An Illustrated Guide to The Cycle Zoo
Samples
Sample files of the book and website contents:
- bike load hauling sketches from the book (First , Second, Third Pages)and links to photos of equivalent real world cycles and accessories.
Extras
There are some things the book's good at doing and other things it's not so good at. By compiling this website I am providing the book's buyers with an opportunity to see and find out more about real versions of the cycles in the book.
To access the extra content from this web page, paste http://www.modularbikes.com.au/book/ into you browser and type the third word from page 66 of the book, then hit enter.
Reviews / Articles
Where can I obtain a copy of "The Cycle Zoo" and "CycleTour"?
From Me, Pay by Paypal or Credit Card Through Paypal
Through the Online Bookshop, "Fishpond"
Use the following Link fishpond.com.au. You buy the book and I send it. Fishpond handles the online payments. Separate prices for purchasers in Australia and Overseas are to account for the higher overseas postage rate.
Retail
More places to buy the book will be added shortly but for the moment it can be purchased from
- Dymock's Bookshop - Melbourne 234 Collins Street Melbourne
- Great Escape Books - 75 Great Ocean Road Airey's Inlet Victoria - Phone (03)52897052
From Me by Mail or Money Order
The cost of the book is $20, including postage and handling. This applies for purchasers in Australia only, if you wish to purchase and are in another country please email steve(the at symbol)modularbikes.com.au
Send Cash or an Australia Post Money Order together with a clearly written return address to
- Bike Chameleon,
- 10 Abbott Grove, Clifton Hill
- Vic 3068
- Australia
Have me talk to your cycling or other group about bikes and the book
And I will sign copies of the book for anyone who wants one and donate $5.00 from each book sold to your bike club or favourite charity. (Reasonable size groups and Melbourne only please!)
How "The Cycling Zoo" was written (15/5/2009)
Well it goes back a long way! I have always ridden bikes and got my car license quite late, so never lost the bike riding habit.
In 1986 I spent some time in Germany and lived in a shared house in Wiesloch near Heidelberg. One day I saw a photo in the newspaper of a bloke who'd built his own recumbent bicycle and decided to build my own. I started right there in Germany and built a really naïve, crappy recumbent bike which was rear wheel steer and as far as I was concerned, unrideable. When I came back to Australia, I built another bike which was still crappy but at least rideable.
It took about 10 years of very-part time tinkering (did a few important things like getting married and starting a family though!) to build a decent recumbent bike on which I did the 1997 Around the Bay in a Day Ride and competed in the 1997 OzHpv Challenge. My bike building has been a bit more intense since then and I have built tandems and load carriers, organised human powered vehicle events, captained a Tandem Greenspeed on a 210k ride and owned about 20 folding bikes...
During 2004 my family travelled to Germany and visited the Spezi special bike exhibition in Germersheim. I collected a few books from the various stalls and amongst them was "HPV Chronik" which is (not a new and virulent disease but) a history of the German Human Powered Vehicle Club on its 10th anniversary. The book had lots of stories about bikes and their riders and I thought that it was great and that something similar about Australian Cycles could be written.
Australian Cyclist and the OzHpv Magazine "Huff" had already published a few of my articles and these formed the nucleus of what was to become a book.
When the book was about 75% together, I started looking for publishers through all my various contacts (friends, neighbours, relations) but their wasn't much interest in publishing it. Bev White helped me a lot at this stage, encouraging me and talking about self-publishing and web publishing.
When the book was about 90% together and my long-suffering friends Jamie, George and Alan had been through several drafts editing and making suggestions, I approached Publishing Solutions and started the process of turning the manuscripts and binary bits on computer discs into the book as it now stands. Publishing Solutions had published Kate Leeming's book "Out There and Back", and she had recommended them so this seemed to be a very good place to start.
Well I'm very pleased with the results and I only hope that you, the reading public will be as well.
A special thanks to my wife and son, Ewan and Christine for their help with the book
"Cycletour" the Boardgame (04/01/2012)
I have done several long bikerides, like "Round The Bay in a Day" and sometimes you get to thinking and sometimes feel you are in a big game of chance, there are headwinds, punctures, food stops and they all contribute to how you go in a ride.
Preparedness makes your chances of doing well in a ride better, but luck still plays a role. When a local Melbourne bike design competition came up, I acted on my musings and started developing a boardgame based on a cycling tour of several day's duration.
See Cycling Board Games for a brief review of the result and a link to download the game for free.
From 2012 on, I am providing a deluxe version of the boardgame with every "Cycle Zoo" book sold through Paypal. The game is in full colour and chance and other cards are printed on correctly coloured board stock. There is a box for holding all the games pieces but still some "work" to do to make and play the game.