Author: admin

Today, Alex Brede was passing through Waterloo on his transcontinental bike tour. He’d read my Couchbike story in Adventure Cyclist and wanted to come by and see the rest of the bikes in the fleet.

It was nice to chat with Alex about his trip so far. He started at his home in Bellingham, Washington and is on his way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a steamy hot day, but Alex still wanted to put in a few more miles towards Niagara Falls before the day was out.

I took this photo just as Alex was heading off in the midafternoon sun.

It was nice meeting you Alex. I hope the rest of your trip goes well.

It seems like everywhere you look people are catching Treadmill Bike fever.  The Country Music Television network called about doing a piece on this latest transportation craze.  Nicole gave an able demonstration while I did an interview by speaker phone.

It was a fun afternoon. I’ll pass on more info about the show as news comes in.

This weekend, I checked out some empty shop space in Toronto. The space is located between the Beaches and Leslieville, just a couple of blocks from the lake.

The main floor is 750 square feet. I tried to imagine how various rental bikes might fit in the room. Unfortunately, the following image is unrealistic as the pickup truck bike would never fit through the 36″ door. The Couchbike could be assembled inside, but it would have to be disassembled to fit back through the door as well.

I never imagined that I would ever live in Toronto, but this is certainly a nice part of town. There’s lots to think about here.  Decisions, decisions.

Greg, Mohrgan, Ted and I just returned from the Bicycle Movie Night at Dundas Square in Toronto. The free outdoor event featured ‘ROAM’; a new film from the producers of ‘The Collective’ about some of the world’s top mountain riders. There were also some shorts including this trailer for the upcoming Donut Ride documentary.

It was also very fun to watch our own movies on the big screen. We had two movies in the lineup. The first was the following shortened version of “Tips for Cyclists”.

The second was this shortened version of our Treadmill Bike ad.

Natasha now has her G1 driver’s licence, so that pretty much makes her an expert. Here she is in the Pimped Out Rhoades Car expounding on how cyclists and drivers can learn to share the roads together.

Thanks to Craig Cardiff for the use of his songs. All tracks are from the album Stuck Up In Outerspace (1996), except for Craig’s cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979 which is from Fistful of Flowers (2006).This is the extended version of the movie that will be shown on May 25 at the Bicycle Movie night at Toronto’s Dundas Square.

BikeCAD 5.2 is now available.  New features in BikeCAD Pro include:

• Annotate the drawing by placing notes directly on the screen
• Option to add a graphic image to the Title block. See here for a sample PDF.
• Each fitting scheme can have its own unique way of taking body measurements. Fitting schemes need not even be based on body measurements.  Fit schemes could instead translate measurements from size cycles into actual frame geometry. For more info, see the customization interface for the Fit advisor
• Miter templates now account for seat stays and chain stays
• PDF output can now include imported photos
• Display effective seat tube length
• Title block info and note info can be opened separately. See here for more info.

New features that are common to BikeCAD and BikeCAD Pro include:

• Mac users can scale photos and paint schemes by holding down the ALT+SHIFT keys together and dragging the mouse forward and back.
• Control of hub flange diameter
• New on-screen dimensions associated with the auxiliary views of the chain stays and seat stays.
• Display both center to center and center to top seat tube measurements at once

Empire Public School celebrated Earth Day today with an environmental fair. The Bicycle Forest was invited to promote the benefits of cycling. We brought along a laptop so kids could design their own bikes using BikeCAD. Here are a couple of designs created by the kids. Pretty creative!

Because it was rainy today, Mohrgan and I elected to ride the pickup truck bike. We stayed nice and dry as we pedalled away inside. There was room in the back for a Hulabike, so we brought that along too. Both bikes were a big hit with the kids.

Here’s a video of our ride across town.