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Just fitted a Rohloff hub to an Optibike electric bike – the internal cabling was a bit fiddly, but it looks very tidy…

Yesterday I spent the day filming with The Gadget Show (Channel 5) – they were having a race between two unusual tandems; a Hase Pino and a Greenspeed tandem trike – racing from Arthur’s Seat to Edinburgh Castle.

The Pino won – though, for the sake of accuracy, I should point out that the race was run in several stages with lots of takes 😉

I’m very grateful to Keith Russell for the loan of his Pino – due to a mix-up with timing, the one Hase sent is still in transit. I’ll have a demo Pino in the shop by the end of the week, though – it’s one of the new folding aluminium ones…

With a bit of modification, the Heinzmann Lithium batteries fit very neatly into the frame of even a small MTB…

I’ve just realised – this week is the 10th anniversary of Kinetics 🙂

10 years ago on Monday, I opened the doors of a wee shop just around the corner from here – it was looking a bit sparse as the demo bikes were really my old hacked-about StreetMachine and a few other things, and I couldn’t afford any proper shop fittings or decoration so a few friends came over to help with the painting and building counters and benches out of scrap wood.

10 years on, and quite a bit has changed – for one thing, in that first week where I took £43, I wasn’t sure that the business would survive 6 months, let alone still be going 10 years later. Then, about a dozen Bromptons a year were being sold in Glasgow, and it took a whole year before I sold my first recumbent – back then, I survived on repairing cheap bikes and selling parts and accessories.

It’s still a lot of hard work, and in a lot of ways I still miss the security of having a proper job (though, perhaps, not in the current climate) – I left a well-paid job at IBM to do this, which at the time seemed very reckless, but I’ve never regretted it. The money isn’t as good, the stress is at least as high, and the responsibility is much greater, but instead of sitting in a suit in a big office all day, I get to play with bikes 🙂

Just finished fitting S&S torque couplings to this frame…

With a Sturmey Archer 8-speed hub in the back and a Mountain Drive in the front, it’s got an enormous gear range…

I went to Cycle 2008 yesterday – the BHPC got a free stand because another exhibitor pulled out. There was a beautiful Velokraft carbon lowracer on their stand…

Okay, I think I can make this public now – for a few months, I’ve been working with Nick from CarryFreedom (the trailer people) on Nick’s design of what a tough, simple bike should look like, and this is the result.

The idea is to make something that’s tough (very rigid steel frame), reliable (enclosed chain drive and cables), cheap to manufacture (minimum number of tubes, as little welding as possible), and customisable (side panels that can be decorated, painted, made out of different materials, or wallpapered).

Nick’s taking it to Eurobike at the moment, and it’ll probably be at Cycle in London next month…

…showing how it folds up. Basically exactly the same way as a standard Brompton, but with a smaller chainring to keep the chain even more tucked away inside.

A recent project – the battery hangs behind the seat, and there’s a twist throttle on the handlebar…