About to crush it in the drag race

Rack: 1, Concrete: 0

What? No champagne finish?

So one of the senior design projects in the engineering program I’m in is Human Powered Vehicle: build a recumbent and race it. My official job title for this year’s project was “The ‘You’re Doing it Wrong’ Guy”, as in it was my job to say that a lot because I had the most bike experience. It paid off though, we got 2nd place in the Unlimited class in the Western US competition. And we beat the School that has been dominating both the East and West competitions the past few years in two of the races.

I’m definitely usually one to talk down on recumbents (and for the most part I still will) but I have to say this thing is really fun to ride. You can maintain control when getting it up on two wheels in the corners and slamming through the gears on a flat will get you up close to 30 no problem. Oh and did I mention it has a really nice rack? It even stood up to the barrel-rolling that Lauren gave it at 25mph (all in the name of testing of course).

What does spring mean here at TCB HQ? Total. Freakout. City.

Rackstackattack

Rohloff + TCB

Pancake FTW!

I’ve been getting a ton of orders right when the meat and potatoes of some school projects are really hitting the fan. Don’t you people know that it’s gorgeous out and I’m supposed to be on a carefree bike ride?

Oh wait, here it is.

“It shall be a violation for success to be a blessing without also being a curse”
-Murphy’s Codified, Section 15, paragraph 6, subclause 3F.

Yeah, I could have worse problems. To comfort myself I ate that pancake. It had bacon and chocolate chips in it. I win.

Sent a rail set as a kit to a guy on the east coast who wanted to make his own top planks recently and they turned out gorgeous!

Beachin' rack man!

And made his own bag too.

Photos by Jim Grey

Nice job Jim!

New phone means I can take even crappier pictures! But at least I can take horrible shots of cool stuff. First off, I’ve been putting in quite a bit of time in the machine shop at school so I get 10 points for the first pic, which is the pile of shavings that came out when boring a 1.5″ hole in inch thick stainless steel. Power tools are fun.

And I was flying out of PDX and saw one of my racks parked at the airport. I don’t know who you are but you get 10 points. I don’t yet know what the points are good for but hold on to them.

The first of the wood topped racks

Finally got the wood top plates the way I like them, and excuse me while I congratulate myself in saying they look hott. The first runs will be birch, but I do plan on finding some other woods including bamboo and okume pretty soon. Ruckus has to get through their first run of tops before I can deliver carbon fiber planks, but that’s on the menu too.

Sizing, load limits and compatibility are the same as the other Pret a Porteurs, so scope that page for those details.

$165 for birch and the others will be a bit more.

So I’ve been working a lot on some new projects this summer and they are very close to fruition. I don’t want to promise more than I have until I gots the goods but I will say that I’m millimeters away (literally and figuratively) from offering things that folks have been asking for since I started producing. And I’ve only waited so long because I wanted to do it right. And I’m doing it right. Here’s a couple pics of some recent custom jobs to whet appetites for now.

So I guess Gideon is my official test pilot now. He got the first Pret a Porteur (which he punishes daily at a print shop messenger job) and recently asked for a randonneur rack for a 400 mile three day he’s planning. Requirements were a) small, b) light, c) extra water bottle cages. It was worth the price break to get a set of the top plates so I can definitely make more of these. $90 without the bottle cage mounts, $100 with.

Dave at Blackstar is making a matching bag for it too that will slip onto that tall backrest and then snap the front for quick, secure attachment. I’ll add some pics of that when it gets done.

I’d been meaning to yap about this for a while and what better time than when my neighborhood is trying to burn itself down around me in celebration of its existence.

For all of our shortcomings and excesses we live in a great country, and being conscious of it and proud of it is the best impetus to fix the problems we do have. One very important aspect of supporting domestic industry is, unfortunately, keeping intact our ability to make tanks and fighter jets. If we no longer have factories making the steel that makes the tools that make the [insert really important thing to have in an emergency here], what happens when the $#!+ hits the fan? Funny thing is it was actually a Chinese immigrant professor of mine that recently reinforced my thinking on the topic.

As a small fry shop it’s very hard to track the true sources of my materials and even harder to keep them consistent. That said, my steel supplier is based in Seattle, my laser cutter (for the aluminum parts) is in a suburb south of Portland, and my fasteners shop is biking distance from my house. These are just distributors, of course, but I have been able to determine that most of the metal I use, by weight, is in fact American made and what is not is mostly Canadian. I also, whenever possible, buy American made tools, though I must admit it’s because they’re usually much higher quality than the cheaper imports. And of course I’m supporting American business just by being one.

OK, enough late night rant, here’s to having a cuh-hold one or so and not burning ourselves too badly this weekend.

PS, Blogger sux and has a bug with Cannon cameras that rotates my image no matter what I do to the source file, sorry to make you crane yr neck.