omenti

150 years

You may have seen this simple electric train

A very simple class of electric motor that operates using one of the four fundamental forces of Nature - electromagnetism.

 

Electricity was an area of active investigation in the early 19th century when one of the experimenters,  a Dane named Hans Øersted, observed that you could make a compass needle jump by making an electric current flow through a nearby wire.  A very curious thing - somehow the compass was sensing the current as if it was a magnet.  A few years later Michael Faraday discovered the inverse situation - if you move a magnet through a coil of wire, a current flows in the wire.  He went on to build the first electric motor and generator.  Decades ahead of anything practical, but that wasn't the point.  The gauntlet was down - what was going on?  

 

Practical uses were quickly developed with the telegraph being the most important.  Telegraphy spread throughout the US and Europe and by the mid 1850s attempts were made to build a transatlantic cable.  The planet's first global telecommunication system was under construction.   This very technical branch of the Industrial Revolution saw great success, but also dramatic failure.  Wires overheated, systems failed without explanation, distortion plagued long range communication.  Help was needed and universities built the first formal industrial research labs to solve the problems.

 

A number of conjectures as to how electromagnetism worked emerged along with a few useful bits of predictive mathematics.  A fundamental assumption found in most was an assumption of how electric and magnetic forces were transmitted through space.  Newton, in his brilliant theory of gravitation, mathematically assumed 'action at a distance" - namely that gravity acted at a distance instantaneously.¹  The great predictive success of the theory led people to assume action at a distance would be at the bedrock of a theory of electromagnetism.

 

Faraday was self-taught and not very skilled in mathematics.  But he had fantastic experimental skills and was one of the most intuitive physicists of all time. His extensive experiments led him to the notion that some kind of "field" filled the space around the wires and magnets and it was this field that allowed the forces to move.  The physics community thought this crazy - after all Newton had this great theory and it had to be the model.  Newton was the great mathematician and Faraday was just an amateur.

 

Nature doesn't care if you're a mathematician or not...

 

Some of Faraday's experiments involved iron filings to visually show the proposed fields.  Objections were raised - the proposed field didn't exist in space .. the paper must have been involved.    James Clerk Maxwell agreed with Faraday and set to work developing a mathematical description of the experimental observations.  For technical reasons he chose to do his work using a differential calculus in contrast to Newton's techniques.   Maxwell had found an approach that allowed him to examine what happens throughout space.  It was a natural language for describing fields.

 

One hundred and fifty years ago this month A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field was published.  In it Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism as different facets of a more fundamental electromagnetic force.  Dramatically he was able to show light was an electromagnetic wave that propagated through space at a finite speed.²  Some of the physics of light was known, but that it was an electromagnetic phenomena came out of the blue and laid the bedrock for enormous technical and scientific revolutions.

 

By the late 1880s Heinrich Hertz had created wireless electromagnetic waves confirming Maxwell's prediction.  Manmade radio was invented.   The equations are a cornerstone of physics.  Much of our current technology rests on them and wouldn't be possible without the deep understanding of Nature they allow.  

 

I've read, or more correctly skimmed, the original paper.  The math is old fashioned and a tough slog.  Even during the day it was only understand by a handful of physicists and mathematicians. There are about twenty equations rather than the current four.  Oliver Heaviside and a few others found a more tractable compact form was possible if you moved to different notation.  By the mid 1880s it was boiled down to the four beautiful equations which began to find their way into university physics and electrical engineering courses.

 

A furious period of invention ensued.  As is usually the case much of it was crazy and useless, some was too far ahead of its time, but several threads of innovation emerged that helped define the 20^th century.³

 

Feynman and Einstein are possibly the two most quoted physicists.  Quotes are often misattributed - these two are real:

 

The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade. - R. Feynman 

The precise formulation of the time-space laws was the work of Maxwell. Imagine his feelings when the differential equations he had formulated proved to him that electromagnetic fields spread in the form of polarised waves, and at the speed of light! To few men in the world has such an experience been vouchsafed ... it took physicists some decades to grasp the full significance of Maxwell's discovery, so bold was the leap that his genius forced upon the conceptions of his fellow workers. - A. Einstein

 

not bad

 

Oh - here's what's going on in the toy train.  The battery has a strong permanent magnet at each end.  The copper wire is uncoated and the battery is able to send a current through a magnet and then to the coil where it then enters the other magnet and goes back into the battery completing the circuit.  This current induces a magnetic field down the core of the coil - you've made a solenoid.  If you cleverly arrange the small permanent magnets you can get the induced magnetic field to pull one and push the other.  It isn't terribly efficient, but fun and insight abound.

