You're probably familiar with "word association", as a game or a technique for sparking creativity--or as part of therapy. For example, "dog" can lead to "cat", "walk", "shoe", "sole", "survivor", "guilt" and so on.
Well, my blog is lapsing into a kind of "theme association". The other day, I happened to mention Jean-Paul Sartre. Yesterday I showed him on a folding bicycle. So today I am going to--you guessed it--talk about a folding bike.
The bike in question first saw the light of day fifty years ago. I don't know how long it was in production. In fact, I could find almost no information about it. But I did find this neat promotional video:
I just love the polka-dot pantsuit the woman is wearing. I think that no matter what she was wearing, she would have had trouble mounting that high-wheel bicycle. Of course, nobody would have been riding such a bike in 1966, but I guess the makers of the video had to find something that would have been difficult for just about anybody to ride.
I also love seeing folk singer Pete Newby looking more like an Oxford professor than any folk singer I've ever seen. Can you imagine him (or anyone) going to the Tweed Ride with the Donkey Bike?
Now, I admit, the Donkey isn't a folding bike, strictly speaking. It probably doesn't even qualify as a collapsible bicycle. With such a small front wheel and wheelbase, it needed only a way to quickly remove the handlebars in order to fit it in a car trunk.
The handlebar is probably the strangest, and most interesting part of the bike. I've flipped handlebars on my bikes, but I don't think doing so changed the look--or, I imagine, the ride quality--as radically as bars that can be ridden as far forward as most racing handlebars, then be shifted to a position under the seat so that the bike is ridden with the rider's hands grasping at their sides, rather like riding a sled.
I can just imagine a bunch of "mods" cruising up and down London streets on their Donkey bikes. Really groovy!
Well, my blog is lapsing into a kind of "theme association". The other day, I happened to mention Jean-Paul Sartre. Yesterday I showed him on a folding bicycle. So today I am going to--you guessed it--talk about a folding bike.
The bike in question first saw the light of day fifty years ago. I don't know how long it was in production. In fact, I could find almost no information about it. But I did find this neat promotional video:
I just love the polka-dot pantsuit the woman is wearing. I think that no matter what she was wearing, she would have had trouble mounting that high-wheel bicycle. Of course, nobody would have been riding such a bike in 1966, but I guess the makers of the video had to find something that would have been difficult for just about anybody to ride.
I also love seeing folk singer Pete Newby looking more like an Oxford professor than any folk singer I've ever seen. Can you imagine him (or anyone) going to the Tweed Ride with the Donkey Bike?
Now, I admit, the Donkey isn't a folding bike, strictly speaking. It probably doesn't even qualify as a collapsible bicycle. With such a small front wheel and wheelbase, it needed only a way to quickly remove the handlebars in order to fit it in a car trunk.
The handlebar is probably the strangest, and most interesting part of the bike. I've flipped handlebars on my bikes, but I don't think doing so changed the look--or, I imagine, the ride quality--as radically as bars that can be ridden as far forward as most racing handlebars, then be shifted to a position under the seat so that the bike is ridden with the rider's hands grasping at their sides, rather like riding a sled.
I can just imagine a bunch of "mods" cruising up and down London streets on their Donkey bikes. Really groovy!
