bike

Flashback: Solar-powered bike GPS

“During the summertime, I’ll disappear for hours on long rides to nowhere and back. But I have to admit on some rides I’ve gotten so lost I have trouble finding my way home. Happily I was able to build a solar-powered GPS mapping machine, mostly from old computer parts and software I had sitting around my office.” Author Brian Nadels words in the introduction to his DIY Outdoors piece, “Solar-Powered Bike GPS,” from the pages of MAKE Volume 10, are further testament to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention.

Continue Reading August 12th, 2009 Goli Mohammadi2

WoodenBikes at Maker Faire

During Maker Faire, people of all stripes were riding these crazy junkcycles around. I took a moment to speak with Tom Kabat, their creator on Sunday. Tom and his bikes were a mainstay of Bike Town, an area of Maker Faire that featured many bike builders and their projects. A former serious cyclist who still […]

Continue Reading June 6th, 2009 Chris Connors

XtraCycle bikes

[Photo from Connors934 on Flickr] There are these great bikes at Maker Faire from XtraCycle. There is an extension that is bolted on in the place of the rear wheel. The chain is also extended so that it can reach the rear sprocket. Instead of a rack, there is a huge back deck, and along […]

Continue Reading May 29th, 2009 Chris Connors2

Put it on a bike!

In Malawi, like in many other developing countries, the bicycle is king for transportation and cargo carrying. The bikes we saw a few years ago were primarily Chinese or Indian manufactured. They looked like the old 3 speeds once widely available in the states. On the back of nearly every one was a sturdy steel […]

Continue Reading May 3rd, 2009 Chris Connors2

How-To video: bike maintenance

Bicycle Maintenance: How To Maintain Your Mountain Bike For Peak Performance Here’s is a very thorough way of tuning up your bike after a hard ride. The rest of the site has some other good information, but you have to dig through a lot of ‘lifestyle’ type entries before you find the making goodies. The […]

Continue Reading April 30th, 2009 Chris Connors8

Grow your own bike!

Photo from Third World Tech Third World Tech is a neat site with loads of technologies that are used and created in the developing world. One feature on their site is this great idea of making bamboo bikes. The bicycle is such an incredibly important tool for people living on very little in low tech […]

Continue Reading March 30th, 2009 Chris Connors

Pedaling forward with Maya Pedal

` Catherine sends this in about Maya Pedal, which helps create and supply bicycles and pedal-powered machines to communities in Guatemala. BicimÃ¡quinas (translates as “bicycle machines”) are pedal-powered machines that act as an intermediate technology to assist the family economy in obtaining a higher production capacity in agriculture and in small business. Each bicimÃ¡quina is […]

Continue Reading March 27th, 2009 Chris Connors4