but these are just wonderful. I don’t think I can have all of them.

More chaincase upgrades

The chain case serves two purposes; keep my pants clean, and keep the chain “clean”, such as it is.

Goldilocks and the Three Bars

These bars are Too High. These bars are Too Low. These bars are Too Wide…

Installing a Velo Orange Porteur Chain Case on a Big Dummy

It was tedious and fiddly to get it on right, but I am happy now.
The rest of this post contains some large photos.

First youtube, cars not stopping

My first youtube video. I’d been meaning to do this for some time, the stop sign at this intersection seems to be often ignored. 60 seconds, six cars, no stops.

Bike rescue

It was supposed to rain, so I was driving to work, saw this out in someone’s trash, and it followed me home. $45 in parts from the Broadway Bicycle School, plus new bearings for the headset, and it’s a bike again.

I have no idea what is going on with the paint job.

Big Dummy

Front fork was aging fast on the old bike, my brother said his Big Dummy was great, I didn’t get laid off this spring, and the stock is up on solid acquisition rumors. So I bought myself a Big Dummy.

Lighting control circuit, fixed, working.

When I finally tested this circuit on a real bike connected to a real hub, it didn’t work right. I got light, but it was flickery when slow, and I seemed to notice a little more drag (this had to be in my head) than the old 350mA system, and more important, the system voltage never made it above 9 volts; no chance of charging standlight batteries using this design as a starting point. The discrepanies from the plan (too much power to lights at lower speeds) pulled too much current from the hub, so it did not run in the more efficient mode.

I figured out the difference between the model and reality, tweaked the model, and then it tracked observations. With that, I could test a fix before soldering it in, and it worked just fine.