__________

¹ Gravitational action at a distance was one of the fundamental flaws with Newtonian gravity that Einstein later solved with his theory of Relativity. Special and General Relativity are deeper and more descriptive than Newtonian physics, but for much of the world we live in they reduce to Newtonian physics with great accuracy.  It is generally easier to calculate and think in terms of the later, so it is still enormously useful.  In physics theories often build on rather than completely replace.

The word theory in science has a different meaning than in popular language.  A theory is something that has been observed and verified by the careful work of many.  It is predictive rather than merely descriptive.

² As a student this takes your breath away the first time you see it.  Ideally an instructor lets you wander in and find the relation yourself.  To see it consider the equations in a charge free and current free region - say in a vacuum. You take the curl of the curl equations and use an identity relation to get a pair of wave equations... literally let there be light.

³ The crazy inventions often the result of lack of clue, but those ahead of their time are waiting for other technologies or conditions.  One of my favorite examples is the hybrid electric-internal combustion automobile - where two underlying drivers of the industrial revolution present themselves in one of the important products, namely the automobile.  In 1901 Ferdinand Porsche made the Lohner-Porsche hybrid - the first gasoline-electric hybrid.  The company he founded is back to making hybrids - this time for different reasons.

__________

Recipe corner

 

An out of season lemonade.  I had this traveling and though it good in the Winter.  Of course it has way to much sugar, so think of it as a desert.  It is terrific over ice.

 

Ginger Lemonade

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

° 4 cups water

° 1/2 cup honey

° 2 inches fresh ginger roughly chopped, you don't need to peel unless you're into that

° 5 cloves

° 2 cardamom pods

° 1 cinnamon stick

 

Technique

 

° combine the lemon juice, about half the water and everything else in a saucepan. Simmer and stir until the honey is dissolved

° remove from heat, cover and let it steep for 15 to 20 minutes

° pass through a fine mesh stainer into a container you can chill. Add the remaining water

° chill

 

training wheels

My first bike arrived on my seventh birthday.  It was red, a bit too large and familiar.  My Dad put on new tires and a rack on a bike a neighbor had grown out of making it nearly new in my eyes.  As if that mattered - it was now mine and a bike spelled freedom.  Learning to ride it endangered a few posts and trees over the course of a few days, but finally balance and steering sorted out and my world expanded.

 

I was lucky. My parents were very busy and, as long as my chores and homework were under control, I could do nearly anything as long as I didn't injure anyone else or myself (at least not too badly).  They allowed me to focus on my interests.  We went through our share of first aid supplies and there were some broken bones along the way,  but I still have all of my fingers and toes and a reasonable amount of my hearing.  

 

I've seen kids ride bikes with training wheels for months learning poor habits that need to be unlearned when the wheels come off.  The same may hold for education.  Science and math are sometimes considered hard and are watered down.  Proficiency is measured by rote memory or by the ability to plug numbers into memorized formula that are only remembered for the test.  No real education occurs.  Too much caution and protection...

 

I could ramble on for a long time - heaven knows I've spent hours on these subjects with a few of you =  but I'll keep it short and link two items.

 

First is a teaching review of a close friend.  Bjarne spent a few years in academia recently and agreed to teach a CS 101 level class. I wasn't suprised that he turned out to be an excellent teacher.  Here's one of the reviews.  It is worth reading even if you don't know anything about the subject.  What comes through is excellent technique along with respect for the student.   I'm familiar with how he worked out some of his lesson plans - hours and hours of thought.

