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

Here's some climbs I've done the past few weeks in Switzerland and France, having been in Basil in part for work. As I write this I'm on a bus from Bourg d'Oisans to Grenoble, having just climbed L'Alpe d'Huez and descended via Col Serenne. What an absolutely spectacular ride that was in many ways.... I'll report on that later. The climbs I report here are relatively modest, perhaps with the exception of Le Grand Ballon, although even that wasn't to the standard of either the climb or the descent I did today. Actually, I don't have GPS data for L'Alpe d'Huez because I took two minor wrong turns, both quickly corrected, the second and more major of which I could have avoided had I looked at the marks in the road instead of staring at the Garmin Edge 500 navigation screen, which unfortunately at the time was on a relatively zoomed-out state -- it tends to scroll between zoom levels. Dornach - Gempen The first climb of interest is the clim

When Brian and Janet visited Cara and me in Basel, finishing off their extensive tandem tour of Europe, Brian told me he'd used Strava route finder as his primary source of routes. This had obviously worked well for him, and it motivated me to rely on it a bit more for my rides here. There's a variety of ways to make routes with Strava route finder. I'll go through some of the approaches I tried, and how they worked for me. Enter endpoints, blindly follow First was my ride to Gempen, which actually preceded Brian and Janet's visit. There I selected my starting point at the apartment, and the end point, the town of Gempen at the top of the hill. I'd expected to be routed up either of the two main Strava segments I'd seen which climb to Gempen, one from Munchen, the other from Dornach. But when I blindly followed the recommended route, I found myself doing a dirt climb, one which started as a well groomed "fire road", but which ended up on a st

Continuing my description of a recent trip to Paris from Switzerland.... Sunday, however, we abandoned the Metro for the Velib bike-share system. This would have been a far, far better way to get back from Notre Dame. ("a far, far better place..." Sorry.) The Velib system, in contrast to the San Francisco bike share system, made a huge impression on me. First, there was the number of users. A substantial majority of the considerable number of cyclists we saw on the streets of Paris were on Velib bikes. And it made sense. With Velib, there was no reason to worry about locking your bike or returning to your bike after finishing with a destination. You could park it at a station, go do stuff, then move on to a different station closer to your destination and check out another bike. Being somewhat scatter brained my internal alarms were screaming at me "you forgot your bike!" as I'd walk away from where I'd docked the previous one. But of course it wa

This blog is a bit out of sequence, as what I describe here is two weekends ago. On Friday evening Cara and I took the TGV from Basel to Paris, remarkably (to me) an only 3-hour journey. This is super-easy, way easier than plane travel with its remote airport locations, long lines, body scanners, body-bending coach seats. I did a brisk walk to the Basel train station, can go directly to the train as late as seconds before the precise departure time, and I'm on my way. Cara, wisely, took the Basel tram to the station which runs reliably every 7 minutes. It's all very low-stress, shorter than my friend's San Francisco Bay area commute. With European discount air fares it is more expensive than flying, but you get what you pay for. Flying coach is dehumanizing in comparison. In Paris, we took the Metro from Gare Charles de Gaul to our hotel not far from Le Tour Eiffel. The location was excellent, and for that we paid plenty. The room had a private bathroom, but it

Soundtrack here.

On Friday afternoon, I decided to try again for a paved climb up to Gempen. I wanted to climb the road I'd descended on Thursday, the one I'd seen so many riders climbing. My nominal goal was a Strava top 10. I thought this should be attainable from the VAMs I saw on the leaderboard if I was feeling good. I decided to head out along the Rhein, crossing the river near where I was staying to the northern shore (German-side, but not Germany here), then heading east, crossing again near where the Birs river feeds into the Rhein from the south. Then I'd head southward to Dornach and begin the climb from there. I once again used Strava route-find, this time putting constraint points at the base of the climb and at the river crossing where I planned to recross the Rhein southward. I was mostly able to follow the thus designed route, and it was again an okay route, but not as scenic as I'd hope. That bridge crossing wasn't great, with some slightly dicey navigation

As I write this, I'm on a TGV waiting to leave the Paris Gare de Lyon station for Zurich. I get off in Basel. The total trip is little more than 3 hours. Really remarkable. It's considerably more distance than the train between Santa Barbara and "San Francisco" (really Emeryville), the Coastal Starlight which is a 1-a-day affair in each direction. Delays of several hours are common. The TGV, on the other hand, is of course precisly on time. Indeed the entire timing board in Gare de Lyon was "á l'heure". Prior to the weekend in Paris, I was in Basel last week. A search on Strava Segment Explorer turned up one obvious "local" source of climbs: the road to Gempen, a nearby hilltop town, small and rural, remarkably isolated from the Basel semi-sprawl. There's two main paved climbs from Basel to Gempen. The most heavily trafficked, by far, is the 2-lane road from Dornach to the west. Dornach is somewhat inland from the Rhein, and

Score! Two tickets...

Fairwheel Bikes, the most technically engaged bike shop I know and one which has made an incredible impact for its size at numerous bike shows including Interbike and NAHBS, earlier this year published the results of a brake test on the WeightWeenies forum . They did a number of tests, including stiffness and braking force. Here I'll look at the brake deflection versus cable pull. But first, here's the brakes in the test, with mass for the pair measured without brake pads or holders, and a price. No price is listed for the Campagnolo single-pivot, perhaps because it is typically sold paired with a dual-pivot brake (single for rear, dual for front): brake mass cost KCNC C7 111 grams $330 THM Fibula 116 grams $1429 KCNC CB3 126 grams $335 EE Cycleworks 139 grams $610 KCNC CB4 150 grams $200 KCNC C6 161 grams $180 Far and Near 168 grams $290 Sram Red 190 grams $350 Campag Single pivot 212 grams   Shimano 7900 216 grams $400 Shimano 9000 218 grams $400 Campag Dual

Here's a comparison of Tour magazine tested mass data for medium-to-large frames taken from three articles: steel bikes, Aug 2013, on-line summary "sub-800 gram" carbon bikes, Dec 2013, on-line summary titanium bikes, Sept 2014, purchased today in print version This sample is biased in favor of the carbon since the carbon frames selected are the lightest, most expensive available, while in steel, for example, a custom builder like Rob English, emphasizing weight, can get lower than most stock steel frames, which have less emphasis on weight. But I think the Crema represents this quite well: only 1512 g for the frame. Forks are heavier on the steel and Ti bikes, in general, but I am focusing on frames, since forks can be selected, especially with custom steel, which is still a lot cheaper than those carbon bikes. Result: best carbon is 704, best Ti is 1350, and best steel is 1512. So the cost of Ti is around 646 grams, and the cost of steel around 808 grams, relat