(Photo: The Lumberyard)
Our friends at the Lumberyard Bike Park are doing great things and their indoor (and outdoor) riding facilities are getting better and better.
They just capped of a summer season that saw a record number of kids participate in their camps. Now they’re ramping up the fall after-school program schedule.
And while the business hums along, they still know how to have fun.
Case in point is the video they just released. They put a helmet-camera on one of their riders and had him check out a Biketown bike, ride it out to their location on SE 82nd Avenue and put it through the paces.
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See for yourself how one of these 60-pound bikes handles the tightly-curving ramps and big-air jumps at The Lumberyard…
— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Why are they 60 pounds?
Why not?
Among other reasons, so they can survive hard use. Looked like a good test to me.
They’re 60 pounds so they can stand up to a little hooning! The Lumberyard and it’s big air bag might be one of the easiest days for that bike.
I love the Benny Hill soundtrack!! (is that right?) Very creative lo-fi vid.
To keep them closer to the ground where it’s safer.
I wonder how often BikeTown will be revoking memberships for things like this being posted publicly…
I wonder if anyone that’d use a bike like that would care?
Looks like free advertising to me.
Having some widebody ride one off a curb is more damaging than anything in the video.
Great fun…but now Biketown is going to add another 3 pages to their membership contract…;-(
awesome!
look how far they had to go just to get the bike…
Wow! I think I just found a reason to download the Biketown app.
Bike Town and Lumberyard, a match made in heaven – both come out looking like a ton of fun in this video.
60 pounds because they’re overbuilt to withstand abuse, and have 8-speed internally geared hubs, heavy-duty metal basket welded to the handlebars, heavy-duty rack with built-in solar/battery-powered electronics module, fenders, integrated lights and U-lock, heavy duty tires so as to rarely strand users due to flats, and shaft drive.
Sure, a bike with these capabilities could readily be built to come in under 40 pounds, but then you need to multiply the cost of that weight reduction by 1000.
Are they really 60 pounds? Who’s weighed one? O-Live says “about 45 pounds,” and while that’s still hefty, it’s way under 60.
Maus said 59 once I think.
Thx! Seems too high, but maybe. I’ll post if I get a chance to weigh one.
Today I weighed one. My scale has 55 pound rated capacity. When I hoisted a Biketown bike, it displayed “ERR.” It will display 59 pounds, I checked, so they weigh at least that; call it 60. Wowsers.
Who is going to up the ante by entering a CX race this fall? I think Biketown is at least as worthy of a race category as Unicycle.
Just race with the Clydes.
I give this whole Biketown experiment … oh … maybe two years. Possibly three. By then the bikes will be trashed by stunts like this, and otherwise vandalized at the lockups. Not to mention the hacks. Nice try. Portland.
Yes, because everyone that rides one has the skills and desire to ride like that.
I can’t wait for my next visit to Portland where I ride Wildwood and Riverview on one.
“I give this whole Biketown experiment … oh … maybe two years”
So what aspect of Portland Exceptionalism will cause this outcome?
I’d hardly call bikesharing an experiment anymore, except maybe in the eyes of the more provincial Portlanders. Our Nice Ride system in Minneapolis is over 5 years old now, with no such problems, and we’re hardly alone.
Nothing in this video was damaging to the bike.
It would be easier to just say you don’t like biketown and be done with it.
I’ve forwarded this story to Biketown.
I’m wondering when the first Biketown bike will be Zoobombed, but that’s likely happened already by now…
If Biketown didn’t want this kind of mischief, they wouldn’t have put a station right next to the Zoobomb pile.
Q: Can you get air on a Biketown?
A: Yes, if you have a steep ramp to launch it and a giant air bag to land on.
I agree with the comment above that the Lumberyard (and Biketown) looks like a gas.