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It was an honour and a privilege to see the Treadmill Bike featured on this morning’s Today Show!

1995 model year and older vehicles produce 19 times more air pollution than 2004 and newer models. That’s one of the messages that the Retire Your Ride program was delivering at the Dundas Cactus Parade last week. Retire Your Ride is Canada’s vehicle recycling program. The program aims to get higher polluting vehicles off the road and is offering discounts on transit passes, bicycles, car sharing memberships, new or used cars, or even $300 cash to people willing to recycle their old cars.

I was happy to see the Bicycle Forest Pickup Truck Bike used to promote the cause. You can learn more about Retire Your Ride at: retireyourride.ca

Earlier this week, Reuters came to film a report on the Bicycle Forest. The first thing we did was take a couple treadmill bikes for a stroll in the park. The bikes turned some heads, so Reuters ended up interviewing a bunch of people about their thoughts on the new fitness craze. Reactions were surprisingly favourable. Scott Ferrede from Core Photography happened to be out as well and took the photo above.

When we returned from the park, we rode some more bikes and talked a little more about BikeCAD. Watch for this piece on TV in the coming weeks.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with the crew from the Chinese language television show which translates to Timeline Magazine. Lily and her team did a really thorough job of capturing footage of most of the bikes in the Bicycle Forest rental collection. They also interviewed me about my Maritime Couchbike trip, the Treadmill Bike, as well as my current focus on developing the bicycle design and fitting program BikeCAD Pro.

This piece should air in the next few months, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out. In the meantime, I better bone up on my Cantonese.

We’ve arrived in Richmond, VA for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. Look for us at booth #503. We’re just between Calfee and Cyfac and just across from Black Cat Bicycles.

I’m here with a pre-release version of BikeCAD Pro 7.0. I’m looking forward to showing off the new features including curved tubes, enhanced logo controls, and customizable colour palettes. I’ll also be doing a seminar at 4pm on Saturday. Hoping to come away from the weekend with some good feedback. To purchase a copy of BikeCAD Pro click here.

BikeCAD Pro version 6.52* is finally ready. New features include:

• The option to save and retrieve templates for laying out dimensions, paint schemes and frame styles
• Enhanced control of handlebar, and saddle design
• User dimensions can be created horizontally and vertically
• Angular dimensions can be shown in degrees, minutes and seconds
• CSV output file and dimensions dialog box have been synchronized
• CSV output file can now be customized
• Change the look and feel of the BikeCAD interface along with GUI font
• Three state lock frame icon
• Three state fork crown clearance icon
• A new Japanese translation thanks to Susan and Koh Annoura
• An updated Italian translation thanks to Francesco De Vittori

All these features and more are described in the following video:

More videos can be viewed on the new BikeCAD Youtube channel.

*6.52 includes a correction over 6.51. When selecting drop handlebars, 6.51 did not record the choice of ergo or track style bars. 6.52 can be downloaded from the same source as 6.51.

I really enjoyed this video from the Oregon Manifest Constructor’s Design Challenge. It was particularly satisfying to see so many BikeCAD users doing so well in the competition. Very inspiring!

Here’s another one!

Last weekend was the Santa Claus Parade in Kitchener-Waterloo. Once again, a number of local environmental groups joined together to enter a float called the Tree Huggers. Here are some photos and a video from the day.

The Human-Powered Ornithopter (HPO) Project is part of a student organization at the University of Toronto that is focused on the design and construction of innovative, high-performance, human-powered vehicles. Their goal is to provide students with practical hands on experience in engineering design while at the same time promoting efficiency, sustainability, and the use of human-power as a means of reducing society’s impact on the environment. The HPO Project seeks to achieve one of humanity’s oldest dreams with the successful flight of a human-powered, flapping-wing aircraft, the last of the aviation firsts.

On Monday, the 43kg aircraft with a 32 metre wingspan took to the air for the first time. On Saturday, October 24, 2009, the team will be displaying the ornithopter at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ontario from 10am until 4pm.

For more on the HPO project, visit: www.hpoproject.ca.