Safer, Cleaner Cycling

The city of Portland, Oregon is trying out a new bike-lane arrangement called cycle tracks, and it uses parked cars as the physical barrier between motor vehicle traffic and the bike lane. This is such an obviously better idea I'm disappointed I didn't think of it myself. Well-done! Here's a video explaining the concept.


On the Right Track from Mayor Sam Adams on Vimeo.

On high traffic streets, like Fair Oaks Blvd, or Sunrise, that painted barrier should be concrete K-rail painted canary yellow, or traffic orange, but this is a great start in that direction. It turns out, it also improves the air quality for cyclists, especially at peak driving times. Duh! Again, a brilliant idea hiding right under our noses - literally.

K-rail: Physical barriers for cyclists' safety

Peaked?

The last week or so my meteoric rise in performance has ebbed, and the last few rides have been rather weak. Have I mentioned how much that SUCKS? I wish I knew what was behind this. It could be fatigue, it could be the mental let down riding in gloomy weather, and it could be mild infection from dental problems not yet put to rest.

Whatever the root cause, I think I will get my 100 miles in this week with another 33+ miles on Sunday, as Saturday is looking like a continuation of rain forecast for tonight. I don't think I'll be able to get to 500 miles this month, although, I might have if I had ignored the weather guessers and ridden earlier in the day a couple of days this week - fatigue notwithstanding. I'm 51 miles short of 400 miles for Oct, so if I feel strong Sunday, I'll try for that.

On the hardware front, Easton is in the news again, and not in a good way. It turns out the EC90 Zero seatpost is just as lousy as my EC70 Zero. Nice crack running down the front of the seatpost there guys! A seatpost is almost as critical for control as handlebars, so this is inexcusable in my book, even ignoring the groin injury potential.

You should make your own decision, but I have a rule about doing business with a company that is this poorly run. The whole RAD concept was a blunder, should have been found to be so in QA testing, and should have been pulled ASAP. Once you move away from a perfectly round tube you introduce all kinds of unwanted stress vectors. I won't be doing any more business with Easton.

It's gloomy here again this afternoon, and I am so at to the "$hit, or get off the pot" stage here. Rain, get it over with, and let's see some sunshine. All of this 'gloomshine" is affecting my mood. Can you tell? ;)

Happy Halloween to you all!

Techie Tuesday - Wheels & Wheels of Details

My spare rear wheel arrived at the local Performance Bike Shop - shipped free of charge from the online store - in good shape, but with a 100mm front skewer instead of a 130mm skewer. I walked around the store and picked up a few items, especially, a new pair of gloves, squeezing the spokes to relieve them, and then handed the wheel back to the mechanic to have it trued.

It was in pretty good shape, so I am very happy with the purchase, as the cost was a screaming deal at $118 - about half of $205, plus shipping, from Colorado Cyclist. In their defense, my CC wheels were custom built by hand with DT Swiss's Revolution, 14/17 super-butted spokes, so I expected to pay more for them. The PBS wheels use double butted 14/15 Wheelsmith spokes, which as you will see in the photos, have much more abrupt butts. Spokes with abrupt butts usually fail at the butt, if and when they fail.

As indicated a few posts back, the CC wheel has developed a serious flaw at the SUP weld, so the catalyst for buying the PBS wheel was as a spare I can use to keep riding while my CC wheel gets shipped back for a warranty inspection.

I took a lot of pics to get these, which I think are quite good, and highlight contrasts between these two wheel builds. I went through a lot of trouble to get some good shots of the manufacturer's trade-mark stamp on the spoke heads. Once you know what to look for, this makes identifying the spoke mfg quick and easy.

Without further adieu then...

 

Sorry there are no captions, but BlogSpot's captions currently screw up the HTML so badly that you lose the ability to click on the pics and get full-resolution click-throughs..

Pic #1: Note the prominent "W" stamped on the spoke head for Wheelsmith, the manufacturer. Also, if you look closely you will see the butt area quite distinctly about 30mm out from the spoke head. The transition is done in about 4-5mm.

You might also notice a characteristic of 3-cross spoking - that adjacent spokes are pulling in opposite directions and form an almost unbroken and unbent line from one side of the rim to the other. This arrangement limits stresses on the flange to those pulling along the curve of the flange, nearly eliminating forces pulling away from the flange directly towards the rim. (which is characteristic of radially spoked wheels)

Pic #2: Shows a close-up of the flange and spoke head.

Pic #3: Shows a shot along the drive-side of the wheel, with the halographic Mavic OpenPro decal in focus.

Pic #4: Shows the same shot, but with the Shimano Ultegra 6700 steel freehub body in focus. You can see the butting quite clearly on several of the spokes in this shot.

Pic #5: Shows the DT Swiss head stamp and the very tapered butting. It is very hard to see the butting, it is so gradual. It is easier to feel it, but you can see it somewhat here, and the butting is all over by about 20-25 mm from the head. The same is true on the nipple side, leaving almost the entire length of the Revolution spoke at a very thin 17 gauge.

Pic #6: Shows a close-up of the head stamp and flange.

Rainy Days are for Sleeping

I got 98.5 miles in this week, and finished the last 20 minutes of that in the rain yesterday. Does that count as a 'W' for my 100 miles a week goal? Close enough?

I've had quite a week of riding, and a very front-loaded one at that. I rode Sun, Mon, Wed, Fri, and since I am letting the Daily Mile website keep track of my miles, and it is on a Monday - Sunday week, I had to get this week's miles done from Monday thru Friday.

I went to Starbucks in Folsom last night and got fitted for a club jersey, and stayed up last night watching movies and sipping hot chocolate. I was feeling the miles this morning, so after getting up early I went back to sleep ~ 10:00 AM and slept until - GASP - 13:30! I have to say though, I am getting toughened in to the 100 miles a week, and the fatigue is much less now than a month ago.

We don't really have seasons in California, except for wet and dry, but I like the change. Riding home yesterday I was tempted to extend my 'Beal's: No Point' ride down to WBP, but the wind had been very strong the last half hour, so when it started to drizzle I thought it best to get my butt home. As it was the last 20 minutes was in a full-on rain, but a warm, gentle rain, so rather enjoyed that.

It reminded me of some wonderful times I had playing volleyball in the summer in Phoenix (yes, I really did just use 'wonderful', 'summer' and 'Phoenix' in the same sentence) in the warm, monsoon rains that come the 3rd week of July and hang around for a month. All the heat, and humidity too!

I continue to ride hard and push myself, and am setting so many PBs I can't remember them all, but one I am kind of proud of I will share. I got passed by a stealth wheel-sucker going upstream on the west side of Lake Natomas. I was watching the thousands of geese that have been stopping there, and reveling in the sight of rowing teams in sculling crews on the dark blue water as the sun got low and painted it every imaginable hue of red, yellow and orange.

He passed me at about 30mph after the bottom of the only 'long' hill and after the blind left turn that limits speeds to about that. I let him go at first, but decided to challenge myself and try to bridge up and catch him. It took me a half mile at full power, but I got it done.

Top speed was 27 mph, and average 26.1. The trail is right next to the water, so absolutely flat, although just a hint of headwind. My legs really hurt after that, and he dropped me like a greased turd on the climb up to Negro Bar, but I loved the look of total surprise on his face when I came up abreast of him with a big grin on my face!

The calculator in the upper left margin says that works out to ~ 350 watts for a little over a minute. That's power TDF riders can crank out for an hour or more, but I'm very happy with this level of performance. I want more!