A Cuban man trying to build the world's tallest bike

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170406-the-cuban-building-the-worlds-tallest-bike

by hwayern • 9 years ago

85 69 9 years ago

hippich• 9 years ago

how one gets on top of it, how to stop on the light, how to hop off?

Getting up and down? With something this tall, it's a rolling ladder, you stop against a building, or have someone supporting your stop.

Stopping at a light? Ideally you don't, you time the light, ride in circles, or hope oncoming traffic stops for you. I wouldn't recommend the latter.

fuckemem• 9 years ago

I've seen riders with cleats who can stop without putting their feet down. This is even without a fixed gear.

soyiuz2• 9 years ago

I vote for less rectangles and more triangles (like the smaller bike in the picture). It is more structurally sound that way.

theoh• 9 years ago

Maybe someone who knows more about structures can comment, but I guess the big issue is how rigid the joints are. A triangulated structure is good because the joints don't need to be fixed--they can be hinged pin-joints and the frame is still rigid + easier to calculate structurally. But if the joints are very rigid, you can go with slightly less efficient option of rectangular framing if that's more convenient.

In architecture it's sometimes called a Vierendeel truss, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vierendeel_bridge and it's very handy for avoiding inconvenient diagonal columns. (There are some high-profile buildings that use it, e.g. the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the HSBC building in Hong Kong.)

soyiuz2• 9 years ago

A triangle structure is significantly more rigid than a rectangular one. Vierendeel truss needs to be super rigid to resist flex. Not good for a bicycle.

swimfar• 9 years ago

To put that into perspective, here's a cool video of a guy riding through LA on a 14.5' (4.4m) bike. https://vimeo.com/64653759

tomjakubowski• 9 years ago

This is my go-to tall bike video too. What's especially great is the way he dismounts :-)

Fezzik• 9 years ago

AND it's a fixie?? Is that the norm for tall-bikes? We have a bunch here in Portland (Ore.) and I always figured they had breaks but never really looked closely... but I see none in the video. That seems 10x as terrifying.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

No, it's a coaster brake single speed. Back pressure on the chain engages the hub brake. You can see him coast at 2:20.

Tiktaalik• 9 years ago

A fixie for a tall bike makes sense because one can (presumably?) track stand to keep the bike upright while stopped. Otherwise you gotta hope there's a stop sign you can lean up against or just never stop...

gamache• 9 years ago

I've seen only one fixie tallbike. It's a hard thing to pull off because even at very high chain tension, a run of chain that long has a lot of slop.

This one is singlespeed (you can see him coast a few times), and I am not even sure it has a brake at all! I didn't see a coaster brake arm at the end of the video where the drivetrain is visible. (EDIT: I am wrong, there is a coaster brake.)

lstyls2• 9 years ago

@gemache is right, they're mostly single speed. It's way too easy to have the chain slip off, and when that happens you have no choice but to bail. That happened to me before and I broke my foot.

I had one and rode it for years. Single speed, no brakes. I stopped by putting my foot down on the rear tire :)

jacquesm8• 9 years ago

That's very impressive, especially the balance so high up. If you'd overbalance even a little bit there is absolutely no stopping it until you hit the ground.

sjburt• 9 years ago

The creator/rider of that bike recently went to Cuba with a suitcase full of bike part parts to help out.

ux-app• 9 years ago

This is madness. I recently fell off the second rung of a ladder onto concrete (shoe got caught), and even that hurt, third or fourth rung might have been a broken arm.

Falling from this thing is guaranteed serious injury or even death. It would be very easy to add some kind of simple automatic kickstand in case of tipping over laterally.

Fricken• 9 years ago

It's demonstrably not the madness you suggest it is, he's been doing it for decades and he's still in one piece. You see alternative sports athletes walking away from death defying stunts gone awry on a regular basis. Wiping out is a learned skill, and an under-appreciated one. A rough and tumble youth will save you from needing hip replacement surgery when you slip on an icy step when you're 80.

flukus3• 9 years ago

Bikes are even worse generally because you fall laterally and we don't have the neck muscles to stop the head hitting concrete. When you fall off a normal bike it's not normally the speed that determines the head injury.

grizzles• 9 years ago

We must seem like ants to them.

bullfightonmars2• 9 years ago

Tall bikes are intentionally absurd but so fun to ride, it's hard not to smile from ear to ear while rolling down the road perched high above the world.

rbreve• 9 years ago

what happen if he falls?

loeg2• 9 years ago

Hopefully he lands on his feet.

Florin_Andrei2• 9 years ago

At 10 meters you're likely to break something even if you land on your feet.

jacquesm8• 9 years ago

Hospital with a couple of broken bones if he's lucky.

