I've now completed migrating my Clunkerbike posts over to ShinyHappyRainbows.com and will now let this blog fold. My bicycle stuff is very design and mullet hack oriented, so I'll still be posting bike and trike things. While I wait for the weather to improve, so that I can get outside and practice a bit of welding for the trike, I've been working like I'm full-time on bike related designs, as well as music designs and projects, along with other artistic musings. (A wooden trike may be built in the not too distant future, as a test for a CNC router I'm planning to build.) The site is probably more intriguing - unless you're a bicycle purist to the level of ignoring all other facets of life. So the original Clunkerbike, this place, is an archive. No new content will be added here, the domain will lapse, but the posts will remain up on clunkerbike.blogspot.com but noting new will be found here. From now on, if you want to keep reading my stuff, come over to S
I'm sick of waiting to die. I'm 61, I have congestive heart failure (diagnosed 2 years ago after a heart attack that "would have killed [me] if [I] weren't a cyclist":my doc said) and insulin managed diabetes (adult diagnosis but hey, my endocrinologist has just declared me a Type 1, at 61!), so I've been feeling pretty damned brittle for the last 2 and a bit years. I have been finding myself getting a bit paniced on the bike when I can't handle a short, uncategorised climb, say Brighton Rd from Inkerman to Alma. I have literally been acting like I'm waiting to die. Then I snapped. "Fuck this shit!" I screamed, "Didn't I once write a song with a chorus that is literally, I want to live forever, or die trying?!" How was this cardio-anxiety any sort of " Gallant Attempt at Immortality "? (<- Soundcloud Link) My response has been to hatch, as "Baldrick" would put it, a cunning plan. I have come up with
I'm one of those "Clives" (old men) who, as well as a touring bike, has a cargo bike. I usually put it to work doing this kind of thing... I call it "Thunderbird 2" because It's my plan to have some standard pods. There's a big black load deck on the front, where most, middle-class people have a kiddie carrier, but why would I bother with that? My kids are old enough to have kids, if they want to. Mine's the bicycle equivalent of a Toyota Hilux, it has a box pod that normally mounts on the load deck, the original plan was to put a counter and coffee machine on it (but food truck laws! Jesus, was going to cost as much as doing the same with a large van! Tens of thousands of bucks, just to get compliant!) and I've even built a disability seat, but that's yet to be pressed into service, or even tested. However, today I started building a campervan pod for it. A 1.8m x 0.5m camp bed with a bivi, that folds up into 0.6m wide,0.52m tall pod. Th
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