15 String Transmission

It looks like one of those linear drive systems have shown their face again. It was in 1897 that a patent, granted to a teen Swedish inventor Birgin Ljungström, showed the world a linear drive bicycle where the pedals moves in linear, reciprocating fashion. The project was sponsored by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel. Ofcourse, numerous other linear drive systems for bicycles have been invented since then.

Recently shown on the Internet by a Hungarian bicycle design team was a linear drive bicycle. The system we're looking does involve circular pedal motion but the symmetric cam mechanism ensures that a string or rope constantly winds and unwinds on both sides of the bike, transmitting torque through the freewheel of the rear hub. Some videos are attached below to show the design and operation of the drive.

Discuss the possibilities and negative aspects offered by a symmetric drive system such as number of extra moving parts, ease or difficulty of adjustment, gear ratio variability, safety etc.

10 The 'Age Group' Business

"I raced at this [insert name here] TT. Shaved 3 seconds off my time & seventh in my age group!"


"Why that's an awesome result, [insert name of other person here]! ....Just curious, how many people raced in your age group?"


"...Seven."

Do you suck as a bike rider? Want to sugar coat the real results?

Pull the age group card! There's an age group result for everyone!

Use today! Hurry..before another sucker beats you to it!

*  *  *

6 A Boy and a Bicycle

This was published recently in the NYT Op-Ed section written by none other than Nicholas Kristof. He's a 2 time Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, whose columns I like to read from time to time because of his tremendously insightful accounts of poverty, social and human rights issues in some of the poorest places in Africa.

This latest column is about the efforts of World Bicycle Relief in fulfilling the needs for a practical mode of transportation for poor kids in Zimbabwe, many of whom have to walk several miles to get to school. Some of the background operations of the organization has been broken down for us and some light is shed on the nature of challenges they face in successfully running a bicycle equip program in these poor villages. Come discuss the article after you have read it. Have you been involved in any such programs here or abroad?

"Early this year I wrote a column from Zimbabwe that focused on five orphans who moved in together and survive alone in a hut.

The eldest, Abel, a scrawny and malnourished 17-year-old, would rise at 4 o’clock each morning and set off barefoot on a three-hour hike to high school. At nightfall, Abel would return to function as surrogate father: cajoling the younger orphans to finish their homework by firelight, comforting them when sick and spanking them when naughty.

When I asked Abel what he dreamed of, he said “a bicycle” — so that he could cut the six hours he spent walking to and from school and, thus, take better care of the younger orphans. Last week, Abel got his wish. A Chicago-based aid organization, World Bicycle Relief, distributed 200 bicycles to students in Abel’s area who need them to get to school. One went to Abel.

The initiative is a pilot. If it succeeds and finds financing, tens of thousands of other children in Zimbabwe could also get bicycles to help them attend school.

“I’m happy,” Abel told me shyly — his voice beaming through the phone line — when I spoke to him after he got his hands on his bicycle.

Before, he said, he wasn’t sure that he would pass high school graduation exams because he had no time to study. Now he is confident that he will pass.

The bicycle project is the brainchild of a Chicago businessman, Frederick K.W. Day, who read about Abel and decided to make him and his classmates a test of a large-scale bicycles-for-education program in Zimbabwe.

Mr. Day is a senior executive of the SRAM Corporation, the largest bicycle parts company in the United States. He formed World Bicycle Relief in 2005 in the belief that bicycles could help provide cheap transportation for students and health workers in poor countries.

At first, his plan was to ship used bicycles from the United States, but after visits to the field he decided that they would break down. “When we got out there, it was clear that no bike made in the U.S. would survive in that environment,” he said.

After consulting with local people and looking at the spare parts available in remote areas, Mr. Day’s engineering staff designed a 55-pound one-speed bicycle that needed little pampering. One notorious problem with aid groups is that they introduce new technologies that can’t always be sustained; the developing world is full of expensive wells that don’t work because the pumps have broken and there is no one to repair them.

So World Bicycle Relief trains one mechanic — equipped with basic spare parts and tools — for every 50 bicycles distributed, thus nurturing small businesses as well. Abel was one of those trained as a mechanic this time.

In the world of aid, nothing goes quite as planned, and it’s far too early to know whether this program will succeed. World Bicycle Relief tried to get around potential problems by spending months recruiting village elders to oversee the program (it helps that the elders receive bicycles, which they get to keep after two years if they provide solid oversight). Elders will ensure that fathers and older brothers do not confiscate bicycles from girls on the grounds that females are too insignificant to merit something so valuable.

