Techie Tuesday: The Emergence of the Electric Bike

Looking around for after-market batteries for my new MagicShine, as a 2nd 7.4v pack seems like a good investment, I noticed that Shimano has pushed their DuraAce Di2 electronic shifters down to the Ultegra 6770 level, and the price is ~ $1,500 street.

Since I have set up a charging station now right next to my bike, so I can plug in and charge the Garmin and the MagicShine, I was immediately curious as to what voltage the LION battery was that powers Shimano's shifters.

Electraglide in Grey

The Di2 system uses the same 7.4 volt standard as the MagicShine, and most other lights high-powered too I might add. That's nice, because the rather small Shimano battery lasts for hundreds of hours, so its not very power hungry, and with the same voltage, a stub with a Y connector to the MagicShine's battery would make the Shimano one redundant, and save some weight and drag.

Why would you want electronic shifting? Because indexed front derailleurs are a PITA. For every rear chain position there is a different front chain position, and a different shifting strategy depending on where you are and where you are going. The control inputs are also just taps, and you can tap through 10 gears in back without any delay or hesitation, and the front derailleur takes care of itself. 


This still leaves me with 2 AAA cells for the Planet Bike SuperFlash taillight, which I will be upgrading to SuperFlash Turbo. (I had to offset 2ft to the side and 4ft back to keep from getting blinded.by Steve's Thursday night. So much for the uber great tandem draft), and 2 AAs for the Planet Bike 1W Blaze in front. (could you PLEASE, make these all AA cells?)

Currently, the MagicShine runs on 7.4V, the Garmin on the 5.0V USB standard, and the other two lights on 3.0Vs. This is a mess. What is needed is an on-bike converter that uses clear, flat, urethane ribbon cables that have a Post-It Pads sticky glue and flat silver ribbon wire connecting everything with a pronged battery pack connector system that allows you to connect multiple packs together depending on power requirements. Obviously, this power management system should also charge everything from a single wall charger.

Looking at the emergence of the quad-bulb lights up front, and the effect of a 29.6v, 8-cell LION system in chopping the wire size to 1/4th of it's current size, I think bikes should, and probably will follow the example of aircraft, and develop higher voltage, lower current power systems.

Now if someone would just develop an on-bike generator that wasn't the size and weight of a cheap 11-36 mtb cassette....

Enjoying My Damned Hard Riding

I've been putting in a lot of miles, pretty much sticking to my 100 mile weeks, and am just enjoying the ride - having my gear dialed in well - finally.

I did a really wonderful ride last Tuesday evening with SBH, although it turned out to be just myself and the ride leader. I had made rice and left the stove on, so asked if we could swing by my house for a minute. That kind of set the spirit of adventure for the evening, and I ended up kind of co-leading the ride, showing her a bunch of new roads in my hood.

I took up the lead shortly after we left Sunrise on the ARPT, after stopping for a few minutes to take in a breathtaking sunset, and suck down some Gatorade. It was still warm well into dark. I spotted a fast pair way up ahead, and decided to challenge myself to try to catch them, as I started to really get my legs  under me.

It was a 2 mile sprint, ramping up steadily from ~22 to a peak of 27.3 mph. She was right on my wheel. Very impressive. I got us to within 50 yards when we got jammed by slow traffic and failing light. I pulled a bottle, and we turned on our lights while "coasting" down to 22 mph. Spent from pulling at such high speeds, I hung on for dear life for the next few miles as she put on her own display of speed.

We caught  a rider shortly after WBP who had no light, so we drafted her with me on the right, and Shon on the left. My Bike Planet 1W Bazer just barely filled in the shadow from Shon's MagicShine, but except for a half dozen snakes we didn't see until right on them, the light was good enough for Shon and I to average 20mph from Sunrise to CSUS ~ 12 miles. With all of the dips, rises and hairpin turns, that's very good speed, and excellent speed at night.

Yesterday I needed a 50 mile ride to make my 100mi/week goal, and managed to do so in spite of running a gauntlet of skateboarders, clueless riders withe zero situational awareness riding with headphones and earbuds, a 5 yr old on training wheels towed by her dad and slingshotted across the trail as we approached a turn, and peds walking 4 abreast with a belligerent attitude behind a blind hairpin turn with oncoming traffic. You name it, the stupidity was there.

