In the early days of the internal combustion engine, there were lots of fairly simple vehicles powered by the new motors. One of the first was also fairly cheap. Bicycle shops all over the place took small gasoline engines and regular bikes, creating hybrids (human/gasoline) long before Prius fever swept the nation.

1902 Motorbike Advertisement

As Henry Ford's Model T came on to the scene, the attention shifted to vehicles that could transport the whole family, more cargo, etc. World War II vets brought interest back to 2 wheeled motorized transportation. However, by then, the engines got much bigger and eventually led to the Harley, Honda, and other full-sized motorcycles that you see (and hear) heading down the road.

Today, there's lots of interest in getting from Point A to Point B with as little of the liquified dinosaurs as possible. Heck, if you're looking for a new drinking game that will get you drunk by noon, just take a swig every time someone starts a paragraph with the following phrase:

With gas at $4.00…

There are reports at dealerships selling mopeds, scooters and motorcycles that sales are up by as much as 40% over this time last year. The appeal of vehicles that get 75, 100 or even 150 miles per gallon is obvious if you've ever seen the gas pump fly past $70 as you fill the tank.

Personally, I've been interested in alternative forms of transportation for a while. Heck, I distinctly remember sitting on the riding lawn mower at the age of 10 daydreaming about whether I could take the mower into town. I dreamed up a way of putting a sort of tent over it so I could ride in the rain.

More recently, I've tinkered with an electric bike. That project is sitting in the garage, taunting me. I would love to tackle it again and have that option available in my transportation arsenal. However, the pragmatist in me realizes if I wait for that day to come, I'll just keep driving my truck.

So, last fall, I began thinking about a way to expand my options for getting around without using a gallon of gas for every 20 miles I drive. Shelly's new job has provided one option and we're now carpooling several days per week. However, I wanted something that makes the short trips to the store, library, etc. better as well as the commute.

Since Minnesota requires an extra endorsement on one's driver's license to ride a motorcycle (and the time to take the class/test is in short supply), I did a bunch of digging into the gas-powered options with engines smaller than 50cc's. That size avoids the motorcycle endorsement and slides into a fairly unregulated category.

I looked at the "normal" mopeds a bit, but they didn't really catch my interest. Then I ran across a company called Spookytooth Cycles. They build motorized bicycles in the style of the original motorcycles from 1902. With several models under $500, they are providing cheap transportation to lots of people.

I was intrigued and made a note to look into getting one this spring. About a month or so ago, I finally took action and ordered one of their bikes, called The Dresser.

Spookytooth Dresser (what I bought)

I ordered it and have spent the last month waiting for the build and shipment process to finish up (that's their normal lead time FYI). Today, FedEx delivered a couple of boxes containing my new motorized bicycle. While I ordered it "fully assembled", there is some assembly that needs to happen in order to cut down on shipping costs.

So, I still have a minor project to finish before I can ride it (plus the rain has to stop before I'd want to). However, the shiny new vehicle is sitting in the garage right now and I'm looking forward to taking it for a spin when I get a chance.

With mileage in the 150 mpg range, it's definitely an option worth looking at if you're trying to cut down on transportation costs or just want to cruise down the street with the wind in your hair.

A couple of months ago, I ran across a link to a light electric vehicle called the BugE. It was notable not only because it's just a cool little bit of transportation technology that'll do 40mph, but because it was going to be far cheaper than the $25,000 to $100,000 that other electric vehicles capable of that speed tend to cost.

Today I got a note indicating that these things are finally shipping and you can order one. While they're a bit more expensive when all is said and done (about $5000 plus shipping) than the $3000 ballpark number thrown out when it was first mentioned, we're still talking about a very reasonable price for a slick little vehicle. The $5000 number is what it takes when you buy the kit, plus the lighting bits and the motor/controller/etc kit in addition.

I really like that his design specifically set out to be simple, using fewer parts than his previous designs. This makes the kits easier to build and cheaper to manufacture, which are critical to pushing stuff like this into the public consciousness. Even at $5000, it's in the price range of a snowmobile, ATV, boat, etc. That makes it a do-able project for a dedicated enthusiast (though it'll be a year or 2 before I'm up for it yet), instead of only for the die hards out there.

Given some of the recent total-cost-of-ownership I've seen for the iPhone, this would be a much more interesting way to spend that same money, as far as I'm concerned.

Photo: Fanch

At the moment, I'm inclined to pretty much put my DIY electric bike on hold. This first appeared to be a simple project.

1. Buy a cheap bike
2. Buy a hub motor kit
3. Install the wheel and connect the basic connectors.
4. Ride away.

First, the original bike didn't have enough room between the forks, so I bought a replacement bike after measuring quite a few.

Then, today, I finally had the time to put on the tire, install the motor, and hook it all together. My mom, Shelly and my sister headed out shopping for the day and the garage is mostly cleaned out after last weekend.

I got the wheel installed, and then wired the controller, the motor and the throttle together (they were just clip-together connectors) and went to hook the charged up batteries.

It was at that point that a bright flash of light blinded me. The smell of ozone filled the air and my fingers, newly scorched black and burned by the arc, dropped the connectors. Despite there really only being one way to hook this all together, something is apparently very wrong with one or more of the components.

Then, apparently proving which side of the scientific divide I'm on, I tried it again.

I think there was more ozone, but less scorching the second time.