 

The second link is wonderful.  An episode from npr's new Invisibilia podcast  - How to become batman.  Listen to the full show - trust me.  Training wheels, expectation, and human potential.  

 

__________

Recipe corner

 

It doesn't get simpler.  Fantastic for watching a blizzard.  There are any number of variations

 

Rosemary Almonds

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 cups raw almonds with skin

° 1 tbl olive oil

° 1 tbl chopped rosemary

° some garlic powder

° 1 tsp sea salt

 

Technique

 

° oven to 350°F

° mix the ingredients in a blow and spread out on a tray 

° bake 15 to 20 minutes

° cool to room temperature and see how many people eat

 

pending such action, no new pigeon codes be established

This new fangled radio technology was beginning to get exciting.  Spark gap transmitters had been used to wirelessly send signals to a receiver.  In 1888 Hertz was able to show the transmitters were producing  electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell a quarter of a century earlier - waves that travel through space at the speed of light.  Waves that could carry a signal.  

 

The rush was on to create practical communication systems and ship to shore radio looked to be the killer application.  Signals were sent using morse code and the number of radio equipped boats began to grow - particularly in the North Atlantic.  But there was this little problem...

 

Signals sent from one spark gap transmitter would be received by all of the receivers within range.  Early on communications were very sparce and it was possible to manage a few dozen ships, but it didn't scale.  The solution of sending signals that didn't step on each other would be a form of multiplexing, but it wasn't obvious how until Marconi invented syntonic multiplexing.  His idea was a transmitter that would radiate at a fixed frequency and a receiver to be able to resonate with just that frequency.  In retrospect it wasn't terribly different from the tone based multiplexing that appeared in telegraphy in the 1870s, but it was one of the those breathtalking intellectual leaps.  The sort of discovery that seemed obvious in retrospect. By 1901 the Navy was talking about introducing it on warships and discontinuing the use of carrier pigeons for naval communications.

 

Twenty years passed and radio became practical for broadcast communications.   Children made crystal sets, families bought receivers in fine wood cabinets that cost a month's wages or more and radio stations popped into existence.  The growth was astonishing.  It was all based on Marconi's syntonic multiplexing.  Frequencies and channels were assigned.  International groups were formed to make sure long range communications wouldn't interfere with each other and within countries policy was created.  In the US AM stations were regulated in frequency and power - the allowed power changing at sunrise and sunset for most to limit their range.

 

Radio had become a major applied research and development effort and new modulation schemes like frequency modulation were created allowing better audio fidelity for music.  It's downside was the channels needed to be wide to prevent interference.  To deal with the problem the Federal Communications Commission encoded the notion of available spectrum into policy - a policy based on the performance of radio receivers of the 1920s.  The idea of what radio was was solidified through policy.   

 

Policy was working. Radio was a huge industry and vital to the many other industries.  Entertainment was exploding and a growth area even during the depression.  It was also vital to the military.  

 

After WWII limits began to appear.  Television was FM radio on steroids requiring large chunks of spectrum.  There was a limit to high frequency communications as they were strictly point to point and attenuated by the presence water and even air.  The solution in the 50s was a combination of economics and policy.  Some of the spectrum would be made legal property.  A company could own and trade it.  If you couldn't get your signal over the air, it was possible to move it through coax by building a new physical wired network.  It was just money and people were willing to pay.  The invisible hand would fix everything.   

 

Except it didn't

 

Nothing in physics says there is a limit on the amount of information that can be carried by a certain chunk of spectrum.  Shannon came along in the middle of the century with brilliant work explaining how much information could be carried, but under very specific conditions that made a lot of sense at the time.  It was a beautiful theory based on sensible engineering.  Low energy photons - the stuff of radio waves - pass through each other.  We have no trouble with the light patterns we get watching a sunset in the West interfering with the patterns of light someone looking across our vision at a tree to the South is receiving.  

 

But for the present we have issues - look at my WiFi situation.  An interesting listen before sending spreadspectrum technique that is useful mainly for very short ranges.  but it doesn't scale well.  Here's my house with 40 basestations within view.

