
--------------------------- 
NOTES FROM THE BIKELAB 
Issue #15 -- 3/29/92
by Steven K. Roberts
---------------------------

Copyright (C) 1992 by Steven K. Roberts.  All Rights Reserved.
(Intact reposting and free distribution is OK with permission; 
personal forwarding is OK without.)


IN THIS ISSUE:
	High-tech Nomadness Returns!
		The Mother of All Layovers
		The Mothership
	BEHEMOTH Technical Update
		CELLULAR PHONE
		HAM STATION
		PNEUMATICS
		FORTH DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM and MAC STATUS
		UNIXCYCLE
		HP-95LX PALMTOP


"I'd rather be lucky than talented.  Luck doesn't take any work."
	-- Dave Berkstresser, who never fails to come up
	   with a quotable line in the middle of a pizza.



I keep getting glimpses of it:  sometimes in the images called forth by
the music of my life, flashes of the Road encoded in the CDs of my
favorite travelin' jams.  Sometimes the reminders lurk in the
smoldering eyes of a new friend, recalling the romance of beginnings,
the magic of new places.  If I'm sensitive, it takes but a sunny day
and a passing bicycle; if I'm stressed, I have to get hit on the head
by the poignancy of old writings or the intensity of new passions
before I remember why I am.  But always, somewhere below the surface,
is the wanderlust -- the ache for freedom.  Strip away all the high
tech and business clutter, and you'll find me deep in love, still, with
the Other Woman... The Road.  She's easy to take for granted, yet so
potent in her effects that handling a tattered old road map can bring
tears to my eyes.

It's happening again at last.  Friends have watched patiently for three
and a half years, some helping with the project, others just asking in
that quiet way if I'm ever going to travel again -- their voices taking
on the sort of tenderness associated with hesitant questions about
relationships in transition.  This whole Silicon Valley "layover,"
nearly as long as my internment in Ohio suburbia, seems to have been
one great inhalation:  now, blue-faced, I strain toward the moment of
release in a sort of eager panic.  On April 15, I shut the door of the
Sun bikelab one last time and return to the road at last... full-time.

But things are different, this trip. 

Road lust takes many forms, and I seem to experience most of them.  You
must understand:  it's passage away from HERE that is the lure -- and
not necessarily any particular HERE.  Just HERE:  wherever comfort has
degenerated into complacency.  (Oh yes, I've had some sweet layovers
indeed -- homes so lovely and warm that my wanderlust seems
perverted.)  But when restlessness grips you it cares nothing for your
degree of comfort, only for the instinctive desire to GO... the innate
quest for change.

Sound familiar?

This story is a watershed.  For 3.5 years (!) I have been in the
Silicon Valley area, taking a break from full-time travel to build the
new bike.  Of course it's not finished -- it probably never will be --
but it is now far enough along that further development can take place
on the road, away from the milling machine and Deep Clutter.  And there
now really is a nomadic research lab to justify my company name.  But
since so much time has elapsed since my previous reports, I think a
quick timeline summary is in order before I tell you about what's
happening now...



The Mother of All Layovers
--------------------------

This all began in 1983, when the torpor of midwest suburbia became too
oppressive, the concept of growing up had been exposed as a farce, and
it occurred to me that a lifelong quest for passion was not such a bad
idea after all.  I built the Winnebiko and traveled solo for about
10,000 miles, taking me into 1985.

It was to have been only a short layover, but my Computing Across
America book became ensnarled in the sleazy nightmares of the
publishing business and I ran out of money.  In Ohio I built the
Winnebiko II and fell in love with Maggie... we hit the road together
in 1986, taking a year and a half to pedal our recumbents 6,000 miles
on both coasts.  In early 1988 we hit Florida:  my book finally came
out, and we bought a 35-foot school bus to haul inventory around the
country on the tradeshow circuit, living hand to mouth on book sales.

About 300 cubic feet of gasoline later, we rumbled into the San
Francisco Bay area.  It was the fall of 1988... and the plan was to
find a place to spend a year building the new bike, then dump the bus
and hit the road again.  But this was a seriously ambitious project,
and I underestimated it by about 75%.

