Extending the bike affair and developing a cycle hack over the weekend
My legs still hurt long after the 48 hours of thinking, prototyping and testing new ideas at the CycleHack event that ended on Sunday. It was aimed at spurring ideas to reduce the barriers to the utilization of bicycles in urban settings and for people like me, looking for more excuses to expand the use of their bikes, it was the perfect challenge.
The beginning of the bike affair
My father claims that I learned to cycle when I was about four, but while I cannot be sure of the exact date I have started using a bycicle, the truth is that it has been my companion since long. During the school summer breaks, I used to ride it at least twice a day — during the lunch hours and in the evening, for long strolls along the beach.
So I grew up used to riding mostly in calm places, where it is possible combine pedalling with listening to good music or, most recently, to a good book (yes, many people know about newest addiction to audiobooks), but last year I had the opportunity to ride in London.
José — a friend of mine — faithfully lent me his Tokyo bike and there I was, riding from Islington to other parts of the city. I got to experience what it is to be in no man’s land. The road was quite scary to use, with the heavy traffic, trolleys and trucks, and buses, and the so-called bicycle “highways” were no easy endeavour as well. I was almost as afraid of being ran over by a speedy cyclist on those lanes as I was of being rolled over by a bus on road. So I tried the sidewalk, but people would have none of that. Where else could I ride?
True, the canals and the parks offered some respite, and sometimes the sensation of being somewhere else, so for people looking to have that peaceful riding experience they would be one of the go-to places.
But overall, the experience of riding in the city was quite different from my memories of riding peacefully along the beach or in quiet streets were I could venture riding without hands and music — shhh! At the beach location, one day I even tried to do a Titanic pose while using headphones and going down a slope, to be surprised by a policeman on his moto staring at me and waiting for me to bring the “show” to an halt. Rest assured, I would never attempt to do that in the middle of a busy city.
Answering to the “maker” urge in me and registering for CycleHack Lisbon
Due to my long affair with my bike it was with some excitement that I heard about and registered to CycleHack, a global event happening in different cities in the world, to develop ideas to increase the adoption of bicycles in urban context (yes, that context!). It would take place at a renovated industrial wharehouse, in the old industrial part of Lisbon, now home to artists and their creative businesses.
It seemed that there were enough conditions being met for a well-spent weekend.
The event started Friday evening, where there were some presentations of ongoing projects to improve and increase the usage of bikes — on schools, for people with deficiencies, and in urban settings. One of them was one app called Biklio, to incentivize people to use the bikes when shopping for local businesses, to be launched the following week.
The problems aka the “pains”
As for the participants, we quickly wrote in some forms a specific “pain” we were facing when riding bikes.
But everyone seemed quite exhausted (I certainly was) to come up with the actual ideas to further develop during the weeked), so we called it a day.
Next day, while driving to the event that would start at 9:30 am, I thought about what I really would like to focus on, and the pain of riding under the rain during Winter prompted me with the idea of rain protector. After all, while I associate summer with riding along the beach, I associate winter with riding in a more rainy and urban context (mostly after the experience in London).
If that problem could be solved or mitigated one more obstacle to using the bike beyond the summer could be removed.
Day 1: From the primitive sketch to the abstract protype
First I did a brisk sketch of what I was thinking of, and started to “recruit” some colleagues to help me out on the project.
Bruno was one of the first to help out, so I researched some of the images of motorcycles that I recalled had a concept similar to what I was looking to have for the bike.
Then I started assebling a prototype in cardboard and plastic wrap, using some of the 3D printer rolls and filaments that were in that space (a maker space for sure) garbage bin. Bruno II (another colleague called Bruno) started producing some pieces to create also a styrofoam version of the bike structure.
As I researched further on the internet, I realised that despite me never having seen anyone using a bike rain cover there were already commercial solutions for this. Yes this has pained somedy else. There was for example something called a nubrella — that makes you look like you came out of a spaceship — and another one called Dryve that was closer to what I had in mind — the BMW C1 cover over a bike. In real life, thousands of references would be analysed and put side by side, but in this case, looking at some videos, we were just trying to get a sense of the actual difficulties in the use of something existing in the market.
Left to our own devices and choice of materials, prototyping continued and took almost all the morning. Only by lunchtime me and Bruno I were running to the local hardware store to by some materials to turn those prototypes in to reality. It took us almost one hour to choose the materials. The flexible pvc would be used as the material to make the cover and some “wonder” tubes — we are not sure to that what are they used for (electricity, gas, maybe?) — would be used for the frame. In testing, and bending, the several materials contending to be the frame, one wooden stripe could not take it and broke. Oops, this one wasn’t going to work out in real life.
By the afternoon two other elements were recruited — Jorge and José — and we started giving shape to the tubes and thinking about how to connect the plastic to the frame.
Jorge suggested that a nylon fyshing string would work in sewing the plastic to the frame and José and I drove to the closest fishing store he had noticed before nearby. The owners were kind enough to dispense us with 5 meters of 0.8 mm fishing string (as they only sold rolls with over 100 meters). Yey!
But the string and the sewing would have to wait until the next day. The rest of the day was used to play with shaping the tubes and defining the pieces that would connect the frame to the bicycle.
Day 2: Learning to sew, to use the screwdriver, and bringing it all together
The following day, Sunday, Bruno started to design some pieces for the 3D printer to unite the extremities of the frame made of two separete tubes. We put the pvc over the frame and marked the places where the nylon string would pass. Jorge taught me how to use the screwdriver to punch the holes in the plastic cover.
Next challenge (that no one was expecting to be a challenge) was to sew that to the frame. It turns out that in a room full of “makers” no one knew how to stich. We turned to YouTube and after some movies played in slow motion we got the handle of a basic stiching technique (or well, perhaps we created a new one), that seemed to look good and work out.
The stitching process took long, but hey everyone learned a new skill, and we got to know better each other during the conversations during the stitching period.
Ana, one of the event organisers kept asking us if everything was ok, as we had to test the product and be ready to present in little more than one hour time. Suuure! No problem! So it was with a clunky and shaky frame that I started to move my bicycle towards the the door, humm, it was shaking so much that we had to think about a way to stabylise before the actual test drive.
Quickly, Jorge used the mechanic saw to cut triangle shaped blocks of wood, that were then screwed to the main wooden support, now yes, we could test it.
The (final) tests
We tested up and down the (quite inclined) street in front of the place where the event was taking place:
After the tests, everyone made their presentations and the event was supposed to end with a ride in this (East) part of the city. I was facing a quasi-existencial question: in order to take it home I would have to disamble the frame — so should I disassemble it now, already, before the group ride?
I was met with, “yes, you will have to disassemble it anyway”, but it was too late, I had grown attached to “LetItRain” the product we — me, Bruno, José and Jorge had so diligently worked on.
So yes, it was coming with me. After many ups and downs and being sprikled with water from a publick water fountain…the frame still shaking and tilting sideways a bit, it made it!
The cycling route ended unexpectedly at a Medieval Fair, where we replenished energies for the last mile.
You can check out more details of this hack at the CycleHack catalogue.
Enjoy your rides!
