Plan B for Cold Weather

..and when I say, "Plan B", I'm not talking about not riding! Today it's about 20 degrees (F.) out, but clear. A good day for cycling, if you dress right. However, flatting a tire in really cold weather can be a royal pain. In order to fix that tire, you have to pull of those nice warm gloves, and I can guarantee that adhesives just don't work the same in extremely cold weather. (Hm, this seems to be a self-referential kind of post.)

If you flat, it won't be a problem to fix it once you get to your destination; you'll have your patch kit, tools, and access to soap and water for a clean up. But on a cold, blustery day, it sucks to do this outside. I think the best solution is to have a Plan B. The only two Plan Bs that I can come to reasonably are:

• Calling a (good) friend on your cell; and
• Public Transit

The first one being self-explanatory (let's hope your friend doesn't drive a Mini), let's concentrate on the second. It's not necessary for a cycle-commuter to cycle along bus routes in cold weather, but it's good to know where they are relative to your ride. (The graphic is an overlay done in Vectorworks of a GoogleMap screencapture of my route over the PDF of the Howard County transit routes. The HCT routes are abstracted enough that this exercise is of but limited value, but you get the idea.)

So in very cold weather, try not to flat. But if you do, have that Plan B in the back of your head. Know where the transit routes are relative to your route, and head to a bus-stop if you flat. (Have the correct change for that fare ready!)

Blighters Rock

No, it's not really writer's block, I've just been, ah, busy. We're in busy season at Nemetschek, meeting our design deadlines for the next great version of Vectorworks, and I've had my head down.

I've had my head down cycling, also. As I knew would happen, I "made my year" and met my goal of 3300 miles last week. In retrospect, it seems kind of ho-hum. We'll see how many miles I make by the end of the year and I'll try and do some kind of estimation of what percentage of work days I rode to work. I have to say, though, my utilization has got to be really high, if you deduct for business trips. I think I use my car to get to work no more than 2 days per month, at least for the past 3 or 4 months. Good weather (that is to say, reasonably clear weather) helps.

When it comes to understanding urban cycling, there's nothing like statistics. The city of Fort Collins, CO has just released a compilation of statistics about cycle-auto accidents over a 30 month period and I'm working on some analysis of that as well as accident stats from elsewhere. But the news item I've read recently that has I think the most significance is new bicycle usage stats from New York City. Since 2007, the ridership is up 66%. (That is to say, cycling levels in 2009 are 166% of what they were in 2007.) Wow. Check out that chart. (That is a zero-based chart!)

What can account for this? It's pretty simple, really. There's a serious commitment by the NYC DOT to get people bicycling. The city has substantive programs in:

• Bicycle education and safety;
• Bicycle parking;
• Bicycle/Mass Transit interface; and
• Bike street infrastructure.

The city has created 200 miles of bike lanes in 3 years and is committed to 50 miles of lanes per year until it completes its bike network. Check out the main NYC-DOT page on cycling and drool. For anyone outside of NYC, it is just enviable, to live in a city that has resources and uses them to Make Things Better.

Apple and bikes

Continuing on in the "what if XX made a bike" series, let's take a deep breath and go after the big one: Apple.

Prologue: Today's state of bicycle "captial D" design to my mind is so-so at best. The fact that opportunity still exists for Apple to come in to the market (should they decide they want to) means that design is still lagging, despite all the effort put towards it. At right is a "design" put forth by Puma, a design-conscious fashion clothing manufacturer, for their fourth-generation bike. They appear to be making some kind of statement about color, except they can't quite get even that right (ahem, guys, get a white handlebar, stem, and front rim, and powder-coat the front brake calipers! If you're going to make it about color, DO IT!)

