Why Bother

You love the boredom of an Elliptical Treadmill, but prefer the outdoors; maybe an ElliptiGo 3C is right for you. I look at stuff like this and ask myself, “Why Bother?”

I will admit you would probably get one hell of a workout, but at what cost. You can neither enjoy the experience of running, or a good bike ride. And at a price tag of $1,800, you could buy a pretty nice bicycle for that much.

The people at Bicycle Forest made the Treadmill Bike as a joke; ElliptiGo is just as funny except I believe the makers are dead serious.

                        

Picasso’s Bull’s Head

There is an exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work in Paris, at the Musée Nationale; after it closes on May 15 the show travels to San Francisco’s de Young Museum.

One of the pieces on display is Picasso’s Bull Head made during WWII in 1942, when Picasso was living and working in occupied France.

Eric Gibson writing in the Wall Street Journal said,

“Out of the blue, comes a moment of wit and whimsy: "Bull's Head" (1942), a sculpture made from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.

At once both childlike and highly sophisticated in its simplicity, it stands as an assertion of the transforming power of the human imagination at a time when human values were under siege.

Consisting as it does of only two elements, "Bull's Head" is Picasso's sparest sculpture. And it is unique among his assemblages for its transparency.”

Some may read that and say, “What utter bull shit about a bull’s head.” So many times I have heard people say of Picasso’s work, “I could have done that.” But the point is, they didn’t.

There is an old saying, “In order to be successful you need to be First, Best or Different; Picasso was all three.

Rather than even try to analyze or wax lyrical about “The Bull’s Head” or any of Picasso’s work for that matter; I just think it is pretty damn cool, I like it and I’m glad he made it.

Sometimes we miss out on some of life's simple pleasures by trying to understand or analize everything. After all we don't look at a beautiful flower and say, "I don't get it."

If you are into art like this, check out Fluxus.

                         

More questions than answers

After my last article about Cornell University’s bicycle experiment, I started thinking “What if” the bicycle had never been invented in the late 1800s, would engineers come up with a similar design today?

Even if they did, I doubt it would be taken seriously as a viable form of personal transport.

The bicycle came into being at a time when the only other form of personal transport was the horse. These animals were not only expensive to buy, they needed feeding and housing; working class people could not afford horses.

However, once the bicycle had been invented, and a few years later mass production put this new machine within reach of the poorer classes it became a revolutionary form of personal transport. Many forget that the automobile came later and eventually replaced the horse as the wealthy person’s transport of choice.

So what if the automobile had come first. The poorer working classes would have continued living in cities where they could get to work either on foot or by rail or other form of public transport.

The bicycle had less of an impact on America’s history, because there it was the automobile that became affordable due to mass production, and the luxury of plenty of space led to urban sprawl, and the suburbs.

In the UK and other smaller European countries, it was viable for a working class man to live in a rural area, and cycle 5 to 10 miles to work each day. The humble bike was the working man’s wheels all the way up to the late 1950s, early 1960s. 

Even though commuting to work by bicycle is a hard sell today for the majority, think how much harder it would be if engineers were only just developing the bicycle now. Almost everyone can at least ride a bicycle, and most households have at least one bike in their garage.

Look what happened in Japan recently after the earthquake and tsunami? People took to bicycles to get where they needed to be. How high will gas prices need to go before some people in the UK and the US start to realize their choice might be eating, or putting gas in the car, and bicycles will start to be dragged out of garages?

Would today’s engineers even think of a two-wheeled vehicle? If there were no bicycles there would be no motorcycles, only four wheel vehicles; don’t forget the first autos were “Horseless Carriages.”

Above: A German Draisine or Laufmaschine, circa 1820. I have always called this a Hobby Horse.

In my last article I referred to the Cornell experiment as a “Push Toy.” I realized later, had it not been for a push toy, the bicycle would have never come into being?

The bicycle’s predecessor, the Hobby Horse came on the scene in the early 1800s as a rich man’s whimsical plaything,

It only needed two wheels because its rider kept his feet on the ground.

No doubt it was soon discovered that its rider could lift his feet clear of the ground and remain balanced when coasting downhill. 

