Tag: bicycles

This Company Wants to Bring Back American Bike Manufacturing

Posted on by robbie

Americans are fast embracing cycling as a means of commuting.
But as more and more cities make room for bike lanes, the price tag that comes with the pedaling lifestyle is a hefty one. In fact, a conventional bike costs upwards of $1,000, while more specialized bikes can retail for more than $10,000.
Despite the popularity of cycling in the United States, 99 percent of the 16 million bikes sold across the country in 2013 were made abroad — mostly in China or Taiwan — according to the National Bicycle Dealers Association. But a Portland-based startup is looking to change that statistic by bringing back jobs to Oregon and creating affordable custom bikes all at once.
Circa Cycles uses a manufacturing process that can produce a 21.5-pound custom bike in just 10 hours or less, compared to the typical 50 to 100 hours of hand labor that other companies require to make an average bike.
Founder Rich Fox broke down the process of manufacturing a bike and then found ways to reduce the time required. “It goes together almost like a Lego set. It’s kind of like a combination of Ikea, and Lego, and Swatch, in a way,” Fox tells Fast Company.
The one-of-a-kind bikes are put together with a specialized glue used to construct race cars and airplanes. And rather than using a hand-painting process, Circa bikes are anodized at a Portland shop, allowing a customer to personalize the color. Fox uses all local milling and piping suppliers to ensure a fast turnaround.
Customers can also decide on size, handlebars, drivetrains and tires using computer-controlled milling (CNC) machines to produce customized designs in a short period of time. Frames cost $1,100 with the completed bicycle starting at $1,500.
“Typically, making a custom bike takes anywhere from three months, up to as much as five years,” Fox tells Fast Company. “So the idea that you can turn a bike around in less than 10 days — it’s pretty innovative to go from zero to bike that quick.”
While the price tag is still high, Fox hopes the more affordable option will encourage more cyclists to opt for an American-made bike. Ultimately, he hopes to bring more jobs back to Oregon.

“I moved to Oregon about 15 years ago and I really love it here, and I really wanted to contribute to the local community by creating something here to boost the economy,” he says. “I just wanted to make where I live a better place.”

MORE: What Has Two Wheels, Two Pedals and Can Boost the Economy?

Put Your Hands Together for the Heroes Competing in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games

Posted on by robbie

You’ve heard of the Olympic Games. And you’re probably familiar with the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. But have you heard of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games?
The games, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, has grown every year to become the largest annual wheelchair sports competition in the world. This year, a record number of participants — 660 athletes — have registered to compete in 17 different events that will be held from August 12 to 17 in Philadelphia.
One of the athletes is new to his sport: Ellwood “Woody” Allen of Philadelphia. During the Vietnam war, Allen served in Army and was stationed for much of his service at Fort Benning in Georgia, where he was a behavior-science specialist helping veterans returning from the war cope with what they had witnessed, what they had lost and how they would rejoin the civilian world. Two years ago, Allen lost his leg due to an infection.
After his leg was amputated, Allen was the one who needed help. As a means of recovery, he began cycling using a borrowed bike from a veterans group that sponsors adaptive sports.
Meanwhile, a Disabled American Veterans (DAV) chapter in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, was looking to donate an adaptive tricycle to a deserving vet. A member of the DAV, Bill Pinkerton, told Kristin E. Holmes of the Philadelphia Inquirer that they decided to donate a trike because, “it gives you mobility, hand-eye coordination and it gets you outside and meeting people. After trauma, you need to get out.”
A counselor at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center connected the DAV with Allen, who rejoiced over receiving the red adaptive tricycle. “The fact that they were willing to help somebody, I hate to say I feel emotional, because we’re grown men and we’re not supposed to,” Allen told Holmes.
Allen will compete as a member of the Philly Phever team at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. For him, victory will mean “not finishing last.”
MORE: Can Riding Tricycles Help These Injured Vets?

Volunteering Enables Low-Income Ohioans to Get Their Own Two Wheels

Posted on by robbie

When it comes to low-cost transportation and exercise, nothing compares to a bike. But you’re more likely to see people commuting to work and school in high-income communities than in low-income ones.
Toledo Bikes! is looking to change that dynamic by spreading the benefits of cycling to people of all income levels.
The Ohio nonprofit recovers used bicycles and refurbishes them while also teaching low-income kids and adults how to make repairs. People can volunteer in the repair shop, and once they fulfill a certain number of hours, they are given a bicycle of their own. Last year, the center racked up 848 volunteer hours, and 44 people earned their own wheels.
Toledo Bikes! also donates bicycles to community organizations and sells them at affordable prices, using the profits to keep its programs running.
This year, Toledo’s Hawkins Elementary School held a bike-themed essay competition. The 12 kids who wrote the best compositions explaining why they’d like a bicycle got to ride one home, supplied by Toledo Bikes! Even those who didn’t win one were able to enroll in one of the center’s build-a-bike or bike maintenance classes.
Erik Thomas of Toledo Bikes! told Eric Wildstein of WNWO that kids who start out taking classes are apt to return to the bike shop. “A lot of them we see coming back over the years as they’ve grown up,” he said. “They’ve gotten their first job, they need transportation, they’ll come in here and earn some hours.”

