Thinking of building The Tree, a top / bottom tandem tall bike

What's up Bike People? Hope you had a good long weekend. I spent Martin Luther King day in the workshop, organizing, replacing cardboard boxes with stackable, dividable plastic bins... and sketching out a full sized drawing of a new tall party bike concept that I'm calling The Tree.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I wanted to share this concept drawing with you, because I'm not sure at this point whether I'll have the time to build it. And if I do build it, the thing's going to be really hard to take on BART. I'm pretty sure I could bust this one out in less time than previous full-custom party bikes, given the practive I've had wiring up bicycle audio systems and creating custom fiberglass forms. But from past experience, I also know good work always takes much longer than I expect.

I have been really inspired by the execution of Jay Broemmel's Dragon Bike, the way he hides the structural steel tubes in matte black and draws attention to the decorative dragon itself, like a puppeteer who dresses in black. Similarly, the tall bike I want to make would be a tree, where you literally climb the branches to get to the seat. It would also be a tandem. There'd be a place low on the bike for a stoker to pedal, in a recumbent position.

I imagine night rides like the SF Cruisers' Halloween party, and other events, where we would roll into a street party, and create a fantasy forest experience for passersby -- a Tree, a Dragon, a Fish, with a bamboo dance floor ready to roll out and move people to dance.

Well, it's a big project to take on, at a time when we have really important progress to make on the Down Low Glow and other basic priorities for growing Rock the Bike. But the public reactions to the art bikes from the Rock the Bike community this year has been tremendous. And on principle I don't want to put off till the future the realization of a dream that has been simmering as long as this one. One lesson I took from David Deida's "Way of the Superior Man" was to not put off into the future the things you imagine yourself being and doing. Starting today, he writes, spend 1-2 hours a day doing that thing that you imagine yourself doing in the future.

Well today I spent about 2 hours taking The Tree from my notebook to full-sized paper. I started by taping together some Innovate Or Die posters I had in the workshop, along with some architectural drawings I was about to recycle.

I flipped it over and started placing bike parts on this huge canvas, such as a seatpost, tires, disc brake rotor (to represent a chainring), etc.

To place the various key components, such as the chainring for the recumbent stoker, I lay down on the paper, taking note of where my head and feet ended up. I then sized it down, thinking that a lot of the stokers I'd carry will be shorter than me.