134.5 kg Concrete Bike [video]

This is similar to my business plan where I start a combo moving company / personal training service and charge people to move other people's furniture. Double profit!

You're thinking too small, friend.

Build a space station with gravity via rotation. Then spin it up to 150% of normal gravity. Now everything is 50% heavier, yourself included!

It's much easier to get married, so you'll have the weekly task of going to the store by foot and bring back bagfuls of groceries, and possibly two packs of bottled water... then return there because you forgot two bags of cat's litter:)

More seriously, ages ago I wondered about a way to generate power by making sort of a (very compact) exoskeleton-like contraption for each limb articulation, so walking or using arms would activate some generators. Mechanical construction would be quite a challenge, however if built in a very compact wearable way it could become a thing: sensors for body parameters could self power, the phone in a pocket equipped with a inductive charger would charge while running, etc.

I once met a guy on a bike ride who trained with a kids trailer loaded down with bricks. He claimed that it was more time-efficient way to train, and on race days, his bike felt like it was made of helium. My only concerns are wear&tear on knees, and the risk of a crash, getting smashed by a 200lb trailer doesn't sound fun.

It would be a cosmic irony, since humans have been trying to make things "easier" since at least 4000 years.

I have another idea, make a lot of crank generators so that biochemical energy gets converted into electricity. I know you won't power your kettle nor your telsa but considering people 1) pay for exercise [0] 2) pay to power the devices to exercise .. I think it's due time.

[0] gym club managed to market gravity (and social context, but mostly gravity).

> keyboards with 1lb resistance springs

This may be a good recipe for tendinitis.

SNL did a sketch about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZRzJJcq6Rs

For some reason the feeling of getting exhausted on an ultralight racing bike feels much easier on the mind than getting exhausted on a regular bike with a flat tire. Similar with swimming with slick gear versus swimming with long shorts and a shirt.

> This reminds me of my own wacky idea for a line of fitness products: ordinary everyday items that are normal in every way except that they are intentionally designed to be physically challenging to use.

Not exactly an everyday item, but people who want to train for "tactical" things with ballistic armored vests, either because they work for a PMC or are actually in the military, can buy steel plates to put in a plate carrier which exactly match the dimensions of an expensive ($2000+) ceramic plate set, for weight and balance purposes and train with those.

> keyboards with 1lb resistance springs

I'm sure there would be mech keyboard enthusiasts who would find the actuation force too light on those

Not exactly the same, but this reminded me of the following excellent design gallery: https://www.theuncomfortable.com/

Famous Russian wrestler a century ago walked with a cane 16 kg weight.

For simple mortals like me - while hiking I've been using the Nordic poles with 8 inches springed amortization which naturally works up your upper body.

> remote controls that weigh several kilograms

That would require either very expensive metals, or a giant remote control.

But something like this is already done - a lot of people use leg weights as an extra in the gym.

Along the same lines, I’ve wondered why gyms don’t hook up all their weight machines up to a big generator. Gym members would be paying the gym to reduce the gym’s electric bill.

Kind of the extremely radical opposite to the reasoning behind accessibility, then? Ever have someone in a wheelchair get mad at you?

What about just wearing a weighted vest?

Another interesting idea I've had many many years ago: Skies that have enough buoyancy to be able to float on the sea while a person is standing on them. Do that you ski across the sea. Although the movement would be closer to rollerblades, due to lack of hills.

The door idea is a safety issue, but there's a market for a gag-gift remote control holder that's a barbell, for sure. Whether it helps anyone is an open question, but it hits the sweet spot for twee Americana gas station stuff.

Or just have kids.

I am picking up a 16kg and a 12kg masses several times a day, and I am sure that this keeps me in shape. Basically, because I didn't have time to go to the gym in the last five years.

It seems like anyone who’s a lazy TV watching bum would get RSIs from their remote control. I know my Apple TV remote does this to me when I use the integrated touchpad.

> doors that require a lot of force to open

These already exist! Especially when a door opens outward and it's windy outside and the wind is pushing against it.

Google "rucking"

Basically you put some bricks or weights into your backpack and take a walk.

And yes, it is a thing.

This has got to be the dumbest idea that I have ever heard of.

they call it functional training

> a concrete helmet is literally worse than useless.

Is it? It would still absorb energy upon impact. Which, in contrast to popular belief about bike helmets, is its main function. Yes, ordinary bike helmets will also just break. But in doing so, they absorb energy which then won't be absorbed by your skull.

There is no point in a perfectly stiff helmet. It would just transfer the energy right through and you'd crash your skull into the helmet, which doesn't help.

In the late 70's ferro-cement sailboats were a thing. I watched one get built at the marina where we kept our boat at the time. It's mentioned here [0], the Sandpiper.

[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=COilQT7iWTgC&pg=PP436&lpg=...

The knife throwing machine reminds me a lot of the slingshot channel:

https://youtube.com/c/Slingshotchannel

Do you happen to have photos of the bike?

I do this with extension cords, bit of electrical tape and most potential yoinkers will think twice about yoinking.

I like this. But alternatively, couldn't that make it look abandoned and possibly have the opposite effect?

It sort of does. You can see the fork got damaged mid-span in some of the riding shots. Still there isn't enough strength in places like the fork ends or crown without the concrete.

I strongly suspect they could just as well have used a normal bike and cast the concrete around it (which they did for some parts) ...

correct, it is a steel framed bike, covered with concrete - not a concrete bike.

The same thought went through my mind watching it, but you could say the same about most (many?) concrete structures. Someone with a structural background could explain better, but I believe the rebar and concrete provide different kinds of strength, like concrete is compressive strong (and keeps the minimal amount of rebar from moving around and bending, while the rebar keeps the concrete from cracking. Even for the bike, it wouldn't be the same structurally if they just wired up a rebar frame

I suppose the technically correct term would be reinforced concrete bike

It seems like they could achieve the same results by pouring concrete around a real bike frame (instead of build a bike frame out of rebar).

Ah my Civil Engineering student years.. Except my year, because the year before the canoe wasn't right, and the sponsoring professor swamped the thing and took a year off (or so was the rumor), so our class never got to build one.

I was wondering that too, thought I missed something.

William Osman on YouTube made a bike fully out of wood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJdz-kjfLk

[haven't finished the video yet, not sure if this or something similar was mentioned]

Someone in the UK made a wooden frame: https://youtu.be/jd0vt5v37B0

I have to guess that in some forms of cycling you can still get motorcyclist style injuries... downhill racing and slopestyle come to mind.

Its fixed gear. Your brake is to stop pedaling.

Yeah. Good luck stopping that thing with a bit of speed. Notice that in the video he always pedals super slowly.

If that shape is flat...

Or break some limbs.

That's the thought I had; at least the car would take some damage.

It's similar weight to a small motorcycle.

No they are not. Most people can't explain off the top of their head how the derailleur works to move the chain from one cog to another, or how freewheeling allows the wheel to move without the pedals to move, or even how the cable allows brakes to be remotely activated from the handlebar. Most people can't even explain why it is possible for a bike to be stable while moving but can't stand on its own. It's counter-intuitive.

There's plenty of ingenuity in the design of a modern bike.

The chain requires some pretty fine engineering. Arguably jewelry makers had it.

205 years to be precise: https://www.bricsys.com/en-eu/blog/the-first-bicycles

Rubber. It's a product of the Americas, before that, wheels sucked.

the steering geometry of a modern bike is not entirely obvious, most configurations are either unstable or unsteerable. Plus a bike is unusable if you don't know how to ride it, so even if you stumbled on a stable steering configuration you might give up on it before you learned to ride it.