Today I finally was able to install the key assembly in the power train for the new tandem. This assembly is a jack shaft that allows the blending of power from the rider and the auxiliary electric motor. That is the rider can power the wheel with no auxiliary power. The auxiliary motor can power the wheel and the rider can coast. Finally both can power the wheel at the same time.
At the same time the shaft itself functions as the pivot for the rear wheel suspension. This is good because the chains don’t vary in length as the suspension flexes. Read More
Tandem Milestone:
October 5, 2011
Look Ma, No Brakes!
May 5, 2011
We are celebrating today, Cinco de Mayo, but is has no connection to the 1862 battle of Puebla when the Mexicans defeated the French. Instead we are celebrating a milestone in the construction of the new bicycle. Read More
Trial Fit:
April 10, 2011
Today I reached a significant milestone in the design and construction of the new bicycle. I put the major components together this afternoon for a trial fit. There is a photograph of the new bicycle on the blog. The components are the wheels with tires, the front fork, the main frame with a small front sub frame and the rear suspension frame its Fox Vanilla Shock and one seat. Read More
Arizona Springtime
March 28, 2011
We are in the middle portion of Arizona, about an hour northwest of Phoenix. The weather has been improving daily here in the Sonoran Desert. High temperature today was 78 degrees after a low last night of 42 degrees. It makes it up to 65 by about 11 am. That is how long I had to wait to do some painting. Each day we get in an hour of walking before the temperature gets too warm. As soon as the sun sets, however, it starts getting cool quickly. Read More
Rage Over a Lost Penny
February 11, 2011
I guess I know about how Beethoven felt when he wrote the piano rondo, (“Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio in G major, Op. 129”, better known as “Rage over a Lost Penny”.) I have been making little doo-dahs for the new bicycle. I needed a dozen or so braze-on binder bosses and a dozen or so water bottle bosses. What I have been doing on the cold mornings is to get in my trailer with the electric heater. I set up the Smithy Lathe with a steel rod and start turning out bosses. Today I was finishing up some water bottle bosses. They are three eights of an inch in diameter necked down to nine thirty-seconds. They are about five sixteenths of an inch long and are drilled and tapped for a five millimeter bolt. I whack it off with the hack saw and dress it up a bit with a file. It takes me about fifteen minutes to create each one. Read More
Something New
January 29, 2011
In six years of travels we have never leased a lot for a whole month and stayed put. Oh yes we have stayed in one area for a month or longer, but always in places that limited our stay. We would have to move every couple weeks to go to the dump station, or to reset the clock. These locations always are close to our children’s families homes in Hillsboro, OR or Gilroy, CA. Read More
One Step Forward:
November 6, 2009
“One step forward and two steps back;” That’s what my Dad used to tease me when I complained about the five block walk to school. He lived with his folks near Ewan Washington on a dry land wheat farm. He walked two miles to school and in the winter with drifting snow blowing hard he told me the he would take a step forward and the wind would blow him back two steps. I got suspicious when he told me the only way he got to school at all was to turn around and walk backwards.
Rear Suspension, Work Day
November 2, 2009
We have moved to Gilroy California and it is once again warm. Today I dug out my entire horde of aircraft steel tubing. When you buy steel there is a substantial minimum order. When I built “Path” I had plenty of steel left over for another complete tandem. The entire horde turned out to be 55 pounds. We have hauled all of this along for five years now
Power Distribution Hub
September 5, 2009
The heart of the electric power assist turned out to be an elegantly simple device. Creating the design taxed my creative imagination for a couple of weeks. My wife, Judy, may have began to wonder if I had lost track of reality as I traced imaginary chain lines in the air and doodled increasingly complicated sketches of Rube-Goldberg devices on scraps of paper.
Son-of-Path
September 4, 2009
I have started a companion blog to our regular travel stories starting here in September. I have started building a replacement for our recumbent tandem bicycle we call “Path.” Until we dream up a new name for the new bicycle it shall be known as “Son-of-Path.” I don’t believe the gestation of the new bicycle will take as long as “Path,” (a couple years.) I do expect this to take several months and be full of adventures and indeed misadventures.
