I recently shared that I had a visit to the Bike Mecca of North America last week. There’s something about a physical change in location that makes my life feel like a spot light is shining and highlighting the mundane into ethereal.

One such mundane-to-ethereal transformation was the art of bike racks. Mundane: I use them every day when commuting around Austin: the library, the grocery store, and the credit union all host mirror images of the same solid, muted grey standard issue bike rack.

Yet in the cardinal neighborhoods of Portland, the grey edition of the bike rack existed, but it was in competition with the plethora of art-inspired versions of the bike rack. Bike racks in the shape of bicycles, racks with metal flowers and vines flowing, and racks inside of buildings; indoor with air-conditioning, heaters, and protection from the rain and sun.

With all of the speciality organized bicycles rides around Portland, I wonder if Austin’s version of the Moonlight Tower bike ride could be replicated with a special tour of the wondrous bike racks that line the streets of Stumptown.

This idea spawned the thought: “Hey, why doesn’t Austin have inspirational bike racks?” We could have racks that inspire cyclists to ride to racks, not only to use them, but to admire them for there inherent artistic nature.

After all, Austin has had art installations including gargantuan guitars; and the recent cow herd of “Austin Art Cows” scattered around town was auctioned off to raise $1 million dollars for an endowment fund for patients and families of the Children’s Blood and Cancer Center of central Texas.

If cows and guitars can do it, bikes can too. Scanning my mind for art racks around town, a few places emerge: the new Hyde Park location of Birds’ Barber shop on the corner of Red River and 41st street has one of the funkiest bike racks I’ve seen in town. The exaggerated sized bicycle as a rack looks illustrative like a cartoon and the bright blue color of the rack catches the eye from a distance. The national franchisee Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf has racks with silhouettes of joyful children and adults in metal outlines that seem to be celebrating the bicycle as you tether it to the rack. And at Daily Juice off of 45th Street, the classic grey rack has been substituted with curving metal work that softens the look of the rack. Plus, if you arrive by bicycle, Daily Juice gives a discount.

These are some highlights of bike racks in my hood. What are bike racks like in your neighborhood?

One thing all these above mentioned racks have in common is that they are located at places of business in Austin. I’d like to see more independent art on the streets, and more bike racks as permanent art installations.

How about a bicycle art kickstarter campaign to make it happen?

Just in time for the holidays, they are now releasing a bike themed pinup calendar for 2012, Bike Taxi Babes. Leanna and Scott both pedicab and have taken some seriously sexy photos of our local female pedicabbers.

Calendars are $15, and you can purchase the calendar online, at local bike shops, or come to the calendar kick off party next Monday and see if you can get any of the models to autograph your copy.

Bike Taxi Babes Release Party
Monday, December 12
9 PM
Scoot Inn, 1308 E 4th St

One of the show stoppers was this copper plated steel mountain bike from Edoz Cycles of Oklahoma

Look for the show to return next fall but maybe down the road. After a three year Austin run, rumor is that the next show will return to its Dallas area roots.

As an exhibitor myself, I am amazed a grateful for the quality and diversity of builders we have in Texas. Steel, carbon, road, mountain, cargo… we have it all. Custom bicycles may not be one of the first things you think of about Texas, but you should. Whether you are considering having a locally made bicycle built for you or just want to admire the craft, come check it out!

4th Annual Texas Custom Bicycle Show
Saturday, October 15- Sunday, October 16
10 AM- 5 PM
Austin Convention Center, 500 E Cesar Chavez St

Tickets: $5, $1 of each ticket goes to benefit the Austin Cycling Association

If you can’t make it or want to know more about many of our local builders, check out some of these framebuilder profiles we’ve published in the last two years.

• James Flatman, formerly of Alchemy Bicycle Company
• Scott Ross of Dominion Bicycle Company
• Wes Williams of Willits Bikes (Shop closed)
• Cody Baron, Clark Davidson, and Cole Thompson of True Fabrication
• Brad Cason of KirkLee Bicycles

Issue #1 of The Dropout which can be viewed online

Past issues 1-4 can be viewed online at The Dropout’s website. Urban Velo says Leanna and Scott are working on a new zine covering local Austin food called The Dineout. Look for it soon.

Minnesota’s Nice Ride bike share program has been exceeding expectations in popularity
Nice Ride MN: Minnesota’s Bike Share Expands.

