Dialed in

It has been 231 miles give or take on the Corsa and I feel like I have the bike dialed in both for fit and handling. Fit wise I feel very good, and today during the ride home I was very confident navigating stop and go traffic as well as tight turns. I was day dreaming a bit, thinking about making the Vivo a test project for a fairing, and just naturally turned left through a traffic circle with traffic coming on three sides. It was a nice tight turn and easy confident movement, I then had to wait for an oncoming car just after I descended the hill and was going to turn left into my complex. These were nerve racking moments before that I would have tried to avoid by preemptive braking or otherwise scheduling my arrival at this decision point to avoid conflict. Now it just feels natural.

This is a big deal for me as I was a bit nervous before, twitchy you might say. Now that confidence I feel on an upright bike is also there for my Corsa. Kiley and I are good friends now at 231 miles. This is good since I will now do group rides and training rides with both SIR and Cascade Cycling.

Homemade streamliners

Oh dear. I have been pointed to the Mars group in NY who make homemade streamliners like the one shown here. This is seriously cool stuff. John Tetz had a 40mph fall in one of these foam streamliners, he was uninjured except for a pinky injury (no lie) though the foam was damaged, he flatted out and there was bike damage. But a 40 mph naked crash on a bike would be life threatening, so that is pretty amazing. Additionally John Tetz gets a 35% aerodynamic performance increase from his 7lb shell designed for transportation usage not racing. I am starting to get very interested now. My laptop + commuter clothes is more than 7lbs, 7lbs is not a massive penalty on climbs considering a 35% aero bonus. Here is a list of the tools he says are needed:

The simple tools needed to build the fairing are several razor blades, contact cement, and a professional heat gun (the kind you find in a hardware store, NOT a hair dryer), plus some thin vinyl upholstery material for hinges and some hook and loop material (e.g. Velcro). Other materials you might need are some Coroplast (Ref 2). Seems like no fairing is complete without some Coroplast which is used to regain lost stiffness around the side door and along the "bomb bay" doors.

John Tetz does his work in his attic, the Spollen brothers do theirs in a 1 car garage. This is the kind of space I can work with. Hmm. This might be an interesting passion. There are obstacles but time, effort, and research will be on a hobbyists schedule and budget. This could be fun.

Motivation

I haven't been feeling wonderful lately and am fighting a bit of a motivation gap for my commute. It is worse in the mornings because my cough and general malaise is also worse in the morning. I am still commuting by bike but I am starting to leave later and later. The weather is supposed to be nice the rest of the week so hopefully I can arrest this behavior.

OTOH the results are nice too, but I like to cycle commute for the cycling's sake, I am not very good at losing weight.

Commute home

The commute home was nice. Seattle area weather did the usual thing and defied the predictions. It was predicted rain in the morning and dry evening, instead it was dry in the morning and rained in the evening. The Conti GP4000 tires did very well on the ride home. The contrast is great compared to my Bontrager Hardcase tires. Though these tires may not last as long as the Hardcase they handle so much better. Good grip, nice cornering and a softer more steady ride. I feel much safer with the Conti GP4000, at this point I consider them a great buy. Now to see how long they last.

My front headlight is a bit disappointing at the moment. It feels dim compared to my trikes halogen setup with a water bottle battery. I am still waiting on my dynamo light from Dale. It is a shipping delay, not his fault but I am eager to get the better light on my bike. The one arm bandit mount pictured here should allow me to mount both my IQ Fly and my current light. That will give me a backup light and I can run both for more coverage.

Hunters beware, your prey isn't always so facile

A hunter recently discovered that his prey was not as helpless as it appears in a recent incident occurring in Montana. I think this hunter rediscovered the risks of hunting include more than just indiscriminate hunters who fire at anything that moves and Dick Cheney.

Commute

I rode in today. There was no rain and it is only supposed to get nicer as the day progresses, the roads were damp but it was a nice ride. This was my first ride on the Conti 4000 GP tires. I love them so far. I felt more connected to the road and the ride was softer. On the way home I will see how they corner. Fit wise I think my seat was moved too far forward during my weekend experiments. I am going to slide it back a bit for my ride home. I hit the bar with my knees a few times and don't think I am extending my legs enough.

I also tested out the new stuff sacks my wife got me for our 11th year anniversary. They are perfect, I like to keep stuff separated rather then just dump everything willy nilly in my panniers. I use one stuff sack for my clothes which makes getting ready simple as well as my unpack and shower clean and fast.

I passed a motorcycle cop on the way up 7th today. He was hiding behind a parked car, obviously running a speed trap. I waved and he told me I was going pretty fast. It made me smile, I do like motorcycle cops, I always have good experiences with them. I still remember a motorcycle cop in Beaverton who told me to be more aggressive taking the lane during certain maneuvers. I think cops who ride motorcycles understand the feeling of vulnerability that cyclists have. Both of us know that any collision or accident will result in our coming off worse for wear and we are aware that motorists are just annoyed that we are on the road.

