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- I imagine a lot of people here might be too young to know about Steve K Roberts. He had an earlier bike called WINNEBIKO (II?). Imagine yourself as a kid in the 80s watching something like this on TV, it was super cool.
High-Tech Bike on Spectacular World of Guinness Records - 1988
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2G6DtfZFUU
Xerox PARC Winnebiko presentation by Steve Roberts - 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU6MXakwcjI
It's easy to overlook how inspiring this was without knowing about the context in which we lived back in the 80/90s. No one had cell phones, few people had computers, or had ever used a computer network, let alone the internet. I'm not sure I had even used a computer at the time, and I saw this guy on TV talking about being able to: write a book while riding his bike, talk to people all over the world via computer network, work remotely, it was poof mind blown. Like looking 15 years into the future.
Later on during University, after my first summer programming internship I read his book, "Computing Across America", which I highly recommend. For me at least, Steve was also kind of a lifestyle guru. Reading his book you realized you that you didn't have to be chained to a desk in an office, that technology would open up new lifestyles. It was a wake up moment where I tried to visualize my ideal life, and where the normal way of things was no longer interesting and something to avoid.
Steve Roberts has a youtube channel here:
- I had occasion to meet Steve Roberts at the Dayton Hamvention when he had just published Computing Across America. I don't know anyone so delightfully dedicated to sheer hardware and software hacking fully integrated with one's lifestyle.
[edit] and here is what may have begun his start: https://microship.com/combo-mowing-rig-1966-movie/
- A bit off from what you want, but for an extreme - see Steve Roberts's book "Computing Across America". In the 1980s he outfitted a bicycle with computers and solar collectors and so on and set out to ride all around the US.
His current project is setting up a sailboat to live on; he blogs about it here http://www.nomadness.com/blog/ . The book gives a lot more detail than he does online; he has also done other projects and sells books about them from his older web page http://microship.com/ .
- Yes i remember! Back in the 80s didn’t he document his journey and had a best seller . I bought that book. Was called “Computing Across America.” Started the whole digital nomad trend of trekking across long distances and blogging it etc etc. Hahaha I mean the guys bike had crazy inspector gadget type gadgets! Like a computer, a ham radio, a satellite link, and a fax machine of all things and then went 17k miles across the Us. totally rad for it’s time lol.
- (bike) Computing Across America, 1983-1987, https://microship.com/category/caa/page/5/
(boat) Building the Microship Trimaran, https://microship.com/microship/
> The Microship project spanned a decade, with three different labs and multiple design revisions... at last yielding an amphibian pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran. This massive project was fueled by about 160 corporate sponsors and a team of brilliant geeks.
His books, https://microship.com/product-category/publications/
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