Viewers Need Rest Days Too

"The riders in the Tour de France for sure need stamina. But so do Australian viewers of the live coverage on SBS. Tonight's stage will only start at 10:55 PM and it usually finishes around 1:30 AM. I'm looking forward to the rest day. Rest days are important as we all know. I need to catch up on some sleep!"

- Groover, Blogger from Brisbane Australia

Low Power Wireless Powermeter Technology

The engineering magazine Design News had a 3 page article on the usage of the latest wireless power meters by Olympic cyclists and coaches. This appeared in its 7/14 issue.

However, the meat of the writeup is around the latest buzzword - ANT wireless technology - and the background work of Dynastream Innovations INC which made this protocol. ANT, designed for communication between sensors and sports equipment, is an attractive low power alternative to Bluetooth and Zigbee wireless networks [See Bluetooth and Zigbee].

The Real Venom

Il Cobra my ass.

Turns out, Mr. Cobra was sucking on a different kind of venom during the fourth stage.


EPO. Sluuuurp sssllluuurp...



Well Cobra, you need to take a trip to animal detention.

I usually refrain from putting doping stories here but this one was a bummer.

Green Oil and Bottles, V.V's Power to Weight Ratio....etc

I have limited time today but here are the quick Thursday pollinations :


1. Cal Springs LLC has added something nice to its line of California Bike Gear - An LDPE Plastic biogegradable water bottle [See Low Density Polyethylene]. There is a special additive in these water bottles that kick in the decomposition stage after the bottle has outlived its life or thrown into a landfill. These bottles completely become biogas and a biomass that then provide nutrients to the soil.



Boy, it'll suck if that 'additive' malfunctions and turns my bottle into biogas while I'm taking a sip from it..


2. Want something more to add to your green shopping basket? How about getting your bike on a green diet?!

So here's Green Oil Bicycle lube, also marketed as the "Ecological Chain Lube".


Ha! Its hard to associate oil with anything green but here's some key points I extracted in my own words from the company's website :

a) Green Oil is manufactured from naturally occurring plant extracts and not any petrochemicals like crude or palm oil hippie crap. The herbal blend produces a high performance lubricant. Green Oil contains no animal derivatives also. (The ingredients are all a trade secret, but puh-leese, I'm not putting some cowdung on my chain)

b) Green Oil does not contain petrochemical components, or Teflon. Perfluorooctanoic acid, a compound used to make Teflon is a likely carcinogen (proven??). Teflon production in the USA was subject to a $300 million lawsuit in 2004, as a result of ground water pollution in Ohio and West Virginia.

There's some other technical stuff too on their website so do check it to add to your reading...


3. Guys! Quarq powermeters are shipping!


Finally we can put an end to the market oligarchy that is SRM and Powertap. Yeah, there are some others too but they're junk...we don't need them.


4. The latest book to be hitting the shelves soon is called Bike To Work, a 200 page commuter's 'bible' so to speak, written by none other than Carlton Reid, the editor of Bike Biz.


Reid has always been one of the movers and shakers in the field of bicycling advocacy and he aims to lure as many people away from motor vehicles to bicycles as he can possibly get.

Said famous cycling personality Phil Liggett about the book : “This book could save you $3500 a year. And you’ll be lighter and stronger into the bargain.”

I like the deal ! More info on this site.


5.
What was Christian Vande Velde's Stage 10 power to weight ratio like? Saris says :

5.4 Watts/Kg on the Tourmalet, an effort of 51 mins, 3 seconds with a 1551 VAM
5.45 Watts/Kg on the Hautacam, an effort of 41 mins, 31 seconds with a 1543 VAM

where VAM = Velocita Ascensionale Media, or Average Climbing Speed.

Read more about VAM here (Climb like a Pro) and here (Uphill Gradient and VAM) and my previous post on Power to Weight Ratio.


Alright. Too much information. Lay back and chillax now. Cafe del Mar....

Question : Is it Easier/Difficult to Ride in The Rain?

After cycling close to 50 miles yesterday in pouring rain, some people in the group were throwing an interesting question around at the coffee table.

Is it easier or more difficult to ride in the rain? The question was more in terms of rolling resistance but what might make riding in the rain a more easier or difficult experience?

There's all kinds of directions you can go with this. I've got some thoughts so bear with me.

