Found this survivor on e-bay, all original and complete.  An old Raleigh DL-1 rod brake roadster, just like the one Dad rode as an Oxfordshire constable in England in the early '50s.

Put the hundreds of bits together and last weekend took it to Morgan at Bikeland to make it right.

This is Dad's birthday present, sort of like buying your Dad a baseball glove. Ok, well exactly like ;-)  I'm hoping to borrow it for the RfH, as a 'reward' to my sponsors for helping me raise $1,000.

Dad's expressed an interest in cycling as an exercise that'll be easier on his knees than walking.  I'd like to see him on my mtb initially as it should be a bit easier than the DL-1 after nearly six decades off bike, then have him try this oldie.

Tough bike computer

This past weekend I put a load of clothes through the wash (heavy cycle, hot wash, cold rinse), then tossed some into the drier for 20 minutes.

Something in the drier kept clunking around.  Thought 'the plastic buckle on those pants' though it sounded heavier.

Emptied the drier, and found my Sigma 1609.  Still working.  Since then I've had occasion to check all its functions, no damage other than maybe a few new scuffs.  This has worked flawlessly through its first winter going between my Barrie and Toronto bikes.  Still a happy little bike computer!

Hyperdrive bicycle

with apologies to readers: this was posted early on the morning of April 1st, 2010. But due to an incident with a really high spoke count bicycle wheel it may have appeared briefly in the late evening of March 30th. Please be assured that no detectible tear in the fabric of space time occured, and I'm quite confident that any black holes that could have been created would have been very, very tiny and of short duration.

Last year while on the GWTA I stumbled upon an extraordinarily sustainable means of augmenting energy.

It came about when I was in a bike shop having a broken spoke replaced. While there I asked for a new cadence magnet for my crank; mine had come off somewhere enroute. The mechanic grabbed one off the wall and tossed it into the bag along with the chamois cream and one or two other odds and ends.

When I got to camp that night I took out the bag intending to fit the new magnet so I'd once again have cadence indication, only to discover they'd given me a spoke magnet in error.

That night I had a revelation. If the magnet were mounted to my wheel, on the spoke opposite to the existing magnet, my bike computer would confirm that for the same pedalling effort I'd achieve twice the speed, this without any change in the wheel circumference calibration entered into the computer! I can ride comfortably all day long at an average 20kph, so with this I'd be able to achieve 40kph without any significant increase in wattage!

What's more, if two cyclists, one with and one without this technology, start off together and ride the same route, reaching their destination together, one will have travelled twice as far and twice as fast. This analysis alone proves the technology can bend space-time! More work needs to be done to develop practical applications, but the potential is obvious.

Thinking further about this I realized that putting magnets on each spoke of a thirty-six spoke wheel would allow me to maintain an absolutely terrifying average speed of 720kph all day long with peak speeds up to 3 times that or more, if only I could find a road where this could be done safely. Unfortunately our highways are choked with old fashioned automobiles, creating unacceptable traffic delays when this bicycle technology is ready for release.

I remember once reading a theory that UFO's use a form of magnetic drive technology, of which this 'double-helix onion drive' system is but one of the more sophisticated examples.

Further developing the concept, how many spokes could be fitted within the outer wheel of a device based on a monocycle? Would it be possible with such a device and a really, really high spoke count wheel to travel in time? Is it just a coincidence that this 1873 monowheel bears a passing family resemblance to illustrations of H.G.Wells Time Machine?

I can't reveal any more of my research at this time. Further developments must be done in secret, as powerful interests have conspired in the past to suppress much smaller threats to their dominance of mankind. Once all is ready I promise to release it for free, to the benefit of all. Then it will be too late to stop us! "The history of science is the history of the suppression of great inventions".