Drawing Bicycles From Memory

In Bob Dylan's "Highlands", the narrator (presumably Dylan himself) wanders into a restaurant in Boston.  He is the only customer; the only other person there is the waitress.  

She says, "I know you're an artist, draw a picture of me."  

He responds:  "I would if I could, but I don't do sketches from memory."

Then she chides him, "I'm right here in front of you," but he continues to hedge.

Some would argue that all drawing (and writing and other creative and re-creative work) is done from memory.  After all, any thought, feeling or other experience becomes past--i.e., memory--the moment it happens.

I, too, have been asked to draw from memory and "in the moment".  I, too, find ways to hem, haw, hedge and politely decline.  Long ago, I realized that I am not that sort of artist:  When I displayed my sketches and paintings, I got a ticket for littering.

OK, so I made up that last story.  But, even with the meager talent I have for such things, I might have continued to paint and draw--from memory--had I known what has been confirmed in many studies:  Most people don't do any better than I did.  In fact, most do worse.

That point was illustrated (pardon the pun) once again when, a few years ago, an Italian designer Gianluca Gemini asked people to draw men's (diamond-frame) bikes from memory.  Most of their renditions bore, at best, only a passing (pun alert!) resemblance to anything anybody rode down the strada or through the piazza.  Recently, he decided to render some of those drawings into lifelike 3D pictures.
  

The participants in Gemini's study ranged in age from three to 88 and lived in seven different countries.  Across those generational and cultural divides, Gemini found some patterns, especially among genders.  For example, men tended to overcomplicate the frame when they realize they are not drawing it properly.

I want to meet the dude who came up with that.  What I find ironic is that for all of its sharp geometric lines--as if it were designed by Mondrian on crack cocaine--it actually looks good with "moustache" bars.  Also, the brown leather seat and handlebar tape lend it a certain elegance.

Speaking of elegant, here is a bike that reflects a female pattern

Interestingly, most of the front wheel-drive bikes (the ones with the chains and gears attached the front wheel) were drawn by women.  Gemini can't (or doesn't) offer an explanation.  

I very much like that bike--at least, its looks.  Had I more space and money, I'd have it made and use it for a wall hanging.  Heck, I might even ride it.  Put a Brooks brown saddle on it, and very few bikes would be lovelier.

Here's another bike from Gemini's study that caught my eye:

I mean, how can you not love a bike with track gearing, two fork assemblies, a wheelbase longer than the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge--and that yellow flag!

All right, I'll admit:  I really like the color:  a sort of periwinkle/lavender blue.  If you've been reading this blog, surely, you're not surprised.

Gemini's participants also came from a wide variety of occupations, including students and retirees.  Professional or employment status--or lack thereof--seemed to have little or no bearing on how realistic or whimisical participants' drawings came out.  The most "unintelligible" drawing, according to Gemini, was made by a doctor.  I wonder whether he or she is a surgeon!

Suspending Disbelief

I started mountain biking right around the time suspension front forks were becoming a standard feature of serious off-road machines.  Back then, it seemed that designs were changing every week, and that if you bought a Rock Shox Mag 20, or a Marzocchi or Manitou telescoping fork, a year later you could get something lighter, more durable and with more travel--whether from those brands or one of the new marquees that seemed to appear every month.

Suspension (telescoping) fork advert, September 1992

  

By the time I stopped mountain biking and sold my Bontrager Race Lite, in 2001, new suspension forks bore little resemblance to the ones I saw and rode nearly a decade earlier.  Moreover, bikes with suspension in the rear of the frame had become commonplace, with designs that changed as rapidly as fork designs had been changing.

Even with all of that design evolution, there were some ideas that, apparently, no one ever considered.  Can you imagine how mountain bikes--and mountain biking--would be different if the first suspension system looked something like this?:

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd want to ride such a bike, especially on rocky ground.  I'd guess that even when I was skinnier and more flexible than I am now, I wouldn't have been able to keep my feet on the pedals for very long.


 



 


Then again, maybe the bike isn't made for spinners or sprinters.  It's called a "Flying Bike" because, I believe, it's made for riders to pedal for a few rotations before lifting their feet and "flying".  But I have to wonder whether it would feel like flying if the bike is bouncing through potholes and over rocks.

If you think the "flying bike" is weird, check this out:

 Can you imagine what mountain bikes would be like today if that had become the paradigm for suspension?

Crazy In Chicago

Since I'm posting this on the day after April Fools' Day, This it is not a joke.  But some of the bikes you will see in it will seem like pranks.

As we all know, Schwinn was based in Chicago for a century.  At the time it started building bikes, in the mid-1890s, about six dozen other bicycle manufacturers were making their wares in the Windy City.

Most, of course, did not survive beyond the first decade of the 20th Century.  Still, Schwinn was big enough, and enough smaller companies remained, to ensure that the city on the shore of Lake Michigan would retain its status as one of the centers of the American bicycle industry.

And it's one of the places where adult cycling actually survived, at least to some degree, during the Dark Ages of cycling in the US:  roughly the two decades following World War II.

Maybe it has to do with the water (Lake Michigan?  The Chicago River?  The Canal?):  During the 1940s, a lot of "crazy bikes" were built there by ostensibly sentient grown-ups.  

I don't know whether to have respect or to ridicule Art Rothman, who designed this one:

 

He's riding in the top position. Perhaps not surprisingly, he broke three ribs while learning how to ride it.  Perhaps he recuperated on this Joe Steinlauf-designed bike-bed:

 



Once he got it going, I'm sure he got further on it than anyone who rode this machine:


 

Just in case you run into any gangsters (It's Chicago, after all!), make sure you have this:

 


Thirteen shotguns, two revolvers, six bayonets and a flare gun.  They covered all possibilities, didn't they?


Now here's what we needed this past winter:

 

The Lunartic

For a moment, I thought someone tried to ride a handcuff.





Turns out, the contraption is even cleverer (Now there's a word only a Brit can get away with using!) than that. 


That strange-looking rear wheel is belt-driven and hubless.  (Could even a Brit get away with saying "hubless"?)  The moving parts are housed, which makes the bike's wheelbase. 


Luke Douglas, the wheel's creator, said he was trying to make a bike as compact as possible without having to fold it.  He said he was also trying to eliminate the awkward ride qualities of many folding or collapsible bikes.


At the time he designed it, he was a student at the Loughborough (UK) Design School.  He entered it in the 2011 competition for the James Dyson Award.  Alas, he didn't win.


He should have gotten some kind of award, though, for the name he gave his invention:  the Lunartic.