The same cohort that sent me a picture of the Funky Cockpit sent this picture over from Eurobike with instructions to place it in the "WTF?" folder:

Short wheelbase and awesome saddle aside, I couldn't exactly figure out what the story was here until some analysis and tidbits from the brain of Ezra. It appears that the drive-side chainrings drive the cluster at the front of the head tube, which in-turn drives a the non-drive-side of the front wheel, as well as the drive-side of the rear wheel. Making this a two-wheel drive two wheeler...whoa. Also of note: Magura hydraulic rim brakes, sweet. Here's a not-so-close-up:

Found this on the BikeJerks blog today:

The front banner touts it as the the "Guinness World Record Bike," but from what I can see, that thing has six (or more) wheels, y'all. Which prompted me to attempt to verify this record. Along the way I found the longest "true" bicycle, the largest bicycle parade, and longest trike tandem...but didn't get much further. Anybody know about this thing?

Allright. The new website is now nearing two months old. One thing we've noticed is a lot more incoming emails with all kinds of questions (some of them intriguing, some that make no sense) and product ideas. We've decided to address these in this new feature: Your Problems

Where can I find your products? 
We get this one a lot. The short answer is: everywhere! Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) is our parent company and exclusive distributor. They ship to more than 5,000 independent bicycle dealers in the United States, and several hundreds more worldwide. In all likelihood, your local bike shop can get our products through QBP.

The shorter answer: we're working on getting a comprehensive dealer list together for y'all. If you're a bike shop, have a QBP account, and would like to be listed on the dealer page, click here.

How do I _________?
We've been getting a lot of random requests for advice from folks in the middle of a project. For example:

"...the cones were loose so i tightened them and now the wheel doesnt spin properly, so i loosened them but still having no luck. what have i done wrong?"

"...i just want to know the performance of bike/scooters suspension..."

or 

"We are replacing the rear wheel and cannot get the chain to stay on it is to loose"

While we'd love to help, and sometimes can provide a tidbit of guidance, without seeing/touching the stuff we can't really assess or assist. Your best bet? Take it on down to your local bike shop and have them take a look.

Product Ideas
We've recieved a handful of product ideas so far, which is exciting. Most often, they're a little too specific to be viable for us. Other times, folks send us teasers, saying things like:

"I have a design that you may be interested in... since I don’t have any protection on the design I’m hesitant to tell you exactly what it is. I will tell you that I have built a prototype and it has worked flawlessly so far. I could see this design working great within your many products you currently have..."

For those folks, I'd recommend reading this. As of right now, we don't have the resources to tackle that kind of legal/logistical mess, so here's the basic policy for us:

If you submit an idea to Problem Solvers, you agree that:

• Your submissions and their contents will automatically become the property of Problem Solvers, without any compensation to you.
• Problem Solvers may use or redistribute the submissions and their contents for any purpose and in any way.
• There is no obligation for Problem Solvers to review the submission.
• There is no obligation to keep any submissions confidential.

That sounds kind of harsh, but our lawyer made us do it. I can say (without any sort of guarantee), that if your idea leads to a product, we'll probably name it after you and send you a free one—then give you mad props on the website and introduce you to my mother. 

DK's visage is so stunning, is he single?
Currently, DirtyKop's heart belongs to another. His mustache, however, went off on it's own recently. I believe it's got a profile on match.com. 

Not too long ago we posted about Ride 2 Recovery, an organization dedicated to helping wounded vets through cycling. They use our Cable Doublers in a lot of their setups. The ever-infamous Calvin at Park Tool just posted a write-up on his experience at the Ride 2 Recovery Great Lakes Challenge in "Calvin's Corner."

I found a fellow Minnesotan on the Make website today, and he's got a really nice-looking design to construct a trunk for rear racks from sheet metal and pop-rivets.  

Very clean and functional. I'm not sure what it weighs, but I am sure I don't care. The instruction set makes me think I'd like to take my first foray into sheet metal. Oh, and here's the obligatory "but does it hold a 6-pack?" photo: