Update to the battery pack upgrade

Back in May I upgraded the trike's electric assist battery pack to 48 volts from 36V.
This has made a nice difference in the effectiveness of the assist motor, but the one drawback has been how the pack sits in the trike. Juergen and I had quickly installed the pack in the nearest handy container, an old metal toolbox. This meant that the box had to be put in the cargo box of the trike, opened up, and the cable plugged in. It also meant that the pack had to come with me whenever I left the trike unattended for any length of time, since a loose toolbox just kind of says "steal me".

Here's the bare pack:

So I needed a better arrangement, and that was for a sealed box that could stay with the trike. The easiest and most out of the way place to put it would have been along the front end of the cargo box, but since the pack is kind of heavy I wanted it by the right rear wheel, to balance out the weight of the assist motor built into the left rear wheel (the trike when empty can lift a rear wheel on sharp turns, so now both rear wheels have some weight and this no longer happens). So while aesthetically this isn't the best spot it certainly works from a practical point.

My choice of material for the box was corrugated plastic, aka coroplast. If one has to use petroleum for anything then coroplast and duct tape gets my vote! ;) And both worked well for this application:

After cutting and assembling two holes were drilled through the bottom of the box as well as the cargo box floor and bolted in place:

Then, after the pack was fitted inside, I drilled two more holes, one for the power cable, and one for the recharge cable. They came out underneath like this (the small black box is the controller):

Juergen gave me a handy key-operated on/off switch that I wired into the end of the box. This disconnects the pack from the controller while in recharge mode, and to also prevent any minor power drain while parked:

Now that I was no longer taking the battery pack inside to charge it, I had to add an extension to the charger's cable out to the trikeport (the charger can still be removed from where it sits and brought with me if I'm on a longer trip and have to recharge before coming home). So one length of cable comes out into the trikeport and ends in a plug, and that gets plugged into the jack of another cable that I clamped under the seat and ran back under the cargo box to connect with the pack:

Note in the bottom of the photo the bottle for the recently installed Air Zound horn. It's a nice loud beastie that rattles me a bit any time I use it, but it's far more useful in traffic than the squeeze horn it replaced. Here's its business end:

And as is often the case with my projects, Jett supervises:He also thinks the empty trikeport is a good spot to hang out.

another trailer!

Yet more mail on a trailer built using my website info. And this one made it to Burning Man!

Mark-

Here is a shot of the completed cart on the playa at Burning Man this year. The sculpture behind me was called "Crude Awakening" and the figures all worshipped a 90' tall oil derrick that went up in flames on Saturday night. We gave away a lot of noodles this year here at Crude Awakening and at the temple, both just after sunrise, to a lot of hungry folks. My girlfriend made the stock for the soup and I did most of the hardware. We had a propane tank in the cart along with our cooler and dishes and the 2-burner stove sat on top of the cart. We detached the bike during serving and blocked the corners of the cart for a stable serving/cooking platform. It all went really well and we'll probably do it again next year! Thanks again for the blueprints- they worked out great!
-Jon

Folding bike page update

I received another email from someone with an Auto-Mini folding bike, and he has done some nice work on it. My webpage on folders was for a long time the only page that had any info on the 'Mini, and I keep adding to it as photos come in. Check out this newest addition here.

Bikes to Africa

The re-Cycles Co-op is donating bikes and parts to an initiative called Bicycles For Humanity. We have about 40 or so bikes ready for them, and boxes of parts and a 6 foot stack of knobby mountain bike tires (which are kind of useless on our paved roads, but perfect for African rural areas). The big pick-up day is tomorrow, Saturday the 29th. Check the specific BfH page for details.

CBC TV interviewed me at the shop yesterday, and it should air this evening. They also have an article on their website.

Gig alert

Next Tuesday the IJO takes on its biggest challenge to date.

We will be playing the music of Gil Evans, the famous Canadian composer who created some classic albums with Miles Davis (among others). We will be recreating both "Sketches of Spain" and "Miles Ahead", both of which have never been performed in Canada (and rarely elsewhere), mainly due to the complexity of the music, plus the cost of the large group needed! The regular IJO big band orchestra will be enhanced by two French horns and one tuba from the NAC Orchestra, plus bassoon and oboe from the Ottawa Symphony (I think a harp might even show up).

This is a huge challenge for us, because the music was never meant to be played live. The classic recordings were done in multiple takes, with the best ones stitched together in the studio (there were even some splices mid-take). We have to do it all in one pass!

If you like this music this may be your only chance to ever hear it played live. Trumpeter Lina Allemano from Toronto will be our guest for this show.

Details at: http://www.impressionsinjazz.ca/CP-021007.html

More trailers! (aka fan mail)

I've received another email from someone that built a trailer based on mine. Here's his email:

"hi there,

I came across your website when I was looking for trailer plans, and I found your instructions helpful for creating the trailer i just completed. I wanted to email you a picture of my trailer (it is made specifically to carry a small boat that I just built.)

also, someone gave me a burley trailer hitch, but it seems ridiculously easy to rip off the design (just a piece of 1 inch angle iron and 1 1/2 inch angle iron welded together). I am going to try using this setup with the rubber hose as the flexible member, but if that doesn't work, burley sells a replacement rigid rubber piece that fits perfectly (for $5).

thanks again for the plans,

v"

He also included a link to his boat page, and photos were attached:

Out and about

I like exploring my environs, and the bicycle is the perfect machine for that. I'll try and post about some of my fave places as I go along...

My friend Andrea and I have been going on bike rides together for many years (I'm lucky that her partner doesn't cycle, so his loss is my gain. hehe). It's a time for us to chat and get caught up, so we are never in a hurry and just sort of tootle along. One route that we like to take is the bike path along the Ottawa River on the Quebec side. This path starts at the end of the Booth St. (Chaudiere) Bridge and ends some where past the Alymer Marina. It's a nice route that is mainly covered by trees and so quite nice on a hot day, and it never seems too busy, though we do avoid going on a weekend (since we are both self-employed we can usually find a weekday afternoon for these jaunts).

Our usual destination is the beach at Parc Des Cedres near the marina, but halfway there is another fave spot. There's a bend in the river here where it widens to become Lac Deschenes (directly across from Brittania on the Ottawa side). And the river makes a bit of a drop, and there's also a small island that creates a channel and the water really rushes through between there and the mainland. And at the end of this channel are the ruins of an old hydro generating station. The interpretive plaque says something about it being built around 1900 and dismantled only 50 years later. Someone mentioned to me that this may have been after a large control dam was built upriver, which thus lowered the water level here a bit too much.

All that remains are some concrete walls that are gradually being worn down by the wave action. It's still rather impressive, if only due to the amount of turbulence in the water. The photos below were taken from a smaller island that creates yet another channel that we were able to cross due to low water levels at this time of year. And while it was early Sept. it was 31C that day, so perfect for playing in the water. And with the low water in that second narrow channel a small pool is created that one can soak in quite nicely.

(Check out this blog page for photos of what the place looks like during high water.)

Here's a Google satellite shot (obviously taken in the Fall due to lack of greenery):

Gig alert - "Swing Explosion Gala"

This coming Saturday (Sept. 15) the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra and Swing Dynamite will be teaming up for a fun evening of music and dancing with "The Biggest Swing Dance Party of the Year". You get dance lessons, music and live band, and also a jitterbug contest. Details at both the IJO and Swing Explosion sites.

bike co-op break-in

Well, it took 8 years, but we finally had a break-in at the re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op. Some time last week between the Wednesday and Thursday shift someone got into our shop. They did not pick the lock or kick the door in, but simply punched their way through the drywall right beside the door, and reached around and undid the latch. They then found our cashbox and made off with it. The bikes and tools were left alone, since I guess none of that stuff would fetch very much money, and cash is, well, cash! To add a weird twist, when the volunteer mechanic showed up and discovered the break-in he noticed that the thief had taken our plastic sign off the door and used it to cover the hole! The Police were called, and the sign was taken for fingerprinting, and the officer said they would be investigating.

Fortunately we only lost around $150, so not a huge loss. But still, to think that someone would rob a community non-profit operation is appalling, and we're certainly hoping it wasn't someone who had been in our shop before. Yes, I know that even churches get ripped off, but I still think it takes a low form of life to steal from those that have given a lot to their community (remember that re-Cycles has been run for all these years by volunteers).

But we will not let ourselves get paranoid. The punched-out wall is being reinforced so that method of entry will no longer work, and we will now be emptying our cashbox after each shift. An alarm system and security camera are being considered as well.

Protest

I've taken part in quite a few protests in my time. And for these events I usually bring a drum along, and with other musicians get a beat going so people can dance and move and blow off some of the anxiety and stress that can be associated with public demonstrations. If there is a police barricade being approached I've never condoned the provocative or confrontational methods used by some like the Black Bloc, as I feel non-violent action is the only sane solution.

But one can get a bit frustrated when one watches what the police can get up to. Over the years I'd heard reports of them using "agent provocateur" tactics, and at the recent SPP protests in Montebello it looks like they did just that. Watch this video, and see a union president call them out on it. Brilliant stuff... (and thanks to HPVOoOer jlam for the link.)

UPDATE: And not too long after I posted this the CBC reported it on their Ottawa webpage.

UPDATE #2: As of midnight the updated CBC story shows a photo where one can see that the footwear of these bogus protesters matches those of the cops dealing with them.

UPDATE to the updated update! The CBC now reports that "Quebec police admit they went undercover at Montebello protest". And my, but what an absolutely bullsh*t spin the police put on it...

Fire

My previous neighourhood here in Ottawa was Chinatown, which is on the west side of Bronson Ave. (I'm now a few blocks east of there). That area unfortunately has seen more than its fair share of fires over the years, and this past week saw three of them. Fortunately, no loss of human life reported in any of these, though I don't know the status of any pets.

The first one was last Sunday. As the weekly HPVOoO dinner was ending and we were all coming out onto the street we noticed fire coming from a dumpster behind the pizza shop at Somerset and Bronson. Fire trucks were already on their way, and things were quickly dealt with.

Then on Monday night, a derelict house caught fire a block from there. From the Ottawa Citizen: "A fire that tore through a two story duplex at 164 Cambridge at 9 p.m. Monday night is still under investigation. The fire started in an abandoned structure that was home to vagrants, said district chief Monty Malloy. The fire was under control just before 10 p.m. No one was hurt during the blaze, but the structure was totally destroyed, with damage estimated at $100,000.".

And then in the wee hours of Thursday morning the buildings at the NW corner of Somerset and Booth were ablaze in what seems to so far be the worst fire of the year, and arson is suspected. "A total of 30 apartments in the century-old buildings and five street-level businesses, including a pizzeria, pool hall and Asian and Caribbean grocery stores, were destroyed."

You can read CBC articles on this fire here and here.

I went and had a look yesterday afternoon and took some photos, as demolition was taking place and firefighters continued to hose down the remains. It was a sad sight...

From the southeast corner of Somerset and Booth.

On Somerset looking northeast, halfway between Booth and Rochester.

Booth St. just north of Somerset looking west.

Booth St. just north of Somerset, looking west behind the row of buildings

UPDATE: Lots more photos at the Ottawa Firefighters website.

Wood bikes

I've always loved the idea of a bike made from wood. There are structural challenges involved using wood as a frame material, due to factors like the strength of the wood and the alignment of the grain. But such bikes have indeed been made, with some created from laminated wood, and others from bamboo.

Perhaps the best-known bamboo bike is a commercial one made by Calfee Design:


Then there's this one from Brano Meres Engineering and Design:


From the website of the American Bamboo Society:


The Bamboo Bike Project:


And of course one could always use a Bamboo bicycle trailer:


Next up, a page about wooden recumbents:


And a page just full of wood bike porn like this one (drool...):


And perhaps one of the coolest wood bikes, this tandem:


Do I hear project ideas gearing up at Mike's Blue Camembert woodworking shop? ;)

to tell the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but...

In an hour I have an appointment to get a tooth pulled. It chipped lightly a while back, then cracked badly, but fortunately has not hurt at all after the initial incident. I'm getting it pulled instead of fixed because a) I don't have a dental plan to cover any repair costs, and b) it's the last molar at the end of the row, so I'm not really going to miss it.

But it's still never fun getting dental work done, so with apologies to Al Gore it's been

(wait for it...)

An Inconvenient Tooth.

Gig alert

Fans of the Jivewires have a chance this weekend to catch the band, and the show is free! On Saturday night we'll be performing on the Sparks St. Mall from 7:00pm till 10:00pm. When we did this gig last year we had some folks swing-dancing on the Mall!

