Sad.

A 70ish-year-old cyclist was killed today in downtown Boston.

It’s getting messy out there for us winter cyclists. I lost a rim to a rain-covered pothole last Tuesday so my winter commuter bicycle is down until the new rim arrives. I threw some snow tires on a beater Huffy, liberally doused the chain with tenacious oil, and it’s getting me places but the road conditions are terrible.

Furthermore, the bicycle lane is obstructed along most of my commute, either by cars or snow. And when I ride in the car lane, I get verbal abuse and horns, even though it’s not taking any longer for the vehicles behind me to get to the next red light.

What happened to ticketing cars that park in travel lanes? If this law doesn’t apply in the winter, it should be reworded to say so. Imagine if I parked my bicycle in the car lane, but only in the winter. What would that be like?

I have two bicycle-related projects running simultaneously right now. The first one is a small rack-mountable radiobox, shamelessly lifted from the BikeBoomBox, which was in turn shamelessly lifted from MOSFETgrrl’s bike stereo. My goals with this radiobox are to make it easily reproducible, cheap and effective.

The basic idea is to use 6″ sonotube as a shell, build an internal frame out of MDF and pine for strength, jam a large SLA battery and an inexpensive super-efficient class T amp inside, and put marine speakers on either end. The total outlay *should* be less than $100, it should be weather-resistant, mount on a standard bike rack, accept mp3po input and be rechargeable. It can also be disassembled if necessary.

Here’s some MDF marked up with the speaker dimensions:

And in the process of being cut with a jigsaw:

MDF produces lots of nasty dust. It’s not really sawdust — it’s much finer, and is really not a good thing to breath. I tied a wet rag over my face to keep the dust out.

After an hour or so of cutting up wood, all the parts were ready for assembly:

The speakers attach at one end. A solid piece of MDF seperates the speaker area from the battery compartment:

Here’s an end shot with foam padding attached where one of the speakers will sit:

And here is the 7.5 Ah SLA battery fitted inside:

Next I need to install the class T amplifier, which just arrived from parts-express this week. Thanks to Pywaket for introducing me to this neat device.

I’ve also been working on a swingbike. Designing a strong center joint that can be disassembled for servicing has been challenging, but with Skunk’s high quality welds in place I think this iteration is going to work out:

The top piece will get bolted in with a thick hardened steel bolt. Here’s a top-down view of the joint, showing the bolt hole:

And a side view of the two connected frames. I’m going to use different handlebars ultimately:

It still needs a lot of work: painting, rear wheel, new cranks and chainring… but the hard part is finished!