November 14, 2007...4:20 pm
Safetybike
YIKES! Safetybike update 1/18/08: The Safetybike video will be featured this coming weekend on an CNN show called “News To Me” that runs on Saturday and Sunday at 12:30 and 5:30. Mark and Chris have put together a Safetybike website for inspiration.
Another one of Mark’s projects! To see more of his inventions check out the typewriter piano and the Invisible Chair.
Mark has also become the collective house’s resident hydrologist; you can see his directions for an inexpensive rain barrel here. That’s just a start–he recently found us two big plastic containers that will hold 275 gallons of rain water each, to be installed once we’ve finished replacing the gutters. Stay tuned…
1/10/08 SAFETYBIKE UPDATE: Crazy! The Safetybike video has caught on in a big way. In the last month it has gone from several thousand views to well over 1.1 million. If you Google “Safetybike”, page after page of links come up.
Mark himself is back from tour with Zegota and home sick with a bad cold. He’s not quite sure what 1.1 million views means to his own life, except that he and Chris Huggins are thinking about putting the actual Safetybike–resting against Mark’s parents’ garage for the last couple of years–up on eBay. We’ll see.
I’ve enjoyed looking at some of the responses to the Safetybike video. I think my favorite is this guy:
...and many thanks to the 
The best seat in our house is definitely The Invisible Chair. Mark invented it a couple of years ago and we've got the prototype in the living room. Most days it's just a chair--we sit on it to use the house computer, we pull it out on the porch when we need an extra place to sit, visiting children have crayoned on it--but on evenings when people sit around playing music, it reveals 
All six hens are laying now--brown eggs from the two Barred Rocks and these lovely little blue-green eggs from the Americaunas.
23 Comments
November 30, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Awesome dudes! Why the hell didn’t we invent this in Holland first
November 30, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Brilliant.
November 30, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Looks more like an unsafety bike. Every time you brake a barely controllable flip over is provoked. Now go try that on a road where some traffic is taking place, instead of showing off this amazing construction an empty field.
November 30, 2007 at 2:33 pm
[...] Safetybike November 30, 2007 at 6:33 pm | In Crafts, Technology | I have to say, my instinct is that this is, in fact, a profoundly unsafe bike. [...]
November 30, 2007 at 3:21 pm
You should have a little peice that flips over to the part where the bike wheels are, that transforms your part-circle into a whole circle.
ROLL FOREVER!
November 30, 2007 at 3:34 pm
@Knut - you may be taking the name a little too seriously.
November 30, 2007 at 4:23 pm
thats fantastic… love it….
November 30, 2007 at 5:50 pm
No, I /know/ Knut is taking the name too seriously.
November 30, 2007 at 9:15 pm
well done, but what is safe about that? who cares. brilliant!
December 1, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Dudes — it’s a safety bike because if your front wheel gets jammed or hits something you don’t fly over the handlebars.
December 1, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Some enterprising young cyclist had one of those at this year’s Minneapolis Mayday parade. It was incredible. He could spin over at will and the crowd would cheer. It was sweet.
Nice work everyone
December 1, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Why don’t you make the top part armature a sphere instead of just a circle? It would keep you from falling over sideways.
December 1, 2007 at 3:22 pm
The Rat Patrol a group of alt bike makers has a member with one of these who takes it around Chicago for no special reason. Last I saw him it was Halloween nite in the middle of the Damen/North/Milwaukee intersection during traffic lulls and redlights at about 2am to the roars of the crowd.
December 1, 2007 at 8:05 pm
The gyroscopic extra wheel needs to be spun faster; or maybe give it a little more mass, but this is less desirable.
December 1, 2007 at 11:42 pm
[...] This is awesome. [...]
December 3, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Nice…and Knut, you might want to learn to take a joke a little better!
December 3, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Holy crap. THat was Chritopher Stuart Huggins rollin’ that bastard.
December 5, 2007 at 12:59 pm
You are complete IDIOT! Nice anti-Police website! The Police were called in to swelch the anti-establishment goons in Seattle and Los Angeles (D.N.C.) but just think about how badly you anti-everything crowd would get your heads kicked in if the Police that you hate so much were not there to protect your nerd asses! Protest is great, but when you have a violent intention, that’s when I call the Police to get you out of the situation ASAP! And if your beaten because your resisting a lawfull order, the sobeit! That’s the beauty of a civilized scociety, if you don’t like rules, move to Indonesia, I am quite certian they would love to have you malcontents there! If confused about this post…… Hold your breath, close your mouth (difficult I know), block your nose and FART! Perhaps that will clear out your feeble mind!
December 8, 2007 at 10:05 pm
What is that all about!!!
That doesn’t look to safe to me.
What is this,Some kind of joke?
I mean they kept falling on their behind’s.
Automatically done for the day
-Skye.A.Trull
January 5, 2008 at 10:30 am
Maybe if you used two big circular rail-ey things with enough space between them you’d be able to roll in a straight line every time, or at least more often.
January 6, 2008 at 2:00 pm
What a complete joy it must have been to feel yourself encircling on a bicycle in a way many of us have seen and or participated in and unbeknownst to ourselves moments before while riding in a pack !
That joyish moment, that feeling of momentary hurtling through the air suspended upside down, that brief glorious feeling before the finale of anticipated doom. Just those few thrilling moments, suspended, lets us all know life can have thrilling moments, indeed! Thanks for the reminder.
January 8, 2008 at 9:26 pm
[...] linked to more and more websites; one day more than 9,000 people came to my blog looking for the Safetybike. And now the Safetybike has become a YouTube phenomenon: as of the second day in January the video [...]
March 11, 2008 at 9:25 am
The rollover bike in Chicago is not a Rat Patrol bike, Patrick is mistaken in this case.
http://chicagoist.com/2007/10/23/for_once_going.php
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