The 2009 Master Bicycle Plan calls for a city wide bike share program by 2020, and City staff are working on getting a program up and running in the Downtown area in as soon as 18 months. The current plan is to create a non-profit organization to run the service and contract out to an established bike share vendor like B-Cycle or Bixi to provide the equipment and technical support for the system. The estimated start-up cost for the program is $2.5 million with the number of bicycles and stations at launch to be determined by the winning vendor bid. The equipment costs in other cities have broken out as follows: bike kiosks at $40-50,000 each, bikes $1000-$1500 each, ongoing maintenance and operating costs $1000-$2500 per bike per year. For the bike share system to work, it is critical that there be many docking kiosks within a short walking distance of each other in the service area and enough bikes that each station will always have a few.

Under a bikeshare system, kiosk docks would be placed throughout the service area allowing new membership and checkout via computer terminal and checking in and out of bikes.

One concern mentioned in the presentation was the fact that nearly every already established bicycle share program has experienced second year revenue short falls meaning it is unlikely the program will be profitable within its first year. Considering the high capital costs and the fact that this is a start-up in a new market, this is not unusual or necessarily a mark against the viability of the program. National carsharing company and venture capital darling Zipcar has been in business for a decade but has yet to be profitable as a company (many of their individual markets are profitable.) Again, creating a new market is not cheap, but it is yet to be seen what entity will provide post start-up capital as the service seeks profitability.

The bikeshare bikes are a variation of Dutch style city bikes with built in lights, lock, and basket and designed to be left out in the elements.

Assuming the grant funding and matching dollars are secured, the City has a goal of awarding the vendor contracts next summer and launching the full service during SXSW 2013.

Bodhi Bicycles are built from the ground up to be e-bikes. That blue patch on the down tube isn't a modern cubist graphic. It is the integrated, removable battery.

I met the co-founder and President of this Ft. Worth based company, Paul Jung, and had a chance to get a quick preview of the bike. Bodhi and Alien Scooters are arranging to get us a test model for a full detailed review later this month.

Bodhi developed and designed their own e-bike motor front hub.

The first thing I noticed is that this is a bicycle truly built from the ground up to be an e-bike. Instead of a cheap hybrid with a battery and motor hub thrown on, there are really nice looking features like a battery integrated into a compartment on the frame and integrated lights. The folks at Bodhi have developed and designed the electric front hub and relatively light weight battery. They also are using quality parts like bamboo fenders and the infinite gear NuVinci 360 hub from Austin based Fallbrook Technologies.

Bodhi uses the NuVinci 360 internal hub with infinite gearing.

I’m looking forward to the review testing to see if the function lives up to the well thought out style and design.

They are new to the Austin market with bikes available to test ride and purchase at Alien Scooters starting with a demo day this Saturday, July 30 from 10-6 PM and special pricing on accessories and tune ups.

Here is more about the bikes from Bodhi:

I think, therefore I ride.

At Bodhi Bikes, we’ve introduced a new line of electric bicycles to encourage people to get on a bike again and just ride.

An electric bicycle is a bicycle. With handle bars, brakes, pedals and shifters. Simply add a small motor inside the wheel, a rechargeable battery, and a display – and enjoy the ride. Our power on demand system allows you to get a boost whenever you need it. An e-bike is a way to take the hills out of riding, take a gym workout outside or choose the scenic route as you head home from a long ride.

Not everyone pedals at the same speed. An e-bike is a cool solution to allow all cyclists in your group to ride together. Commuters love the ability to ride to work effortlessly and to get a good cardio routine on the ride home.

Bodhi Bikes is Austin-bound! We invite you to come join us at Alien Scooters, take a spin and meet our co-founders, Paul & Kirby. Stop by and receive 20% off the price of one accessory or 30% off the price of a tune-up.

Bodhi Electric Bicycle Demo Day
Saturday, July 30th
10 AM – 6 PM
Alien Scooters, 1122-B South Lamar Blvd

Interested in becoming an A2W sponsor? Visit our sponsor info page or contact Elliott at sponsorships@austinontwowheels.org or (512) 791-9874.