 

The physics is simple, but the engineering isn't obvious and has only been developed in the past two decades.  Other forms of multiplexing, computational radios, tricks with the environment - many tricks are being learned and experimentation is underway.  It is extremely unlikely that any of this will be applied soon as there are many details to hammer out and it interferes with the business models of some very power entities.¹  Rather than diving into this rather esoteric subject I'll just note a decade or two from now, depending on policy, technology and need, we should easily see a factor of 100 improvement and much more is not unthinkable.  It will happen, but other vision and policy is more important.

 

My belief is this needs to be understood if you are thinking about the future of the Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT - such an ugly term).  Two polar models of wireless computation exist -  the dumb piece of glass tightly connected to the cloud and the smart piece of glass connected more weakly connected to the cloud. One might say the Apple model and the Google model, but neither company is at the pole.  Both models have advantages and disadvantages.  The Apple model may offer better security as the IoT grows.  At this point it seems likely that end user computational power will grow much more rapidly than direct wireless connection to the cloud.² 

 

There will be enormous growth and surprise, but exactly what, how and when is unknown.  My bias is the IoT will be much more human centric than the machine to machine models that are currently popular.  I'll also bet that security and communication costs are going to be important and available spectrum will be a cost driver.  There needs to be more flexibility in how radios talk to and coordinate with each other - heavens, my iPhone has six radios that don't interoperate. Some form of smart radio has to happen, even if it isn't the dramatic spectrum saving radio of the future.

 

A large amount of work needs to be done and it is mostly blue sky territory at this point.  I would vote for building something in the spirit of the Internet.  I'll need another post just describing why the Internet is so special and unusual - why it has survived this long.  Perhaps it is evolving to something else, but there are some misconceptions. Even the creation story - that the Defense Department wanted a network that would be robust in a nuclear attack - is incorrect folklore.

 

stay tuned to this channel 

that is until we get past the notion of channels...

__________

¹ Regulating scarcity is a nice business to be in even if what you regulate is expensive to acquire.  The FCC does not allow this sort of work outside of certain experimental, military and amateur radio licenses.  Good work is being done by amateurs and the military.

² Cost is a factor in wireless cloud connection when you are talking about very inexpensive IoT devices.  There is a need for a local cache/aggregator for operations that permit latency.

__________

 Recipe Corner

 

Falafel is wonderful, but often dripping with oil.  Here's a nice baked version.  Be sure and go with the dried chickpeas.  There is a lot of room for experimentation in seasoning and you can, of course, have great fun with tahini and other sauces.

 

Low Fat Falafel

 

Ingredients

 

° 3 tbl olive oil

° 1 cup dried chickpeas soaked for at least a few hours

° 1/4 of a medium red onion chopped

° 1/2 c parsely 

° 1/2 c cilantro

° 3 garlic cloves, minced

° 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

° 1/4 tsp ground cumin

° 1 tsp sea salt

° 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

 

Technique

 

° Oven to 375°F, oven rack in the middle

° coat a large iron skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil 

° combine the drained chickpeas, onion, cilantro, parsely, 2 tbl olive oil, garlic, and seasonings.  Process until smooth

° scoop out a couple of tablespoons at a time nad form into patties about 2 inches wide and a half inch thick .. or so.  

° place them in the pan and bake for about 15 minutes before flipping.  Bake for another 10 minutes for so until browed on both sides

° use 'em for falafely things

 

its a material world

5:25 am - excellent!

 

I brush the last of the snow from my coat and switch on the lights before taking my seat.   A few minutes of silence and then a door opens and closes reverberating for about three seconds.  The clicking of shoes echoes through Warner Hall as she makes her way to the bench.  A minute of preparation and then the Praeludium in G by Bach fills her space and mine.  I sit back and shut all but the Bach from my mind.

 

She is doing an excellent job until - rats.  Bach derails and I sit up in my chair looking around.  A female shout fills the space reverberating for about three seconds

sh*tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!

