Many of you have probably already seen Damon Rinard’s now classic article about his experience building a carbon fiber bike in his garage. It was originally posted close to ten years ago and is currently archived on Sheldon Brown’s site (if any of you are not familiar with Sheldon’s site, it is a great place…

28 days! Man that is fast. That is how long Trek’s Advanced Concept Group took to redesign and produce a new TTX time trial frame for Lance Armstrong to ride in the 2005 Tour. An article in Design News, an engineering trade magazine, explains how the design team used their software tools to pull off…

I have been traveling this week and my internet access has been pretty spotty. It seems to be working now, so here is a short post that I’ll credit, indirectly at least, to the Masiguy. He left the comment “makes me want to design something” to my recent post about Specialized concept bikes. OK Tim,…

You probably noticed that this sketch looks a lot like a rendering that I already posted (which is now in the header). This was one of the quick sketches leading up to the rendering. One element in this one that I like is the little rear fender integrated into the frame. It wouldn’t necessarily have…

I am not referring to the high dollar custom machines that framebuilders create. I am talking about bikes that are modified by their owners to make them unique. It is fun to see what people do with their bikes. Pictured above is a bike, most likely owned by a messenger, that I saw in Manhattan.…

Bike Friday Walter has a great post about the benefits of riding a fixed gear. I think he makes some pretty good points and I have to agree with him that riding a fixed gear bike is a great experience. Though I do most of my riding on bicycles with derailleurs, I think that everyone…

One of my favorite parts on my current road bike is the Giant aero seat post shown in the picture to the left. It looks great on the bike and, with its 4:1 length to width section profile ratio, has a much lower drag coefficient than a standard round post. Due to its location on…

Every week, I get an email newsletter from Design Within Reach, a great modern furniture catalog. Today, the feature story was about cities made for walking (and biking). Urban design is a subject that always interests me. In this case, they used the nearby South Carolina city of Charleston as an example, so I felt…

I love to look at old pictures and drawings from the early days of the safety bike era. What an innovative time it was for the young bicycle industry. The books shown in this picture are some of favorites. Archibald Sharp wrote “Bicycles and Tricycles” in 1896. It is a very detailed book on the…

OK, I know I said I would be back to normal design related posts after the weekend, but something changed my mind. This morning, I read in the paper about two more cyclists who were killed in a nearby South Carolina town. On top of that, I read the comment from Fritz about my last…

Today’s post is a little different than my others. Most of my posts have something to do with the design of bicycles. This one is really more about design for bicycles. For some time, I have been involved with local bicycle advocacy issues in the larger cities where I have lived. I currently enjoy living…

These renderings have been circulating on the web for a couple of years now (thanks to Fritz at Cyclelicious for reminding me about them). This summer, a few bloggers picked up on a press release stating that these concepts would be released by Specialized in 2006 as the new Venom line. Treehugger was one blog…

Here is a quote from yesterday’s post on Salsa Cycles’ blog (check out the rest of the blog for some great commentary). “Industrial design is becoming more important. It used to be that if a product simply worked really well and did what it was supposed to, that’s all that mattered. Now, it also has…

I recently sold my old Scott aero bars on Ebay. Though I no longer used them, there was a time when I installed them on my bike every Wednesday afternoon for the weekly local time trial. Of course, as soon as the time trial ended, they came off to sit on my workbench until the…

You have to give SRAM credit for building suspense around their new shifters. Cyclingnews and VeloNews both now have explanations of how they work, but for me the suspense is not quite over. I think the shifters look pretty good, but I will reserve judgment until I get a chance to try them in person…

I was sorry to read on Bicycle Retailer yesterday about the death of author Tom Cuthbertson at age 60. Not long ago, I bought an original 1972 copy of his book “Bike Tripping” at a garage sale. As the title implies, the book is full of great information about cycle touring and many other types…