Bike Ideas & The Kashmir Concept©2010 Gary Clifford Gibson

Recently I broke several spokes simultaneously on a bicycle. With winter approaching and the prospect of riding becoming more dangerous with an increased chance of crashing on asphalt or hard packed snow I thought it might be good to change the usual structure of bike wheels and tires to a more snow and ice friendly format.

It can be challenging to fix a flat tire in the snow, and larger rubber tires weigh more than thin tires yet a wider tire offers a better surface for riding on snow and icy surfaces. Why not increase the tire size and reduce the weight while eliminating the possibility of getting a flat tire?

There are several no-flat tire systems in existence that tend to weigh a lot or be fairly costly. It could be best to change the shape of bike wheels and tires together.

Of course I think a three wheel trike with two wheels and a cargo boot aft would be safer than a two-wheel bike for riding on ice and snow, yet the new wheels and tires should work equally wheel for either and the tires and wheels should work well in warm environments as well.

The new wheels would be of a convex shape something like a half-moon with the curved surface facing outward and a few thick spokes meeting the hub. The tires would be half moon shaped also and not inflated with air at all. For shock absorbing they would be a little like those running shoes popular nowadays with a little built in pseudo spring or shock absorber-yet not made of steel.

The half-moon tires might be of double thickness with a little air space and a lot of small half-inch or so shock absorbers. The tire could be in curved sections instead of in a completely round shape since they are not inflated and are lightweight. It would be possible for these pseudo-tire riding surface to just bolt on to the wheel in various sections-perhaps quarter wheel sections in order to permit alternate bolting on of studded tires for winter riding on ice.

The back of these tire sections could have a curved backing of fiberglass, aluminum or some suitable material to contact the wheel-actually there are innumerable methods of attaching the tire halves to the wheel.

It might be possible to make some sort of a film for-profit about a bicycle designer who goes to live in Kashmir in order to design the fastest bicycle wheel and bike design for competitive road racing. Perhaps he could be a former world champion bike rider who was injured after winning his first race and lost his medal because of a false doping charge later.

The fortyish bike designer could still be in excellent shape and meet some woman who has a father that was involved in some local political movement and killed unjustly by either partisans or government forces or foreign agents.

The designer and the Indian woman could together survive numerous efforts by foreign agents to steal the new bike in order to allow a sectarian rider to win the tour de France and provide a platform for rebellion and a coup d’etat of Jammu and Kashmir to form a terrorist training base.

Of course the bike designer could ride his new bike at high speed across the Himalayan and over the Indus River headwaters on a bridge while being pursued by terrorist jihadists firing full metal jacket AK-47 bullets at the bike designer. I won’t give the ending of the story away. Let’s just say. The bike-riding champion also enjoys skydiving.