Cycling Tourism Has the Potential to Transform This Hardscrabble New Mexico Town

Posted on by robbie

While Gallup, New Mexico is known as the “Heart of Indian Country” because of the many nearby reservations and its sizable presence of Native Americans (who comprise 76 percent of Gallup’s McKinley County), that wasn’t always the case.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, Gallup became notorious for something else: The fact that, each year, police put 30,000 people in the drunk tank. Many of those arrested were Native Americans who flocked to Gallup since it was one of the nearest places where they could purchase alcohol, Jonathan Thompson writes for the High Country News.
But now a group of entrepreneurs, Gallup boosters, and outdoor enthusiasts are working to make the town famous for something much better (and undoubtedly, much healthier) — mountain biking.
Chuck Van Drunen, who lived near a vacant lot known as the Brickyard, contributed to the bike-centered transformation of this gritty town. Until 1960, the Brickyard held kilns for brick-making, but after that, it became a neglected piece of property where drunkards and transients hung out. Van Drunen tired of booze-addled people wandering in the alley behind his house, so he started leading bicycle trail rides over the Brickyard.
It caught on, and Gallup’s mayor Jackie McKinney convinced the owners of the Brickyard to donate or sell the land to the city. Community members hired a bike park designer to plan proper trails and enlisted the Youth Conservation Corps to clean things up. In September, the Gallup Brickyard Bike Park officially opened.
Thompson writes, “Over the last 15 years, local bike-advocates have built and designated dozens of miles of trails in the nearby desert and forests and spiffed up the old downtown.”
Various bike enthusiasts formed the nonprofit Gallup Trails 2010, working to establish trails throughout Gallup and the nearby Zuni mountains. And while no one thinks Gallup is on track to become the next Moab — Utah’s mountain biking mecca — the town now hosts mountain biking races and is beginning to attract outdoor adventure tourists.
Does the enthusiasm for mountain biking have the ability to turn around Gallup’s tough economic situation? Currently, more than a third of McKinley County’s population live below the poverty line, and its unemployment rate sits at 8.5 percent, substantially higher than New Mexico’s overall rate of 6.8 percent. Still, the bike trails and cycling-centered tourism promotion seem to be moving the city in the right direction.
Lindsay Mapes, the owner of Zia Rides, a Gallup bike-race promoter, said that when she used to tell people where she lived, she’d get a pitying or disgusted “Gallup Look.” “Now it’s like: ‘Oh, yeah, I love it there. The trails are great!’ I love it when I see locals interacting with someone in the outdoor community, boasting about the assets we have. There’s a lot of community pride.”
“Sometimes, I see it as a revolution,” she said. “This group is really using the bike as an agent of change.”
MORE: The Two-Wheeler to the Rescue
 
 

The Two-Wheeler to the Rescue

Posted on by robbie

Jim Turner sees the world through bicycle-shaped lenses.
He’s a two-time Motorcross National Champion who left an engineering job at Ford Motor Company to found the Boulder, Colorado-based company Optibike (which designs and manufactures electric bikes), and he’s the author of a book — The Electric Bike Book — which is about bikes (naturally).
So it’s not really a surprise that in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy struck the East Cost, Turner began thinking about how electric bikes might be useful for recovery efforts.
Inspiration kicked into high gear (pun intended!) when the Colorado floods of September 2013 stranded Turner and his family. The roads to his community were washed out, and the only way to get out or bring supplies in was on foot or by bike. (Or by unicycle, as one goofy video demonstrated.)
Turner decided to turn his early ideas into a learning experience for the industrial design students at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. (David Klein, a friend of Turner’s, is a professor there.) Turner challenged students in Klein’s class to design prototypes for a Bicycle Emergency Response Trailer (or BERT). The contest had a few parameters: The trailer had to be light enough that an Optibike could pull it, it needed to run on solar power, and it had to be narrow enough to fit on a small trail.
Students came up with designs that included solar panels for charging cellphones when a community’s power is out, emergency lights, water filters, fold-out tents, and drawers for medical supplies. One team’s BERT folded out into a table that emergency crews could use for a staging area, while another doubled as a stretcher.
Turner told Jason Blevins of the Denver Post, “It reminds me of the beginning of Optibike. This is something that hasn’t been done before. There’s so much room to be creative.” He said of the student designs, “Every one of them, I see something I like.”
So in a few years, when disaster-stranded people are in need of rescue, don’t be surprised if a fleet of electric bicycles and emergency trailers are their saviors.
MORE: His Family Lost Its Farm. Now He’s Making Sure No One In The Community Suffers the Same Fate