John C Woolsey, LEED AP » Transportation

Did I Mention?

John — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:30:01 +0000

I took my drive test to get my M1 endorsement with the CA DMV. It was exciting, I took it on the 110 and because the bike had cooled off while I was waiting to start and started getting cold blooded I gave the examiner a great acrobatic show. The big no-no is putting your foot down during the test, in fact its a DQ if you do it. The bike sputtered in one or two places and then reved pretty fast after I feathered it to keep it alive. I worked to keep my feet on the pegs at all cost, at times I must have looked like a big awkward guy on a pommel horse.

When it was all said in done I thought she would fail me for the stunt on the second CCW loop but she didn’t! She told me that it looked kind of weird but she didn’t know why I shouldn’t pass – she said it looked like I could handle the bike.

So, I passed but not without knocking a little chip off my pride in the process. But its ok, I am done now and can go racing my 110 on the freeway in the middle of the night with a passenger. Let the good times roll…er..wait…wrong brand…

Scoot

John — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:38:57 +0000

Some have asked to see what I look like on my bike. I guess some people might suspect that my large frame would be a little out of place on such a small bike. But as you can see from this picture, Vince and I both look right at home on our road warriors.

Get out of the way!

Check This Out

John — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:19:48 +0000

There isn’t much to say, just take it in.

Big Bike

Gas Was Never Cheap…

John — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:18:20 +0000

But as you well know its even worse now than ever. Granted, in the last week or two we have seen it drop in price by as much as 35 cents US but its still quite steep and its not fun to fill up my truck anymore. In fact, I can remember when we bought our Matrix we could fill it up for $23. My how times have changed…

Lots of people I know are working to challenge the gas pump and have resorted to the two-wheel option. It started with Jeff a long time ago running around on his Honda Trail bike and then all of the sudden one person after the other got a scooter. Even Vince got in on the gas saving toy. Oh, and did I mention I did too!? Not that my commuter bicycle isn’t awesome and even better on gas, but its hot around these parts and its not cool to show up and someone’s house tire, panting and sweating all over their furniture. That is where my spare time in front of the computer has turned into spare time tinkering in the garage getting my Honda Trail bike up and running. Yup, I dragged Jeff’s old disassembled one out of his garage and rebuilt the critical parts and replaced the missing ones. Its up and running now and I have been driving around for the last couple of weeks on about 8$ of fuel. It gets between 80 & 90mpg and it can comfortably push me 45mph into the wind.

What I am particularly drawn to is its a cheap bike if you find one in parts and they are so simple you can fix anything on them for little money and little time. There is a reason they are the best sold motorcycle in the world. Honda still sells them in other parts of the world.

I have to say, with the fuel consumption and the entertainment value of these little Honda bikes I might just become a fan of all things old, small and Honda.

Have You Ever Seen One of These?

John — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:50:28 +0000

Well, now you have. Its called a Tri-Runner and its from a Chinese company. They run a 250cc water cooled 4-stroke engine with a pseudo-variable speed transmission (Salisbury) with a centrifugal clutch. Fully suspended and capable of about 40mph. Think of it as a recumbent version of a 3 wheeler like Honda used to make…with a roll cage. I would never consider buying one of these considering their place of origin could make for questionable reliability and repairability…but never the less the Woolseys have come into possession of one! A friend of my dad’s acquired 4 of them and had no where to store them. He offered to give my dad one if he could keep them at his house. My dad at first didn’t know what to do with one but soon realized I would put it to good use.

Next time any of you are ready for a quick trip out to the desert I will be ready with my exotic, china-made ride. Try to keep up

Letting My Geek-ness Show

John — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:59:45 +0000

While cruising the internets for cool things people do with commuter bikes I ran into a very neat product from England. Its made by a company called Bicygnals. Its a nifty light assembly that contains headlight, tail light and turn signal LED’s. I was pretty impressed and have thought for a while that bikes should have more options for indicator lights rather than the simple ‘look out – I’m here’ lights. In my hunt I have found nothing that I feel is compact and clearly communicates your intent as a driver/rider on the road. I think its a bit of an improvement to have a series of 16 LEDS that will sequentially blink to indicate a direction rather than have a set blink on the right or on the left. Frankly, as small as a bike is, the turn signals that are available seem indistinguishable right or left, maybe with the exception of the Bicygnal front module. If you don’t know what I mean pay close attention the next time you come up on a highway patrol car on the side of the road from behind. The bright orange lights that blink and give the illusion of the lights steering you in the desired direction. Some big trucks use this, you can’t mistake the intention of the lights.

Considering what the commercial products cost and don’t really deliver I started thinking about making my own sequencer for the bike. Plus, I like the idea of a brake light too! With LED power consumption what it is, you can have it all on a pedal powered machine. I could power it with any number of power cell or battery options. I just need a circuit. I am no circuit designer, save the simpler stuff, but I can work with something someone else has made. Google tracked down a good sequencer for me and I wanted to share it with any of you that have read this far.

