Monthly Archive for February, 2012

Don’t call these Frankenbikes, steampunk-style, “mutants” or anything of the sort. It’s hard to even call them works of art due to their extreme functionality and purposeful intent. Call ‘em crazy fun! Porter goes beyond piecing together bikes to fabricating amazing machines that take either great skill or just a great sense of humor to ride. The well produced video showcases his rides and gets a few words from Thomas about his perspective, along with some humorous sidekick commentary. This guy can build some amazing bikes and has serious talent to ride them too!

Let’s handle the case of the Monday’s with a bit of inspiration. Like when life hands you klunkers, you make trials videos!

I don’t know what’s cooler about this, the tricks on the barely held together pieces of metal or the rider’s ability to keep it going without total collapse all the way to the ridiculous finale. Either way… I hope this makes your Monday just a bit more tolerable. And maybe makes you rethink the value of your bike in the process.

The Times has been running a campaign to promote the safety of cyclists in the UK. A major impetus was the unfortunate injury of Times journalist Mary Bowers while she was cycling to work.

According to The Times: As a point of comparison: since 2001, 576 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq; 1,275 cyclists died on British streets. The latest data shows there were 1,850 deaths or serious injuries in the first half of 2011, a 12 per cent rise on the year before. Britain leads the world in competitive cycling; it is time that we did the same for the cyclists on our streets.

Read more.

I’m a sucker for these detailed and descriptive approaches to manufacturing. Robert Penn writes about his journey to source the bike of his life, one he will take to his grave, but also drags us around history, science and culture in the process.

It must be nice to have the privilege to seek out each part of your bike on such an intimate level, but let’s be honest, most of us would do the same if we had the chance. It’s nice to live vicariously through someone who took hold of the opportunity. You can do just that through Penn’s book.

Buy it here.

Foreign Accents, contemporary rug designers, have taken the recycled bicycle part craft to a high-society level and created a rug made entirely of woven bicycle tubes. From what I can gather, this is the only bicycle part floor covering they make, but it certainly is a fascinating one.

Foreign Accents has a system of bicycle tube recovery in India and hires workers in a weaving mill to hand cut the tubes into long strips for weaving, creating a nice gradient pattern with “occasional yellow accents” (the yellow size printing on the tube). The rugs measure at 5 x 7 to 7 x 10 feet, the smaller rug comprised of at least 35 tubes. Not a bad use for bike tubes instead of sending them to the landfill.