Dry seats

Some companies advertise by printing tons of bicycle seat covers and putting them on bicycles in dense parking areas. In this case the company is advertising for student work opportunities and they were placed on bicycles around the TU Delft campus. If you don't mind being an advertiser for random companies it is an easy way to get a seat cover. They are quite handy in the Netherland's wet weather.

Grote bakfiets

The Pirate Bar Squat in Schevinengen loaned us their huge Dutch cargo bike for the weekend so we could transport food and equipment for our art exhibition. Mark and I drove it about 20km out to a restaurant/food distribution center to see what we could glean from the unsellable food. We ended up with lots of great fruit (pineapples, mangoes, avocados, bananas, apples) and a mother load of cucumbers. We turned it into a really nice fruit salad for the expo.

The trike handles fairly well but the main issue is that is weighs a ton and only has one gear which is fixed. These bakfiets haven't really changed over the last 80 years or so. They are really calling for a modern redesign. Lighter components and materials with proper gearing would make this ride so much more pleasant.

Vacuum Rental

Renting a super vacuum cleaner is no problem when you have a bike rack to carry it home on!

Velo-city presentations

All of the presentations from the Velo-city conference in Brussels last month are now available online: http://www.velo-city2009.com/programme-en/plenaries-sessions.html. There are some excellent presentations and a wealth of knowledge from many different cities and organizations. Enjoy!

Row, row, row your b...bike!

Yesterday I was able to try out a rowing bike for the first time. My professor introduced me to Wim Thijs, a brother of Derk Thijs who invented the rowingbike. Wim has an early model of which very few were produced. It is a long wheelbase version that is quite a bit different than the current production model.
After a little coaching I was off. It isn't too much different than controlling a recumbent, except the rythm of rowing takes a bit to get used to. I also had to figure out how not to use my legs for balancing.
It is a nice comfortable design and allows you to get a full body workout while riding. Turning it around takes a mighty big area though. There have also been the European Rowing Bike Championships for the past ten years where racers from around the world compete for the title with the next ones coming up in September.The mechanism is made up of a sliding pedal set on the main tube of the bicycle which is fed around a pulley to a chain on a normal multi-speed freewheel. The handle bars are also connected via a string and pulley to the pedal set. It is a nice design but the newer fully cable driven designs are supposedly much better.

De La Haye Bicycle Frame

Check out what was dug up from the TU basement today. A De La Haye prototype frame it seems. De La Haye is French for The Hague. I don't know much about the frame yet, seems to be titanium with glued joints and these crazy steel tensile members for the top tube, down tube, chain stays and seat stays. I have a feeling that it wouldn't have much torsional stiffness. We will have to put some parts on it and give it a go. I will give some updates once I find a bit more info about the bike. For now, just check out the photos.

Bikes Not Cars Festival

Looks like the bicycle rowdiness is also catching on in the Netherlands. A group of people are hosting the "Bikes Not Cars Festival" in a couple of weeks. Seems to be primarily a political action with various types of bike wars, except that they are also declaring war on cars. Critical mass, cargo bike races, and tall bike jousting will all be rolled up in the 3 day fun. Here is a brief schedule of events:

July 3rd-5th

Friday, ijsbaanpad 12, amsterdam
- opportunity fot those without a bike to fix one
- banner painting
in the evening soup and a band

saturday
- 14.00h critical mass, museum square, sith bikepolo and slowbiking on the way
- 19.00h ijsbaanpad, voku, folowed by bands:
de fatwas
de reclassering
hysteria
and one more band

sunday
- infomarket
- workshops
- cargo bike race
- tall bike jousting

Find out more information at:
http://bikesnotcars.wordpress.com/ and
http://www.myspace.com/destroycars

Kieran's new ride!

My good friend, Ty, and his wife, Alexia, had a baby since I've been in the Netherlands. I really like the handlebar mounted seats for young children and thought that it would be a nice practical gift for the family. Many people use them here, especially in combination with a rear seat, but I have rarely seen them in the States. I have a feeling that people think it is dangerous to carry a young child on a bicycle back home but I figured Davis was the perfect place to introduce one. These are a few photos of Ty and Alexia with their boy, Kieran, on his new BoBike seat. I managed to pick one up for 20 euros on Marktplaats.nl (the Dutch Craigslist) which is well under the retail cost of about 70 euros. I found an extra mount so they could quickly hook him up to either mom or dad's bike.

Leisure ride on a rickshaw

I came upon this guy on the way home from work. He had just pedaled from Rotterdam to Delft on his cycle-rickshaw. He removed the rear seats so it wouldn't be so much of a workout. Either way it is still a heavy beast but since it is flat here, not such a big deal.

Schoolverkeersexamen

The summer has brought the bicycle training classes for children. Kids in the elementary to middle school range all don orange saftey vests with their own number and get practical instructions on safe and smart bicycling. This is one of the route signs for the class put up near my house.

The beer bike cruising the streets of Delft. You can rent these from a tourist company in Delft: http://www.delftexpress.nl/. Is beer the next sustainable fuel??

Update: Just came across this article explaining how the beer bikes are a nuisance in Amsterdam and have been banned from some areas. The company owners do claim that only a sober person does the driving.