I loved doing informal, friendly talks at local clubs… cycling, ham radio, computer, online folk, or whatever. Some of the best contacts emerged from casual settings like this, and in later years, when I became a “professional speaker,” I really missed the dinners, hanging out, and crashing at the homes of interesting hosts. Western Wheelers is a fun group, still very much active, and it hosts the annual Sequoia Century ride. This page shows announcements of the event in both the Flat Tyre (club newsletter) and California Bicyclist.
Western Wheelers meeting – March 1987
Steve Roberts, the ultimate high-tech bikie, will show his computerized bicycle and discuss his ongoing trip throughout the US. Steve built a recumbent and loaded it with solar panels, five computers with over a megabyte of memory, and a host of other high-tech equipment. His bicycle system does word processing while he rides, as well as speech synthesis, diagnostics and solar panel control, data and voice communications with telephone and radio links and many other applications. The bicycle weighs 220 lbs. and uses 36 gears which have allowed Steve to ride the Rockies as well as the Pacific Coast on his 12,000 mile journey.
Join us at 6:00 pm before the meeting for a no-host dinner at Feng Yuan, 3950 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto (in the Charleston Shopping Center).
Random posts from the archives:
This second issue of the Bikelab Notes, published during my time building BEHEMOTH at Sun Microsystems, focuses on the high-brightness LED taillight assemblies. These were not commercially available at the time, so this was a hack. I also commented on the wonderful facilities that Sun provided and a...
This was a time of nearly overwhelming publicity, with BEHEMOTH getting splashed all over mainstream media ranging from the Phil Donahue Show to the Wall Street Journal. I had a friend in Reno who arranged for a presentation at UNR, and the next day I did a photo shoot for People Magazine. It was al...
It was bizarre to revisit Columbus, the city that inspired my long-distance travel, after over 8 years of adventure. The four years that I had spent as a homeowner in the suburb of Dublin were but a distant featureless blur in my memory... dotted by moments of love and technopassion, to be sure, but...
