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I have been combing through the last two years of photos for an upcoming project, and ran across a few old favorites of mine, sharing just one for now:
I do not usually fall back on the archives for a post, but this one was calling out. The bike now belongs to a friend, and was a key step in learning how to make little bikes that handle well, even with a 12 pound wiggling dog in the basket.
I am sure many of you, but maybe not all, who are readers here are likely familiar with Bicycle Quarterly, and the strong bias towards traditional French bicycles that they profess. BQ is one of the few sources of well thought information on bicycles outside of mainstream modern racing. If you have not yet heard of them, it is a worthwhile read. The Spring 2012 issue hit my mailbox yesterday. Every time I promise myself to read at a decent pace, and stretch it out for a couple of weeks. As usual I ended up reading about 90% of it last night.
This issue had some decent coverage and insights on the issues surrounding bike design for taller and shorter riders. This has always been an issue for me in trying to interpolate Jan’s reviews and comments into something that applies for the bikes in our household. Jan is around 6 foot tall and 160 lbs, and represents the average rider/part-time racer’s slim build. I am 6’3″ and my wife is 5’4″, both of average build and are at the opposite ends of the size range. Over years of riding and research I have been able to take the data from the averages and work out bicycles that perform quite well for her and I. This led to helping friends outside the averages get on bikes that suited their every day needs as well. This bank of experience led to my design of the Rambler line. There are many ways to get things to work on the smaller and larger sizes of bikes, some better than others.
The smaller bikes, sizes 56 and below, are designed to use the 650B wheel size. This wheel has a diameter between that of the common MTB tires and 700c road bikes. This leaves room to maintain a decent reach to the bars without making horrible compromises in the frame geometry. The front end maintains the desired handling characteristics without having toe-clip overlap. Toe-clip overlap is an occurrence at low-speed where the foot on the pedal and the front wheel can collide at the extreme turning points. These extremes do not often occur, but when they do, it can take the rider and bike to the ground. This possibility has been designed out of the bike. Another aspect of the design is Seat tube angle. I have kept it such that the seat will easily be set far enough back with commonly available components to keep the rider comfortable. Balancing all three of these parameters results in a bike that will comfortably fit the riders on the smaller side of average, allowing for the use of normal components to build a bike with either drop or upright handle bars. I think those familiar with the challenges of fitting smaller bikes will appreciate this design.
The larger sizes do not have the same space constraints with wheel size that the smaller bikes do. They have plenty of room for large 700c tires. These will offer the space for larger (up to 42mm) tires and fenders, that with a bit more rotating weight, will offer the gyroscopic stability that a larger rider may seek. This will be balanced with the front end geometry and long rear stays to flesh out a comfortable and stable bike. The challenge in taking the design above the averages is managing the flexibility of the frame, striking a balance between stability and the optimum resilience of the tubes. This is managed through steel tubing specification itself, and I have struck what I feel is a good balance for a rider and load total weight between 180 and 230 lbs.
The whole line is biased towards carrying a modest load on the front of the bike. This is so your every day necessities can be at hand without having to dismount and search around in a bag behind the saddle. Likewise you can keep an eye on your stuff. This style of loading requires subtle changes in the design of the bike that move away from the commonly available racing geometries of today’s mass market offerings. Ironically these changes, while accommodating the loading, result in a well-mannered bike with or without a load aside from the rider.
My designs throughout the size spectrum are confirmed by the reports in the issue of Bicycle Quarterly. Both the historical accounts well as reviews of recent interpretations covered in this issue, confirm my design philosophy and decisions. While I have complete confidence in my designs it was reassuring to have many of the aspects of my design affirmed in print. A big thank you to Jan Hine for his pas, current and future efforts with this publication.
I am still recovering a bit from the first tip to Portland. This was actually my first time north of Sacramento on the west coast. It was far more than I imagined with plenty of the unexpected. After working out all the travel options, the decision was made to drive with my bike in the back of the car. My estimate was for a 14 hour trip if I pushed straight through. I knew there were mountains between me and Portland as I made it through northern California and southern Oregon, but I was not prepared for the beauty of the forest and high desert of the Shasta national forest. I made through the region with just enough daylight and clouds in the tress to really take it in. The lack of snow and or rain was a bit of a bonus. I knew there would be a storm at some point and I was feeling pretty good about making it this far with good weather. Rolling into Oregon the drizzle started, and was really coming down as a made my way north of Medford. But you don’t need chains for rain and I kept on charging ahead. Around midnight, still 20 miles out of Eugene the rain was starting to get a little fluffy. I was pretty wiped out by this point, 13 hours, and hoped it would be back to liquid as the elevation dropped. I could not have been more wrong. There was a glimmer of hope and slush passing through Eugene, and then it really started to come down. After 14 hours, never seeing one plow truck, and more cars than I could count on fingers and toes stuck off the sides of the highway I called it quits, pulled off and managed to find a room. By that point the snow was 8 to 10 inches deep, and coming down hard. The plows had made it through by the morning, and this was the view on the way into town:
At some point in the night the snow had given way to rain and things had cleaned up a bit. By the time I made it into Portland all of the weather had given way to blue skies and puffy clouds.
The main objective of the trip was a visit to my frame and fork contractor, only a voice on the phone until this trip, and to make sure we are on the right track with the prototypes. The quality of the work exceeded my expectations. The lead fabricator assigned to this project has a good resume with steel bikes and I stoked to have him working on mine. The 50cm model was ready to check, and the others are in progress.
