I'm just getting around to writing what I've been thinking/feeling/visioning since around 1988 or so. I've read a lot which came my way, listened to others and saw what they created for bikes. I bumped into people, contacted people and even tried hanging out with a group of people who rode and, or, built different bikes for their own pleasure, and others. Life happened while this was all going on, but, I always thought of bikes ever since pricing a car after having ridden a bus or relied on a motorcycle for getting to and from work. The divorce, and expansion of my job made me consider getting yet another car. After looking at my finances, and looking at the costs of owning an automobile, I realized that no matter how I cut it, there was a minimum it would cost one. Then, there was the company's prodding. Buy new, they said. Where is the increase in pay to cover this adventure, was my reply? No increase, they replied. I jumped anyway, with the thought of economic slavery simmering my mind. And, for days, this thought would stay on the back burner working its' way through.
In the coming days, of driving to the new manufacturing place I was setting up, and driving back and forth to meetings, and to suppliers and vendors, back and forth, and back and forth,,,. There has to be a better way! Mass transportation? Done in long ago by General Motors and associates. The buses never run where you need to go, and when you need to be there. Not in the U.S. Bikes? Having riden motorcycles for around a year, they had their drawbacks as well.
A co-worker bicycled in the better months in Minnesota, and rode the bus during inclimate weather. When he needed a car, he rented one.
Looking at bicycles, I decided to get one and try it out as I'd not ridden since I was a kid - and I was then in my forties. One of the guys that I'd hired, biked, and during lunch hours, we'd head out. Having ventured into design and materials, I was struck by the inefficiency of the mountain bike. Reading up on bikes at the library, I became interested in two things which leapt off the pages. 1) The Safety bike was at the end of the design cycle. 2) The design came from the late eighteen hundreds. Then I stumbled upon the recumbent bikes and then the Human Powered Vehicles. Which is to say, we have to name them something else besides just "bikes" because they won't let us play in "their" game.
Another claim to fame of the safety bike boys was to not allow advances into the certified races other than the safety model as "it's about the riders, not the bikes themselves." Or, some such nonsense because the first thing the riders do now is to come out with their own line of bikes or bikes with their names on them. Gee, I guess it is not about the bikes after all?
Maybe it was more about capital investments in mass manufacturing jigs and fixtures rather than improving the advancement of design for bicycles?
Schwinn, at one point, could brag about the frame costing just a little over a dollar to make? Don't know when that was as to where the dollar was valued. Now, Schwinn is just another name of a brand carried by Target stores. Manufactured where?
Anyway, life gave me the chance to explore and research the world of bikes by getting a layoff notice after filling a wharehouse of goods. Not needing my car, I parked it. Later, after my bike was stolen, I bought a better one.
Then I ran across, in an old book, where the bicyclists each gave a dollar to lobby for paved roads. Still much later, I ran across how the head of Columbia bicycles, Pope, had run most everybody out of business through the court system and the bicyclists' group which gave the money was his organization. Hmmm. And, Pope was involved with the internal combustion engine shinanigans while he was using his organization to lobby Congress to pave the roads. What a sell out. What a crook. With sterling people such as this leading the bicycle industry and dictating what the consumer is going to get,,,, leads me to this point.I got on a bike and started biking year around in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area to find out how the bike could be improved. Why (was the question) weren't more people purchasing and riding bikes?
These questions plagued me over the years which included finding a wonderful person, getting a ready made family and raising a family on bikes and public transportation,,, in Minnesota.
Getting into specifics will have to be the next thing.