Our big birthday kids’ bike release was a huge success, but it’s also left us awfully short on child-sized rides. As the school year creeps closer, we want to make sure that parents can offer their kids the option of spinning cranks to the classroom no matter their income, and that we can continue to provide support for after-school programs, awesome non-profits, and a whole variety of organizations that share our knowledge that Kids + Bikes = Good. Whether that training-wheeled, coaster-braking rust collector in your garage was outgrown two weeks or twenty years ago, consider donating it to YBP – we’ll make it new again for another young’un.

To donate your kids bike, visit the YBP donate page for donation info and shop hours for drop off.

Don’t have a kids bike but want to help? You can also make a cash donation or donation these other highly needed items:
* quality bikes (especially road bikes)
* Working laptop computers
* locks with keys
* blinky lights
* tools of all kinds – especially metric wrenches and bike-specific repair tools
* good 700c and 27″ tires – please no unusable, dry-rotted, or completely worn-out tires.
* good wheels (especially 700c)
* Cleaning supplies, Fast Orange, Simple Green
* Bike oil, grease, etc.

It’s been a while since I shared a customer build from Violet Crown Cycles, but this recent project was both challenging and satisfying in that I got another person on a useful bike that they’ll love. In this case however, it was to be three wheel joy instead of two.

Last fall during the Texas Custom Bicycle Show, I was approached by a couple looking to have a custom trike built for them. While both loved to ride, the wife had some balance issues that meant she was more comfortable on a three wheel bike. She had a stock trike, but these vehicles are in general built for short, elderly riders. She stands at around six feet tall and is in her forties. The current set up was severely cramping her style.

While all my fellow builders at the show passed on even talking about this job, this was my first trike, and I wanted to investigate the frame design before committing. I took a look at her current stock trike as well as other designed out there. To limit the complexity and cost of the design and maintain easy serviceability, I decided to use the drive train of an established trike, in this case the Torker. I prefer internal hubs for this sort of application but was limited in this case to trike adapted three speed systems since the hub requires two separate cogs, one for the crank part of the drive train and one for the rear axle. The customer lives in relatively flat East Austin and indicated three speeds were really all she used on the stock bike (a seven speed with a derailleur.) With a frame design and drive train settled upon, I accepted the job.

The first part of the project was fairly straight forward. I was essentially building a step-through Ma Ferguson frame with the exception of the rear stays. Since I did not have a rear center wheel to worry about, I had the option of adding an additional chain stay bridge about half way down the stay for added frame rigidity. Other than that, the frame looked like my others.

The challenge began with the frame for the rear axle. Since there are two sets of chain drives that have to be tensioned independently, a separate frame must be built for the rear axle. Tubing selection was important not only for structural soundness but also to snuggly fit the four axle barrings that keep the rear drive both centered and rolling smoothly. It also needed to support the rear basket. I experimented with a couple of designs for the rear before settling on a tubing platform for the basket that also used the stays from the basket to connect to the front frame for additional frame rigidity and a secondary system to the hub and its lock rings to hold the two frames in the correct plane.

One of the drawbacks of the Torker system was its use of the chain tension between the internal hub cog and the axle cog to keep the rear axle centered. After some testing by the customer, this system proved insufficient causing rear chain drop and wheels rubbing the fenders as the axle would shift along the barrings shells. I ended up creating a set of custom aluminum sleeves/spacers for the entire axle to keep the axle from moving back and forth in turns (not pictured here.)

While this trike was a departure for my traditional two wheel designs, I was also cognizant of the purpose of the bike: transportation. This may seem like a no brainer, but believe it or not there are actually racing trikes out there. The customer uses her current trike for riding around the neighborhood and going to the grocery store so the bike needed to serve that function. Unlike the mass produced granny trikes, I equipped this one like any other Ferguson Dutch bike: full fenders and chain guard, dynamo hub powered front and rear lights, internal brakes and hub, cargo carrying basket. We upgrade the basket from the one her previous trike which had a rubbery coating that had disintegrated in a rusty mess. We opted for a galvanized steel Wald basket this time for better outside durability.

One other final post delivery upgrade was a brake lever with a locking mechanism. Since trikes do not have or need kickstands, you need a way to lock in the brake so the bike does not go rolling on non-flat surfaces. Having test ridden trikes previously, I should have realized this but in this case had to depend on the feedback of the customer to get the right part installed on a followup visit.

The final product is a trike that actually fits the customer while providing all the utility of the Dutch bike design.

align=”aligncenter”