To make matters worse, they haven't caught the arsonist on the ARPT, and he, or another arsonist burned a house a block down from me Sat night. I stopped at Riverbend Park and talked to a fire crew refilling their truck. They told me the neighbors along the ARPT are talking about setting up sniper hides to shoot the arsonist. No way that's going to end well. I hope they catch the guy soon though. He's burning a lot of nursery trees and tying up 10s of thousands of $$$ in fire fighting resources.

After putting it off for a whole year, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a MagicShine 900 for myself. I'm also going to get a 2-3 watt rear red light, and mount my existing tail light on the back of my helmet. That should allow me to ride flat out after dark. With wx in the 90's again this week (near 100 tomorrow) riding at night is just too much fun to give up.

Interestingly, I got back from that smoking fast 34 mi Tuesday night ride and realized all I'd had to eat all day was a cup of sugared coffee and one slice of whole wheat bread. Eating more fat is not only suppressing hunger, helping me to lose weight, but appears to already be making my muscles more insulin sensitive, and eager to burn fatty acids for fuel. I went through 2 Gatorade bottles on the ride, but that was it. On my  50mi ride yesterday, 2 bottles and 1 PowerBar. About 700 calories in total.

My blog on eating fat last week has had a profound impact on my view of carbs. They're great for ride fuel, and for recovery, and perhaps spiking blood sugar just as a ride starts, but otherwise, glucose is a toxin that has to be very tightly managed. Better to eat fat. I am so much less hungry too.

The sensation isn't the 3-alarm fire of hypoglycemia it has always been in the past. Eating is something that can be done anytime in the next few hours, not a plunge into irritability and brain freeze. Nice too that shunning carbs, except as ride fuel, actually makes them more effective in that role!

At Odds with Ends

So it's December, and winter weather is upon us, so it's time to hang up the cycling shoes for the year and hit the gym, right? Run everything through the laundry, hang it in the closet, stay home, and grow a spare tire? Uh, yeah, but not so much around here. Still nice to have the gym as a backup, but so far the wx has been pretty good.

It was in the mid-60s yesterday, so I had to do a little head-scratching about what to wear before heading out the door for Beals Pt. It was a gorgeous day, and kind of weird that, being a Monday, the trail was almost abandoned. After 6 days off it was a slow and sluggish ride for the most part, but that's just fine. Some Base Level I riding is a good idea this time of year anyway.

Last week I did a nice 38 mile ride up into the El Dorado Hills to get in some practice for our New Year's Day hill challenge, but got there about 20 minutes too late, so reluctantly headed for home over the Johnny Cash Bridge and took in the always spectacular view of the lake while hitting 30mph going down a 6% grade.

Once over the bridge, I got on the ARPT, crossed under it, and stopped to take in the view while donning my PI convertible jacket's sleeves, thus turning the vest into a jacket. In last week's cooler, drier weather this was perfect.  Last night, in spite of wearing a short sleeved summer jersey yesterday, wearing the sleeves coming down from Beals left me soaked in sweat. I'm talking about wet T-shirt contest, pasted to my skin soaked.

Although the fall foliage on the ARPT was breathtaking, the crushed, wet leaves, mingled with twigs and small branches, required a slow pace, especially on the descent from Beals. There was also a fair amount of mud and sand on the trail, so my jacket was spattered and bike filthy when I got home. I need a dedicates bag. Winter clothes are a challenge to clean and dry in the shower due to their sheer bulk and size.

For the bike, I'm going to try the vacuum cleaner with hand brush for the big chunks, and then a clean towel and TurtleWax car shampoo to get it nice and shiny again. It's Tiger Woods in a Vegas whorehouse filthy!

When I got home from my 38 miler last Tuesday, I discovered my tail light had fallen off. I was a little alarmed that I had crossed Fair Oaks blvd without it, as it's 4 lanes of heavy traffic and a dedicated turn lane. I always cross into the turn lane at the crest of a hill where traffic from both directions can see me, but doing so without a tail light is still dangerous.

Wanting to ride the next day, I headed off to REI the same evening and picked up a Planet Bike Blaze/Superflash head and tail-light combo for $48 with a 20% discount. I found a 1/2 watt and a 1 watt combo and went with the 1W, duh. If you already have a tail light you like, I'd go with the 2W Blaze, which uses a CREE XR-E Q5 lamp to produce 100 lumens. Such a pleasant relief to get to Beals last night and NOT have to be checking the time to make sure I'd get home before dark. Headlights rule!

