This is the first personal page I think I've made since the mid-nineties. At some point, I'll probably turn it into a blog, but for right now, I just wanted to get something out there before I head up to Michigan for a week for spring break. No, I am not a student, but she is. It's supposed to be a whopping 8 degrees when we get there. Yay!

Introduction

Some background is in order. Since this is a personal page, I can just spew forth with all kinds of scientific inaccuracies and ludicrous postulations, and be just like all the other stuff on the internet.
I am in my mid-forties, and right now, while I call Ruth Bell, WV home, I spend my weeks within easy commuting distance to the place where I work in the black heart of the Northern Virginia Sprawl a little ways outside of the home of our nations Capitol, DC. I stay in a little cottage on the back side of a small property adjoining a horse riding camp in Great Falls Va. I currently have 3 motor vehicles. The old ford van is still resting in a snow bank out on a farm in Loudoun County, awaiting spring. I have a kludge of a horror of a pickup truck, based purely on bits and pieces of various models of Toyota Land Cruiser, which hogs fuel enough to turn a Lincoln Navigator pilot green with envy, and I have a classic old american made '84 VW Rabbit GTI which is my so-called economy car. On a good day, going down hill with a tail-wind, it might get in the mid-30s on expensive fuel.
I work as a sysmom, a system administrator for a mid-sized company in the mid-atlantic. I ply my trade with Linux. I've been in the game of earning my keep by fussing with configurations files long enough to figure out that shink-wrapped solutions don't really save all the time that the purveyors of such claim. If you are going to put the time in to getting it to work right, might as well use free software and keep the cost-per down, as work hard at making Microsoft richer. Toss some bucks back into the software community and share what you've learned, and it all seems to work out. I don't make any claims at being a great Linux hacker, heck, I can barely write a program that prints "hello world", but I can generally get the tool to do what I need to get done.

Okay, fine. But what about Bob? Or just MotoBob?

It's my page, and I want to digress and rant. So, for your perusal;
Like some of you who went to grade school in the 60s, I thought that by now, the early 21st century, that not only would we, the race of humanity, be deep into inter-planetary space with a lot of momentum toward inter-stellar, but here on earth, we would be primarily atomic, solar and wind powered with the populations living principally split lives between the high-density zero polluting cities with no cars, and the completely rural agrarian country side with huge unspoiled and restored areas where folks would recreate to restore the serenity of their souls in manners suited toward their appetites.
(how's that for a run-on sentence Mike?)
Funny how that didn't turn out. The urban areas are a horror, the urban flight has decimated the agrarian mid-atlantic and spawned tract-mansions and townhouse plantations in an economic climate where the folks who build them can't afford to live anywhere near where the work has to be done. The entire BAMA (Boston to Atlanta Metropolitan Area) is connected not in any way that makes any remote sense, but rather with the DrachenSpur of I-95, a screaming horror. Everyone must drive, and they must drive everywhere. There is no "Rapid Transit" as such despite the hard work of many. It's all about the automobile. It's more like Rabid Transit. and the statistics bear this out. Hiway slaughter, and anarchy rules I-95, where on the open stretches, SUVs with R rated tyres (they're CHEEP!) routinely travel at speeds in excess of 90mph for extended times on low pressure. Just ask Ford and Firestone. Lumbering behemoths piloted by the clueless with cell-phones jammed to their heads, doing the-Lord-only-knows-what damage to their respective brain-stems, enter mortal combat wherein the one with the most throw-weight wins. I understand that the Ford Excursion does pretty well in battle with the VW Rabbit.
What can anyone do about it? Ulimately? Nothing. The ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels is accomplishing both tasks of keeping the coming ice age at bay, and to assure it's eventual arrival in our lifetime. Pretty neat. Even the republicans concur.
Okay, that's just a sample rant. There is plenty more. I'm sure you have your own. But what about Bob?

