For a few years, I fed the Microship project with speaking gigs… sometimes with the help of Keynote Speakers bureau. This was one that they found me, and it was unusual… 11 half-hour talks in a booth on the show floor. That was quite relaxing compared to a standard keynote, and led to lots of…

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I fell in love with the Ultratorch butane soldering irons from Master Appliance after visiting them in Racine during the BEHEMOTH adventure, then incorporating two of them into my mobile lab. This article describes these lovely little tools… written for 73 Amateur Radio Today magazine. The Ultratorch — a Tool for Liberation by Steven K.…

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I spent much of 1993 schmoozing for lab space for the Microship project while still doing media and speaking gigs about the bike, and this post to my mailing list is a perfect snapshot of that time between projects. The broader tale of that complete development decade is here. From April 1, 1993: Hello! This…

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Cycling into the space age

This is a much-loved publication Down Under, and this somewhat amusing story was clearly written by an enthusiastic reporter… a few things were lost in translation (like my email address). But I love the imagery of the “invisible envelope of dataspace which surrounds Steve and his bike.” Australian Women’s Weekly April, 1993 Steve Roberts is…

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This visit took place in 1993, when the industry was abuzz with the mobile implications of promising new technologies like GPS and cellular. Motorola was one of my sponsors (with their ground-breaking Traxar navigator as well as radios from the Radius division), and on one of my speaking tours I was invited to swing by…

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I barely recall the details of this gig in Oxford, Ohio… though that graphic is a bit misleading! I was on an extended tour around the US in the mothership; this was just after the Mobile World Expo in Boston, and a few days later, I was near Chicago, speaking at Motorola. As I traveled,…

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, the BEHEMOTH is coming by Ian Fried, STUDENT writer Miami Student March 9, 1993 It weighs over 500 pounds. It’s powered by humans but has a voice and three brains. It can only be called BEHEMOTH and it’s coming to Miami. BEHEMOTH is a 105-geared bike featuring a computer…

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This is just a quick note in QST about my visit to ARRL on March 9, 1993, during a speaking tour with BEHEMOTH.  Steve Roberts, N4RVE, brought his rolling research lab (disguised as a recumbent bicycle) to ARRL Headquarters just before the Blizzard of ’93 hit in mid-March. Visible in this shot of the trailered…

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I spent a couple of years traveling around the US in the mobile lab, hauling BEHEMOTH, giving talks, and questing for lab space to begin the Microship project. I was in Connecticut to visit the headquarters of ARRL (American Radio Relay League), and it was the perfect opportunity to connect with one of my long-time…

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