CydeWeys5• 9 years ago

That's the thing about tall bikes: The only rule is don't fall. Fortunately they're inherently very stable, but if the bottom of the bicycle gets knocked from beneath you by a car or something, it's bad news.

jacquesm8• 9 years ago

Ugh. I had a bit of an unfortunate accident last summer with a recumbent and just looking at this hurts, that's a very bad height to fall from, I had plenty of damage being 8" off the ground.

sevensor• 9 years ago

My thoughts exactly -- I fell off an ordinary bicycle at moderate speed last year, and suffered three cracked ribs and a concussion as a result. This fellow is courting disaster!

gerdesj• 9 years ago

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

British Broadcasting Service branded site is unavailable in the UK. Weird.

flukus3• 9 years ago

You just saved yourself 2.5MB of bandwidth and a 10 second page load.

Is anyone talking about changing the funding model of the BBC though? It doesn't seem cut out for the online world.

throwaway91111• 9 years ago

My british vpn gives me free BBC.... I'd say it's pretty sweet!

monk_e_boy3• 9 years ago

They do bring it up every so often, but any politician that is interviewed about it is generally interviewed on the BBC. Also, the public love the BBC and don't mind paying.

The BBC is really good online for us in the UK. I know a few people who work there and they are using cutting edge tech on a shoe string budget. They really do a brilliant job.

Personally I don't mind paying for the Beeb and some other people in the world get it for free.

jwarren• 9 years ago

Here's another news story about the same man: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/...

Weird that we have to go to Miami to get our news, but oh well.

hathawsh• 9 years ago

Does anyone know what the rules are for breaking this record? If I attached a small hot air balloon to the top of the bike, I could conceivably make a ridiculously tall bike that's safe to operate. In fact, to keep within the rules, I could keep the balloon at equilibrium most of the time (so it doesn't lift the bike at all) until an emergency. Would the balloon invalidate my attempt to break the record?

monk_e_boy3• 9 years ago

Would you want to break the record like that? No one would respect you or the record. Sometimes these things come down to how you want to feel about yourself.

danielvf• 9 years ago

The records are by the distance from ground to the top of the seat where the rider sits.

This would preclude the balloon trick. :)

jacquesm8• 9 years ago

Not really, the balloon would be attached to the top of the bike at let's say 15 meters high and would itself go maybe another 5 or 10 meters up trailing the wire to the bike.

So the rider would still be at the right distance from the ground, it's just that the bike can't fall over anymore because the balloon will help to catch it. You could sit still all day long on that thing (or until the wind caught the balloon...).

The downside of the scheme is the negative feedback loop in the bike once it did became unbalanced. When it's almost balanced it would not take much upwards force to keep it that way but once it starts to become unbalanced the force required will very quickly overpower the balloon.

Or you'd have to make the balloon so large that it would be just incapable of lifting bike + rider off the ground.

xrange• 9 years ago

After more than half a century of living under a trade embargo, many Cubans have grown accustomed to shortages of basic household goods

Are there countries other than the U.S. with an embargo against Cuba? What's stopping them from trading with China or Mexico or Canada or the E.U. countries for basic household goods?

CydeWeys5• 9 years ago

They aren't a rich country, and so don't have a lot of money to buy imports with. Not having access to the main large nearby trading partner doesn't help.

LostWanderer• 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg

How Cuba DIY's its existence Quite bunch of interesting hackers

donquichotte• 9 years ago

Hah, splendid! One of my favourite Makers on youtube, Laura Kampf from Köln, also built her own "tallbike". It's smaller than Cepero's, but there's a video of her actually building it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWZnGQiSbtQ

zoner• 9 years ago

I will pay the bbc tax only if I can read articles from bbc in the UK. (I'm not watching live TV though at all)

vertex-four• 9 years ago

This isn't an article by the BBC "proper", it's by a separate organisation which is owned by the BBC, but is solely funded by the BBC's overseas operations.

pvaldes• 9 years ago

This is innecessarily dangerous. It only would take a stroke of wind or an accidental kick to kill the biker. If this guy accept some ideas; such bike should be designed as a tumbler doll and add a seat belt for the biker. If you can mechanically raise the heavy piece to balance (lower) the upper part could even have a supercool mechanism to dismount or save low obstacles.

bitslayer• 9 years ago

Here in Asheville, NC we had a fellow who built and attempted to ride a 44 ft. (13.4m) tall bike at a festival. He did not ride far enough to make it in the record books. But it was exciting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WgBeW4LXcU

teh_klev• 9 years ago

Archive.is copy for those of us inside the UK:

http://archive.is/EXWhb

A Cuban man trying to build the world's tallest bike

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