What has always amazed me is that it took until towards the end of the 1800s for someone to attach a simple foot crank to the front wheel and it became a bicycle.

I started out by mentioning that before the bicycle the only form of personal transport was the horse. I am sure ever since men rode horses, children pretended to ride horses with a stick between their legs.

When the wheel was invented, model horses with wheels were made as children’s toys, from this came the adult version in the 1800s, and from that the bicycle. The bicycle evolved, rather than it was invented; it was certainly not invented by any one person. 

It is one of the simplest and most efficient machines that humankind has ever made. What I find surprising is that today almost 200 years later, engineers are still asking, “How does its rider balance, and how does it steer?” The bicycle still raises more questions than answers.

I for one doubt very much that today’s engineers, even knowing about gyroscopic precession, caster action and such, would even think of building a two-wheeled vehicle for personal transport. So I am glad that the bicycle came first and then the automobile, it may not have even happened the other way round.

What do you think? Just a little food for thought for you to munch on.

                         

Does a riderless bike prove anything?

Engineers over at Cornell University have designed and built a riderless bike which seems to have no other purpose than to debunk the theory that the gyroscopic precession of a spinning wheel, and caster action of the front wheel has nothing to do with the self-steering properties of a bicycle.

I am sorry but this is not a bicycle yet, it is a push toy; when you put pedals and a rider on it, then it will be a bicycle.

I believe that giroscopics and caster action contribute to balance and steering; however, that is not the whole story. Simple momentum has a lot to do with it; take a surf board for example that has no wheels.

A surfer has to initially move his body constantly to remain upright, but when he gets up to speed it becomes easier to maintain balance and his body is practically stationary. A bicycle too, the faster you go the easier it becomes to balance and hold a straight line.

Another natural and intuitive thing to do is to lean into a corner; in the direction we are turning. We even do it while running, and for that matter so do all animals.

While running, if you lean to the left you automatically step to the left to maintain balance, and so you turn; it is an intuitive movement without thought. So if a bicycle is designed to steer in the direction it is leaned, it too becomes intuitive.

It is the intuitive nature of the way a bicycle handles that makes it relatively easy to ride. Riding at slow speed it is almost impossible to ride in a straight line; as the rider falls to the left he steers to the left bringing the bicycle back under his body to maintain balance.

Much in the same way you balance a broom on your hand; you constantly move the hand to keep it under the center of mass to maintain balance.

At very low speeds the cyclist will physically steer the bike left or right by turning the handlebars; as speed increases the rider will steer by leaning to the left or right. This is where the self steering properties of the bicycle kick in.

As the bike falls to the left the head tube of the frame moves to the left; so too does the steering axis.

The steering axis reaches the ground at a point ahead of where the front wheel contacts the ground.

This is known as “Trail,” because the wheel trails along behind the steering axis.

Leaning to the left will cause the front wheel to steer to the left; leaning to the right will steer to the right.

On the Cornell model the exact opposite is true. They deliberately placed the steering axis behind the front wheel’s point of contact. (Negative trail.) They did this in order to prove a point, but in doing so created a reason their model works. As it falls to the left, it steers to the right thus correcting its direction of travel. (Watch the video on their site.)

In order for the Cornell model to work they have added weights. The momentum of a weight on a pole ahead of the contraption pulls it along. Another weight placed low on the front steering falls at a quicker rate causing the front wheel to turn in the opposite direction. (Go to article link above and click on the picture to see an enlargement.)

As I see it all that has been proven here is that by adding carefully placed weights you can make something self-steer even though its steering axis is behind the front wheel’s point of contact.

Gyroscopic precession and caster action have been removed, but this had to be replaced with a system of weights to achieve the same end. It is simply a different way to skin a cat; it proves nothing

As a model this apparatus is a cleaver idea, but will not work as a bicycle; here is why. As I have already mentioned to balance on a bicycle as you fall to the left you instinctively steer to the left to bring the bicycle back under the center of mass, which is the rider.

On the Cornell model as you fall to the left it steers to the right, the rider will be unceremoniously dumped in the road. Even worse as you intuitively lean into a corner the bike will steer in the opposite direction.