1) I have noticed that in short term rain, with a very fine layer of moisture on the road, it makes it somewhat easier to go fast. This is not just because of the fact that its raining, but because of what is happening at the road surface itself. Water mixes with dirt and other crap and creates a fine emulsion that acts like a lubricant. You can take some sand, add water and just feel it between your fingers yourself. [Read Lennard Zinn's take on a film of water reducing rolling resistance]

2) A lot of relentless rainfall cleans the road of all this dirt and increases the friction component once again. So the friction component is time dependant on rain. [See Road Surface Properties]

3) The lesser friction you have, the lower your skidding resistance. A decent amount of friction is good!

Picture Courtesy : Graham Watson

4) Think about road condition. Suppose there are potholes everywhere and they are filled with water, that's not going to be fun to ride in. There is an interruption of friction coefficient. I guess surface tension might also play a tiny role there.



5) Okay, what about surface tension? I don't know about surface tension, but I've heard a few things or two that it makes all the gravel and other grit on the road 'stick' to your tires making the chances of a puncture higher. [See Surface Tension]

6) Regarding rolling resistance again, a nice thin film may be nice to cut friction by so many units, but if you have too much water and cross a threshold, you're literally trying to ride in water. After a point, all the buoyant forces kick in and you've essentially made a sail bike, with you as the sail...and the clown.

7) A cool, wet day is constantly spraying moisture on the skin so it decreases the body temperature during exertion and could perhaps increase performance (like being able to ride harder for a longer time interval for instance).

8) But a rainy day also makes jerseys and shorts soggy so there you are with some more added weight to pull with you. So if you're a fatter person wearing more area of clothing, you suck in more water.

Well, that sucks!

9) Racing bicycle tires are so thin and high pressured (100-120 psi) anyway so it doesn't take a lot to keep water away from the point of contact. What I'm saying is that there's not much chance that bicycle tires can hydroplane [See Hydroplaning]. The contact shape in very thin and almost single plane (isn't it) as compared to a car tyre that's almost square or rectangular in shape.

Leaving rolling resistance aside, what about drag?

10) Some might say that moist air is less denser than dry air which is true isn't it? So lesser density of air allows you to go through it easier than the same quantity of dry air, huh?

11) But wait, there are pellets of raindrops falling from the sky so the bicyclist is literally trying to shove his way across this confusion. The interaction of wind, and rain is complex that I'm wondering how they affect bicycling performance. My idea was that someone should use computers to CFD simulate such conditions so we can see through the model what is actually happening. [See CFD Analysis]

12) Finally, this might be a trivial point but in an industry that talks so much about light weight wheels and lesser moment of inertia, think about your wheels running on water. Rain water is being picked up by the tire and thrown off a tangent (which is why if you're directly behind another rider who's riding in the rain, its not such a good experience)..

Plus, if you have a tall rim depth, more water and grit can stick onto that surface essentially increasing the weight on the rims by so much amount.

Moreover, if you have carbon aero wheels with drain holes in them, the water collects in the wheels through these holes and there's some addition to weight there as well. Water can also seep through frame tubing and collect in the bike itself, increasing weight.

So what is it finally? From a rolling resistance standpoint, can we purely state that it makes bicycling easier? There's a lot of other factors to consider that can take away from this little gain, if gained at all, in bad visibility, poor traction, and the feeling of being wet and dirty which robs from the general pleasure of cycling CLEAN.

In the world of post EPO, if someone asks you if you're riding clean, they generally mean - "ARE YOU DRY?" Or are you dry clean. Or dry cleaned... whatever...

Whats your theory? Maybe we can round up all theories and arrive at an average. I guess the average would be "Man are you crazy, could you stay at home when it rains??!!!"

DT Swiss Wheel Manufacturing

A recent article in RBA throws light on the wheel manufacturing process at DT Swiss at their Switzerland plant site. So pictures are entirely courtesy of the RBA staff. By the way, DT Swiss has a really cool website!



The wheels are extruded (See Extrusion) to lend a starting billet stock the uniform cross sectional shape of the final design. The resulting coils are then cut into rim sections. (Too much extrusion gives you too much material, and too thin an extrusion gives you a final structure that can be prone to cracking and premature failures)

Expensive dies are used in the process to give this shape. Now you know where much of the costs associated with a new design comes from.



