Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 3

Day 3 was just as uneventful as the previous day for the bicycle show part of it. There was a young man with a cool method of carrying a baguette. He was saying that he got the bread for free, but found out that someone was trying to steal his rear wheel at some point earlier in the day.


At the show was this really cool setup, a flame thrower attached to frame.

The photos for the rest of the show that I took on the Sunday. One of my favourites is/was the booth Banjo with the Xtracycle clone. After the show as I was walking back to the hotel I came upon a modified Xtracycle, it looks like someone is making the ride safer for their young ones. I left the hotel for the train a few hours early and decided to go to the british pub in town. However it was closed at the time I went because of an earlier opening for a soccer match. So I found another pub/eatery for a Guiness. While there I stumbled upon a new way to serve a bacon cheeseburger and am happily passing it on. The process is to slice the top and bottom buns in half, cook them like a grilled cheese (gc) sandwich. A slight modification I have made to it is put the onions and bacon in the gc part, and the hamburger after being cooked ends up in the middle. The local restaurant I frequent called Su Casa in Orleans Ont made it with the modifications, and it stays perfectly together unless a slippery tomato is slipped on the meat. Then I went to the train station to wait for the trip home.

On the train trip home I sat down beside a young man who was wearing some closed headphones. As we were talking about headphones and music it came about that he was in a band. I recommend you give it a listen as it is pretty good music. Note: from the download page you can find all sorts of lossy and non-lossy compression.


Enjoy the photos and music.


B

Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 2

Well for day 2 of my trip I woke up and went to the show. Nothing exciting happened except for seeing and photographing some really nice handmade bikes.

Lawn mower powered by human effort


The rest of the day 2 photos are here.

Trip to NAHBS 2010, day 1

Well I left Ottawa by bus for a connecting train to go to NAHBS in Richmond Va. I had to get a drive to the bus station, and I wanted to be kind to my chauffeur. So I decided to take the 6:00am bus instead of a 3:00am bus. My SO/Chauffeur was woken at 5:00am to get me to the bus. One of the reasons I did not chose 3:00 was the weather was fine. Well shortly after leaving Ottawa the weather took a tiny turn for the worse, snow was blowing across the roadway. I thought not a problem the bus is just going to fly through the crap. Well the other road users slowed way down and my worry meter started working overdrive. And there went my chance to nap as I had purposely stayed up so I could sleep on way to train. As the bus continued on we passed vehicles in ditch and one was on it's roof. Worry quotient creeping up more, and I started to think that it was a bad idea to give 90minutes layover time. I talked myself down a few notches by thinking that a big city like Montreal will have bus lanes. Ha, when we got close to the city around 8:00am the bus comes to a complete stop a few times. Since I was at the very front of the bus I asked the driver if they still stopped at the train station. He said, "no, that they go directly to the bus station since last fall". I asked what time did the bus get to the station, and he said "around 8:40-8:50, and the metro is in the station". Well the bus arrived at 8:45 and I got to the Amtrak station to pick up my tickets in 15 minutes, leaving 30 minutes to spare. Well the train left the station on time to head for New York where I had a 6 hour layover. I was hoping to store my luggage in a locking locker while I was going to check out the city. Well since there are no lockers the only thing to do is sit and wait. It was nice to find out that the train to Richmond is electric until Washington when they switch engines. As I got off the train in Richmond I met some fellow passengers on route to the show. One of them was there to be a judge for the show, J.P.Weigle. I was able to get a few hours of shut eye on the train, but not enough. The early morning arrival allowed me to get a room and crash for a while. I then went over to see where the show was, and saw that there was a party that night in the hotel sponsored by Bicycling magazine and Blue Moon beer. At the party there was a contest to see who could ride the 500 virtual meters against the clock. The final was 1k, and the winner of both the men and women are and here There are a few photos to remind me of stages of the trip. Day 1

Santa parade Ottawa 2009

There was an event on Dec 5th where 22 human powered vehicles (and a few e-bikes) participated in a parade. The bicycles ranged from homebuilt tall bike to a short wheel base recumbent bike being pulled along by Rudolph and a mini Santa. Trikes were well represented in both delta and tadpole designs. Blackburnpete was riding his Sun EZ-3, wingbatwu on his Trice and me on my Catrike road. The other trike is one we have nicknamed "hammerhead", in some of the videos you can see the operator lifting the wheels off the pavement. BTW the ring on the front of hammerhead contains leds frozen in distilled water.




When the photos come more description will be available. All particpants had fun and are making plans for our local St. Patty's day parade.

Yahoo, we won the Novelty award

We the above (click on photo for full team) won an award for the parade of lights Christmas parade we entered. We won a plaque and trophy for Novelty theme in the 2009 version. I forgot to mention, the crowd was pegged by police to be around 130,000.

Orleans parade of lights (aka Christmas parade)

Well it looks like now I have learned how to do a few things like add a link to my photos I am at it again. Post number two for 2009, will do more but order is well past when it happened. Tonight was the night for lights in a Christmas parade in the bedroom community of Ottawa called Orleans. It is a mid to large suburb of nearly 125,000 people. The parade follows the route called the heart of Orleans aka main street. Here is the parade route. A few of us met at my house to setup our recumbents for the parade, us being HPVOoO. Human Powered Operators of Ottawa is our mostly parade riding group. The recumbents in attendance, a Catrike, Trice and Sun EZ-3 for the three wheelers. A BikeE, Action Bent and Sun EZ-1 for the two wheeler recumbents. And lastly the coup de grace, a tall bike. More photos will be added when the other get their photos linked to me.

B

Wow, sure did let a lot of time pass between blogs

Hey it sure has been a long time since the last post. I think I will go back to my photos and see where I would like to start from. Off the top of my head, I see that I went to Indy to see the North American Hand Made Bicycles show. The photos in my link show most of the bicycle makers in North America in the customizing bicycle business.

Here is link to the downtown parts of Indy, Monument circle I really enjoyed walking around the center of town, it was nice to see the buildings curve around monument circle. Map of downtown Indy

And then the bicycle show in the best convention center I have laid eyes on. The show had a lot of bicycles and builders to photograph. Beginning with, things that make you go hmmm . And some of the world's fastest human powering a vehicle. Sam Whittingham with his hand made frames called, naked bicycles And some nice looking Bilenky frames.


B