Fall

Yehuda Moon, the best (and only?) webcomic devoted entirely to bicycling. There's also a link in the sidebar under Miscellany.

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The Sublime & the Ridiculous

My wife and I rode down to San Diego's South Park neighborhood yesterday to test my new basket on the Runwell.  I found the basket at a thrift store and added some wire to make hooks to hang off the handlebars. It holds just enough for an afternoon jaunt. I was worried that it wouldn't hold up over our terrible streets around here, but it did just fine. We locked up at one of South Park's cool high-wheel racks, walked around a bit, and when we came back, saw that the herd had grown. It was interesting to compare our very practical and stylish old city bikes to the (I'm sorry, but) goofy-looking wacked-out new mountain bikes, which were obviously not designed with comfortable city riding in mind. I see the practicality for mountain biking, but I'm always amazed that people chose to ride these bikes around town.  'Course, I suppose the way the roads are, a little suspension might come in handy now and again. Thank goodness I have the Runwell's patented "rigid safety frame"!

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The Runwell Head Badge Revealed

I've been trying to determine exactly what my faded and worn head badge used to look like on the Runwell.  I knew there was an image of a boy or man running, but many of the details were lost. Without an example of the company logo to go on, I was pretty much out of luck. Fortunately, someone doing research on the company at the University of Warwick offered to look for an example of the logo for me. They were able to get me a scan, which was still a bit blurry, which I then cleaned up, traced, and colored to get close to what was originally on my bike. Given my utter lack of artistic ability, I think it turned out okay. So, here's what I ended up with:

The head badge on the bike:
The scan of the logo:
And my ham-fisted rendering (with full, pouty lips):

Upon closer inspection, it looks like the words have a slight shadow outline, so I'll have to go back and work on that. It feels good to resurrect a nearly-lost piece of bicycle history. 

Oh, and I added a basket.  More on that later.

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Type Bike T-Shirt at Neatorama

In keeping with my absolutely random blog posts of late, here's a cool t-shirt for sale at Neatorama, one of my regular reads on the interwebs. It's a bicycle design completely composed of type (letters and whatnot). The price is pretty reasonable at $14.95, but only comes in three color options, all too light for Greasywrench McMessy (me).

Image: Neatorama

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Handlebars as Musical Instruments

File this under "other things you can do with your old bike besides ride it."

Mark Growden plays the handlebars from Doctor Popular on Vimeo.

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Dinosaurs & Robots (& Bicycles)

I've been reading Dinosaurs & Robots off and on for a couple of months now, and wanted to pass it along to y'all. The honchos at D&R include Mister Jalopy of Coco's Variety Store and Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing fame. They're big into the "maker" and DIY ethic, which is very much in keeping with the mission of the OBB. Mister Jalopy is especially fond of bicycles, and periodically posts items of superlative interest to fellow cyclistas. A variety of guest bloggers and the principals' own catholic interests keep D&R constantly fresh and interesting. Go check it out!

Image: Dinosaurs & Robots

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African DIY Ingenuity

From the terrific and inspirational AfriGadget blog, the story of a bike-mounted radio that's good for more than just entertainment. Check out the site for a couple of other bike-related posts, as well.

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