Oh, and the band finally got a promo video together. You can download it (in .wmv format) from the band's website, but I've also uploaded it to YouTube (of course!) and embedded that below.

"You are the leader pot smokers emulate"

Every now and then I stumble on one of those silly quizzes, and sometimes I take the bait. I liked the results of this one so much that I had to post it here! ;)

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

(with four blog posts today can you tell that I took a rest day from unpacking?)

even more moving photos!

When relocating it's not a common thing to have to take the "garage" with you. In my case, I had built a covered shed for the trike at the old place, and it of course had to come with me. It was fairly simply put together, so easy to take apart. When rebuilding I'll need to beef it up a fair bit, because at the new place I'm told the spot for it can receive a healthy build-up of ice in the winter from water dripping off the flat roof. But this rebuild will have the added benefit of diminishing my woodpile, which for the most part still resides at my old place with the owner's consent.

So here's how you move a wide load with the trike - just put the stuff across the box and hope it all weighs enough to keep it in place. With slow cycling it did. ;)

(note red safety flag)

The roof panels, acquired from a friend that was demolishing an outbuilding. They fit almost perfectly into the box, and I mean like with a 1/2" all around to spare! The only thing that prevented them from lying flat was the battery box for the electric assist (which is soon to be relocated under the trike in a semi-permanent installation). Most of the move was actually done without using the assist at all (battery pack not even in place), but I was getting tired at this point and needed the extra help.

My regular 2-wheel bikes were easy to fit, but not so the big beasts. In the above and below photos you can see the Rainbow Chopper, the CCM tandem. and the Infinity recumbent.


Gratuitous cat photo. In the new place, and Jett is mauling his catnip Teddybear, recovered from under a shelving unit while packing.

more move photos

Since the owners of my previous abode were not returning until mid-month I had time to move, which was good since I had to figure out how to fit everything in the new place! So instead of having the usual "do it all in one day" I did it in stages. For the big stuff Richard arrived with the organ trailer, and Greg came with his old Cannondale trailer. Between my trike and these machines we were able to move a fair bit in just two trips! What helped was there we were only going four and half blocks away...

(The cooler is full of small bits of drum hardware)

Since after unloading we had both machines empty, Richard said he wanted to find out how well my trike could be carried on his trailer. Given the layouts of each, it was a surprisingly good fit! Width-wise the trike just fit inside the railings, the rear wheels tucked in behind the rear trailer wheels, and the front wheel just nudged the front rail. Funnily enough, Juergen-- who did the welding for my trike--also helped Richard weld this trailer together, though they were done about a year apart.

post-move

It is truly amazing the amount of stuff one can accumulate over time. Now, it's understandable that I would have drum and music gear that can take up a lot of space, along with the various bikes. But when you keep hanging on to things like very obsolete computers then it's time for a sanity check!

The very first computer I bought back in 1990 was (don't laugh) an Atari. A 1040ST to be exact, with a whopping 1 meg of RAM. The reason I bought it was because not only was it cheaper than a Mac, it came with built-in MIDI ports for doing music work, something no other manufacturer offered. It's been said that musicians kept Atari alive long after the gamers had moved on to other platforms (my machine my have been one of the few that never had a game played on it), and I was one of them. ;) It cost me $1000 for the machine, and another $500(!!) for the MIDI software (Notator, which morphed into Logic, one of the current industry standards). I even used this beast to get on the Net back in '95, via National Capital FreeNet using the Lynx text browser!


And of course the ultra-ergonomic mouse...

(not that the PowerMac's original one was much better.)

When I bought my first Mac back in '99 I transferred most of the MIDI files over, though it was a bit of a pain because I was going to new software and it didn't recognize Notator's loop function. And since I didn't move all of the files (and because I had the shelf space) my Atari set-up stayed around. And it had grown over the years, due to people giving me the darn things, so I had two monitors and two hard drives, including the largest hard drive Atari ever made, the mighty Megafile 60 (a whopping 60 megs).

(and due to its fan noise it sounded like a small vacuum cleaner when you fired it up)

But then the move into smaller living quarters comes up and it was time for a purge. Funnily enough, someone bought all my Atari gear for $50, but my upgraded PowerMac 7500, which served me well with almost no grief from 1999 until June 2006, had to be given away.