We spent six months in Palo Alto, working in Alan Selfridge's ping-pong
room.  Six months in Milpitas, sharing a rented house with Dave
Berkstresser, designing circuitry in the livingroom and hacking
fiberglass on the rear deck.  Six months with Roger Grigsby in Santa
Cruz, working in tiny bedrooms and a funky garage, doing the console
metalwork and mounting boards.  Then we languished happily for nearly a
year in Soquel, renting a house with Dave Wright, working in space
donated by Borland International and then moving back to the house --
sweating over a desk in the school bus and puttering about in another
dusty garage, feeling way too much like a homeowner clinging to the
obsolete hobbies of youth.  And then at last the breakthrough:  a year
and a half in a 1200 square foot lab provided by Sun Microsystems in
Mountain View.

As lifestyles go, I cannot really recommend round-the-clock presence in
a windowless fluorescent-lit corporate environment.  But the resources
have been first class, the company supportive, and the people
stimulating.  The project moved steadily along.  Machines flickered to
life, wizard friends started spent late evenings here running cables,
machining, writing FORTH code, building boards, tweaking gears, running
the CAD system, hacking the unixcycle, brainstorming... and it even
began to seem that I would in fact get to pedal this thing again
someday.  In the summer of '91 I trucked it to Iowa for an aborted
attempt at RAGBRAI (blew a hub the first day), then proceeded more
slowly on a test ride through Illinois, Wisconsin, and the upper
peninsula of Michigan.

It was quite a reality check -- in some ways thrilling, in others
frustrating.  Bike mechanical components were quickly proven to be the
weak link, with the freewheel serving as the fuse in my drivetrain when
I pushed too hard one afternoon on a hilly section of the Fox River
Trail.  Gravity was now more of a factor than ever before, with 780
pounds of stuff (including my body) to haul up every hill -- although
active helmet cooling, a 105-speed geartrain, and pneumatically
deployed landing gear helped take the sting out.  But the brakes were
inadequate, and in a curious way the computers were a pain because most
of the on-board systems were yet unconnected and unprogrammed.  Halfway
up a killer Wisconsin hill on a 97-degree summer day, the words "dead
weight" take on a sinister tone... more than once did I contemplate
leaving a trail of useless gizmology in the ditch and breezing happily
into the sunset.

But I managed to avoid that temptation, and in Lansing an interesting
alternative presented itself:  the mothership.  The triggering event
was the purchase of six Japanese books to support my language study --
when the time came to pack the bike and pedal off to Ann Arbor and
points south, BEHEMOTH's trailer lid wouldn't close.  Aw hell.  This
got me thinking about the convoluted nature of this business, the other
motives in my life, and the need to rapidly relocate the bike to trade
shows, speaking gigs, interesting layover environments, and client
sites (I had spent over $3,000 on rental trucks in the previous year).
Within a few days, I was the owner of a GMC van and a 20-foot Wells
Cargo trailer.

Zooming back to the lab for the final phase, I threw myself into the
project once again... fighting the torpor of endless TO-DO lists,
living a reminder of all the reasons I want to travel.  Stress.
Deadlines.  Biz.  The endless sameness of days spent in physical
stasis, watching the contents of hard disks change to reflect the
latest details of my life but otherwise experiencing time's inexorable
passage with growing impatience.  But now, as I write this at the
beginning of April 1992, I realize that I'm at the beginning of a whole
new adventure, as unprepared as ever but deeply excited and anxious to
get on with it.

So what's all this mothership business?  Am I about to betray my
human-powered roots and become an industrial-strength RV'er?  Steve
Sergeant commented in the technomads alias that, "it was like the day
the music died for me when Steve Roberts announced he was becoming a
MOTORIST."  Time to explain...


