On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

My last post was of racing bikes. The bikes I'll describe here deviate from main-stream racing machines, although obviously any bike can be raced, and one here is even for a particular type of race ("gravel race"). Ritchey Tandem Breakaway Ritchey showed the tandem Breakaway frame they'd showed at NAHBS this February. There was finally a formal promise it was going into production, although they were "still working on pricing". I think the Ritchey bikes all look awesome. This is the only stock tandem I've seen which I thought looked really good. Key question is whether we'd choose to travel with it. Certainly the Breakaway boxes would facilitate transport, but packing and unpacking Breakaways is a time-consuming process, not one for a few hours drive to a century or double. Velo Orange touring bike Velo Orange had a very nice touring bike, something which would have been nicely at home at NAHBS if the frame had been custom. I asked abo...

This being Interbike and all, I was surprised by the relative lack of, well, bikes. There were bikes, of course, but not nearly to the level as the North American Handbuilt Bike Show, a personal favorite. But to be fair I missed the far better forum for bicycles at Interbike, which is the outdoor demo. We've hit a saturation level in carbon fiber technology, where a light carbon frame is a commody produced in bulk quantities in Taiwan, so the sight of a carbon frame barely draws attention. Hey -- is that a new Bonk Breaker flavor? I'll come back to this bike later.... maybe. Comments on some of what I saw, starting with pro bikes. Peter Sagan's very cool Cannondale Evo Two bikes which drew my attention were the bikes in the SRAM booth. Peter Sagan's Cannondale Evo was really nice. Notable was that SRAM showed it with its competitor SRM power-measuring crank; SRAM bought Quarq and so was promoting that. But hats off to SRAM for having the confidence and mat...

Another Interbike theme was food. After flying in from San Francisco, having munched on some raw food bars from my back pack, I planned to invest my lunch calories in food samples, which are plentiful. Powerbar was there with it's high protein bars and a new flask containing fruit mash. I stay clear of protein bars containing isolated soy protein, since I don't digest it well, but I tried the mush. It reminded me of my days eating Gerber's baby food. Actually, I don't remember those days, but it reminded me of baby food anyway. Indeed I've heard of ultra-endurance riders preferring baby food on their rides, so the new Powerbar product has precedent. But I'd rather just eat fruit. They also had gel blocks. Clif was there in force, with Clif Bars, Luna Bars, their granola bars, and their relatively new Lara Bar rip-off. The Lara Bar varient was good, a lot like Lara Bars. Clif Bars and Luna Bars, like Power Bars, are made with soy protein isolate (proba...

After I commented on the cleverness of the Da Vinci tandem drivetrain, the guy manning the booth told me "we've been here 17 years in a row". I responded, "but this is my first time here." So this may not be new, and I've likely seen it before @ NAHBS, but in any case I considered it cool. The goal is to allow the stoker to pedal independently of the captain, independently coasting, although still constrained to the same cadence. A side effect of this is the pedals can come out of synchronization, although the stoker could time reinitiation of pedaling to synchronize as desired. Despite their longevity they don't seem to have caught on, as most tandem riders seem content to remain locked together with a fixed timing chain. Da Vinci tandem drivetrain Da Vinci drivetrain, stoker close-up Another curious drivetrain was the " string bike ". This was quite remarkable, converting a circular motion on the pedals to a piston-like motion of ...

Another big theme of my one-day Interbike experiene was drivetrains. First, shifting... Shimano had a big booth and supposedly they showed a new electronic shifting system. I missed that as, I admit, I am no Shimano fan and didn't spend much time there. I did try the new Dura-Ace 9000 shifters and these had a very nice shifting action. But then all the big three have a very nice shifting action. At the Campagnolo booth my focus was on their EPS electronic shifting system. They had the system set up on a Pinarello bike on a trainer. In retrospect I regret not having tried out their mechanical shifters as well, but Vegas-and-back in a day makes for a tiring day and I wasn't 100%. In any case, the EPS shifting nicely on the test bike, and I had no problem adapting to their shifter location. However, it seemed a bit artificial to me, designed for hands familiar with their mechanical shifting rather than optimized specificially for the electronic shifters. Again, I was ne...