She goes back a few bars and dances through the problem smoothly.  Now a piece I don't recognize, but it is still clearly Bach until about 6:55.   Her shoes and coat go on and steps click to the door in the distance.

 

And a little magic as a female voice is softly singing Bach.

 

A door opens and closes.  The reverberation is about three seconds and then silence. Time to switch off the amplifiers and make some hot chocolate before getting to work.

 

She was an organ student in Oberlin and I was in a special room in New Jersey where we were working on the reconstruction sound fields.  A special seven microphone array had been installed in the hall with a computer handling compression mixing and compression in realtime.  The bitstream made traveled Eastward to our room where a reasonably convincing illusion of the Hall's sound space was created.  We had created a virtual acoustic reality.¹

 

Pipe organs - the old mechanical 'tracker action' organs - may have been the most sophisticated technology of the middle ages.  Oberlin's Warner Hall organ is a wonderful Flentrop that is ideally suited for Bach - a fact that partially determined where the array went.  Listen to a performance.²

 

The construction of modern tracker action organs hasn't changed much in a half millennia.  Each make has its own special alloys for pipes and techniques that are specific to each company and even to a master builder.  The sounds from the metals and woods of the pipes have distinctive signatures that come from voicing by golden eared experts who reason with the material in quest of perfection.  

 

I have a habit of taking a few weeks at the beginning of each year to learn a bit about something new.  The idea is to get to the point where I can ask questions that aren't completely foolish.  By the end of the two weeks I always feel I know much less about the subject than when I started, but this is sign of progress.  It is a bit like learning a few phrases  in the language of a country you're visiting.  Even if people speak perfect English they appreciate that you've tried.  That becomes a starting point if you want to learn.  

 

Several of these mini sabbaticals have been guided by designers and craftspeople.  Those who know fabrics, metals and woods at an intimate level.  There are amazing properties that we usually don't think about.  How can you put an edge on a knife, how does concrete work, what happens when you bend metal, how do metals influence flavor?  How do you tune the exhaust note of a sports car?  How do you build flexibility and stretch into denim?  Some of this is well studied. Much of it isn't.

 

There is an effort to move beyond STEM education by adding the arts - STEAM or STE[A]M education.  It often involves sensors, lights and some computing power with a few companies appearing to supply and inspire experimenters.    A few brilliant bits have emerged from people like Iris van Herpen and Björk, but most of it is - well - learning and part of a transition  Design languages will emerge and now is probably an exciting time to get involved.  The beauty is that it encourages people to acquire the skills it takes to make things - something that is missing from most K12 programs.³

 

The Maker community is a starting point if you're interested in the intersection of the physical world and technology (mostly computing).  While a great hobby and even a business opportunity for some, I see a path to something deeper.  Most of us are idiot savants with the technology and stuff that surrounds us.  Perhaps this is a path to an evolution of our education that embraces the past and the future and recognizes art and science as active partners with engineering.   Computing and networks are important, but so is the material world and understanding how we relate to it.

 

A goal is to bring together people with a wide range of expertise and create new classes of materials and designs.  Clothing that adjusts itself to local temperature and humidity while remaining comfortable and perhaps even having a wonderful 'feel' and movement.  New ways to make proteins in during cooking to create entirely new flavors.  Building materials that repair themselves.  Fabrication processes that allow individual expression while being inexpensive enough for average people.  Tools and designs that encourage people to add to the design rather than just  consume.  

 

The sky is the limit.  The problem is finding the right spark with enough constraints that collaborations begin to reverberate.  But that is another story...

 __________

¹ There were a number of other experiments in shared acoustic VRs and sound field reconstruction for conferences.  

² The Oberlin Conservatory site has a link to an organ concert in Warner Hall that was covered by the public radio program Pipe Dreams.  Worth a listen!

³ Make: magazine is a good resource.  They're mostly focused on male-centric STEM (mostly T and E) projects, but Make: Volume 43 Feb/Mar 2015 has sections on clothing and wearables.  Adafruit is very woman friendly with supplies and projects to get someone going.

Making It by Chris Lefteri is a brief but excellent book detailing a few dozen techniques and an introduction to the different technques used at a variety of production scales.  Get the 2^nd edition!