If Apple made a bike, what would it look like? Knowing what I know about Apple (I've been a Mac user since 1984 and have worked for 10 years for Nemetschek North America, makers of Vectorworks, the best-selling CAD product on the Mac), and particularly considering its recent successes with industrial design since the iPod, here is what I could reasonably predict about any Apple product:

• It would be iconic; recognizable as the thing that it is (that is, it would be a realization of a classic design rather than a revolutionary design.)
• It would feature obsessive attention to detail.
• It would focus on the user experience.
• It would definitively fix problems with the product category that users didn't realize they had.
• It would be visually beautiful and a tactile delight.
• It would co-promote other products made by Apple as part of a lifestyle.
  
• It would be expensive, a stretch for the pocketbook; something that conveys status, but stops short of aloofness.
  
• It would be value-engineered, so Apple could make a decent profit.
• It would be sold only through the Apple store. (duh.)
• There would be tremendous opportunity to create a third-party "add-on" ecosystem.
  

So, how would these "branding requirements" translate into a specific bicycle design? What are the "unrealized problems" waiting to be solved in bicycle design that could be fixed with an obsessive amount of user-centric problem solving and delivered through industrial design? I think the major problems to be solved (the "user requirements") are these:

• Looks: The bike should have a minimalist look, as much like a fixie as possible. The explosive popularity of fixies is all about that sexy, iconic bike look.
• Shifting: Bikes need to be easier to use (i.e. shift) so that users don't wear themselves out getting from point A to point B. (Fixies look great, but aren't practical unless you're an athlete.)
• Security: There needs to be a convenient, highly effective anti-theft solution.
  
• Comfort: The places where your body touches the bike, the controls, the seat and the pedals, need improvement. This is after all the "user interface" of the bike. Ideally, other than for a helmet (and maybe some sporty-looking gloves) you wouldn't need any special clothing to use this bike.
  
• Maintenance: The thing needs to set new standards of minimalism in maintenance.

Specking out this bike (at a high level) would be fun—more fun, I daresay, than the sweat-work of designing and testing it. (So, let's do it!) I would think we'd see the following kind of "functional specification" from Apple in trying to fulfill these requirements:

• Frame: Probably hydr0formed aluminum, welded, with smooth-dressed joints. The finish would be anodized ("nanochromatic" colors to match the iPod nano?) and clear-coated. All cables would be internally routed. The frame would be set up so that a minimum number of sizes (maybe just two: small and large) would accommodate all riders. This presumes a maximally adjustable seatpost and stem arrangement.
• Drivetrain: Internally-geared rear hub, probably 8 speed, with an automatic shifter working off cadence and speed scnsors integrated in the frame. Belt drive. Gear range for city hills.
• Brakes: Internal hub brakes front and rear. (Yes, the hubs will be big, but it'll be a clean look and low maintenance. Speaking of which...).
  
• Maintenance: Carbon or aramid drive belt good for 10,000 miles. Sealed bearings everywhere. Aramid-belted tires (possibly tubeless) with interior goo to stop slow leaks. All cables Teflon-coated. An absolute minimum of hardware exposed to the elements. Here's where that famous Apple attention to detail will pay off.
  
• Controls: Brake handles with fully-concealed cabling. The cyclocomputer would be your iPhone or iPod touch running a "free" app from the App Store. The app would integrate GPS, speed, odometer, traffic and weather reports, and (naturally) music. There would be special valve-stem caps that could sense low pressure in your tires and transmit warnings to the control unit via Bluetooth. Oh, and the app would enable customization of your shift points on the transmission. The front hub would be a dyno-hub to keep the lights and the iPhone charged up.
  
