An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Great idea! Get me rewrite!

Specialized's "Innovate or Die" contest is done, and here's the winner. It's a bike that powers a water-filtration system, thus killing at least two birds with one stone. (By addressing two global issues: Scarcity of potable water, and global warming brought on by fossil fuels.)





Gotta say that the only thing this righteous invention lacks is... uh, how to put this delicately? It looks hella dorky. It's a trike, after all.

Not to be a superficial jerk about it, but lookit:

Specialized is an awesome a company, but will it stay forever blind to the hipness and rising popularity of utility bikes like the Extrabike and the Big Dummy? The biggest emerging story in bike culcha since, well, the fixie?

I know, I know-- they didn't invent this bike, nor dictate design to participants. It just got me thinking how much cooler this would be -- and easily could be -- on two wheels rather than three. As far as I can tell, there's nothing about the design that would require the extra roundie. And then that got me thinking about why the major bike builders haven't already jumped into the utility bike scene. Perhaps they're waiting for Big Dummy to guinea pig the market.

And to take the thought just one step further, there is some truth to the idea that the mainstream really loves an ugly bike. I can't think of many bikes that are uglier than the Parisian Velib ride, for example, and my aesthetic and moral issues with the Trek Lime are also well documented.

The garish cruisers and plain-folk commuters in showrooms today are enough to make Dave Moulton's skin crawl, I'm sure.

2 comments:

The Driver said...

Form follows function.

Anonymous said...

i guess this is pretty cool. i would like to see how effective it is in the real world, however.