__________

Recipe Corner

 

What happens when you have a can of plum tomatoes and some coconut milk.  Very easy and a nice area for experimentation

 

Tomato Soup with Coconut Milk

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 tbl olive oil

° 1 large yellow onion - chopped

° 1 celery stalk - chopped

° 1 carrot -chopped

° 2 garlic cloves- minced

° 28 oz can peeled plum tomatoes - real San Marzanos are a bonus!

° 2 cups vegetable broth, unsalted preferred

° coconut milk (the stuff in the cans, not the dairylike drink)

° salt and pepper to taste

 

Technique

 

° heat the oil in a pot to a medium heat

° add onions and reduce the heat a bit. Add some salt and reduce the onions until soft.

° add the carrot and celery stirring every now and again for about five minutes.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

° pour in the stock and tomatoes, bring to a boil and then cut to a simmer and cover.  Cook for about a half hour

° salt and pepper to taste

° stir in about a half cup of the coconut milk.  (a full cup may be even better)

° serve

 

 

531

I'm really enjoying Om's new pi.co project.  His latest piece is an interview with Frank Clegg - a guy who found his life's passion designing and making high quality leather goods.  You really must go over to the site and read it.

 

As I get older I find myself more and more interested in design and materials - particularly the esthetic qualities of materials and designs that are timeless.  With so much written about Jony Ive and other industrial designers, it is important to step back and look at that those special people who focus on causing that ideal in their mind to become physical.  While some bemoan the flight of craftsman ship from America I find pockets everywhere and in unexpected places.  

  

I have an interest in human powered vehicles - bicycles in particular.  High stakes racing has produced a progression in technology punctuated by iconic leaps along the way.  Rather than getting lost in the past a few special points, inspired by history and tradition,  stand out as a source of inspiration, memory and delight.  I own one.  One of my most important objects, and I would only claim to have a few, is my 1973 Raleigh Pro.  

 

Raleigh had a division that hand-crafted bikes for road racing and serious riding. Expensive, beautiful.    I saw one and couldn't get it out of my mind.  I wanted to ride one.

 

I was just an undergrad and $525 was an astronomical price in the day.  The bike shop had just ordered one that was to be delivered in about six months.  I asked the size.   Fifty nine centimeters.  The sweet spot for me - a bit of normal fitting would make it perfect.  My checking account had about one hundred dollars.  The deposit check nearly emptied the account and I now had to live with the problem of not knowing where the rest of the money would come from.

 

A few details were finalized with the builder via air mail.  A single person would make the frame, another would paint it and a third would build the wheels and mount the group set..  I opted for a special paint and detailing scheme for about two weeks worth of meals.  The letters their project manager sent weren't exactly regular business letters and exuded enthusiasm.  They only increased my sense of expectation and excitement.

 

It struck me that I was wasting money on a room.  If I gave up having a place to live the money would come together in about seven months.  So clear and obvious - I went homeless.  It wasn’t terribly difficult. I made a gym key for showering and a friendly postdoc let me use his couch for a few months in return for a bit of house repair.  It seems some theoreticians have no idea what a hammer is, so from his vantage point I had a useful super power.

 

The Raleigh arrived and the regular customers stopped by to admire the English beauty as it hung in the window for a few weeks as I came up with the last bit of money.  

 

A gloriously beautiful lugged fame  fashioned from Reynolds 531 tubing.  The group set was all top shelf Campagnolo. Sewups, Brooks seat ... everything.   She is beautiful to this day and has a wonderful ride quality - the signature of a Reynolds lugged frame from the 70s or 80s.  Riding a bike of this caliber is such a delight. I rode with the cycling club mostly on Saturdays and Sundays.  There were regular centuries - round trips between Pasadena and Irvine.  

 

The rides led to me crossing paths with a few people driven by their dreams - Paul MacCready and his take on a human powered vehicle, the Duo Tones and their surf music, and much more.  My little Raleigh was acquiring a patina of the experiences it catalyzed.  