The rim sections are welded to form a single unit.



The conventional way to make butted spokes is through drawing them but DT apparently uses rotary forging to make better spokes. Rotary forging gives some good material properties in the grain structure, I would believe. Anyone opposing this idea? Comment below.

There are some more pictures in the original article so click here to follow.

Finally, this may be a little off topic but take a look at how rotary forging is used in the manufacturing of automobile rims. Its a pretty cool article.

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Tour de Cattaraugus : Area 4 Ellicottville and Around

Another day, another new route in my quest to ride Cattaraugus.

I somehow managed to wake myself up early at the rooster's crow and head out to Ellicottville with Mike to meet up with his weekend warrior gang of 6. They have this weekly Sunday recreational ride thing and the route is moderate to slightly challenging and the pace can be fast as well.

You may have heard but up here, Ellicottville is ultra famous for its ski slopes, especially Holimont. The Holiday Valley ski resort is located here at a summit elevation of 2250 feet and has 56 or so ski trails served by 13 lifts. If you're serious about snow sports, this is one of the hot places to visit in winter. Click here to get more information on Holliday Valley.

So I met these new folks today, and it was an interesting and surprising experience for me when one or two of them said that they read my blog. Wow...


The weather dished out rain from point one and over time it just got worse. But my cheerful friends today made me want to ride and climb more in the wonderful rain than stay at home in bed doing nothing with my life.

We did this 45 mile loop with a fair amount of climbing, visiting some really small towns known for nothing particularly interesting except for the fact that they somehow exist on the map.

Here are today's views from my recreational office :)







Somewhere along the way, the brakes started squealing and I went pretty fast down this hill scattered with all sorts of muck and gravel. An untimely and stupid hard left turn got me up and over the handlebars and I crashed on my side.

Being a sport about it can cover up for any shameless act of self injury-fication, so here I am with my fantastic work. Okay, not much to see here but that left knee is bleeding. Nice!!



Speaking of blood, here's my spokesperson. Ha!

Tour de Cattaraugus : Area 3 & Olean Stars Airshow

My cyclophotography got a real workout today when our gang decided to ride our bikes to the Olean Airport to watch the Stars Model Airshow hosted by the Southern Tier Radio Aero Society. For more information on the airshow, click here.

I promised to make you guys all famous ... so here's Mike Higgins, his sister in the back and her husband in blue

The airport has a private landing strip, so no commercial passenger planes land here.
So to check in for breakfast and viewing the show, people were told to either fly in or drive in.

We biked in!

Olean Airport Authorities - Please make this change in your advertisements next year. Allow provision for bikes. Human power trumps all kinds of motor power, c'mon don't tell me ya'll didn't know that?!

And another thing that's peculiar is that the airport is up at a height of 2000+feet, so the roads that lead to the airport involve some serious climbing (Hors Category?), and they finally lead to the plateau where the small airport, hanger facility and landing strips are located.

A cool, strange aircraft with rear propeller

So we hung out in the hanger, had some great pancakes and eggs and talked cycling. Can you imagine, sitting in an airplane hanger and talking bikes? Some may call it a crime, but we're that crazy about this sport!!!




So we headed to the model airplane rally after that.


...And saw some spectacular model airplane action. Name these planes below, because I'm not good with recognizing aircrafts.

Funny - a lawnmower plane.. we all joked whether it would ever take off the ground or chop someone's head off..

A jet powered scaled airplane, can you believe that?

Hows my photography skills?

After getting sick of airplanes beyond a point, we left the airport and headed to Cuba lake! Cuba NY is famous for motorcycles (yawn), the first oil discovery in the United States (Seneca Oil Spring, 1627) and Cuba cheese - they have a plant here that processes and makes this stuff. Heard of Cuba cheese, anyone? Neither have I, but I'd like to taste the damn thing.



Cuba lake is really beautiful and there's property and houses all around it. The weather was awesome to go for a swim or go boating!

So Area 1, 2 and 3 are now done. More to go to get this Tour complete, in celebration of the Tour de France season.

BBC Journalists Ride L'Etape du Tour

Last week, I linked to a video of Google's Dylan Casey giving a first hand account of what it is like racing in the Tour de France as part of Lance's US Postal brigade.

