LITTLE ROCK — Bicycles get weirder and weirder all the time.
The other day, someone slipped past me on the trail riding a gizmo that at first glance seemed to be a big eggbeater. It was a handcycle, but by the time I doped that out, the handcyclist was far, far away.
Poking along on my upright commuter bike, I’ve seen electric bicycles; fixed-gear and single speed bicycles; unicycles (two of them, but on different days);
recumbents with two wheels;
recumbents with three wheels;
recumbents with fairing shields;
tandems; tandems pulling child trailers; tandems attached to a child’s two-wheeler; a regular bicycle with a sidecar; a regular bicycle hooked up to three children’s bicycles ...
Only after people flail off into the distance do I find a word that seems to describe what they’re riding. Usually it’s some variation of “bicycle,” but the reproduction antique velocipede with its huge front wheel and teeny rear wheel looked like something escaped from a circus.
How many different kinds of bicycles are there? How much can you rearrange wheels, metal tubing and a saddle before the word “bike” really can’t apply?
The International Bicycle Fund has compiled a product research tool that helps answer such questions - or, anyway, helps you figure out what that contraption you just saw scooting along the trail might be.
Based in Seattle, the fund is not a trade group but an independent nonprofit advocacy organization that aims to promote the use of bicycles as transportation around the world.
On a web page titled “Bicycle and Pedal Power Technology Applications,” it links to manufacturers that make “nonstandard bicycle technology” under categories like “arm-powered,” and “pedicab/rickshaw.”
An “alternative cycle technology” page links to 50 or so manufacturers’ websites, listed alphabetically from “Air Free Bicycle Tire” to “Wind Powered Bicycle Project.” A few of the pages no longer work, but most do and lead a visitor to curious adaptations of bicycle technology, illustrated by YouTube video clips.
Among my favorites are the “Shuttle Bike Kit” link, which brings up two enthusiastic product representatives chattering in Italian as they pedal across a body of water on mountain bikes attached to pontoons. The pontoons apparently can be carried around in a backpack.
The “Pedal Powered Application” section answered an enduring question: “How many convenience devices have been outfitted with bicycles to generate electricity?”
Oh, so many. It’s not just margarita blenders and ice cream makers. You can pedal a stationary bike to run a corn thresher, a water pump, a microconcrete vibrator, which might be handy for dealing with roofing tiles, a coffee depulper, a metal sharpener, washing machines, soil plow till-hoe, a nut-sheller, a wood saw, chain trencher, a weeder, a front-end loader, an oil-seed press, a forklift, a soy grinder, a reel mower, a bulldozer, a dump-trike, a rice separator ...
Unfortunately, a keen sounding link to a “pedal powered computer” in Laos, Cambodia, didn’t connect.
Ironically, the day I visited the site, it was supported by a Google ad titled “Gas Bicycle.”
The site is ibike.org/library/bike-manufactur ers.htm.
ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 07/26/2010