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

A rider died in this past Satuday's Levi's Grand Fondo when he missed a corner on the Hauser Bridge descent and went off the road. Here's the story in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat . Michael Muhney, 40, said the rider was just ahead of him and was “just barreling” down the hill despite numerous course marshals cautioning riders to be careful on the descent. “He was hauling,” he said. The Fondo is a "timed ride" and not "a race" according to the story. Here's how Oxford English Dictionary defines race: race (noun) 1A competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course. I don't know -- seems to apply here. So the problem is you have a race over a technical, dangerous course and that means people are going to take risks, and when people take risks by definition sometimes things go wrong and people get hurt or die. Fine -- if you want zero risk of death stay in bed in the morni

It's time once again for the Low-Key Hillclimbs , and this will be the 20th anniversary of the first edition, when Kevin Winterfield and I brashly organized a series of 12 consecutive weekly climbs extending from October through almost Christmas. And the amazing thing is we pulled it off. I'm less brash now but I don't need to be: I have fantastic support in putting the series on and so far we've had minimal interference. It's really been a wonderful thing. I've got some decent fitness this year after having ridden SuperTour, organized by Sid and Linda Fuhrer, then raced the Mt. Tam Hill Climb and the Fremont Peak Hill Climb. For the first time in years I've actually been focusing on training instead of riding, and it's helped, starting with the fantastic dose of base I got from SuperTour. My time at Fremont Peak wasn't what I wanted, although I rode fairly well at Mt. Tam the week before. It was particularly hot at Fremont Peak so that took

Previously I blew it by posting that Cannondale had retained the old geometry for the new 2016 Evo. This had shocked me since I knew they'd hired Damon Rinard, formerly of Cervélo, the pioneer in stack-reach design, something the old Cannondale clearly did not follow with weird kinks and jogs in its stack-reach progression due to odd jumps in seat tube angle as sizes increased. I'd gotten the geometry chart by clicking links on the Cannondale website, but somehow I'd clicked a link for the 2015 geometry starting from the 2016 Evo page. So I'd been too hasty. Well, I was finally pointed to the correct geometry chart. Here's a comparison of old Evo and new Evo: 2015 Evo: And, finally, the 2016 Evo: Here's the stack-reach progression: Plotting stack versus reach shows the design has switched to a stack-reach focus, with continuous small increments in seat tube angle rather than descrete jumps, with a design transitioning from closer to the Trek H2 in sm

[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