22 Jan - Winter Riding and its After Effects

Good morning,
I was running around town yesterday shoveling sidewalks and doing errands, a total of less than 10 miles in total probably, but this is the result.  My bike is covered with snow and salt, shifters are frozen and non-working and large-scales/long-term corrosion is likely to reduce the life of this bike.  I've long had ideas about improving the all-weather capability of a bike, but I'd like to hear from readers of this blog about your ideas.  Please feel free to post them in the comments.  As far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as bad weather for biking, just bad bikes for weather.  Let me know if you've got a good one - whether you've built it or just thought about it.

In other practical matters, I'm posting this photo of the powered trailer that Laird Knight brought by the shop a few weeks ago.  He built this from a trailer and gas-powered assist motor he got from Ebay, and parts that he scavenged from our bins.  This motor allows him and his wife to carry all the family cargo when they go on rides with their 3 kids, without working very hard.  The rig can achieve up to 30mph on level ground, and help maintain a good climbing speed up hills in traffic.  I took a ride on it and, although I generally prefer electric (or no) assist, it was an unmitigated blast to ride.  When you think about it, this is a vehicle that gives you most of the utility of a car (in good weather at least) while weighing less than 100lb - vs a car or motorcycle that might weigh 1000-6000lb.  For short-distance travel in good weather (even with our local hills) this makes a lot of sense - and you can still get a workout whenever you want to by just turning off the engine.  Feel free to send comments or pictures of similar rigs you've seen.

21 Jan - What's going on

Good morning,
Here's what's happening at the shop this week, and where we have opportunities to volunteer...

Invention: We're helping build a kayak trailer for a volunteer and her friends that can be pulled behind a bike.
Construction: We're finishing office space - need plumbing, electrical and carpentry skills.  Also need materials (insulation, paneling, electrical supplies and a kitchen sink/cabinet)

Reporting: We're doing financial and activity reporting for 2010, this will help us get volunteers and donations in 2011.
Grantwriting:  There are several grant opportunities coming up and we need to get our applications in soon.

As always your financial  donations are always welcome and there's always work to be done to get bikes ready for the coming season.  Call if you can come help and we'll arrange a time, even if it's outside regular shop hours.
Thanks,
Nick

14 Jan: Urgent! Help needed

Truck Needed to deliver 25 bikes to Cumberland by 10am tomorrow.
"Bikes for the World", our overseas shipping partner for recycled bikes, is planning to fill another container this weekend to give bikes in countries where people need them for basic transportation.  If they meet their target they'll have 50,000 bikes shipped since starting in 2005.  But they need our help.  We've got 25 more bikes that wouldn't fit on the last truck they sent, we need someone with a pickup truck or trailer who can deliver them to Cumberland, MD by 10am tomorrow.  Call the shop at 304-276-0213 if you can help.
Update 17 Jan - The BFW driver (Phil Ruth) was kind enough to drive the extra distance and pick up our bikes and parts.  They are anxious to fill a container with 500 bikes, which they expect to do today, and load their 50,000th bike.  Here's a video article of director Keith Oberg talking about where these bikes will go.  The total number of bikes put on the container was 514, meaning that our 25 helped put them over the top.
http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=131342&catid=373 .

Carpenters and laborers needed on Make-a-Difference Day - Monday
This Monday is Martin Luther King day and United Way is sending us $100 and student volunteers so we do some wallbuilding to create more shop and office space that will help us serve our mission better.  We plan to put up partition walls, simple stuff but we need carpenters who can supervise unskilled volunteers and make sure the job gets done well.  Call the shop at 304-276-0213 if you can help.
Thanks for your continuing support!

Update 17 Jan - Thanks to Will and Don Ravenscroft and Doyle Campell for showing up and helping out.  They completed framing of the office wall, giving us a good start to this project.  We welcome help in finishing it from anyone with electrical, plumbing or carpentry skills.

8 Jan - January newsletter is out

Good morning,
I've just published the draft January newsletter.  You can see it here.  Leave comments here on the blog or on the website forum if you have suggestions/corrections.  As you can see it's been a busy year, even with being closed for much of the Summer.  Next year is going to be much bigger, and we'll need more help to support all the activities that the community needs for better bike/pedestrian education and sustainable transportation.  Please volunteer generously, and remember to join or renew your membership.  This gives us funds to continue operating through the Winter when bike recycling income is down.
Thank you for your continued support in the coming year.

Update:  The final version of the newsletter is now out at:
http://www.positivespin.org/Newsletters/2011_01_PSNewsletter.pdf

Please consider volunteering to help with our many activities..
Thank you

6 Jan - A sidetrack to GPS tracking

Good morning,
Some of you may know that I haven't always been a bike mechanic, I have an extensive technical background in vehicle (mostly aircraft) simulation.  Yesterday I happened across a website that will map any bike ride that you want to put in, similar to mapmyride and other online mapping tools.

http://ridewithgps.com/
What's exciting about this one is that it will output the course coordinates if you want to use them for other things.  In my case I've written a bike simulation that calculates power required on a given route for different types of bikes (specified by weight, drag coefficient, rolling resistance, mech efficiency) and riders (specified by power, weight, etc).  There was a little bit of finagling required to get the data in the format I needed, standard format is lattitude/longitude/altitude and my program uses x/y/z in ft.  Here are some screen shots of the online program and the output of my processing program (written in QuickBASIC with output in Excell-ready format).

GPS track in Google Maps from Positive Spin to Cheat Lake

Excel plot of dist vs alt for same route processed from .tcx output file