The Mothership
--------------

One nice thing about having this lab at Sun is that it can support a
lot of interesting projects that are impossible when living full-time
on a bicycle.  I have inventory, robust tools, and workspace.  The
cost, of course, is that I am immobile.  Since the bike is an ongoing
development project, I really do need workspace -- and finding it on
the fly while passing through an unfamiliar town can be extremely
time-consuming.  Quite simply, the mothership is a way to have the best
of both worlds:  a workspace that can be relocated on demand, serving
as a mobile home base for a succession of shorter bicycle tours.  This
may seem to take something away from the grand adventure of open-ended
bicycle travel, but it more than compensates by adding a layer of tools
that render the entire project more flexible and intellectually
stimulating (like allowing major book projects, consulting gigs, and
system upgrades without requiring a year's layover!).

It also adds another feature:  rapid deployment to places I would
otherwise avoid (cities).  This becomes significant when dealing with
the business side of this (um, you didn't think that publishing the
journal is my sole source of income, did you?) -- I'm now working with
a speakers bureau (Keynote Speakers), appearing at trade shows, and
doing a bit of consulting here and there -- some on-site, some
nomadic.

OK, so much for the quickie justification.  Now lemme tellya about the
mothership!

This is becoming a serious toy.  It's happening in two stages:  the
current system, a 20' trailer and an inadequate van, needs to be
replaced.  I can't do this all at once without eliciting polite
chuckles from bankers, so I'm trading the van for a robust truck and
pressing on with the mobile bikelab...  assuming that in a few months
I'll upgrade the latter to a 44' Wells Cargo fifth wheel.  These are
not at all like RV's, fortunately -- I researched those in some detail
and discovered that a huge percentage of their not-inconsiderable cost
is attributable to the implementation of someone else's idea of
"home."  But I need a machine shop, bikelab, R&D environment, inventory
area, office, and -- oh yeah -- a place to sleep and perform
body-maintenance tasks.  The Wells Cargo products should be
investigated by any nomad who needs to define custom space...  they
build everything from empty boxes on wheels to concession wagons, auto
carriers (like the racing teams use), mobile offices, and research
vehicles.  (The company is at 800-348-7553.)

My 20-footer has been configured with a suite of surplus workbenches
and office furniture, occupying the entire left side and front end.
Parts inventory lives in 500 tiny drawers and 32 Rubbermaid bins in a
custom shelving unit.  The bike lives on the right side, tied down with
ratchet straps, and can be removed via a ramp stowed under the trailer
(the big one will have a fold-down ramp door).  A small solar panel is
on the roof to keep the local battery (and the bike system) charged,
and I've remoted the bike's cellular and pager antennas via an
umbilicus.  A phone line from the bike's CelJack cellular phone
interface runs all the way to the driver's seat, where a cordless phone
with answering machine is velcro'd to the ham equipment rack.  There's
a long way to go -- this one will take care of the trip beginning on
April 15, but the full project is much more ambitious (of course).
I'll tell you about it in detail as it develops, but suffice it to say
that it will become a complete autonomous climate-controlled mobile
lab, linked full-time to the internet, networked to the bike, and
equipped with a full range of mechanical, electronic, and software
development tools.

The current trip begins April 15 after a talk at the Idea '92
conference, then takes me to Reno for a gig at the local ACM chapter.
Then I zoom cross-country with visits in Utah and Colorado, arriving in
Dayton just in time for the annual hamfest (the big one) -- where I'll
display the bike in the PacComm booth and speak at the Icom FM bash.
>From there, I loop through Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and
Richmond for a round of visits, then make my way to Washington DC for
the Interop show in mid-May.  Here, we'll demonstrate the bike's
internetworking features (um, that is... whatever is working by then!)
and do an interview with NPR's "All Things Considered," then, well,
from there it gets vague.  I'll be back in Silicon Valley by October,
probably long before, to implement the big trailer and hit the road
once again.  Hopefully, somewhere after Interop there will be time
for a liesurely bike tour around Utah.

Yes, all this business stuff is the substrate that keeps me alive, but
as I plan these mothership excursions the key thing is to leave large
holes in my schedule to accommodate adventures more satisfying than the
quest for 60-foot parking spaces in unfamiliar cities.  The bike is
still the focus of the whole affair, and even though it's networked
with mothership and backpack in a multilayered nomadic system, it still
comes into its own when it's out on the road, lumbering along under
human power, computing and communicating on the captured energy of
sunlight.  As this journal continues to evolve in both print and
electronic forms, the spirit of BEHEMOTH will remain the focus -- even
as we diverge into all sorts of related tools and techniques that apply
to a wide range of nomadic needs.

