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

I'm a committed fan of 26 mm handlebars. They feel comfortable in my hands, they're plenty stiff, they're light, and they flex just enough to dampen some road vibration. I never understood the shift to 31.8 mm, and will resist it until my present bars fail. But then as if 31.8 mm wasn't enough, Deda came out with the "35". For some reason the perception was that bar flex is to be avoided at all costs, as if we propel the bike primarily with our hands rather than our feet. Indeed, the 35 has had a tepid response even from the pros, who put out considerably higher torque than most riders, me included. 31.8 was already more than enough. But manufacturers in the quest for differentiation never let the facts get in their way. I just found out, from some of my many inside industry contacts, that Deda will announce soon a new "standard" in handlebars: "The MegaFondo 50" Why MegaFondo? Well, the pro peloton already rejected 35 mm. In any...

While "tech" has caused ballistic increases in housing prices in San Francisco, pushing condo prices over $1000/square foot, there are advantages to the presence of these companies close to home. And that's connections. A friend sent me the following story, scheduled for publication on VelocyclingNews.com . Fresh off its remarkable $18.36 billion IPO, @Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has announced it will be sponsoring professional cycling in 2016, coincident with the first phase in the new UCI restructuring of the top tier of professional racing . "Every sponsor comes into cycling wanting to win the Tour de France," announced CEO Dick Costolo ( @dickc ), an avid cyclist himself. "Yet for any team to win is always a long shot. That's why we are taking a new approach, a guaranteed approach." That approach, it turns out, is to become title sponsor of each and every of the 16 class 1-A UCI professional teams. With the media exposure of professional c...

After replacing it's long-time weight-weenie favorite, The Addict, with the aero-optimized Foil, Scott has finally returned the cutting-edge Addict frame to its lineup. This was first revealed at yesterday's Tour of Flanders , the bike ridden with some success by the IAM team who placed sixth with Henrich Haussler. However, that was just a prototype. It wasn't until today the production model was leaked. The following is the press-release, which was sent to me by one of my extensive list of industry contacts. click photo for larger resolution Here's the text of the press release: Scott USA, 01Apr2013: Scott Sports, the cycling world's engineering leader, today announced the launch of the 2014 Addict Ultra Limited frameset. Building on the legendary Addict, the Addict Ultra Limited makes the lightest even lighter (with a world record effective mass[*] of 599.9 grams for 54cm) while maintaining optimal stiffness, comfort, responsiveness, acceleration, and a...

Normally I don't repost articles here, but I ran across this cutting news on one of my favorite race news sites, VeloCyclingNews.com (sometimes it's down, so be sure to check back later). Brugge, Belgium: Jonathan Vaughters announced today that his Slipstream-Cervelo team was going against its sponsorship and will race Sunday's Tour of Flanders on vintage Alex Singer "constructeur" bicycles. "I came across a copy of Bicycle Quarterly and almost immediately realized this is what would give us that critical advantage on the bergs of Flanders", Vaughters said during a brief press conference. "All these years riders have struggled to overcome the cruelties of these steep, cobbled climbs, and until now it never occurred to us that maybe, just maybe the cobbles didn't need to be so cruel. It turns out for all the research and development done by us and our sponsors, the answer was worked out more than a half-century ago. If only we'd looke...

My off-season (well, not so off-season at this point) focus on trail running this year has really killed my legs. As a result, I've been generally suffering on Old La Honda during the Wednesday Noon Ride. Guys I am accustomed to staying with have been simply riding away from me, chatting in a relaxed voice, while I suffer, gasping, in their wake. But now that's going to change. It occurred to me during my recent Pirates Cove Trail Run that my Powertap, which as I've documented hasn't been reporting accurate power anyway, can be put to a far better use. The key is the piezoelectric effect. The Piezoelectric effect, as applied to measuring power, results in the following relationship: voltage = (torque ‒ τ 0 ) × K, for some τ 0 and K. However, trivial algebraic manipulation yields: torque ‒ τ 0 = voltage / K, where torque ‒ τ 0 is "useful torque" sufficient to overcome the built-in tension in the powertap hub. What this says is if instead of forcing a c...