This blog features new additions to the Cyclofiend.com Galleries. If you want to know when the Current Classic, Singlespeed, Cyclocross or Working Bike Galleries receive updates, you can check back here, "follow" this blog by using the link below right, or subscribe to this blog's RSS feed.

Most of the time, I'll highlight one of the new entries from the batches - don't take that to mean it's better or the others are worse. It's just that when I went to post those entries, one caught my attention at that time and place.

This won't be my main venue for online nattering - ride reports, technical stuff and whatever tangents capture my brain will show up over on the Cyclofiend.com "Ramblings" blog, so you ought to wander over there. If you want to see what I've been writing about, there's a feed down at the bottom of this page which has the most recent posts from that blog.

If you have found your way here looking for things about Rivendell Bicycle Works (rivbike.com), I am the moderator of the RBW Owner's Bunch group over on google groups. That is a discussion of Rivendell bicycles and their products, but you can learn more about that here.


Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Working Bikes Gallery Into Gear Again

The Working Bikes Gallery was actually started most recently.  It began when I snapped a quick image of a cycletruck delivery bike up in Oregon, which got me thinking about this mostly invisible segment of the bicycle world.  It's easy to over-glamorize these machines, perhaps.  But, I think it's better to acknowledge how well suited the basic design of a bicycle is for these purposes. 

Even though it's easy to get transfixed by low forward cargo bikes, or specialty haulers, the fact is that a basic, diamond frame bicycle can be an incredible tool.  If you have only perused the Current Classics, Singlespeed or Cyclocross galleries, take a while to see the diversity of design and use that can be found in the Working Bikes Gallery.

Jason's Schwinn Heavy-Duti

Across various airports, ridiculously large warehouses and assembly plants, you can reliably find bikes like these.  They are the mine mules of our time; used interchangeably to get somewhere, get something done, and not have to fuss about it.  They are load-carrying beasts, ready to roll with little preamble. 

What inspires me about this bike is that it seems to have made a break for the daylight and kept running.  Now it gets to roll around on the roads, breath in the fresh air and enjoy the elements.  Because of its tough past, there's little now that can faze it. 

Roll on, Heavy-Duti!



No comments: