into place”: why not combine the things he was most passionate about — computers, writing, travel, bicycles, and romance — into a new life?
He ordered a custom-built recumbent (a type of sit-down bicycle), then grafted on a RadioShack TRS- 80 Model 100 laptop, a Hewlett-Packard HP- 110 portable computer, CB radio, and a 5-watt solar panel to power these gadgets. He named the resulting vehicle the Winnebiko.
Starting from Columbus, Roberts biked 10,000 miles, passing through small towns along the southern East Coast, through Florida, the South, Texas, and the Southwest, and ending in Silicon Valley in California about 18 months later. Throughout this trip, he continued to earn a living by writing articles on his laptop. He also wrote about his journey, which eventually caught the notice of people in the media, who wondered about this man bicycling across America on a “computerized bike.”
As fulfilling as this really long bike ride had been, he found it frustrating that he could not write while riding at the same time. “I had all this mobility, but I was just watching the words flow away, knowing by night, when I was camping or whatever, I would not capture these thoughts,” he says.
Roberts upgraded the Winnebiko for an encore trip in 1986. The Winnebiko II added packet radio for email access, a security system with motion detection and voice synthesis, and a new, more sophisticated control panel. To enable himself to write as he pedaled, he hacked apart the keyboard of the TRS- 80 Model 100, and rewired the keys to the bike’s handle controls.
His second bike tour ran from Seattle, along the West Coast, and across the country to the East Coast. He was accompanied by his girlfriend at the time, Maggie Victor, who rode her own recumbent. Together, they traveled 6,000 miles.
The attention Roberts got from the media led to interest from corporate sponsors. From 1988 to 1992, he threw more things onto the Winnebiko II. A lot of things. Much like a succeeding version of a Microsoft application, the bike quickly became bogged with too many features, to the
point of absurdity and uselessness. So many components were put on it that a trailer had to be designed to hold them, and for the bike to tow.
Renamed BEHEMOTH (Big Electronic Hu-man-Energized Machine ... Only Too Heavy), it was assembled in Silicon Valley by a team of volunteers assisting Roberts. It had almost every piece of mobile and computer technology at the time: a hacked Macintosh and other computer systems, tons of radio communications devices, GPS navigation, even a radiation monitor.
“I got so distracted by the tech stuff,” Roberts admits. “I’d be reading a trade journal and go, ‘Ooh, ooh, I could use that!’ and then I would schmooze and get it.”
The media and public were enchanted with his journeys, and wowed by the technology-laden, though impractical, bike. Roberts was interviewed by many reporters and appeared on TV talk shows. But as public interest in his project was reaching its peak, the tech-nomadic biker’s passion for his original dream was dying. Ironically, to make public appearances and do speaking gigs, he traveled the country in a diesel truck that carried the BEHEMOTH in its trailer.
Using the money he earned from his speaking tour for the BEHEMOTH, Roberts bought property on Camano Island, choosing the region for its variety of surrounding waterways. He put up the 3,000-squarefoot workshop to facilitate the research, construction, and testing of small watercraft that would utilize tech-nomadic technologies. He brought over the volunteer-community ethic of BEHEMOTH by inviting engineers and other specialists to take part.
The “Microship Project” began with the idea of outfitting a basic kayak with communications devices, but evolved into a pair of specially modified boats, Songline and Wordplay. These water vehicles expanded upon the embedded systems technologies that Roberts and his BEHEMOTH team developed, and which allowed the pilot to control almost every aspect of the craft through a Palm-OS PDA.
In his workshop, Roberts shows me the inside of a thick plastic project box that’s sitting at one
References:
Archives