Parents sometimes try to save daughters the risk of walking several hours each way to school by lodging them in town. But the result is sometimes sexual extortion; if a girl wishes to continue her education by staying in cheap lodgings, the price is repeated rape. With bicycles, those girls will now be able to stay at home.

World Bicycle Relief has given out more than 70,000 bicycles so far, nearly 70 percent to women and girls. It expects to hand out 20,000 bicycles this year. And if all goes well, Abel may be the first of tens of thousands of Zimbabwean students to get a bike.

So, for Abel, this is something of a fairy-tale ending. But one of my challenges as a journalist is that many donors want to help any specific individual I write about, while few want to support countless others in the same position.

One obstacle is donor fatigue and weariness with African corruption and repeated aid failures. Those are legitimate concerns. But this column isn’t just a story about a boy and a bike. Rather, it’s an example of an aid intervention that puts a system in place, one that is sustainable and has local buy-in, in hopes of promoting education, jobs and a virtuous cycle out of poverty. It’s a reminder that there are ways to help people help themselves, and that problems can have solutions — but we need to multiply them. Just ask Abel."

6 2010 Highlander Highathlon

Bike Ride : 130 miles
10,000 Ft of climbing
Ride Time : 10 hours
Day : Saturday, 11 Sept
Location : Finger Lakes, NY

Run Distance : Full Marathon
Time : 4:20 hours
Day : Sunday, 12 Sept
Location : Rochester NY




I have been away for more than a week or so from this blog mainly because of my preparation for this event, what they call a Highathlon. I did it!! Now I'm recovering from some kind of over-training symptom but I'm okay. The above video is a satellite flyby of my weekend adventure, easily one of the toughest things I ever had to do in life so far.

The bike ride is one of the most challenging in the country and few people have even heard about it. This year, the folks with the Highlander Cycle Tour team aptly called the marquee ride "Death Before Dismount", a double metric featuring over 10,000 feet of total climbing. The name is bit striking - it was perhaps telling the riders that if they were crazy enough to even think of doing something like this, they'd rather jump down a cliff and expire themselves than shamefully dismount the bike while attempting to traverse the sick inclines of the route. Was it in any fashion supposed to carry a reminder to ideals of the medieval Japanese Samurai? I don't know...

I have already mentioned last year why it manages to match (or even exceed) the difficulty of the Triple Bypass ride in Colorado. The ride features short, nasty, steep hills one after the other, all of them mostly in the range of 8-13% grade, like one giant rolling route on asphalt enhancing steroids. You are challenged constantly in finding a suitable gear and a rhythm to climb, unlike long climbs that take 20 or more minutes to complete where you can settle down at some point into a zone.

But on a full plate of luscious pain, you are served a side of some of the most beautiful views of the Finger Lakes area that you may ever see as you climb over 15 climbs in the region and visit both Canandaigua Lake and the oddly shaped Keuka Lake.

For the people who didn't think this ride was enough challenge, 10 or so folks including me ran the full marathon the very next day in Rochester. This was what they call the Highathlon.

Last year during the Highlander Century, I had painful seizures in my lower back and something slapped me in the face making me realize why its so important to build core strength to do an extreme event like this. This year, my core had no problem but I was suffering from cramps on the inside of the thighs during the last 30 miles. Some of the initial climbs were on newly chip-sealed roads so it was near to impossible to stand and pedal because of loss of traction.

At mile 90, the organizers wonderfully planted two asphalt walls before you - the initial sections of Skyline Rd followed by the infamous Yoder Hill - a climb that stands so naked and steep before you that it plays games with your mind. Most people who attempted the ride said this was the climb that took them out. Both roads are in the range of 10-12% average grade and its not unlikely to see a 18% or a 20% step here and there.

As the route unraveled itself over that day, we were constantly asking when this ordeal would be over but the roads near to the end at mile 110 were not easy either. Cold and tired, we found ourselves snailing across the last portions of 6 and 7% grades until we were back in Bristol Mountain after 10+ hours of ride time for a hearty meal and a chance to share an adventure with others who were just as tired as you were.

But in an event like this, its always the marathon that roundhouse kicks you straight in the face.

I woke up the next morning with 5-6 hours of sleep and choke full of Adrenaline with a capital A and started out the first 10 miles with 800 other people at a pace that I couldn't sustain for the complete run. 7:50 mile pace crashed down to 9 or 10 mile pace after mile 13 and all I wanted to do after then was just finish. The route was by no means flat and there were inclines along the historic East Ave as we passed sights like George Eastman House. Then there was a 2 or 3 mile section of Erie Canal trailway that featured nothing but gravel and the wretched stones didn't do good to my feet.