The mounting system wasn't big enough to get around my handlebars, but I tossed the plastic strap and used a bit of the grippy rubber strip from the tail light under a zip-tie, and that worked very well. If I remount it I'll just cover the zip-tie with vinyl tubing like I do with all my zip-ties. It's cleaner and the edges don't curl up. I mounted it upside down next to the stem - slung under the main bar - which is out of the way and provides good vertical separation from the aerobars.

The light has a front bulb section, and a rear battery section that houses 2 AA batteries. The front attaches with a twist lock that only needs about 2mm of twist to disengage it. No way is that going to be reliable, so I immediately cut a strip of Velcro lengthwise and stuck one half to each half of the light. I then wrapped that loop-side Velcro with a Velcro strap's opposite, hook side. It's totally locked in place now, and if I were to drop the light it would be protected from breakage in the bargain.

I did some testing with my 1W light, rated for 7/14 hrs on hi/lo setting, and my wonderful Duracell 2650 AA cells kept the light going for 15 hours on hi!(these excellent batteries were reformulated and are now complete crap. Try the Sanyo Eneloop instead). Somewhere between 10-12 hrs though, the light transitions from a 'See' to a 'Be Seen' light imho. For the 2W, which produces 100 lumens instead of 70, burn time would be 7-9 hrs.

Finally, my new, replacement wheel arrived from Colorado Cyclist, and as expected, is just completely new through and through. I had repacked the hub a week before finding the SUP weld problem, so checked the hub on this one. It's a new hub.

PS: After looking into the MagicShine bike light, I think I'll use this one as a backup or forward flasher. At 900 lumens, the MagicShine far outclasses either of these Planet Bike lights. Here's the technical specs on the Seoul Semiconductor LED that powers the MagicShine light.

Techie Tuesday - Cyclists Lighting System

Learning to fly in Los Angeles at night, if nothing else, is an education in lighting. Once off the ground, and out of the TCA, the familiar disappears into an endless carpet of lights with some random dark spots - defined only by the hard dark line of the ocean. Lighting on aircraft is well-specified by the FAA, so you'd think it would be easy to spot aircraft, but it's anything but easy.

Most commercial airlines now require you to raise the window shades when landing so the cabin windows are lit. They have almost universally taken to brightly lighting the tail of the airplane too. (which G.I.T. requirements would this satisfy?)

Ghosts of lighting past (photo courtesy of Javier Arroyo)

When I took up riding bicycles seriously a few years ago, and this time of year rolled around, I got to thinking of all the lessons I learned about lighting moving objects for identification and collision avoidance. It turns out, many of those lessons apply.

This system is focused on helping others see and react to you. It doesn't cover your being able to see the road, but of course, that is not only important, but a legal requirement too. Without further adieu then, I'll present my recommended lighting scheme.

The G.I.T.  LIT lighting system 
- Grab

- Identify

- Track

The highest priority in lighting is to GRAB someone's attention. Until then, they're incapable of responding or reacting, because they're unaware there is anything around that requires it. Strobes and flashing lights are excellent for this task. Both allow a light source to be much brighter than if constantly on, so be sure to buy a bright light. In any case, the battery drain will be dramatically reduced for flashing or strobing lights, so go big, and as they say, "take two, they're small".

Noticing flashing lights is much, much easier - relying on the very primitive part of our visual system that senses motion (remember Jurassic Park?), and there's evidence they appear brighter than constant-on lights. 

The next highest priority is making sure you're easy to IDENTIFY. Every object has unique properties and behaviors. Motorists rely heavily on knowledge of what they're looking at in order to react appropriately. A jogger, cyclist, and motorcyclist all share some characteristics, and differ dramatically in others.

A jogger you might expect to be facing you, and if lit, to have the light bobbing up and down. Their feet would also be moving in a much different way than the circular motion of a cyclist. A cyclist may be facing you, or may not, but they will be going 3-5 times as fast, so reaction times are compressed. Wheel reflectors will also be making their characteristic roundy-round motion. You wouldn't expect a motorcycle to be facing you, or make quick or radical moves like a jogger or some cyclists.

You would expect a motorcycle to have a powerful lighting system, more powerful than a bicycle and much more powerful than a jogger. It will also be going faster, and can be expected to accelerate faster. If you think about it, even if something grabs your attention, you don't really know how to react until you know what it is.

Anything that lights you and your bicycle well enough so it can clearly be seen as a whole at some distance is best. A headlight mounted on the back of your bike that shines on your backside is excellent. No guessing required. Failing that, highlighting some behavior that only a bicycle can exhibit is good.

