Most of us like to try new things, especially if they are relatively safe and easy to do. But, would we be willing to endure hardship in order to explore a new idea? Probably not. Yet, most of us will have a time in our life when we will be challenged to muster all that we have, in order to do all that we can…
EXPERIMENTS IN SPEED is a wonderful (under ten minutes) documentary film by Spindle Productions that follows the journey of bicycle builder Tom Donhou as he challenges himself to design a speed bike and test it, recreating conditions similar to Utah’s Salt Flats, to see how fast he can make it go.
Back in 2016 there was a Cycle Revolution exhibit (now closed) at the Design Museum in London. The exhibition focused on four sub-cultures of contemporary cycling: “the ‘High Performers’ – competitive and athletic riders; the ‘Thrill Seekers’ who look for extreme experiences in hazardous environments; the ‘Urban Riders’, modern knights riding on two wheels across the city; and the ‘Cargo Bikers’ who carry out their work on a bicycle.
It also featured innovative bicycle manufacturers and designers including Tom Donhou.
It is awesome to see where backyard engineering and someone’s bike experiments in speed can go.
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