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I met Aaron Pidde of Blonde Fabrication at NAHBS in San Jose last year. Aaron would have been exhibiting this year had he not broken his hip a few months ago. He still came out to check out the show though. He showed me this crazy bike that he designed on BikeCAD Pro. I got a kick out of it, so I thought I’d post these photos. The bike is called the Amazon Blonde 36er and it has a pair of TA 4 ply 36 X 2 ¼ tires mounted to 36″ Airfoil double wall aluminum rims. At first, I assumed that this was purely a novelty bike and that no one would actually race on such a beast, but Aaron has actually raced it a fair bit. Apparently, it works really well. Too cool!

I think the photo below is hilarious. That 36er sure looks huge next to a normal 26″ mountain bike.

This travel to and from the North American Handmade Bicycle Show has been exhausting. Because of the storm last Wednesday, I decided to leave the Bicycle Forest corporate jet in the hangar and take a commercial flight for a change. I had a rather convoluted itinerary involving a quick stop in Detroit and a long layover in Dallas, but I did make it into Portland in time for the show.

The way home has not been so easy. Last night, I took the red-eye out of Portland and landed in Orlando this morning. From there, I flew to Detroit. After a weather related delay, I took off in a small prop plane for the final leg of the trip. We hovered over the Waterloo Airport waiting for the weather to clear, but it was not safe to land, so we had to fly all the way back to Detroit which is where I am again tonight. I’m crossing my fingers for better luck tomorrow.

I shouldn’t complain though. I didn’t have it as bad as Tyler Russell of Nice Bicycles who was snowbound in Wyoming for most of the show. Tyler epitomizes the spirit of the Handmade Bicycle Show. Not only was Tyler’s bike handbuilt, his posters were also hand drawn.

As I sit here snowbound in Detroit, I’ve put together a small gallery featuring the work of a few more BikeCAD Pro users at NAHBS.

Nice Bicycles

Dean

Caletti Cycles formerly known as Cloud Nine Design

Vicious Cycles

Marcroft Cycles

Sweetpea Bicycles

Vanilla Cycles had another classy booth, as always. These two bikes are from Sacha’s Speedvagen line which features the work of guest builder Mike DeSalvo.

Margo Conover from Luna Cycles seemed to be constantly occupied with inquiries, possibly thanks to a recent review in Bicycling Magazine.

Bilenky Cycle Works’ booth was full of interesting bikes including the Viewpoint semi-recumbent tandem.

Igleheart Cycles

GoodTimes Bicycles

Pereira Cycles

Jones Cycles

Grognard Bicycle Company

No one was surprised when the President’s Award, the People’s Choice Award and the Best of Show Award all went to Sam Whittingham of Naked Bicycles and Design.  Sam’s fixed gear bicycle was the talk of the show. It features old fashioned elements like beechwood rims and grips, polished lugs and a sculpted handlebar. The bike also has modern elements such as state of the art hubs and a front disk brake with cool internal cable routing. Another neat touch was the hole through the top tube for securing the bike with a U-lock.

Since there were no awards that BikeCAD could have fit into, I had to take satisfaction in seeing owners of BikeCAD Pro winning awards. Besides Sam Whittingham, who’s been a long time BikeCAD Pro user, the following award winners also use BikeCAD Pro.

Ahearne Cycles won Best City Bike

DeSalvo Custom Cycles won Best TIG Welded Bicycle

Crumpton Cycles won Best Carbon Fiber Bicycle

Calfee Design won Best Tandem

Engin Cycles won Best Off-Road Bicycle (not shown here)

Here’s a photo of my booth neighbour from NAHBS, Tony Maietta. Tony used to work at Hot Tubes, so not only does he weld his own frames, but he also paints them too.

Here in Portland, I’m sharing a room with Joel Greenblatt of Clockwork Bikes in Minneapolis. He brought along this beautiful monster cross bike that turns my head every time I walk in the door.

Today was the first day of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland, Oregon. I’m here to promote BikeCAD. I’ve had lots of interest through the day at my booth. I also conducted a seminar on BikeCAD in the afternoon.

As soon as I had the chance, I wandered over to say hi to fellow Canadians Andrea and Sam at the Naked Bicycles and Design booth. Sam only brought one bike down this year, but it’s a beauty. His booth looked really classy with the park bench stolen from his parent’s lawn.

Tonight, Sacha White opened up the doors of the Vanilla workshop for a framebuilder’s party. Sacha has a really cool shop that seems as suited to live music and beer as it is to building his legendary frames.

It was neat to see the stacks of bikes parked outside Sacha’s shop. It’s clear that the builders at this show don’t just build bikes. They obviously ride them too.

The show goes on until Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned for more photos tomorrow.

We’re having an early winter here in Canada. The weather this weekend wasn’t ideal for showcasing our latest pedal powered creation. However, I wanted to submit an entry in the Specialized and Google Innovate or Die contest and that contest closes next weekend, so I felt like it was now or never. You can see our video on the right.The Family Truckster is a four passenger quadricycle that splits in two to create two back to back recumbent tandems. The Family truckster features four independent drive trains. Passengers in the rear can either pedal backwards or install their chain in a figure 8 and pedal forwards. Passengers in the rear can also choose from two different handlebar positions.The Family Truckster can lean into turns thanks to three pin jointed cross tubes that link the two sides together.

BikeCAD 5.3 is now available. New features that are common to BikeCAD and BikeCAD Pro include:

• New icon to minimize the display of the tabs at the bottom of BikeCAD.
• Show either Campagnolo or Shimano brake hoods.
• Full German, Italian and Portuguese translations.
• Type in mathematical expressions into dimension fields (18.5*25.4, etc.)
• Check box to make both front and rear wheels the same size.

New features in BikeCAD Pro include:

• Unlimited fit schemes in the Fit advisor.
• Fit advisor can now manage formula for determining effective top tube length, stem length and saddle setback.
• Move the sitting position back and forth on the saddle, or even stand off the saddle.
• Show block of text in the title block in any of the four corners of the drawing.
• Streamline your interface by removing menus, options and dimensions that you don’t need.
• Post your own version of BikeCAD on your own site using BikeCAD for the Web.
• Initiate custom bike sales by collecting contact info and body measurements from prospective customers using this free PHP script.

Today was the Santa Claus Parade. For the third year in a row, a collection of local environmental groups got together to enter a float as the Tree Huggers. This was my first chance to unveil a new four person bike I’m calling the Family Truckster. It made it though the parade with flying colours. Although I’m glad that it still isn’t painted as there are a few modifications I still want to make to the bike.

Here are some photos and a video from the day. The video features music by Ontario’s own Matthew Barber.