Small to medium folding bikes - Or "Really? Don't you have enough crap?"

Here's the way my brain works.

I'm going to Melbourne in a couple of months for a conference, and I'll have a few days at the end to amuse myself.

Naturally, my thoughts turn to bicycles.

Strida

I've been eyeing off Strida bikes for a while now.  Not because I need another folding bike.  I'm not sure anyone ever needs more than one good bike of any kind, and I've got a Brompton - which is one of the best folding bikes on the planet.

No, I want one because a) I love novelty bicycles, and b) I'm slightly obsessed with things that transform.  The Strida has a different design principle to the Brompton, so it's a different kind of folding bike.

There's a part of me that longs to be an inventor making my own folding bikes in my workshop.  But I'm not an inventor and I don't have a workshop (or any mechanical skills or experience, for that matter), so I just obsess over the work of other designers.

There's a shop in Melbourne that sells Stridas, so I'll have the chance to take one for a test ride.  Then I'll know if I just want one because it's pretty or if I'm actually likely to ride it.

Now, there is an excellent chance that, if it's magnificent enough in person to impress me, I'll just buy one there and fly home with it.

However, I've gone off trawling the Internet for folding bicycles again, haven't I?  And because I'm now looking for something that's in a different class to the Brompton, I'm now looking closely at a bunch of bikes I dismissed back when I was looking at folding bikes last time.

A-Bike

For instance, part of me really likes the idea of the A-Bike.  I've long thought the ideal folding bike would also be collapsible, and the A-Bike does pack up quite small.  It also has 6-inch wheels, which is a little bit alarming.

I'm sure it rides much better than it looks like it will, but I've had enough experience with scooters and the like to know the smaller the wheel, the more likely it is that a pot-hole will send you flying.

If they had offered a model with larger wheels, I probably would be thinking about it more seriously.

The Carryme
Image from Ridethisbike.com

The Carryme by Pacific Cycles is not quite as compact as the A-Bike, but it looks much more robust, it has 8-inch wheels (which makes more difference than you may think) - and it's got some pretty good reviews on the Interwebs.  Some of them even rank it higher than the Strida in terms of practicality and value for money.

I have to admit that the more I look at the Carryme, and the more I read about it, the more I want one.

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to take it for a test ride while I'm in Melbourne.  And something in the back of my head is saying: "It's sort of in the same 'class' as the Strida, and it might be better - so you really shouldn't get both..."

And, really, I shouldn't get either.  I don't need another folding bike.

No, really, I don't.

Are you listening to me, Sharon?  You don't need another folding bike.

“Working from home”, Pt 2

Following on from my last ramblings about “working from home”, I was thinking that it’s strange there’s not more of a trend of working from someone else’s home.  Or having someone else work from your home.

My aunt works from home, and she could probably do with a bit of extra income.  Her son has the front down stairs room, which is a perfect space for an office.  You can get to it from the street without entering the house or yard.  You can cut it off from the rest of the house and there’s a kitchenette and toilet that can be easily accessed...  If she kicked him out to the granny flat, she could convert that room and rent it out as office space.  Parking would be awkward, but I’m sure they’d work something out.

There are probably a lot of houses that could have a section converted to office space.  You hear about people converting part of their homes into a separate living space so they can rent it out, but it doesn’t seem to be a common thing for people to convert a space into an office to let.

From the home owner’s point of view it would be less intrusive than having someone actually living in your house, but still a source of income.  And if you were running a small business and needed an office it would probably be cheaper than renting a space in a commercial complex, and possibly a more pleasant environment.

This way, even if you lived in a one bedroom flat and you wouldn’t particularly want to work there, you could still “work from home”.  Just not your home.

And it would potentially be a much safer investment on the part of the home owner.  People are odd, and treat the place where they live in a way they would never treat the place where they work.  A professional working in an office is likely to do much less damage (I would expect) than someone living in a rented room.  And it would be so much easier to evict someone who’s mistreating the place if they don’t actually live there.

This could be a thing.  How do we make this a thing?

“Working from Home”, Pt 1

“Working from home” is a funny phrase, when you think of it.  Really, you’re working at home.  I don’t know why (in Australia, at least) we us the word “from”.  Perhaps it’s to create some sort of distance from the idea of house work.  Can’t have people thinking all you do all day is vacuum, now, can we?

I was reading something in the paper recently about a company which is encouraging its workers to “work from home” at least one day a week.  I mentioned it to my manager, who then got this dreamy look on her face and said it was a “lovely” idea. 

She maintains the biggest problem she has with getting stuff done is the office environment, and she’s probably right.  We are a nest of distractions – and, ironically, most of the time it’s our work distracting us from our work.  All of the little things just eat away at the time you need to tackle the bigger things.

I suppose you could say I’ve been “working from home” one day a week for the past couple of years – but I’ve actually been “studying at home”.  No one’s paying me to be here on my study days (no one’s paying me at all on my study days) and what I do doesn’t directly benefit my employer.  I know that I have been learning a lot that has helped me do my job a bit better, but it’s not really what people think of when you say “working from home”.

I’m going to miss it when this Master’s degree wraps up at the end of the semester and I have to go back to working full time.  There’s something oddly wonderful about being at home during a weekday.  When my attention starts wandering I can always clean something or bake something, which makes me feel useful.  And just being able to have the place to myself and potter around is lovely.  It’s somehow more relaxing than the weekend, when it feels like everything is being crammed in and shuffled around.

Additionally, because I’ve chosen to keep the Internet out of my house, I’m not fragmented by a steady stream of emails and interruptions (just interrupted by the occasional desire to write a blog post).

Of course, if I ever did “work from home” (in my current job), I’d have to get all connected and let those emails come.  Unless, that is, I could magically create a job for myself that brings in enough money to live on and grants me the freedom to only check my emails a couple of times a week when I pop into a library.

And I don’t think I’d want to “work from home” full time – I do enjoy going to work and conversing with real people.

All I need to do is find a part-time job where I can be with other human beings for half the week, and then a hobby that pays it’s way so I can “work from home” for the other few days.

Simple!

I finally did something!

Sure, it has 10.30 at night when I finally remembered that I was going to start making things on Monday nights, but I remembered!

And I actually did something!

It's this thing:

Okay, it wasn't all of that thing.  I actually only did five rows of it - but still, that was five rows that hadn't been there prior to last night!

What is it, you say?

Well, it's a cross-stitch, obviously.

I did commit the cross-stitching sin of reversing the direction of my stitches, but hopefully you'll be so blinded by the fact that it's an unfinished work that you won't notice it's also badly done.  And badly photographed.

Hooray for doing stuff!