As always, I invite your comments and questions, and I'm still looking
for interesting people who might want to become involved on the road or
with joint-venture projects!



BEHEMOTH Technical Update
-------------------------

Deadlines are amazing things.  I can mess around for months, taking
up my time with schmoozing, planning, scheming, and reshuffling, never
seeming to make any real headway.  Then a departure date looms and
the project shifts into focus, help materializes, and things get
knocked off the TODO list at the rate of 3 or 4 a day.  Here's what's
been going on with the bike...


CELLULAR PHONE

The cellular phone is now alive and in use whenever I'm pedaling or
driving the mothership -- and the key component is the CelJack from
Telular (800-TELULAR for info; contact Jeannette Franson).  This unit
lives between the handset and the transceiver of my Oki 491 phone, and
provides a completely standard RJ-11 modular jack interface.  It has
the look and feel of a normal phone line:  plug in a desk phone, call
the bike, and the bell rings.

The wonderful thing about this is that all sorts of devices that were
not designed to work on cellular phones now work just fine.  I run the
line around the bike (and off-bike as well), and have used it with the
Touchbase 2496 fax/modem, the Telebit CellBlazer, the Panasonic
cordless phone with answering machine that's now velcro'd under the
fairing, and -- most twisted of all -- the credit card terminal.
That's right... in Seattle last month, I met a guy on the street who
subscribed to the journal -- I just took his plastic and did the
transaction on the spot.  Ain't technology wonderful?

Of course, I still think the cellular industry itself is full of
serious bugs.  The fact that a 576-page "Cellular Telephone Directory"
is a necessary adjunct to full-time roaming is absurd.  This is
an appliance, and should feel like one.  Unfortunately, every vendor
of airtime has a better way to do things, and none of them are
either compatible or obvious to the user.  The concepts of online
help and consistent user interface have obviously never occurred
to them.


HAM STATION

I've interfaced the CMOS Super Keyer with the Bencher paddle and the
Icom 725, and it works beautifully.  Performance of the HF system
continues to amaze me:  good DX is now quite routine.  I worked a
station in China during a photo session last week.

Things are still not ready for integrated bicycle mobile operation,
but Joe Dunn built the last two audio crosspoint boards and Dave
Harris is continuing to weave all the cabling into a completed network.
Software power control is working fine, and the whole thing is
finally starting to feel like a system.

PacComm just sent their delightful new Handi-Packet unit -- a tiny
full-function TNC that comes with a belt clip and internal 12-hour NiCd
battery.  This is literally plug-and-play:  I plugged the provided
cables into my HP-95LX palmtop and Icom IC-24 transceiver, and it
worked.  It has KISS mode and an internal mini-BBS as well.  A complete
packet system in a fanny pack or briefcase is now essentially
off-the-shelf technology... and don't forget that a number of
packet-to- internet gateways are now online.  Things keep getting more
and more interesting....   (PacComm is at 813-874-2980.)

On the ham radio theme, I apparently agreed in a weak moment to appear
at the Dayton Hamfest this year -- I'll have the bike in the PacComm
booth and speaking Friday night at the Icom FM Bash.  If you're there,
come say hello!


PNEUMATICS

I did it.  My arm kept getting tired from pumping up the air tank for
the pneumatic landing gear and the horn -- there's a slow leak I just
can't seem to track down.  The bike now has a small compressor that
converts photons into air pressure.  It's the little things that add
up....


FORTH DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM and MAC STATUS

More progress on the bicycle control system!  Thanks to Mike Perry's
expert help, the whole development environment for FORTH is now in the
console Mac -- using the slick script language that's part of
Microphone II.  It's now so quick and easy to hack code that I really
want to finish this update so I can get back to it.  HyperTalk will
still be the graphic user interface during normal operation, but we
found that using it to manage all the handshaking of program downloads
was, well, let's just say a bit too liesurely to be effective.

