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Patrick had the idea of a group for a Riv-only commute group, so his rig has to be in there! He also took this photo.
Details:
'03 Curt Built, Dave Altered Custom Rivendell fixed gear commuter. 69" gear with 559X1" Specialized Turbos. Low-ish bars, and I use the drops all the time for headwinds. Honjos, with World's Largest Leather Mudflap, Adam on Carradice Expedition QR mount sans hoop, Flite, Phil, Nitto, TA, MKS RX-1s, Dura Ace, Ultegra, Sun, Revolution, EOS + Spanninga + PB Superflash. The bottle is an Eleven Gear vacuum flask with sippy spout.
The green line is my usual route to work. The red line is my usual route home. I vary the route a little, depending upon the time and traffic.
(Lots of annotations; hover over with mouse to see them.)
The second recumbent trike I built, with the optional wind screen mounted. This has been my preferred commuting vehicle to work for the last 1-2 years (the 2 years before I was riding my first trike creation)
check out the video!
This trike has a double wishbone front suspension (more accurately A-Arm plus strut) with approximately 15cm travel, and a rear swing arm with 10cm travel. Good cornering stability is achieved through the suspension geometry by lots of carefully balanced dynamic camber increase. As it is not loaded in the picture the suspension is fully extended - the wheels will straighten under nominal load. Another nice feature is the very compact suspension arrangement using extension springs, giving a lot of ground clearance while keeping the seat low for a low center of gravity. Most of the passenger weight is directly transmitted from the seat into the suspension springs and onto the wheels, reducing the load on the actual frame. As opposed to a car, most of the weight is the rider.
As I wasn't always sure about the best geometry, almost everything on this trike is adjustable - seat position and inclination, pedal position, camber, ackermann steering compensation, ride height, etc.
The main driver for this design is that it is easy to make with a limited set of tools and readily available materials. The frame is made of welded steel, deliberately under-sized in some places for weight savings and then reinforced with fibreglass and carbon fibre (e.g. the suspension arms have a minimal steel skeleton for strength, and vacuum molded carbon fibre for stiffness). I bought the wheels and kingpins from Greenspeed - almost everything else is either from the local hardware store, or taken from an old mountain bike. Tools required are a $100 stick welder (MiG or TiG obviously preferred...), a drill press with x/y table for basic milling of acetal plastic (or a small mill). Total cost in materials is somewhere around $1000 (out of which $600 went into the 3 wheels and the kingpins...)
I am currently working on an electric assist system that weighs under 1 kg including some batteries for limited range.
Shot with my Nikon P6000 in the 30s interval time lapse mode during a foggy drive in to work. P6000 attached to my Manfrotto tripod in the front passenger seat. The tripod legs are basically double jointed and can be adjusted perfectly to fit in the seat and remain very solid.
3 seconds of video @ 30 frames per second = 90 ’stills’ = one shot taken every 30 seconds over approximately 45 minutes of commute time (no carpool bonus since my wife was off today).
Every day, even Sat. and Sun. (because of club activities and sports), students diligently put on their uniforms in Japan and go to school. Often students have long commutes on trains of up to one hour. In Japan you choose the school you want to go to then have to pass entrance exams to get into it, it's not a matter of simply going to a high school in your district based on where you live like in the USA.
I shot this candid shot on a local train in the countryside of Japan early on a Sunday morning. It is such a representative scene of daily Japanese life I couldn't resist, even though I am generally apprehensive about doing candid shots of students.
The Japanese use cel phones to an extraordinary degree, but unlike American's they don't chat on them non-stop, they use them for e-mail.
I don't do candid shots too often. I really love the way this shot came out.
Sigh - the commute! A neccesary evil in so many lives, including mine.
Today made doubly worse by an accident on the M53 on the way to work and with insane amounts of roadworks on all my routes on the way home from work (Kensington and the Royal Hospital).
Of course, the radio helps, but so does having a camera on me at all times - I hasten to add - I was queuing here, handbrake on if mr policeman is watching ;)
I thought this shot summed up the mood of being in a jam, with the cone being just visible in the background and I liked the bumber to bumper headlights lighting up the exhaust fumes - the 'motion blur' effect on the right comes from curved blindspot mirrors.
Best viewed in lightbox mode.
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The sign to the right HOTEL HOTEL is where we were staying. Up two flights of stairs. I never an elevator in Guatemala. They haven't been invented yet. Right there along with hot water. Now if the temp was 95 or better in the morning I'd be happy with cold water showers, but when it's 50 and the breeze is blowing in off the lake thru the open windows !!!!!
Notice the banner hanging across the road a bit down the street? See the red square with the white slash thru it? Some of my friends out there know what this means! In WARMER climates it means FUN FUN FUN !! Diving. Though the lake here was pretty to look at, I don't think I want to get in. If it's 50 out here in the morning, what is it "down" there? Kerry doesn't do below 84 without a wet suit and Kerry hates to wear a wet suit. Kerry loves truly tropical waters in the mid to upper 80's. Yeah !!!!
Gee, back home a shower of 84 would feel cool, but it sure would have felt warm here this morning !!! And never mind the sewage run off into the lake - I'm sure it just makes the fish or what ever is down there grow bigger !!!! It's a typical third world country, here the ladies are washing their clothes, there the kids are swimming, and that great big pipe running down the hill and under the water is not international cable !!!
As has been the habit of humans for centuries, the big pit of water is a great garbage pit. And you wonder why God is mad at you and tossing back more and more natural disasters?