Those spoke-mounted reflectors we all remove 10 minutes after we get the bike home, and legally required pedal reflectors - which no clip-in pedal I have ever seen has - are both excellent, but who uses those? I don't (my Sidi shoes do have a quality reflective patch on the heel though).

Helmet light from a donor BRT legstrap

Clothing with reflective piping that creates a distinctive silhouette is very good, as are helmets with silhouette reflective tape. Illuminite type jackets and vests are very good as well.

I have Velcro-ed a Planet Bike BRT strap's internal optic fiber ribbon onto the back of my helmet. It curves around behind the back of the helmet, and is visible from the front, back, and both sides. It's at a motorist's eye level, and when I turn my head to clear a turn it cues motorists where I am looking.

A better variation on this would be optic fibers arranged like the plumage of a Roman helmet, but I have not been able to find one. A unique symbol, similar to the very successful slow moving vehicle triangle is certainly begging to be introduced, but to date, has not been.


Once motorists notice you, and figure out you're a cyclist, they need to be able to TRACK you, or more likely, your lights, to determine course, speed, and proximity. Tracking requires constant on, non-flashing/blinking/strobing lights, and powerful ones. These are primarily rear-facing red lights mounted on your frame or seatbag, but could also be helmet mounted. (assumes you already are using a good headlight, which shows you the road, and allows others to track you when head-on)

Strobing or flashing lights are incredibly difficult to track at night, and since tracking requires constant visual acquisition, it's very demanding of the motorist's time and attention, and perceptually appears dimmer, so this light must be very bright. At long distances, it is likely that you will not yet have been identified when tracking begins. It is by tracking your speed though that the motorist will first begin to form an opinion as to what you are - once you've grabbed their attention. 

While your tracking light will rarely be able to identify you, it can, and sometimes does, grab, the motorists attention. It just isn't very efficient at grabbing it, since flashing lights don't consume nearly as much power, produce as much heat, and for any given power source and bulb, can therefore can be pushed much harder to produce more light. Trade them off.

Have two lights that provide fail-over for each other in either role, as you are trusting life and limb to a battery or few, and a few cents worth of plastics and electronics. This also effectively doubles the battery life of the tracking light. Bringing spare batteries is also an excellent idea for these power-hungry lights, which I always mean to do.

If forced to chose, favor a strong flashing light paired with a dimmer constant light. It's possible to track a strobing light IF it is paired with a still-visible constant light source. Aircraft strobes were designed for years to dim, but never completely turn off for this reason. IIRC, the standard was a repeating pattern of 100-20-100% intensity.

Better to not be forced to compromise, but sometimes fate intervenes. Unfortunately, in LA there is so much ambient light you still lose aircraft between strobes, but not so in rural areas. It's very important that the dim part of a strobe-cycle be bright enough to stand out above the ambient light level. (again, strobes aren't 0% and 100% but 20% and 100%)

Of these three requirements, the IDENTIFY one is the hardest to satisfy. You can be glowing like a Christmas tree, but if the guy can't tell what you are, you still run a pretty high risk of an accident. One promising development here are tires that have reflective sidewalls. From the side, this would make your identification instant and trivial. Worth looking into this winter.

.

Back to 'Normal'

After an early ride to avoid the heat of another 102 degree day yesterday, things are supposed to cool down here today. I think mid-90s are still on tap, but hoping for a strong Delta Breeze to cool things down into the mid-60s tonight, making for comfortable riding temps this evening - my favorite time to ride.

It was so hot yesterday my indoor-outdoor thermometer died, so I was off to Home Depot last night  to get a replacement. The new one is wired (the wireless seemed to develop problems after a year), but it has a humidistat, so more numbers to play with. Playing around with the new one to get it set up, I was amazed that the temps at the top of my vaulted ceiling are 15 degrees higher than down here on the floor. I've been putting off installing a ceiling vent fan up there for years. Maybe it's time.

Something about my ride yesterday, in addition to the Amoxicillin, gave me bad cramps all day yesterday, and generally played hell with my GI tract. That too has returned to normal now, and I only have a day left on the meds anyway, so that will be a non-issue soon. Nice to sit here, enjoy a cup of coffee, and not have to get up to do to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Very nice.

Pain is zero, swelling almost gone, and I am looking forward to a nice big salad again tonight. With it getting warmer I'm going to have to warm up to mornings. Oh, and order one of those $90 MagicShine 900 lumen bike lights from GeoMan. That kind of  light would have cost $500 two years ago. When the Delta Breeze blows, riding near, and hopefully, after dark, is really wonderful. Looking forward to that!