The other Macintosh news is that the handlebar keyboard is at last
alive.  Jay Hamlin and the folks at Infogrip have completed a Mac
version of the BAT chord keyboard, and we wired the processor onto the
BCP's nexus board.  Now I have no excuse for putting off the learning
curve on the new chording scheme... I can finally type while riding
again!

The mouse is another matter -- the ultrasonic head mouse from Personics
just isn't doing the job.  Apparently, the problem is no fault of the
manufacturer -- Steve Sergeant probed around in the circuit and noticed
serious phase jitter coming from the sensors on my helmet.  We've
concluded that this is a result of excessive cable length and EMI from
the BCP, and Steve wants to try adding filtration.  I've been playing
with Logitech's amazing new 6D ultrasonic mouse, but it may be overkill
for the application -- I'm about to try (hopefully) the new gyroscopic
unit from Gyration.  This would let me send high-level quadrature from
the helmet instead of tiny analog signals, eliminating the negative
effects of a long wiring harness and road noise.


UNIXCYCLE

The bike's SPARCstation has been a major issue for quite a while,
and it is now alive on the bench with a monochrome display from RDI.
I also just acquired the new Sharp TFT active matrix color LCD,
which is dramatically beutiful -- as well as an RDI SBUS card to
control it.  All this was intended to replace the 286 system in the
console.

But that involves major mechanical surgery, so an interim solution is
now underway with the help of a group of engineers here at Sun.  We're
building the SPARC into the Zero aluminum case (with solar panel) that
rides atop the bike's RUMP.  This system has 424 Megabytes of disk,
both screens packaged in a folding two-headed windowing environment,
the new 9600-baud Motorola Radius wireless modem, kayboard, trackball,
and external ports for CDROM, serial comm, ethernet, and floppy.  It's
not quite the same as being able to run it while pedaling, but in all
fairness, this system is more for the heavy-duty computing tasks like
high-speed daily internet mail transfers, still video, mapping, and CAD
-- not on-the-road text editing and routine satellite and RF data
communication.  It won't kill me to stop and open a pack, I guess.  ;-)

The only problem with this approach is that it displaces office stuff
that lived in that case...  but that can all move to the trailer and
displace the now-obsolete DOS laptop (the SPARC can emulate DOS, and I
still have the Ampro core module system running the Private Eye).


HP-95LX PALMTOP

Finally, my favorite new personal accessory is the HP-95 palmtop, which
is the first pocket computer that I've found useful enough to want with
me 24 hours a day.  I don't have the space here for a full review, but
I've gotta tellya -- they did a beautiful job.  It's easily
interfaceable via serial or infrared link, accepts the PCMCIA cards,
and has a whole suite of useful applications in ROM:  filer,
communications, appointment manager, address book database, text
editor, Lotus 123, and a robust scientific calculator with solver.
These can all coexist and hot-key back and forth, meaning that you
don't have to close one operation to deal with another.  You can shell
to DOS if you like.  And new applications can be installed... like a
full dictionary and the Mobile Data Link.

MDL is magic.  I keep the 95 in a cradle that also carries the
Motorola NewsStream pager (stylistically compatible).  There's a serial
link between them, and the pager is on a national Skypage account.
Now, if someone wants to send email to my pocket, it can be done by
logging on to 800-SKYWORD and entering my PIN... or just using an
internet gateway that automates the process.  By prefacing message text
with special codes, items can be added to my TO-DO list, appointment
book, 123 spreadsheets, etc.  A friend at HP gets hourly stock quotes
this way.

Of course, this is receive only... but that's a temporary limitation.
I had a chance to see the Mobidem, which plugs into the 95 and
provides a BIDIRECTIONAL email link via radio.  I'll keep you posted...



That's all for now -- back to work!  Next time you hear from me, it
will be from somewhere Out There.  Now that I'm wandering again, I'm
interested in speaking gigs and interesting adventure or learning
opportunities...  See you on the road...


Cheers!
  Steven K. Roberts
  Nomadic Research Labs