In other news they identified the driver who drove into the El Tour de Tuscon injuring 10 cyclists and hospitalizing 5 of them, as William Arthur Wilson. Still no charges in the hit and run though they published a biography of the perpetrator in the Tuscon Citizen. I am still pissed off about this, one of the cyclists, Gary L. Stuebe, is still hospitalized and has been transferred to the neurological institute at a Phoenix hospital. I don't have any sympathy for William Wilson and actually resent being asked to have sympathy for him. The dehumanization of the victims is proceeding nicely in the local press making sure to label all the victims as cyclists without names. Hopefully the perpetrator will be charged with a felony due to the hit and run.

Excellent comparison testing of bike Lights

Our UK brethren did some excellent testing of many battery and dynamo lights. Superbright LEDs have really matured and do very well in this testing. Here is the link .

The light measurements are very interesting with a nice bar graph. But what really got me was the outside path and brightness tests. I stole the image in case their storage of this goes away at some point. Click the image for a full size version.

(Note: this is a UK test, they drive on the left, the left side of the path is what is illuminated, don't look right and see the darker areas and judge)

The Edulux does very well and if I ever upgrade to that light I will be happy but I really wanted to compare the Dinotte 200L and the IQ Fly. A lot of cyclists swear by the 200L and I have an IQ Fly on order. I was particularly pleased by this comparison since the IQ Fly looks very good between those too. I think my IQ Fly + cateye helmet light will be perfect for my needs.

Did your lights show up in this test? How did they do?

Green America

One of the things we will hear a lot about is how we don't have money to spend to get ourselves well again. This is a load of crap but it will be the way the Republicans and Conservatives try to concern troll any plan to fix health-care or the environment. So I find this article very powerful. It talks about how the technology to reduce our emissions by 95% exists today and could be done with a combination of regulation and carbon pricing. It points out the roll of both regulation and smart carbon pricing rules. The summary from the article is a good read and also useful as a primer before reading the entire thing:

Making the unrealistic assumption of zero technical breakthroughs in efficiency or renewable technology, the total cost of a complete transition to 95 percent (or better) emissions-free energy in the U.S. would be about $1.7 trillion annually, if financed at 5 percent over 30 years. (There is no reason a 20-year build-out could not be financed over 30 years. It would provide paybacks for at least that long, and many aspects such as transmission lines and railroads would last 40 years or longer.) From a social standpoint, total paybacks would be $600 billion a year more than this, meaning in the 20th year, the economy would grow $600 billion more per year net than without such investments (not counting global warming reductions, but only immediate and short-term social returns.) Energy costs only, not counting possible fossil-fuel price increases or any social costs, would be about 31 percent higher in this scenario than under a business-as usual-scenario. However the particular subsidies I projected start at around $275 billion annually, average to $365 billion a year for the first 20 years, and peak at $475 billion annually in the 20th year. They drop back to $275 billion a year in the 21st year, as the renewable industries mature and can get by without further subsidy. The other $275 billion continues for another 10 years to pay back the green debt. These not only overcome most of the bottlenecks to phasing out fossil fuels, but they also compensate for what would otherwise be increases in energy costs.

I recommend you read the article and see for yourself. One of the things about the crises we are in right now is that we can't solve all of them without drastic actions on numerous fronts. Luckily it appears Obama is aware of that. Lets see how this plays out.

Sick

I am coughing up mucas and feeling like crap. I didn't ride in today because of it (and the fact that I had an extra 10 lbs of crap to carry in today).

Feeling like crap gets me thinking a bit about how we are sick today as a country. We need to get better and that means changing our lifestyle to allow us to get better. We need to wean ourselves off of our car-focused lifestyle. We need to fix our health-care and transit. We need to move to non-oil based energy sources. Otherwise we will all be sick for a good long while.

Forced love affair

No Impact Man has a nice article up on how cars were forced on us. Follow the link for more data but I do want to pass on this quote block.

What is interesting to me here is that GM was forced to pay fines due to anti-trust issues related to this. Some people like to call this talk of rail killing the city-lights conspiracy as if labeling it a conspiracy makes it not real. The 1949 anti-trust fine pretty much blows that idea out of the water.

In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses.

Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile. Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail routes managed by 1,200 companies employing 300,000 Americans who ran 15 billion annual trips generating an income of $1 billion. According to Snell, "virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system."

But GM lost $65 million in 1921. So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.

The campaigns varied, as did the economic and technical health of many of the systems themselves. Some now argue that buses would have transcended many of the rail lines anyway. More likely, they would have hybridized and complemented each other.

But with a varied arsenal of political and financial subterfuges, GM helped gut the core of America's train and trolley systems. It was the murder of our rail systems that made our "love affair" with the car a tragedy of necessity.

In 1949 a complex federal prosecution for related crimes resulted in an anti-trust fine against GM of a whopping $5000. For years thereafter GM continued to bury electric rail systems by "bustituting" gas-fired vehicles.