• User Interface (pedals, seat, handlebars): I think Apple could come up with some clever platform pedals that would work with street shoes but still have some restraint to allow pedaling efficiency. And the handlebars should be "fixie" style, perhaps with cell-foam padding so they could be used without gloves. The saddle is the real problem, because it needs to fulfill two conflicting requirements (1) be an iconic bike saddle; and (2) be comfortable. I think they'd have to do something like provide a "basic" saddle that has a proven comfort record like the Terry Liberator, and a "premium" saddle that is a Brooks classic leather saddle that comes fully broken in. (That will be an expensive extra cost option!)
• Accessories: I think fenders, yes; but rack, no. (Fenders are sexy, racks aren't.) Instead of selling racks and panniers, Apple could sell coordinated backpacks (they could re-brand this ergonomic German one). Lights front and rear, for sure, integrated into the frame. The really tough challenge is the security issue. You could easily design security to work for Mudville, but not so easy for Manhattan. And effective locks are so big and heavy. I think Apple might try a two-pronged approach: first, a frame design that integrated a solid locking bar that would allow you to use a small high-security lock rather than a U-bar lock, and secondly, something (again an extra cost option) that worked with the iPhone to transmit a "help" signal if the bike were being tampered with.
  

Whew. Quite a bike, huh? What should it sell for? I would say that it ought to sell slightly above the price range for Apple laptops, say $1900 to $3500 depending on the options. I daresay that Apple has enough economies of scale, manufacturing wise, to be able to pull this off, and to value-engineer it to make a profit. (That auto-shifter will be tricky to engineer for sure, but Apple's just the company to do it.)

An industrial designer who is really ready to take on the challenge of the Apple bike is the Swedish designer Erik Nohlin from Gothenburg. He entered his delightfully minimalist, well thought out "MuskOx" design in the Bicycle Design (blog) "Ultimate Commuter Bike" design contest. (He should have won in my opinion.) If Apple wanted to get into bikes, they should just hire this guy, give him the list of requirements, and fund him.

But, first things first, Apple. Before you can proceed on this project, you have to wrestle the "iBike" trademark (#3096850) away from Velocomp LLP, makers of the "iBike" cyclocomputers.

San Francisco April-May 2009

So, within one month I've managed to visit both Seattle and San Francisco, both west coast towns that are reputed to be bicycling cities (with the third of the West Coast Bicycling Triplets being Portland, of course.)

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and arranged to go get drinks and a bite with my friend Scott at Zeitgeist, a fun bar and grill on Valencia street in the "SoMa" district of San Francisco. Arriving at my hotel and unpacking my bike, I discovered I'd left my pump at home (insert self-administered dope slap to forehead here) and so I looked up a nice bike shop called Freewheel just a few blocks south of Zeitgeist. I got down there in plenty of time, got the exact pump I was looking for (a Topeak Road Morph), and had time to do a little sightseeing on South Valencia before heading back north to grab a couple of beers and a burger with Scott.

Thursday night, my company Vectorworks was co-host of what turned out to be just a bang-up party —the City To Green Party— for architects, cyclists and artistic locals at the 3A Gallery on South Park street. In the gallery was an exhibit of track bikes from the second half of the 20th century. The gallery proprietors hung a show of track bikes on the walls and described the provenance of each bike, and detailed descriptions of the bike realization as a work of art. Here's a transcription of one of the the bike descriptions:

---------------------------------------------------------
Automoto, France, 1940s.

Cycles Automoto was a pioneering French maker of motorcycles and bicycles founded at the turn of the 20th century. Well regarded for thoughtful design and meticulous construction, Automoto grew in popularity until merging with the Peugeot group in the early 1960s. Part of that popularity is attributable to the company's wide ranging product offerings, whose bicycle line along grew to include 20 models. When an Automoto advertisement boldly declared, "Le Triomphe De La Qualité Française", few in sound conscience would have doubted the claim.

Built for the professional track racer
Restored condition
Magistroni cranks
Chater Lee Pedals
Major Taylor stem

Collection: American Cyclery of San Francisco
---------------------------------------------------------

Quite refreshing. A very well attended party, right to the end, as you can see from the photos. I've often wondered why the intersection-set of architects (particularly young architects) and bicyclists is so large. At least 30 attendees (including yours truly) arrived on bike and were graciously attended to out front of the gallery in a nice bike parking lot attended by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition , a club of more than 10,000 members. Very, very nice work.