Not only have Cornell taken away the intuitive handling nature of the bicycle, they have designed an unridable bicycle. Don’t believe me? Build it and see.  

There is some more reading on Head Angles and Steering here, and on Trail, fork rake and a little bit of history here. 

                       

Education or Enforcement

There are two ways to apply cycling laws, education or enforcement. Going to school in the UK at least twice a year there would be a special lesson on the Highway Code.

A little Highway Code book would be given to us to take home and keep. It not only had all the rules and laws as applied to driving a car, it laid out those that applied to riding a bicycle and pedestrians.

It was drummed into us, when you cross the street, stop, look right, look left, look right again; (Traffic came from the right in the UK.) if the road is clear then cross.

This was war time Britain of the 1940s and due to petrol rationing there were few cars on the road, especially in the rural area I lived at the time. Never-the-less when we crossed the street we went through this ritual of look right, look left.

There were cycling proficiency tests too, where we would bring our bikes to school and the local police constable would come in and instruct us on how to ride our bike both safely and in compliance with the law.

The result was when I started cycling seriously in the 1950s, I never rode on the pavement, (Sidewalk.) I never rode through red lights, and my bike always had a front and rear light when riding after dark. As for riding a bike on the wrong side of the road, toward traffic, that would be so crazy it would not even be considered.

It was somewhat of a culture shock when I came to the US in 1979 and went for a ride with the local club. The first red light we came to I stopped and everyone else kept going.

It would not be unusual to find a cyclist riding towards me on my side of the road. This led to the quandary, do I pull out in the traffic lane and let him pass on the inside, or hold my course and hope he goes around me? I usually took the initiative and went for the first option.

I remember reading of a case in New Jersey where two cyclists riding at night without lights hit head on because one was on the wrong side. Their heads hit, neither was wearing a helmet; one died instantly, the other had serious head injuries.

Young kids on BMX bikes would jump from the sidewalk to the center of the road, and then wait for a gap in opposing traffic before hopping over to the opposite sidewalk. It was a free for all, with no rules being observed or enforced. Today, from what I read, it is no better in the UK; it seems the Highway Code is no longer taught in schools.

Stuff drummed into me as a kid has stayed with me to this day; so believe me I understand why some cyclists ride through red lights. It is what they have always done since they were a kid; no one said they shouldn't do it.

If I stop for a red light, even if there is no other traffic in sight, it is not because I am somehow better than the cyclist who just rides on through. It is because not to stop feels uncomfortable, and goes against a lifetime habit.

Getting in the habit of obeying traffic laws while riding a bike would be a good thing for all cyclists to do right now. I am reading of a ticket writing blitz going on in Brooklyn, New York; it will not surprise me if this happens in other cities in the US as cycling becomes more popular and more and more cyclists take to the streets.

The article in The Brooklyn Paper tells how critics are saying it is unfair to clamp down on cyclists in this manner. I am inclined to agree to a certain extent. It is unfair that a cyclist should pay the same $190 fine for running a red light that a motorist has to pay.

However, it is quite simple to avoid getting one of these tickets; don't run red lights. Also, whoever said life is fair? It is unfair that I am forced to take my shoes off at the airport, because one idiot tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoe.

One Brooklyn cyclist got three tickets; one for riding his bike on the sidewalk, another riding against the flow of traffic, and a third for mouthing off to the cop who was giving him the ticket. All three of these tickets could have been avoided, had this particular cyclist not become accustomed to riding his bike where ever and however he please.

Laws regarding cyclists running red lights and other infractions are in place everywhere right now, so too are fines set. Because the police have not enforced these laws in the past, it may seem unfair when they suddenly start issuing tickets.

There are ways to get people to follow the rules. You educate, preferably at an early age as happened with me, it then becomes a lifetime habit. Or you start fining people as a deterrent. 

I find obeying the law as I ride my bike, does not affect my cycling pleasure; it does not slow me down all that much either. And if my local law enforcement starts issuing tickets to cyclists, it will not affect me.

Those who get tickets will no doubt say how unfair it is, and how they’ve always ridden on the sidewalk or went through red lights. I may sympathize, but I doubt I will be offering to pay their fine.