This, combined with the fact that I nearly lit my pants on fire by casually tossing a couple of AA batteries into my pocket along with my keys a couple of weeks ago, thus shorting them out has me thinking it might be time for a refresher course in battery safety. Does anyone have some aloe vera?

I've got a couple of things that I wanted to post, but don't have time to give them all a full post treatment.

Subversion and Smoothwall Fighting
I fought all afternoon with being unable to do checkouts, updates or checkins into Subversion on Dreamhost. I had that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach since I wholeheartedly have been recommending people use them for cheap Subversion hosting.

Turns out it wasn't Dreamhost's problem, it was mine. I recently switched on the transparent web proxy in my Smoothwall firewall. Apparently, the Squid proxy doesn't cooperate with the REPORT WebDAV HTTP headers that Subversion uses, thus resulting in the errors. I've shut the proxy off until I can figure out a better solution.

So, if you're getting "REPORT request failed", check if there's a proxy in the middle.

Home Theater Projector
Something like 18 months ago, I investigated the DIY projector information from Lumenlab. Since they used a 15" LCD, I ruled it out (no room for a projector of that size in my home theater). However, 6 months ago, I noticed that they had announced that they were taking their design and getting some smaller ones manufactured.

I added myself to their list to be notified when they were available to buy and I got the email a few weeks ago. I'm now eagerly anticipating mine to end up on the doorstep.

It was $499, with free shipping. Instead of an expensive $300 bulb, they use a cheap $30 bulb that lasts 6000 hours. According to their distance calculator, I should be able to get at least a 100" 16:9 image, but will wait to buy the screen until I'm sure about the size. However, this is the first inexpensive projector I've seen that doesn't throw out a postage stamp sized image at 10 feet.

The IRS Roller Coaster
After getting a letter from the IRS "requesting" a payment in the amount of almost $1200 due to under-reporting my 2005 taxes, things have gone 180°. We tracked down the glitch (we actually paid taxes on the money in 2004 and they didn't match things up).

Then, today, we got the call that we're actually getting almost $2000 back. What a roller coaster. I hope that they lose complete interest in my financial arrangements.

The cash will come in handy following the large soapy puddle in the middle of the kitchen coming from the dishwasher a couple of days ago.

The Electric Bike
I hit Target looking for a donor bike and bought the closest thing I could find: a retro, cruiser-style bike from Schwinn. Basically, if the motor doesn't fit in this bike, there isn't a cheap bike nearby that this thing will fit into. It was the only one there that met the requirements.

With the motor, I'm not terribly concerned with leaning down, so the more upright position is actually nice. There won't be as much weight on my wrists and the bigger handlebars offer plenty of space to mount the throttle and other accessories.

So, here's to hoping that the motor spins freely.

This weekend, despite removing 15" of snow from my driveway, the calendar convinced me that the weather will be changing in 4-6 weeks to something that's more suited to riding atop a bicycle. And, given my stated intent to get my *electric* bike built "this winter", I needed to get off my butt and at least get the parts ordered.

So, I ordered the 600W hub motor kit from We're Electrified. It's initially going on the cheap Target bike ($100 or so). That's to help establish a baseline. That this project can be done and works with a clunky cheap bike, ridden by a guy who's never likely to be much smaller than 200 pounds. It looks like the total cost for the project will be about $500. The bike was $100, the kit $350 and the shipping $50 (lead batteries aren't cheap to ship).

Once it's built, I'm going to be using a plug-in electric meter to track the kilowatt hours required per mile traveled. That's for a couple of reasons.

1. To know exactly how much this replacement commuting option costs and saves over driving the truck.
2. To be able to properly size a solar charging solution, rendering the commute powered by the sun.

It'd be easy to over or under estimate the size of the solar charging setup. I want it to match my actual commute fairly well.

Beyond the electric bike, I want to also get a gas moped of some sort. Either a "traditional" 49cc moped or something more "bicycle" styled like one of these or these. I'm also intrigued by this 3 wheeled electric vehicle. That kit, my electric bike and a gas bike would cost less than $4500, and provide a variety of options, ALL of them greener than my current truck. The point being a continuum of transportation options.

I'm still going to keep the pickup, because it's paid for and is useful for hauling cargo. However, I'd like to have it shift to occasional use (which has the side effect of it lasting longer) to be replaced by lighter options rather than trying to have a single vehicle for all of my needs. That "all-in-one" approach is what's led to so many SUV's on the road in the United States. Since we believe we can only have our one vehicle (per person of course), we insist that it can take care of everything we might possibly need.

As a result, instead of renting a van, the 1 time per year we need to transport a group of 7 adults somewhere, we drive around 364 other days of the year by ourselves in an 8 passenger SUV. Instead of considering an electric vehicle that will cover our needs for everything except for 2 trips to Grandma's a year (and renting a car for the long trip), we turn it down because it can't drive more than 150 miles in a day.

So, I'm taking a stab at incremental improvement. I'm not going to pretend that I'll somehow find myself willing to take up full human-powered cycling. I've tried that in the past and didn't get very far. I think the key is to treat this as something where you work toward improvement *over your current situation* instead of worrying about comparing to the ideal, you are making things better. Success needs to be anchored to the appropriate benchmark. And, that benchmark needs to be *your* starting point, not the perfect end point.

And with every gallon of gas not burned, you save 19 pounds of carbon dioxide from getting dumped into the air. If I replace 105 round trips to work, that's a literal ton of CO2 that stays out of the air.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get a decent MP3 speaker setup strapped to it by the time I'm ready to roll.