This poem was transcribed in chalk on the walls of the foyer of the 3A Gallery:

Ode to Bicycles

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn’t
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it’s needed,
when it’s light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

- Pablo Neruda, 1956

I broke 1000 miles for the year so far on the last day of April on the streets of San Francisco. For me, this really cut it. Call me fickle (less than a month ago I was extolling Seattle,) but San Francisco is US Bicycling City Number One in my book.

AIA-SFO: Integrating Bikes and Business

Next week I'll be attending the American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention in San Francisco. Architects are (at long last) becoming environmental leaders in the professional communities, and "cycling" and "environmental" fit together nicely for me, so I'll be taking a folding bike to push the envelope of "green consciousness" for architects. I don't want to be unfair here—I've noticed that there exists a large intersection among architects, cyclists, and (even) bike builders, it's just that, when it comes to cycling, and particularly practical, everyday cycling, there's a lot more lip service than action. So I hope to turn that around in a small way.

My company, Nemetschek NA, produces a computer-aided design software called Vectorworks. It's used primarily by architects (as I am), but it has great 3D and solids capabilities, and I want to design bikes with it. (This would be just another integration of life, work, and avocation for me.) I've designed buildings and shoes with it, but not yet bikes. If you've used CAD to design bikes, I want to talk to you, so leave me a comment and a way to get in touch!

San Francisco is a city where I've spent time before. And it has hills that are serious challenges to walk up, much less bike up. I don't think I have a bike set up with the gears needed for all of San Francisco.

That's the bad news. The good news is, I'm going to be spending almost all my time in the "SoMa" (South of Market) area, which is quite flat, by SFO standards. Following one of the guiding principles of Practical Cycling, "Research your Route", I've done some homework on SFO. Here's a nifty topographical map of the city overlaid with bike routes. Below is a Google map of what I'm going to be up to. The aqua-colored destination in the middle of the Castro district is where my friend Scott and his wife Polly reside, and that is at the top of a pretty awesome hill, one I don't think I'd try and tackle unless I had about 22" gears. So Scott and I will have to meet elsewhere (maybe at the "Zeitgeist" bar, which is I'm told a favorite of the local bike couriers), or I'll take the bus to his house.

View SFO AIA Convention 2009 in a larger map

So, I've decided to take my folder for the flat areas. I bought (off my brother, who wasn't using it) a Dahon "Speed D7" folder, (mine being about 8 years old, not quite as nice as the one in the link), and a Samsonite "Oyster" standard-airline-case (SAC) that it fits in for transport. I spent a weekend overhauling it, getting it properly equipped for minimal practical cycling (tool kit, pump, lock, patches, lights,) and learning how to pack it. (I made some breakthroughs in this area. There are websites that state that you can't pack a Dahon folder in an Oyster without removing the stem and handlebars, a major pain since I added a cyclocomputer mount. I found that I need only remove the wheels, and everything else fits neatly. (I'll leave the details of that for another post.)

I was in Seattle at the beginning of April and used the trip out there as a first shake-down trip for the travelling cyclist use-case. Excepting a tangled chain on initial unpacking of the bike, everything went surprisingly well. I found the little Dahon, while a bit short in the leg for my tall frame, to still be an acceptable ride for up to, say, 20 miles. I put about 75-80 miles on the Dahon in 5 days, in Seattle, a city not devoid of hills itself. The gear range is rather limited, at both the top and (somewhat surprisingly, given the 20" wheels) the bottom.

So, if you're in San Francisco next week and see the very tall guy on the clown bicycle wearing the Vectorworks shirt, that will be me. Flag me down and tell me you're a reader of A Practical Cyclist, and I'll be glad to invite you to the Vectorworks "City to Green" party on Thursday night! And if by chance you're attending the AIA convention, please drop by the Vectorworks booth, #1651, and let's talk bicycles, design, and computer-aided design.