Bike manufacturer Specialized is allegedly (because there seems little on the web to back the claim) coming out with a new line of bikes next year called Venom. While it features ultra-lightweight frames that look unlike any bike I've seen on the road, I'm a much bigger fan of simpler designs.
And: While on the topics of bikes, check out solar- and bicycle-powered WiFi networks in Uganda, via Timbuktu Chronicles.
An email from my friend Don suggests what I suspected:
ReplyDelete"I think the Specialized bikes are a hoax. While I’ve seen some of the developments before in other forms, like the elimination of the seat stays, integration of tubing into that sort of goopy whole, and recession of the wheels into the frame (aero bikes in some of the grand tour time trials have been really trippy looking the last few years), these just don’t look to me like they would work, mainly because of the seeming lack of connection between the handlebars and the front wheel and the sort of 'front chainstay' contraption which I saw on at least one of the bikes – if there is a tube connecting the front wheel to the bottom bracket, how is the bike suppose to turn?
Even if it’s possible for the bikes to work, though – the last one really says ‘hoax.’ That 'Specialized' is a Bianchi, and they didn’t even bother to photoshop out the logo on the front fork."
Thanks, Don.
These are 'shopped versions of a conceptual artist's tutorial:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.drawthrough.com/tutorials/indoorbike.html
Nicely done though. A bike fanatic here at work was starting to drool over the "Viper".
Quite right. I wrote the article as an April Fool's prank, after finding the pictures on the web. If you look closely, you'll see that most of the bikes are impossible (eg no steering). But it is rather entertaining to send people to the article and have them drool over the pictures until they clue in that it's a joke! Enjoy, and keep smiling!
ReplyDeleteVerdra H. Ciretop
verdra@despammed.com