Delinquent Bicycle

Brant's rebelious Surly Steamroller got into a bit of trouble with the law last night. The bad bad bike parked itself on a rack in an old vending machine area under a stairwell on the Cal Poly campus. University police apparently found this offensive. The impounded bicycle was in no ones way, on no handycap rails. Instead of paying the twenty dollar fine, Brant tried to free his bike and stand up to uptight bureaucracy. Twenty four hours later, after four noble tries to free the innocent victim, Brant still had to catch a ride to his one class at Cuesta, hitchhike home, and take the bus to school the next day.

Brant- 0,  UPD-4 (and twenty dollars). Sad day for Brant.

We are happy to say that the bike is back home safe, and far away from our protective services.

CPHBS: Legendary

Twas the Wednesday before finals week, and what do I see but but a bunch of M.E's on their S.T.V's.

Single Track Vehicle design is class offered every year by the Mechanical Engineering department here at  Cal Poly.  In this class they spend a considerable amount of time gaining a theoretical understanding of lean to turn vehicle handling characteristics.  After writing scads of MAT Lab code, tedious hours of homework and laboratory inertial testing; they get to build their own bike, and today was their final day to show them off.

Some of the more polished bikes were able to use the SLO Bike Kitchens frame prep tools and many others made use of our bargain basement frame supply.  Amongst the crowd were bikes of all varying levels of completion and construction quality.

Now without further adieu, here are some of the standouts.  All of these pictures were taken by Rory Aronson, and can be viewed here.

Blaire's fully bamboo bike, only sporting metal bits in the BB, headtube and rear dropouts.  I believe that it weighed in at about 23 pounds.  This might have been my favorite project as he ended up with a beautiful project and did not have to sweat waiting for the on TIG welder available at any given time, which was limited.

Rory's cargo recumbent, which was another back yard project.  This bike was surprisingly stable, especially at low speeds, due to the low center of gravity. The only design issues that still need resolving are the steering linkage and chain line off of the jack shaft pass through the cargo compartment.

A student riding a ghetto wooden bike.

A beautiful 70% wooden bike, this was another of the projects prepped at the SLO Bike Kitchen.

Me goofing off on my triple tall.

Once the professor had ridden their bikes, many of the students bolted to finish the design reports that were due by Friday.  Good luck gentlemen.

Greener Pastures

Monday, January 23rd was the official public opening and ribbon cutting for the California Polytechnic State Universities Algae Field Station.  For the last year and a half I have been working with my advisor Tryg Lundquist evaluating the operability of High Rate Algae Ponds (HRAPs) for the treatment of municipal waste water and production of bio-fuel feedstock.  What started in 2008 with 4 tiny ponds run by one grad student, Dan Frost, has now become seventeen ponds run by several grad students and about a dozen undergrads.  My comrade, Louis, and I have spent the last summer and much of the fall quarter building this new facility--from the ground up, led by engineer and designer, Ian Woertz.

The Team

Lauren and I with the Ponds

The ponds are located on city land at our local wastewater treatment facility. The algae ponds are innovative and appealing because they are simple, use far less energy than the average treatment process and, in the end, produce a usable resource. 

This experience has offered me a great opportunity to gain both a greater understanding of engineered systems, especially in the field of water and wastewater treatment, but more importantly management and delegation skills that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  Specific skills that I have developed include running an analytical lab, a small understanding of biologically driven treatment systems, data collection, and analysis.

Incredible, right?

Now comes the hard part. Last spring I was accepted into the blended masters program here at Cal Poly.  This program allows you to pursue a masters degree concurrently with a bachelors.  I was all set to produce the next HRAP thesis on nutrient removal when...I left the program.  

For years now I have known that one day I would graduate and at that time I would travel the world by bike.   In the last year my brother and I decided that we would do the first leg across the United States together before he was swallowed the following fall by medical school. My thousands of miles spent touring and the years spent volunteering as a mechanic at the SLO Bike Kitchen have both encouraged me and inspired me to really pack my stationary life up and bike into the sunset. 

This all became incredibly more complex when Lauren stepped into my life.  Never before had I considered the possibility that I would be able to share my world travels with someone else.  This issue, admittedly, was a result of my own stubbornness associated with a desire to have control over speed, duration, and type of traveling that I would be doing.  Lauren put all of these fears to rest with her own traveling ambitions, strong legs and even stronger will.

Now I was faced with a tough decision, travel with my brother and continue on to East Asia with Lauren without hesitation, or be bounded to research and a subsequent thesis sometime next fall, either at the expense of the summer trip altogether or my sanity before and after.  I wanted out.

The good news is, I haven't closed the doors for the opportunity for grad school in the future. I never thought I would say this (in fear of sounding like my lovely mother), but, good grades do pay off, and meaningful recommendations from the PhD smarties are even more valuable. I would just like to come back to it when I can dedicate my focus and my passion to my grad work--not to the open road. 

This trip marks the beginning of my new educational path, one of self discovery from the seat of my bicycle rather than the lab.  Lauren and I want to visit community level water and sanitation projects around the globe.  We want to know what is being done, how the conditions can be improved, and to raise awareness through reporting.

Stay tuned to see what we find.

4 Months 3 Days till departure.