I had three encounters with pedals at Interbike 2012. I'll review them in order of interest. Least interesting by far was Speedplay. I didn't see anything there, other than the Syzr off-road pedal which was at the show last year . Indeed, this pedal was shown in a different form as far back as 2009 ("almost ready for production"): that's four Interbikes. Yet to my amazement someone at the Speedplay booth still talking about it not being ready yet for production. I remember doing a group ride in San Diego 1990 or 1991 where I guy I don't know who called himself Richard talked about his new pedal prototype which he was going to take into production and I laughed: the pedal market was already saturated with big hitters like Look, Shimano, Time. How was some guy in San Diego going to compete with them? So no criticism of Mr. Bryne and company, but I find the ongoing delay curious. Sometimes, it seems, it's easier for a little guy working in a machin...

I was at Interbike for the first time this year, and a big trend was crank arm-based power meters. There were at least three there: Rotor Power, Pioneer, and StagesOne. The fundamental physics behind each of these three units is the same: to propel the bike force is transmitted via a mechanical path: pedal body to pedal spindle to crank arm to (left side only) bottom bracket spindle to spider to chainring to chain to cassette to free hub body to spokes to rim to tires to road. You can in theory extract propulsive torque anywhere along this path, and when combined with rate of rotation, convert the torque into power. In the case of the crank arm-based models, torque applied to the crank arm bends it, a bending moment proportional to the torque. To decent approximation the bending is proportional to the moment, and is thus proportional to the torque, so if you can measure bending then with suitable calibration (for example, hanging a known mass from a pedal orientated horizontally) ...

They say fourth is the worst place: the lead medal, just off the podium. I don't agree with this, having gotten more than my share of 4th places in last year's Low-Key Hillclimbs . But the Low-Keys don't put medals around riders necks. The races which notably do so are the Olympic Games and the World Championships. I thought it would be interesting to review who got the 4th places in the individual elite road events at these competitions this year: Olympics Games: Women's Time Trial: Linda Melanie Villumsen, New Zealand Men's Time Trial: Taylor Phinney, United States Women's Road Race: Shelly Olds, United States Men's Time Trial: Taylor Phinney, United States World Championships: Women's Time Trial: Emma Pooley, Britain Men's Time Trial: Tejay Van Garderen, United States Women's Road Race: Amber Neban, United States Men's Road Race: John "Arnie" Degenkolb, Germany Impressive showing here by Team U.S.A. with a remarkabl...

A year ago, Troy Davis was executed for murders he is claimed to have committed, in Georgia. From an article in Time : In the 48 hours leading up to Davis' execution, the nation heard that the case against Davis was built entirely on eyewitnesses who said they saw Davis gun down off-duty cop Mark McPhail. But of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis in his original trial, seven would go on to change their mind and recant. So nine people, who didn't know him, claimed to have seen Troy commit the crime. Seven later recanted, and yet he was still killed by the state. In contrast, there are reportedly ten independent people, each of whom knew him, including teammates, an ex-wife, and an ex-fiancee, testifying that they observed Lance Armstrong either self-administering illegal drugs, or describing his method and practice of doing so. Additionally, Lance is reported to have encouraged others to use these drugs. He left behind blood samples which have been tested by ...

In the Vuelta this year, Joaquin Rodriguez has been untouchable. Not only is he able to outclimb Chris Froome, arguably the dominant climber of the Tour de France, but he's able to respond to every one of Alberto Contador's attacks. Sure, Contador is a convicted doper, and without the good stuff he's simply not going to be at the same level he was before, but it's almost unprecedented in cycling history before the EPO era that riders were able to so dominate stage races they they never once lost time to a rival. Not only is Rodriguez able to mark his rivals, but he's able to finish these climbs with absolutely ferocious attacks which put 5 seconds or more on everyone else (excepting perhaps Valverde when he's still with him) within the last 500 meters. I've never before seen a rider who was able to do that, nor am I aware of any rider in cycling history who could combine such searing intensity with the ability to excel on extended climbs. And that he...