Bicycle Tutor

Thanks to Urban Velo I just heard about this fantastical website called Pedal ID, where you can drag around bike parts and create your own bike! As a child I spent countless hours sketching my dream bikes and I would have loved to have access to this. I think there is a lot of potential for this project to evolve into something really, really cool… somebody give them funding!!!

I’d like to see the ability to change the color of each component, maybe using a palette or flash-based editor. If you could also edit each item there would be no end to what you could come up with!

What do you think… just how cool is it? Or how much of a geek am I?

Check out the new live chat room! I won’t always be available, so I’m hoping that this page grow into a good resource where you can get live answers from either myself or one of our other many knowledgeable site members. You can chat anonymously, or set up an account on chatroll to create a permanent username and icon. Eventually I plan to set up a bigger studio space where I’ll be hosting live video sessions on a scheduled basis.

I really appreciate all of your patience this past month as I upgraded the site. There were a lot of twists and turns along the way, but all of the glitches have now been solved (as far as I know). I hope you all enjoy the new site layout, it was a long time coming. The old site template worked well when we just had the tutorial videos, but adding the blog, requests, and forums sections got to be too much. I hope this new layout helps to tie it all together in a way that makes it easier to navigate.

I’d love to hear what you think about the new site… if you notice any problems or have any suggestions please let me know. I’m excited to start putting out some more videos and I’m now scripting this week’s tutorial. Thanks for your patience

I’m just about ready to hunker down for the winter and try to get as many of your requests done as I can. In the meantime I’ve been doing some site maintenance and improvements. One thing I’ve been wanting to get done is a new top banner and logo for the site. Since I’m not good at logo design, I thought I’d leave it up to you!

UPDATE: Josiah won this contest… what do you think of the new logo?

Marty Mares from Genuine Innovations sent me six brand new CO2 inflators just so I can give one away to our site subscribers every month! These SecondWind Road-Minis will only work on bikes with presta valves as they are high-pressure (130PSI). They each include a frame mounting bracket and can be used with the instant CO2 cartridge or manually by hand. I’ll do a tutorial on how to use one of these in the coming weeks.

How to Enter

Simply enter your email address and then check your email inbox for a verification link. If you already receive email updates from the tutorial feed then your name has already been entered. At the end of every month I’ll be randomly choosing one winner. If you win I’ll be in touch for your mailing info. Prize winners will be listed below…

Winners

October 2008 - Justin Kuo from Brookline, Massachusetts
November 2008 - Ariel Fisher from Modiin, Israel
December 2008 - Penny Clark from Mason, Ohio
January 2009 - Jon Rice from Wolverhampton, UK
February 2009 - To be announced.
March 2009 - To be announced.

Two lowriders in Kensington Market, Toronto. Photo by Alex Ramon

This past weekend I visited Toronto for the first time. I was blown away by the amount of bicycles… they are everywhere! I guess the flat terrain helps, and the city seems to be working hard to promote bikes. Way to go Toronto!

My buddy ronatron lucked out and got us more media passes for the virgin music festival, so I’m off to take some photos. I’ll be back Wednesday Sept. 10th. The lovely and talented Maria José will be processing the downloads and dvd orders. I’ll respond to your comments and forum posts as soon as I get back to the computer. I hope you all have a great weekend

I love bike photography and I know a lot of you do too. A while back I set up a group on flickr called PedalZine where anyone can submit their best cycling photos. Every month I’ll be choosing four of my favorite photos from the group and showing them off here… if you like them, please click the images and leave a comment on the artist’s flickr page!

Lately I’ve been overwhelmed with email questions from visitors. In an effort to save time so that I can continue producing videos, I’ve now set up forums where you can register and ask questions. That way everyone can contribute and benefit from the answers in a community-style format. Once registered you can add a profile icon and website link (which will show up on all of your posts), subscribe to topics, and send other members private messages… enjoy!

With 36 tutorials online I’m feeling the need to let loose and go on a short vacation. I’m going to check out the Pemberton Festival this week and do some photography for my buddy Ronatron. I’ll be back on Aug 4th and the next tutorial will be posted around Aug 8th

I was blown away yesterday when Sree Sreenivasan contacted me to let me know he’d be covering BicycleTutor.com on the 5:20 evening news. You can watch the original video on NBC, and be sure to check out Sree’s technology page while you’re there… thanks Sree!

The list of requests is growing large, and I don’t have a lot of the components we need. It would be great to find sponsors that are willing to exchange bicycles, parts and tools for brand exposure on BicycleTutor.com. For example, if your local shop donated a BMX bike or a folding bike, I would mention them in every video I used it in, and also link to them in the text portion of the tutorial. This site is now getting 10-20,000 pageviews a day, so the advertising potential for them would be well worth it. If you know anyone who can help us or you have some advice, please contact me. You can get an idea of the kind of thing we are looking for by checking the requests that are pending parts or tools.

Thank you

I haven’t got any 3-speed tutorials done yet, but there have been a lot of requests. I thought I’d share some of Vin Vullo’s great videos in the meantime. Vin has been buying and selling vintage bicycles since the 1960s. He’s got an excellent resource for vintage bicycles over at OldRoads.com. He’s also made 16 videos introducing all aspects of 3-speed bicycles, from sizing to accessories. Check out this playlist of his vintage 3-speed videos on YouTube!

Fábio Pereira has kindly volunteered to add Portuguese Subtitles to some of the videos. Today he sent in the first video, Como Revisar sua Bicicleta (How To Tune Up Your Bike). You’ll find a link to the subtitle page below the English Version. Thanks Fábio!

In response to all of your requests for a DVD version of the tutorials, I’ve put together Volume One of what will become a series of DVDs. This first volume contains the first 25 video tutorials from the site. All future volumes will have 25 videos each.

• Order Volume One