The welds are clean, alignment is better than I expected at this point in fabrication, and the toughest part was looking really good. The chain stays are a challenging area on fat tire road bikes. The tire, stays and chain rings all want to occupy the same real estate. Frosting on the cake was a last-minute substitution on the stays. Production models are slated to have a custom bed and dimple. For the sake of time we found a similar stay that was pre-bent. The web pictures from the supplier were not very descriptive, but we threw the dice and ordered a few sets. They ended up laying on the drawing so close to the proposed custom bend that it is almost embarrassing to admit how much time was spent working out that detail.
The calipers are set at 42mm, and ahead of the wide point for the 700c tire. There is going to be plenty of room for fenders. A 52mm VO fender dropped perfectly into place. There is only a single dimple for the chain rings, with the overall shape of the stay otherwise intact.
The forks are about 75% complete as well. There is still a bit of detailing like the wire guides, brake bosses and sanding. The test fit with both 700c and 650b tires was spot on with just a hair over 1cm between the tire and leading edge of the crown.
The schedule is slipping a bit from the initial projections. We worked out a timeline to keep things accelerated and I still think that production models will be possible before the end of spring. There will only be some minor adjustments between these samples and the initial production run.
The overall trip was scheduled for two days. I had originally planned for one other meeting. Then there was a surprise meeting with another designer that led to a “you should meet this guy”, etc, etc and things booked up quickly. As you have likely heard, Portland is a very cycling friendly town. In many ways it reminded me of Ventura, just 100 times bigger. There is also an amazing amount of industry, people actually making things, and hungry to take on new projects. I ended up having meetings with a sewing contractor for bags, my powder coater, an excellent meeting and tour of a knitting mill and sewing factory, a guy getting ready to make bike tires in the US, and hang out and chat with a couple of cargo bike shop owners. I will be able to spotlight a few of these in the coming week, but need to step away from the keyboard, this may be my longest typed post ever. I still need to process the directions these meetings are going to lead.
I liked Portland, the weather was great, best they have had in a while actually and the people are incredible. Everything I needed was within walking distance for the most part. Ironically though I never ended up riding my bike on this trip. The next time I am up there I will need to plan more time, the pace of this trip was too fast to really take things in.
I successfully made the trek up to Sacramento For NAHBS, 36 hours, 800 miles round trip, one state agency, at least 50 laps around the floor one way and then 10 more in the criss cross direction. I met almost all of the people I intended to and a few more that were a surprise. The ironic part is that I took almost no pictures, and the only one to share was a guy outside the show, more on that later this week. There were hordes of people with cameras, tripods the works, and the pictures on the web are likely better than what I would have been making. The bikes were everything you would imagine, photography and video both fall short of what the bikes really look like with respect to color. The lighting in the main hall was not doing the photographers many favors either.
The people were the main reason I went. I was able to spend time with the Reynolds tubing reps, Kirk from Bikelugs, Dave Kirk, Dave Wages and many of the other notable builders, the friendly people at White Industries and Paul Component (whose components will be gracing the bikes I will be offering in the coming months), and then I ran into Ely of Ruth Works SF. It was great meeting another bag maker face to face, comparing notes and looking a tall the bags in the show. There was a wide range of work, and some of it was stunning. Part of me wanted to stay another day, but an even bigger part wanted to be home in my own bed. If you ever have the chance to attend one of these shows, do not pass it up, the experience is worth it.
For me the trip was a success, and I hope that it went well for all of the builders. If the crowd volume is any indication, this is likely going to be a good year for these guys. I learned more than I expected, made some new contacts, met face to face with vendors I previously had only talked with via phone and email, and was ale to see the full range of booth styles in action as I plan on heading down that path on my own.
Glad to be home before the week starts up again. I made my regular ride to the Farmer’s market, on what felt every bit like a summer day in March. The crowds at the market and beach were almost as thick as the show. The ride was refreshing after all of that windshield time, and gave me some time to percolate ideas I have.
I hope your weekend went well, that NAHBS was great if you made it, and you were able to get out and make some time to ride.
I am looking for your input on the model name for this bike.
I have been brainstorming for months now to come up with a name not only for the first bike in my line, but a pattern of names that could work across future bikes as well. People give the guys at Rivendell a bit of grief for some of the more recent model names they have chosen, e.g Hunquapillar, Samuel Hillborene etc. I am now walking my mile in their shoes on this issue. Every time I think I have hit it, A quick trademark search reminds me how many other people hit it first.
I want to avoid names that are straight up descriptors like “Sport Tour” and the derivatives like ST-1. I have looked into local place names, but feel that there is not as much broad appeal or catchy-ness. I am leaning strongly towards fish names, tying into the “Ocean Air” theme. I have a rough idea of what I would like, and they can easily be analogous to the propose of the product or bike model.
Many of the common fish names have already been taken already. Moving on to the Hawaiian and or Inuit names, many have been used in the past in the bike business by the likes of Gary Fisher and others.
I have narrowed it down to the common Japanese names for the fish of choice. My first pick:
Sport Tour – Rainbow or Steelhead Trout – “Nijimasu“: This not only fun to say, but has regional significance as well. These fish swim the coastal waters and move up the local rivers to spawn. The routes you have seen me riding for the last couple of years parallel the routes these fish swim during their life cycle. They play an important role in the coastal ecosystem. The current threat to their natural existence, is a bit of a canary in the coal mine for our coastal watershed’s health. I can start by helping to draw attention to this single piece of the environmental crisis, a baby step, and grow from there.
So, I want and need your feed back. Does “Nijimasu” ring in your ear and memory? Any other names for trout that you like? Other fish names or names in general? Let me know.