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

[b]Comment:[/b] The following post is in error. The geometry chart on the Cannondale site is still the 2015 bikes. Bikerumor had an article where they described geometry changes for 2016, including adjustments to stack-reach in small and large sizes, and a general drop in bottom brackets consistent with the trend to wider, deeper tires. I'll post a follow-up post when I get the geometry chart for 2016. Cannondale just announced it's 2016 Evo . There's been a flurry of really attractive new bikes announced this year, including the new Madone 9 from Trek, the incredible Venge ViAS from Specialized, and the new Scott F02 update to the Foil. A common feature of all of these is increased focus on aerodynamics and comfort. Aerodynamics isn't new, with bikes going back to the Kestrel Talon and Cervelo Soloist Carbon examples of carbon frames designed for aerodynamic efficiency. However, the bikes have never been as popular as was predicted because in the end riders lik...

SCRainmaker has a "hands-on" (as opposed to an "in-depth" review; still way more in-depth than any other reviews on the web) of the new Garmin Edge 20 and 25. These are, finally , Garmin addressing the simpler/lighter-is-better market for GPS. On bikes, a huge amount of attention and money is directed towards minimizing weight. The best way to minimize weight of a GPS unit is to ride without a GPS unit. But the prominence of social networking website Strava has increased the value of GPS data. So for many, GPS has become a virtual requirement. What's the point of riding if you can't get kudos? Yet despite big push for lighter bikes, and with real estate on the handlebars and stem so limited, Garmin has seemingly ignored the value of lighter-and-simpler-and-smaller by producing a series of increasingly complex, heavy, and bulky GPS units. The Edge 500 came out more than a half-decade ago, and yet it has remained the lightest and most compact unit pro...

The Golden State Warriors lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers in basketball last night. They're now down 2-1 in the series. The first team to win 4 is the champion. I don't care about basketball but there's one thing I like about the game and that's that scores generally increase relatively at random (I hope -- I hope the near miraculous comeback yesterday from a 17-point deficit after three quarters wasn't programmed), and that games are won to some degree seemingly at random. I like random. As an aside, I do find it remarkable in basketball how often a team with a big deficit claws its way back only to lose in the end by a small margin. I'd like to see a statistical analysis of this. A huge amount of money is at stake for games not being a total blow-out. I do wonder at this. Basketball has long seemed to me to be more about the show and less about a fair contest. And that makes it very difficult for me to care about the result. But this is an aside. As...

First I saw it on the UCI list of approved frames for June , then I saw a teaser video posted to the Trek website , and then this uncredited photo was posted to the Weight Weenies forum: My that looks fast. Maybe it's the color, but it reminds me of the Canyon Aerooad. The Canyon has done rather well in the tunnel, not in the class of the Cervélo S5, but fairly good. See for example Tour magazine data here . So I expect the Trek will be at least this good. But then there's weight. The Madone 7 was quite light with the vapor coat -- under 800 grams. But then the Emonda came out, pushing that lower, but there's only so far you can go below that. So the Madone was a bike of compromise. Now they want you to buy two bikes: the lightweight Emonda and the "aero" Madone. So the pressure's off on weight. But I wonder how they did. Nothing on this one looks particularly heavy. From what I see I really like it. The days of bad-riding aero frames are over...