#co-motion

[16incheswestofpeoria]

Three entry points into the garden of earthly delights

It’s a crowded world out there: the sky above, the ground below, somewhere to go-and to return to-and on this day, the company of one’s shadow: that certain though shifting form born of the sun, the ground, and one’s intervening shape. It’s impossible to be alone in such a world. Who would want to be? — Each year, the trees conspire to remind me that I am bald. They’re not mean—they’re…

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[robinsoncenter]

Free legal consultation for Innovation Fund winners: April 26

This spring, CoMotion is partnering with the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic (ELC) to provide faculty, researchers, and students from CoMotion projects and startups with the opportunity to have a legal consult with an experienced attorney and law students in the ELC, free of charge.

Friday, April 26, 2019 at UW School of Law Room 212

Time slots are for 20 minutes between 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Are there legal questions you want to ask but are afraid of the bill?

Request a Free Attorney Consultation for UW students, staff and faculty!

Use this as an opportunity to ask questions related to incorporation, equity, and intellectual property, such as:

When do I need an attorney?

How do I start a company?

How should my founders and I divide the equity?

How do I protect my idea?

When should I start a company?

Who owns the IP?

How do I protect myself from risk in a business?

The consultations are for projects that do not already have their own outside legal counsel.      

Please arrive 5 minutes before your slot time.  

To request a 20-minute time slot, sign-up here.

[bikefamily]

Picked up the new tandem

I picked up our new tandem, a Co-Motion Periscope. It was about a month from when I placed the order to when the bike was delivered. That's much quicker than the 12-16 weeks I was expecting based on talking to the people at Co-Motion. The longer time must be for completely custom frames.

The people at the bike shop were very nice when I picked it up. They appreciated the business and were excited about the bike. They made sure everything was exactly as I wanted and offered to fit the bike to me and my stoker. An employee rode it with me so I could have a feel for how it handled with a stoker on the back. They helped me load it in the minivan. I've had some mixed experiences with bike shops in the past, but this one was very good. The level of customer service matched the level of the bike, which says a lot!

The bike is a dream come true. The custom paint, frame pump, and factory name decals are absolutely goreous. We were on the fence about some of these options, but I'm so glad that we chose them. If you're already spending several thousand on a bike then it's worth it to pay an extra $150 for the color you want. The robin's egg blue looks great with mostly black components and decals. We were thinking about getting our Tubus racks powder coated orange to go with the blue, but now that we see the bike it's obvious that leaving them black is better.

The Astral Leviathan rims were a nice surprise. These are sturdy rims suited for touring, with 36 spokes in the front and 40 in the rear. They are a step up from the Velocity Dyad that I expected. Maybe they come as part of the dynamo hub package- but nothing on the website mentions this, and God knows I checked.

My Mom came by to visit her grandchildren, so my wife and I were able to sneak out to take the bike out for its maiden voyage and get a drink downtown. The ride is amazing, a big step up from our old Medici. The disk brakes are sweet- powerful stops with no squealing or flexing. The dynamo headlight lit our way coming back in the dark- makes the bike so much more practical.

Grandma took the bike back home to sit in storage for 2 months until Santa comes. I told our daughter that I talked to Santa today. She said, "Really? We want a tandem bicycle, one that we can pedal together!"

[robinsoncenter]

$5,000 Innovation Internships - info session today!

Information sessions about the CoMotion Mary Gates Innovation Scholars internship program will be held today and next month as a topic for Scholarship Fridays!  Please share this announcement broadly!

FRIDAY, 2/9, 1:30-2:20 PM, MGH 171

FRIDAY, 3/9, 1:30-2:20 PM, MGH 171

This is a unique program in which students can spend Summer quarter working as interns with UW faculty-led start-up companies, seeking to transfer research to real-world applications.  Participants will build upon their strengths and learn about intellectual property and entrepreneurship through hands-on teamwork with an emerging company.

Each Innovation Scholar will receive a $5,000 scholarship and earn course credit.