MotoBob

more digression
With all these spurious so-called facts in mind, and many more besides, any discussion eventually turns toward alternatives. I for one, have always boo-hoo-ed the concept of electric vehicles, or EVs. They don't do contests with Chevy Tahoes very well, or even with any style, and can barely hold their own against a VW Rabbit. Besides, they still consume fossil fuels, (we burn coal in these parts) And there is that nasty bugaboo of resources consumed in manufacture that even the most rabid of the pro new-technology-is-better types won't touch with a 10 footer.
In the end, one of the things a lot of us have heard, and some of believe is: Human on a bicycle is one of the most efficient machines there is. Turning ag products into motive force, with CO2 and compost as waste products, which in turn fuel ag products. Of course, not much effort goes into recovering the compost, but that is for another page, another day. Those who care to look, can check out composting toilets.
But me? I'm in my mid forties, I haven't ridden in any serious way in over 10 years. The last mountain biking weekend I took back in the fall, I set up and structured for some friends so that the entire day was spent traveling more or less downhill. (email me for details, it was a lotta fun.)
I honestly don't recall when MotoBob entered my realm of awareness. Though I had seen Bob trailers around here and there, the first one I got a close look at was at Rodger's shop Blackwater Bikes in Davis, WV. It's a very nice product. Well thought out and well made. Sure, there is room for improvement, and a lot of Bob draggers make some nice modifications, but for the price, it's a finished, workable product without peer.
Anyway, To the best of my recollection, I was google ing about looking for some hard stats on carbon->oxidised via combustion to motive force output of EV relative to the modern internal combustion engine, and probably also looking at other stuff, and I think I just stumbled into the Thunder Stuck EV home page, where I found MotoBob. I'm pretty sure I thought it was just about the silliest thing I had ever seen. Probably hollared at my office mate and friend of many many years (who is still a bloody locomotive on a bicycle) "Hey, look at this silly c%$p here! Is that the dumbest idea you've ever seen?" Remembering an old saw that went the effect of:

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to shove them down peoples throats"

I was given to ponder the significance of MotoBob. I got out the maps. I studied. I learned that with the exception of a 300 yard dash down Georgetown Pike in the morning, and back up in the evening, (suicide for a fat, slowpoke) I could connect up Fairfax County Va bike trails with neighborhood streets and commute to work. Using MotoBob as a peddle assist, I could maybe arrive not stinking like a pig in the morning, or dead tired in the evening, I could avoid the horror of trying to compete with a ditzy-cell-jabbering freak in a Lexus 450 or Audi S8 by staying mostly out of harms way, use an external powersource on the bike paths, and maybe save my life by actually getting some real exercise for a change. Maybe it's just ridiculous enough to actually be a great idea! Fact, MotoBob is silly. Silly is fun. Fun is good. Motobob is therefore good.
That's enough digression.

I up and emailed Thunderstruck EV with some pointed questions, why this and why that, what about this, what about that, and eventually wasted enough of their time to feel that if I were to buy one of these silly Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions, I should send them a bonus. Then, good friend, whack-job, artist, visionary, musician, writer, and linux hacker Mike Taht confessed that he couldn't chat on the phone because he was on his way out the door to pick up his EV assist bicycle. Too much of a coincidence. I haven't even had the pleasure of Mike's company for over 6 years and aside from the very occasional phone chat, /usr/bin/talk session, and infrequent email (his fault) how could there be this convergence in crazy thought? Maybe because it's a good idea? Who knows. All I know is a few weeks later, he jabbered that the EV assist bike was the greatest thing since sliced bread and I was an idiot if it was within my abilities to have and use one, and not do that thang. Enough! I thought, I emailed Thunderstruck one last time for billing and shipping totals and the next day, express mailed a Money Order for $740 out the door. $700 for MotoBob and $40 for shipping UPS ground. Thunderstruck is up the Marin Highlands somewhere I think, on the wrong coast fer shere, but MotoBob was on my door step in a week.

With the trails around here covered in ice and snow, early morning temps in the teens, it arrived.

So, the story begins. I'll be fattening this up as time progresses, but here is the start.

MotoBobMetamorphosis

click on the pics for bigger pics