I guess pushing yourself like this doesn't come without some "gifts". :)

Hence, I ran my first marathon with painful blisters and a searing pain in both toes of my feet. Later, when I sprinted past the line at mile 26.2 in downtown Rochester at the Frontier Stadium, and crashed into the grass near me, I inspected my feet to find two nice black toenails on both feet. I limped over and got minimal medical attention just to make sure I wasn't going to lose my damn toes!

It was all going to be okay, said a medical staff. "Don't apply much pressure to the feet for a week, a new nail with grow and the old one will fall off." Me and a buddy who did the marathon together walked 1 mile back to his apartment with some shining medals around our necks. What a weekend!

Will I do it next year? If I have the time, you bet.

*   *   *

29 Safety Moment : Speed Wobble and Jaw Fracture

Will Cheng is an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at Stony Brook University here in NY. In their free time, he and his sister ride their bikes with a group of retiree friends in Long Island.

Early in August, Will met with a nasty bike accident during a pace-lined group ride that left him with a fractured jaw. He was rushed to the ER where doctors had to perform an 8 hour surgery on him to patch up the severe injury. Some who witnessed the accident had advised him to contact an attorney. Meanwhile, the medical and dental costs for the operation had been tallying up and taking uncomfortable proportions.

He contacted an attorney who recommended him to get in touch with a mechanical engineer who could look into the background of his cycling equipment.

At the time of the accident, Will happened to be riding a 2006 Orbea with Mavic Cosmos wheels fitted with Schwalbe Blizzard tires. I was informed by his sister that Mavic no longer makes the wheelset.  Will's own account of the accident later to her was as follows :

"I was on Clay Pitts road [in East Northport] and I moved up to second wheel in the pace line at the light on Elwood road. After pedaling for a while [at 20mph], I noticed that I was a little to the left of the shoulder. I corrected by moving the wheel a hair to the right so I was heading towards the white line slowly. I then turned the wheel back to the left to straighten out.

That's when I felt no resistance or feedback from the wheel and handle bars. I assumed that I went over a dip in the road and recall crying "WHOA" and thinking that the leader should have warned us. This was followed  by a gross turn of the wheel to the left. I panicked, simultaneously turning the wheel straight ahead and clipping out my left foot.

I felt the bike wobble a little, after which it diminished and stopped. At that point I thought I was OK but a split second later I felt something was wrong. Before I could do anything, I was falling. I do remember that when the wobble disappeared, I was staring at my handle bars and saw that it was straight without signs of the wobble. I thought I was safe and I looked back up at the road. I don't really remember much, but I think I still had my hands on the handle bar right when I hit the ground with my chin. I didn't have a death grip on the bars but my grip was firm and my hands were always on the top of the bars."

As far as I have looked into the wheelset through some internet searching, I haven't found any design related issues and its performance limiter really depends upon who built it. In more cases than not, a crash is what causes a wheel failure. At other times, it is fatigue failure or some very high external load not expected in normal usage of a bicycle that causes spokes to pull through. Wheel experts say something in excess of 2000 N of force is required to pull a spoke out of the rim.

From the attached pictures (see below, and more here), it seems that about 5-6 of the straight pull spokes in total had pulled out and that more spokes pulled out on nut side of the front wheel skewer than on the lever side. This corresponds with weakening and rupture of the wheel rim on the left side, when viewed from the front. Also take note that the rupture occurred right underneath a sticker on the rim so its hard to tell whether there was a hidden crack formation well before the accident.

From the description of the actions of the rider before the accident, I don't see anything particularly out of the ordinary. Steering motions such as this is absolutely normal and is to be expected. I perform more wilder maneuvers on my bike path in order to avoid sharp twigs and bumps.

What may be significant though, is the faint evidence of a speed wobble before the crash. Could a rapid left-right steering correction at 20 mph together with a sketchy road surface amplify an unwanted oscillation? Check out the image of the site of the accident.

Moreover, what gave away first - the spokes or the rim? Another bit of interesting testimony is the loss of "feedback" just before the crash, which almost wants me to question whether Will had remembered tightening his skewer that day.

Unfortunately, these questions are really hard to answer through images. I would check the tension on the spokes with a tensionometer, consult with a metallurgist who would be able to analyze the sample of broken aluminum rim (Stony Brook should have a professor who may help) and try as much as possible to take a similar wheel with the same tire, attach it to the same bike and perform some maneuvers at the speed in question.

Here's wishing Will the best of luck in recovery. Meanwhile, if any of you have had similar experiences, do share some of your thoughts.

*  *  *