Approximately ten different internships will be available this year, across a broad spectrum of engineering, health sciences, and natural sciences.  Students with backgrounds in art, biology, botany, business, chemistry, civil & environmental engineering, computer science & engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, microbiology, linguistics, neuroscience, physics, public health, psychology, speech & hearing sciences, statistics, visual communications, web design and more should apply. 

The application will open in early March; the deadline is Monday, April 9.  All internships will be at/near the Seattle campus.  Only degree-seeking UW undergraduate students are eligible (students graduating in Summer 2018 or later are eligible; Spring quarter graduates are not eligible).

This program is made possible by CoMotion and the Mary Gates Endowment for Students.

Send questions to [email protected].

[johngsmith]

Riding the Great Divide. Day 1

Riding the Great Divide. Day 1. Leaving Whitefish.

We flew from Portland to  the Glacier National Park Airport at Kalispell and got a cab to Whitefish. Jamie had arranged to leave the bike boxes at a cyclery there. They also agreed to keep our bags.

At the cyclery he had an Old Man Mountain rack fitted on my bike. All he had me carrying were the Big Agnes tent and my sleeping bag and mat, all strapped on in a compression sack.

That, and the Camelbak Mule pack, was my load.

My gear was one pair of mountain bike shorts, a pair of  lightweight shorts, two  jerseys, two socks, two padded undershorts and mountain bike shoes. For evenings, lightweight slacks, a teeshirt and a lightweight fleece all from Craghoppers and some canvas shoes.

We stayed the first night at  a motel. Motels work best: you  can stow the bikes in the room, said Jamie.

Jamie carried two panniers with food, water and tools and his clothing, and a bar bag, far more than me.

He showed me his bike. It was a steel touring bike made by Co-Motion, a company based in Oregon. Its unique feature was the coupler system that means it could be disassembled and carried with passenger luggage.

We set off at 8:30 after coffee and doughnuts in the breakfast bar.

Jamie said we should start earlier on other days while it was still cool,  for the temperature would rise steadily throughout the day to lunchtime, and would peak in the mid 80’s in the late afternoon.

I decided all I would read on this trip was the Yahoo News Digest on my iPhone, when I could get it.

Today the leaders of many countries met in Liege in Europe to mark the start of hostilities in the 1914 war.

We angled south east along straight north-south roads around the huge square fields.

I pictured two points moving slowly around identical green-brown squares, each with a  slightly different mark from tractor trails.

Our first climb was a long, shallow climb on a gravel road through pine trees. Sometimes Jamie would ride alongside me.

“You’re looking pretty good,” he said, standing up out of the saddle and scanning me. “You trained well.”

After we stopped for lunch Jamie pushed the bikes into a brushy opening and cable-locked them together and pocketed  his Garmin and we went looking for huckleberries on the forest floor. We found some low bushes with purple fruits which I said were similar to whortleberries or bilberries, which grow in the hills I roamed as a child.

In the evening I told him how I had been reading up about the history of the bike and  how the technology had stopped and started through  a mesh of coincidence and enthusiasm and inspiration and ambition and greed.

“ It’s a bit like our bodies that contain parts from thousands of species,”  Jamie said.

We stopped at Bigfork and found the campground.

Then we walked over the harbour bridge and up the street called Electric Avenue, checking out what was there.

Jamie has a couple of high-tech bicycle security devices: a D-lock that alerts his iPhone if it’s tampered with and a hidden tracker that provides GPS co-ordinates of the  bike’s position if it’s stolen.

It was Sunday evening. We found a good restaurant and also chose a cafe for our breakfast in the morning.

I had never shared a tent with Jamie before. I slept well but, as ever, with periods of wakefulness. Jamie  groaned  a few times in the night. I wondered what he was dreaming about.

At dinner Jamie said: “Think how many of our customary behaviours are just down to a single biological trait. Humans sleep after dark for six to eight hours. What if we slept in the day? Or dozed?”

I love Jamie. He’s so different.

But I was still curious:Why are we here? What prompted this project?

Riding the Great Divide. Day 1 was originally published on The Journal of an Aging Hominid