Arte de Timo

Sometimes I forget that my perspective has changed over the years, and I forget to check where I am. My son does a great job reminding me to do that.

Has anyone seen this? I was out there last Saturday for the flea market, and was walking by. I stopped to tie my shoes, and then looked up to see the sign and yellow bikes. I was a little in shock. I didn’t think there were any progressive schools left in California that had money left to do things like this. I felt a little like I was in Europe or something. They have huge arrays of solar panels too. What a great development for the school.

I finally got the bike restoration project moving forward. It’s nothing special right now, but I went out for a test ride to make sure the brakes were working this morning. It felt good having this thing actually roll around after the time I’ve put into it so far. Having it come back to life is a testament to how well things were built back in the 1950′s. Incredibly, it wasn’t just the metal parts that held up. When I got it all back together, I just pumped up the tires that were there and headed to the street. I was prepared to replace them, but after who knows how many years, they inflated and gave me a clean ride. Amazing!

I didn’t tighten everything down too tight or lube it, since I will just be taking it all apart again, but it still was a really smooth ride. I was expecting a little clunk or alignment issues, but there was nothing unusual. There was a little tightness in the crank, and some very slight deflections in the moving parts, but again nothing you would notice day to day. This bike was clearly a high end bike with very tight tolerances, and even after all these years of neglect it still preforms well.

All that is left now is the saddle repair, gearing overhaul, and a fresh coat of paint. Getting the gearing back up and running will probably be the toughest part of the rebuild. That and deciding what color to paint it, of course.

Here’s to a new year of projects! Cheers to 2012.

This holiday my family spent a lot of time on the road traveling. It gave me a lot of time to think, which was nice, since thinking is one of my favorite things to do. Sitting in a car for all those hours inevitably got me contemplating cars, travel, and our problems with them.

I wondered why we, as a society, protect the status-quot when it comes to travel. We deny every chance that comes up to go beyond the 150 year old gasoline powered automobile, whether its trains, or electric cars, or higher standards. Cars really are a pain in the butt, even for as much mobility they offer us. They often require multi-year loans to pay off, only last about 10 years, cost thousands of dollars a year to maintain, and even more to fuel up. The internal combustion engine is inefficient, loud, dangerous, large, heavy, and complicated. Why do we bother keeping it around?

Our culture demands smaller, better, faster and cheaper with everything else, but we seem to be more than happy with our uncomfortable metal bricks on wheels. So maybe we aren’t all that happy, but what options do we have? For our trip we had the options to drive our Prius for 10 hours and $70, or use up 5 hours, our dignity (from the horrible “search” and general treatment we would get in the airport), and $500 flying. There is no train to our destination, so we couldn’t take one even if we wanted to. There has been talk and hopes of a single bullet train in our general area, but that will never get built. There is also the bus route, but that lies somewhere in between driving and flying, and usually only offers the worst of both; high cost, uncomfortable travel, and extremely long travel times.

After depressing myself with this conclusion about our one practical option to be uncomfortable, inefficient and environmentally dirty, I remembered some sound bite I had heard about this company that was trying to change the map of personal travel. They had the idea that electric cars would work for a population if you got past the cost and limitations of the batteries. Their model is to sell the car along with a lease for the batteries. The lease offers car owners the chance to swap them out as needed at battery swapping stations on long trips, or just for convenience reasons. I like the idea, but their implementation and leasing structure would only work in fresh markets, expensive ones, or very small countries.

The other thing I remembered was something out of Popular Mechanics. There had been a dream a while back about making cars into platforms for various propulsion and cab options; modular cars if you will. That seemed like a good idea, too, but only amounted to a half-assed pipe-dream from some car makers. So what happens if we combine those ideas?

As I drove along, it started making a lot of sense to me, and I proved a point to myself. The point being that we lacked vision in our down-turned, feeble, economically driven mindset. This lack of vision is something that we all seemed to acknowledge in our loss of Steve Jobs, but why isn’t it something we try to overturn; investing in, encouraging and supporting those who have some? Why aren’t we all seeking out new ways of seeing our lives? Why aren’t we experimenting and adventuring? Everyone I see in the public eye and milling about in society, just seems to be shelled up in bouts of irresponsibility, fear, and short sightedness. So why can’t we have a new way to travel that provides us more options?

Here’s what I came up with: The main “hurdle” of electric cars as reported by the media is their range, but like the SUV, this idea is about owning and driving around everything all the time. What if we bought electric cars with a range of 50 miles and an empty front compartment with a 48 volt plug. 50 miles would get us to the vast majority of the places we want to go, and for the other small percentage we just plug in extra power in that empty space. If we need hundreds of miles, then we plug in some rented batteries, or if we need to go off the grid then we plug in a turbine generator. All the parts and infrastructure are already in place. Think about it.

There is an auto dealership in just about every city in the country, so they could be used for the generator installation and battery swapping. Our roads are already in place, and it seems the US will never fully switch to anything else. And the biggest benefit of this sort of car is that an empty box and a plug will take advantage of what we do best in this country, innovate and compete. With a few standards for plug and power connections, we could see all sorts of plug-in options. I could even see external adapters that allowed for car daisy-chaining or on road recharging. We could have toll roads with overhead power like what we have for electric muni-buses. I can see a different world when I think about it.

What we need is some societal vision and daring to do things differently. Our problem is how we think about cars, not the electric car technologies. We are trying to make them replace an old limiting technology instead of seeing the immensely liberating opportunities they could bring us. Electric and gasoline power are totally different. Where one is heavy and slow to change, the other is light and adaptable. Our mindset with cars is based on a 150 year history of what they can’t do, instead of all the millions of things they could do if we moved forward.

Here’s the view from the bike trailer. My son carries around a little camera and comes up with some interesting views of the world. I think I might turn them into a book.

I think the MFA program did something to my head, because somewhere in the processes of dreaming this up I concluded it was a good idea to actually do it…

Globalization. For many it has been a contentious issue the last decade or two. For others, it has been a boon to business, and merely the next step in our economic evolution. In any case, it is hard to deny that we now feel the extreme consequences of globalization, good or bad. The truth is that globalization has been a fact of western life, and therefore its colonies and conquests for hundreds of years. It has only been the recent (maybe 30-40 years) industrially scaled globalization and hyper application of outsourcing  that globalization has had the extreme effects we feel. This system of  commodities, markets, raw materials and labor (i.e. Capital systems)  have a wide range of outcomes when applied, but like everything else, how it is carried out and to what ends determines the results.

When I got my old English (?) bike it had parts from literally around the world. Handle bars from Japan, end caps  and kick stand from the USA, hubs from Austria/germany, brakes from England, cargo rack from Switzerland and pulley, cables from who know where. And now, I continued that history  by “importing” a few more vintage parts from England to complete it. So in the case of my old 1954 English bike, maybe globalization has been a birthing ground for a solid piece of transport. Globalization produced a bike that has been used and appreciated  for over 60 years (though, seemingly not cared for in the last 10-20 years.).. Maybe this is a little romantic, because it is just a bike that could have been made anywhere at any time and done the same job; but you get my point.

I am the first in line to claim that globalization with its underlying capital systems is out of control. It is a Frankenstein that is slow killing us, but as William McDonough (One of the originators of Cradle-to-Cradle design) talked about in a little video I recently watched, the detrimental effects of business are design problems, where regulations are symptom. In his view, governmental regulation is necessary to stop these effects, but it will take a proper re-design to fix the error. He talks about how pollution is not in a companies best interest. Hurting customers, facing law suits, lower productivity from works, are all costs, that can be lowered or erased by removing the pollutant in most cases. IN the Cradle-to-Cradle design process, that is what they do, and the result is that the companies cut costs, increase productivity, and therefore make more money. Clean environments and healthy workers and customers makes for good business? Who would have thunk?

So is an international old bike really all that meaningful? Maybe a little, but probably just a object of vanity. Philosophically, though, some important the lessons are built into what I am doing with that old bike. A 60 year old bike that promises to once again be a utility (and maybe a beauty) for (wo)man kind, shows us what good deign and forethought can accomplish. If all our objects can become as much, I think our global society would be in a bit of a better place.

I’ve been doing a little digging online and cleaning on the bike in search of clues as to what the old orange bike used to be. I’ll add pics later.

Bicycle Parts Info:

The bike is from 1954 an was probably a Raleigh Sports or maybe a Club. Or, maybe it was a Speedwell from Australia or CCM from Canada (due to the fact that it has a Williams chainset.) It’s lost all of it accessories, so I may never know.

Brakes. Made in England, Phillips style pre 1970’s side pull caliper brakes.

Chainset: Williams steel 5-pin inch-pitch chainset - B100

Wheels: Dunlop 26 x 1 3/8 Made in England – Endrick style – one original tyre.

Hubs: Sturmey-Archer AW  July 1954 3 speed hub, with 3 speed deraileur for 9 total speeds.

I picked this up a few weeks ago off The classified site. Not really sure what it is, but has some high end parts and oddities. Not super rare and not in great shape, but the gearing, even with all that goop and dust all over it is smooth. The frame has lost it’s original paint, so that will be repainted, but everything else looks like it just needs to be cleaned up and lubed. The Saddle is an old leather Brooks, and might not be salvageable, but considering the value of those saddles, I am going to give it a try. Should be fun getting this looking and riding well again.