Category: Pedicab

Preparing for Tour De Fat 2016

My son has seen video of the 2008 Tour de Fat where I went into Rickroll by Rickshaw mode. He wanted in on it for 2016, so we’re bringing it back 2016 style.

I sold the rickshaw earlier this year, so we’re going with the pedicab this time. The CD skipped when it was in the boombox on the rickshaw, so we’re going to use the line in and an old MP3 player.

The first step for decoration was to come up with a new display board for the back. First, I designed one and then put it on a picture of the pedicab. Then, I made some mild changes and printed it out on 9 sheets of packing labels (not including errors). I then applied the labels to a piece of poster board and mounted that to the pedicab. Here’s the mockup:

Fake photoshopped Rickroll by Rickshaw sign
Fake photoshopped Rickroll by Rickshaw sign

…and here’s how it turned out in real life…

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Still more work to do in the next week and a half, but we have enough done to go tomorrow if necessary.

“Rickshaw Season” is becoming a legacy term

It snowed today. I picked the kids up from school today in the snow. The Maxxis Hookworm tires on the pedicab handled everything quite well. I’ll have to try deeper snow sometime.

Pedicab in the snow
Pedicab in the snow

My “Rickshaw Seasons” are getting longer as the years go by, and I wonder if I’ll ever reach the year-around “season”. Probably depends on the weather. Snow was not a problem today.

His and hers John Deere bicycles

I have wanted his and hers bicycles for my wife and myself for some time. They come into Boise Bicycle Project from time to time. Today, the day arrived. A pair of matching John Deere bicycles. Green with yellow “JOHN DEERE” lettering. Both appear to have three speed Shimano hubs. Here they are loaded up on the pedicab for the ride home.

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There’s some rust. The cables are shot. My bike is missing the chain ring, but that’s pretty much all that’s missing. The bikes are probably from the 1970s or 1980s (I’ll learn more I’m sure over the coming weeks). Both bikes have the mixture of campy and his/hers I was hoping for, and the three speed hubs are a bonus.

New Year’s Eve Potato Drop by Pedicab

Parking in downtown Boise is no fun. During events, it’s really not fun. What to do? Bundle up the family and take the pedicab. I was coming off most of a week of winter flu (no fun) and was not 100%, but I’m a Rickshawala, so we’d be okay. We were.

New Year's Eve passengers
New Year’s Eve passengers

Everyone was bundled up. It’s cold out there, but it’s very doable. We parked on the edge of The Grove where the New Year’s Eve Potato Drop was taking place. Met some friends. Saw the potato drop us into 2014. A great event and a wonderful time.

Rickshaw + Pedicab Stop Motion 4K

Here’s the intro sequence my wife and I shot for the passive cycling show TV Cycle.

Both the rickshaw and the pedicab (which isn’t technically a surrey, but you work with what you have sometimes) are in there. It took about an hour and 45 minutes (with a conversation break in the middle) to shoot that sequence. It was shot on Canon 60D digital SLR, and if you look at the quality options, there’s “Original” in the list. In this instance, it’s 4K at 4096 x 2304 pixels.

It was a fun shoot. Here’s the test I did by myself earlier. The “panning” is done by selective cropping, and in reality the camera never moved on the tripod.

To Barber Park and back

The kids and I rode from out home near 25th and State to Barber Park yesterday. The round trip was around 22 miles total including a dead end detour and some Boise State campus riding. Here’s a map that will give you an idea of where we went, it but lacks some serious accuracy:

Where the map is the most off is from around the Bown Crossing area to Ekert Road (the road in front of Barber Park). There’s a ton of new Greenbelt in there so I wasn’t along side Warm Springs on this trip like a would have been a few years ago. Here’s a look at some of the new Bown Crossing area via This Is Ambient:

We ended up crossing that bridge, then taking the concrete greenbelt path in the very front of the shot.

A couple unpleasant additions to this trip:

  1. I didn’t eat before I left.
  2. My light group isn’t working at present.
  3. It was late evening, and pretty close to dark on the last leg to home.

So, I ended up down on calories and riding hungry home since there was the whole battle for daylight.

It was a nice trip though, everyone had fun, and we made it back. Back when cycling was seasonal, I used to hope to reach 100 miles in a “Rickshaw Season”. I cleared over 20% of that in one ride yesterday. Times have changed. and I am a much more functional Rickshawala than I was in season one.

Hauling people and stuff

People sometimes wonder what one does with personal pedicab. Common uses are similar to the family car. Here, I’m hauling two people and a 25″ CRT TV. I don’t necessarily recommend having people sit on the back parade style, but in this special case we weren’t going far, I was riding cautiously, and that TV pretty much took up all the leg room.

Faye and I ride up the bench for a drum key

I need a drum key for a bass banjo project I’m working on, and Faye wanted to ride along. So, off we went. We climbed up the bench on the rail bridge (as featured in this episode of TV Cycle) and made it to Gig’s Music on Orchard. That street seriously needs bike lanes. Lots of bike traffic and no lanes. Annoying.

Here’s a couple pics at the end of the ride. Faye had fun. Me too.

One less car (or is that "One less minivan"?)

Boise Bike Week 2011 recap

Last week was Boise Bike Week 2011. The kids and I had fun on the pedicab. We were out with Kelly for the Thursday “LOOK! Family Ride for Safety” ride. The ride was a Greenbelt loop ride from Veteran’s Memorial Park, across the new 36th Street bridge, to Main Street, and then back to the park. It was a somewhat similar route to this recent episode of TV Cycle:

We didn’t make it to the Veteran’s bridge like that episode of TV Cycle did, but there was a lot of common trail. This is an unusually nice area to ride.

On Saturday, we participated in the Pedal Power Parade. I was short on time and could either shoot an episode of TV Cycle on the Schwinn or take the kids with me on the pedicab. I took the kids. It was a fun ride. The parade was a good ride, and there was food afterwards. The kids played with some other kids in the park, and on the way home we rang the bell outside the capitol building. Here’s some pictures:


 

 

…and yes, the pedicab is now advertising for TV Cycle. It’s not the prettiest sign since I made it by printing on six sheets of legal paper and then taping them together onto a piece of poster board, but it works.