Credit where credit is due: I found this write up HERE

Expandable 16 Stage LED Sequencer

The circuit below uses a hex Schmitt Trigger inverter (74HC14) and two 8 bit Serial-In/Parallel-Out shift registers (74HCT164 or 74HC164) to sequence 16 LEDs. The circuit can be expanded to greater lengths by cascading additional shift registers and connecting the 8th output (pin 13) to the data input (pin 1) of the succeeding stage. A Schmitt trigger oscillator (74HC14 pin 1 and 2) produces the clock signal for the shift registers, the rate being approximately 1/RC. Two additional Schmitt Trigger stages are used to reset and load the registers when power is turned on. Timing is not critical, however the output at pin 8 of the Schmitt Trigger must remain high during the first LOW to HIGH clock transition at pin 8 of the registers, and must return low before the second rising edge to load a single bit. If the clock rate is increased, the length of the signal at pin 9 of the Schmitt Trigger should be reduced proportionally to avoid loading more than one bit. The HCT devices will normally provide about 4 mA (source or sink) from each output but can supply greater currents (possibly 25 mA) if only one output is loaded. The common 150 ohm resistor restricts the current below 25 mA using a 6 volt power source. If the circuit is operated with two or more LEDs on at the same time, resistors may be needed in series with each LED to avoid exceeding the maximum total output current for each IC of 25 mA. For greater brightness, individual buffer transistors can be used as shown in the 10 stage LED sequencer on this same page.

Two Wheel Lifestyle

John — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:14:40 +0000

Deep down I must be an environmentalist at heart. Before my break from the world of engineering I was gearing up to get LEED certified and have always been drawn to more efficient technologies. That interest and concern has tended to spill into other avenues of my life. That combined with the increasing cost of energy I am getting very interested in alternatives to driving my truck all over town. When I started getting excited about riding my converted mt bike around as a commuter I started wondering what other people were doing. Were others converting mt bikes or was there such a thing as a commuter bike that is made by any of the manufacturers. In the course of my education I discovered the Xtracycle company. They make a frame extension for almost any 26″ or 700 wheeled bike. Simply remove the rear wheel and hardware, install the FreeRadical and put the rack hardware of your choice on and you have a sport utility bike. It looks like a great idea and offers the rider a TON of opportunities to leave the car parked in the garage.

I won’t be doing anything like this soon. I have only been at this for a week and need to see how it goes. This town isn’t an entirely bike friendly town. I can say that my goal is to see if I can make a tank of gas in my truck last a month. Wish me luck!

My ‘New’ Bike

John — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:45:14 +0000

I posted pictures of this bike when I put the road tires on it and I thought I would show off the latest addition.

Today Vince had my truck and Christy takes her car down to Temecula to pick up the shuttle to work. Not having any other option I grabbed my clip shoes and hit the road. I found myself at Bicycle Warehouse and went ahead and picked up this rack and pannier bag set. The rack was a new arrival, Matt had to pull it out of a box to show me. It is rated for 50kg (thats 110lbs for you English speakers). That is a far cry from the other racks I had looked at and this one was $5 more. The bags were $39 and I really labored over spending the money on these bags since I wasn’t 100% sure how I would use this bike. I figured if I never used them the shop would take them back. On the way home I ran a few errands for tomorrow and couldn’t believe how the bags kept expanding every time I would stop to pick something up. I stuffed a box of blank lables, several packages of badge lanyards, a 3lbs bag of grass seed and a new watering hose attachment. I could have stopped by the grocery store too! And even with the added weight on the bike it wasn’t too bad climbing hills. Nice thing about being a converted mt. bike is that this thing has LOW gears.

I have really come to enjoy riding this bike around town. I think at first I didn’t like it much because I was too easily winded, too much down hill riding on the DB. A few rides around this hilly town will whip anyone’s lungs into shape. Have any of you responded to fuel prices in creative ways?

Quick Project

John — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:45:28 +0000

Today I am having fun with something so I thought I would share it. I have been thinking a lot about ways to cut back on the amount of gasoline our family burns. Now, our cars are pretty efficient and I can’t complain but I figure any opportunity I can take to reduce is good. So, I stopped by the bike shop to check out some ‘commuter’ bikes. They aren’t unreasonably expensive but they run close to $500. What struck me when looking at them is they resemble a hard-tail mountain bike with road tires on them. They also have taller gears, but that is neither here nor there. After making this observation I got to thinking about my old mountain bike (Trek 4500) and that since I got the DB it hasn’t been used at all. So I grabbed some 26×1.5 road tires and put them on tonight. Its a different bike! I took a test ride around the block. The pedaling effort has been reduced by almost half on the street. I didn’t expect this kind of improvement. I will be getting a rack for the back and some saddle bags. I think this bike just because a commuter.