Here's the latest video from a trio of BBC journalists - Andy Nicolson, Paul Redgrove and Jon Cook who rode the L'Etape du Tour on the 6th of this month. This amateur cyclosportive centers around riding one of the actual stages of the Tour de France, and this year the route was from Pau to Hautacam, 156 km featuring two massive unclassified climbs. The pros will hit this stage on Monday, July 14 which will be really exciting to watch.




Here's a route preview from Cycle Film's Michael Cotty :



Some will also remember that NY Times journalist Robert Mackey of the Climb blog fame also rode the Etape and completed it in cold and pouring rain within a time of 8 hours and 5 mins.

But here are the 3 mortals from BBC who rode the stage after 6 months of training. After watching the video account, I simply have to give it to these guys for just thinking of attempting it.

Bell Volt Design

I was looking at the new Bell Volt helmet.

You can read about the special features of this helmet here, one of them being the so called "Streamjet" channels to force hot air out of the helmet.

I guess Streamjet is good. Brainjet is bad.

Anyway, I looked at the rear side design, through another one of Ben's photos...



and compared it to the older Sweep R.

I think the above is a better design, in terms of not letting unsupported foam and polymer sticking out like in the older helmet below.
I circled this portion in red. There's a good 1 inch of unsupported material acting like a cantilever and I already showed you why this isn't good in a previous post. There have been many people complaining of foam and plastic (particularly foam) prematurely breaking off right on that section.

Ridley Dean : 'The Fastest Bike in The World' Part 2

I thought my first take on the Ridley Dean bike was a little shabby for my tastes.

So here's a second part to it and some more added thoughts.

Some asked me through comments whether these so called surface textures on the Dean frame are the same deal as dimples on a golf ball?

I will tell you I'm no expert but I do have a BASIC understanding of golf balls.

A golf ball in air is a rotating body. If you give them a critical amount of dimples (too many is counterproductive, too less is simply not enough) on the surface, it'll "catch" a small area of turbulent air around the boundary layer and this turbulent layer causes the air to 'stick' onto the ball. The trailing air will have hence have a longer separation point in its wake which ultimately means less drag and a more long, nice looking streamlined flow.




So is this what the Dean frame is mimicking?

Maybe.

The theory I think is essentially the same here too, but these are no dimples. They are just rough surface textures done here and there. I dont have a microscopic image of what they look like, so I wont call them dimples just yet anyway.

While dimples in golf balls in addition to the Magnus lift effect due to ball backspin have really solid and verified benefits, I'm not really sure about the practicalities for Zipp's wheels or ... the Dean, if any reasonable numbers are out there yet.

But hey, a golf ball is a golf ball. Typical velocities at impact are 60-70 m/s and spin rate is 3000rpm+. I'm not sure whether you want to compare golf balls with Zipp wheels or Ridley's new frame.

So what good is frame texturing to a cyclist? You decide with your money and your head.

Ben Atkins of Cycling News has done a good job with getting us laymen some pictures of the bike. I'll spoil it and put some arrows in them too so we all can see whats going on.



FRAME TEXTURE

Theoretical Benefits : Getting turbulent air onto the boundary layer, increasing separation point on the trailing side yada yada.

Here are two places they did this :

Click to zoom

SLOTTED AIRFOIL ON FORKS


In airplanes, control devices called slots on wings are can be fixed or moving.

Remember this? You probably must have seen it through the window seat the last time you flew.





Benefit of slotted airfoils in aircraft : Click this to read.

NOTE : I'm not an airplane guy but I understand some of my readers are from the Boeing company. Please improvise in comments if you do read this. What exactly is a slotted wing doing to airflow and talk about the benefits?

Anyway, so similar idea done on Ridley Dean's fork :






So this is supposed to create vacuum around the tire and spokes and decrease drag by 7.5%, and results from tests show that it saves 45watts when ridden at 45 kmph (28mph) ?? It cuts 8X more drag from the fork and spokes area than normal bikes?

Whoa whoa whoa, slow down there. One at a time. Sorry Ridley, can't believe it unless you prove it to us. Take the pen away from the marketing guys.

Give us a graph, a video in the wind tunnel ---- > something we can actually see to believe. For now I like your sharp design, but I'm not buying the specific claims you make about the "fastest bike in the world".

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