 

There are faster bikes. Lighter bikes. More exotic bikes with carbon fiber everywhere.  Electronically controlled derailleurs, disk brakes, power meters, exotic wheels, and weights half that of my 19 pound Raleigh.  

 

Mine feels better on the road and none of the newer bikes can recall what we’ve been through together.  A few years ago I had some restoration work done by a craftsman who builds steel framed bikes for a living.  He took one look at it and said ‘damn - the frame is three cm too tall for me.  I’ll still give you $4,000 for it if you’d sell it.  That’s the most beautiful 70s Raleigh I’ve ever seen’

 

No sale.  

The roads around here are awful, so the Raleigh rarely gets ridden.  So sad - if I had sense I'd move.  If the roads were better I'd ride her more, but only on perfect days.  I'd have a nice bespoke bike made for other times.  

 

Bespoke is an abused term these days, but it is appropriate in the bike world.  There are about fifty fantastic frame builders in North America - a half dozen have waiting lists deeper than five years.  They create beautiful mounts that will give their owners a lifetime of service and perhaps discovery.  But my roads are bad and a bespoke Reynolds 953 frame properly kitted out would be north of $10k.  Titanium is an alternative and there are a few guys who understand the material.  One of them learned his craft in Lockheed's Skunk Works.  

 

Perhaps some day...

 

Building something wonderful is an exercise in constraint, experience and imagination.  I've designed and built a few things, but this is not a core strength.  Still - I've had a taste and have a bit of an understanding of some basic issues.  

 

Though an accidental meeting I was able to interest Trek in building a bike for a friend in recognition of some of her work.  Colleen is too tall for most bikes - those that sort of  fit have to be adjusted to the point where too many compromises are made.¹  The engineering staff at Trek had done a few special bikes for basketball players and this gave them an opportunity to experiment with a new material and create something that was also more environmentally friendly to construct than most current bikes. 

 

Her bike, other than its custom paint job, was designed to look almost like a normal commuter bike and make her look like an average rider.   The materials and geometry turn out to be special - the sort of thing that comes with enormous skill and experience.  The brazing work on the lugs is beautiful and I'm told it feels wonderful to ride (I have to take her word on that - my feet would be a good distance from the pedals).  Now it is building its own patina of experiences with her.  Hopefully they'll have decades together.

 

That patina of experiences.  My rides have taken me over Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier Park (with ice patches on a July morning coming off the pass), across Washington state, from Banff to Jasper in Alberta and many other places.  The long distances allow a certain detachment from whatever work I've been doing.  Sometimes it sneaks back in the form of new insight out of the blue.  I don't consider myself a particularly creative person, but my best moments rarely come when I'm pushing myself.   While the hard work is essential, it is during these breaks that welcome the muse.

 

There are so many threads I'm not touching.  Om's new project exposes a few types of being original and creativity.  I want to spend some time writing about that - particularly that of the artist and craftsperson.  But my hour has evaporated and I'm going on too long...  

__________

 ¹ Bikes have a variety of geometries to meet different needs, but sizing to the rider is, or at least should be, centrally important.  Most people - probably 90% - will find a fit within a standard range of frames.  You may not be able to find a fit in a particular make, but a good shop can find something.  Once a close enough fit is found adjustments are made.  This may involve changing handlebars, moving seat posts and handlebars, changing seats and break levels and so on...  A good reason to stay away from big box stores or mail order firms where no care is taken.

A few people fall outside the normal range. Women are more impacted than men as relative dimensions are different and often ignored in countries where most riders are male.  Colleen has exceptionally long legs and arms. Normal bikes like the one shown have to be adjusted past their limits producing a bike that is uncomfortable with poor or even dangerous handling characteristics.  

If you are outside the range the trick is a made to measure frame. Not cheap, but worth it.  Made to measure or bespoke may be the way to go if you are after that bike of a lifetime.

 __________

 Recipe Corner

 

No recipe this time, but a neat way to pack a healthy lunch.  Use a mason jar!  I've made one of my own design (eg.  just throw things that look tasty together) and recommend the approach.