Someone I know asked someone else I know what I thought about Surly’s new electrified version of the Big Dummy, called the Big Easy. I don't know why he didn't ask me directly. Anyway, it was the first I'd heard of it, because I don't pay much attention to industry news.
While I’m no fan of smokeless mopeds, I have previously acknowledged that electric assistance makes sense for a cargo vehicle. It brings all of the undesirable complexities of motors and batteries. It does alter the power to weight calculation by adding irreducible weight even when a dead battery or other malfunction negates the power assist. But it does increase load carrying capacity when it is working as intended.
I still assert that a smokeless moped is a motor vehicle with pedals, not a bike with an auxiliary motor. If a bike seemed heavy enough to tempt you to add a motor in the first place, the extra poundage of a battery and motor will definitely discourage you from pedaling without the assist. Once you accept that motor, you’ve stepped onto the same kind of production line that led from the earliest sailing ships with steam engines to the ones with vestigial masts and then no spars at all.
The quest for power warps everything it touches. The Telemark revival of the 1980s was an attempt to increase the versatility of touring skis by using a 19th Century technique to control traditional length skis in downhill maneuvers. Touring skis are long and skinny so that they move efficiently on flat to rolling terrain. Alpine skiing -- the dominant form today -- developed only in the 20th Century when skiing finally reached the Alps. The quest for downhill power and control took over the evolution of ski gear to create skis very poorly suited to anything else. Even the Telemark revival killed itself by turning Telemark skis and boots into just another downhill-only tool. Say what you will about alpine touring gear, trudging up and up with climbing skins for the sake of the downhill run, you would not want to use that stuff, or modern Telemark stuff, to go for a rambling bushwhack where you will encounter mixed climbing and descent. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Telemark skiers were tackling the whole range of terrain on skis around 70mm wide, controlled with leather boots and very basic bindings. By the late 1990s, all of that gear was mutating rapidly into the alpinesque monsters of today. It's all a risk/benefit calculation. You can get seriously mangled with long, narrow skis and non-releasable bindings. But by eliminating one aspect of risk and increasing the power of the tool for one phase of operation, the other functions were seriously diminished or lost.
In bikes, every category illustrates how the quest for one kind of power diminishes the overall versatility of the type.
A cargo bike is already shaped by specific needs. You're not likely to hop on it to go for a ride on the local pump track, or a group ride with sporty friends. But it's an investment. And the more complicated the mechanism, the more support it will need over its lifespan.
By joining the electric parade, Surly has obligated itself to support a complex product that uses expensive components over which they have very little control. The motor assembly is made by Bosch. The frame is built around that specific unit. The weight of the vehicle demands powerful hydraulic brakes. You still wouldn't use it to take the family on a summer vacation to visit the major national parks. That leads to another interesting question: National parks arose at a time when personal mobility was about to increase rapidly. Land was set aside because of various natural attractions as people were developing more and more ability to go and see those attractions. If personal mobility dwindles because people realize that it is more environmentally responsible and affordable just to live where they live and keep most of their trips short, will the justification for the grand and wonderful places crumble, opening them to the destructive extraction of finite resources? This may seem like quite a leap, but the Big Easy lists for $5,000.00 USD. It's either a car replacement or a car supplement. Extrapolating a widespread shift to relatively short-range transportation devices leads to a scenario in which a highly developed public transportation system would have to pick up where the cars and SUVs had left off. Either that or the adamant non-pedalers are simply running us down with electric behemoths instead of fossil-fuel guzzlers.
Because the Big Easy is a Surly product, it is solidly built and as simply designed as possible. I still don't want one, because its vulnerabilities outweigh its benefits, same as all the smokeless mopeds. Any complex piece of equipment is only as good as its support. Can you get parts? Are they the parts that actually need replacing? Can you get in and out of the mechanism without destroying it? Can you get good instructions and diagrams? What sort of facilities will you need to perform maintenance and repairs? I got into bikes for transportation because I could do absolutely anything I needed to do in a one-room apartment. It's a lot easier to maintain a vehicle that you can lift with one hand than it is to work on one that requires a hoist or a hydraulic lift.
No one has stopped driving cars because they don't make parts for a Duesenberg anymore. The evolution of machinery has left many fossils behind. But the extinction events seem to come along more frequently these days, driven as much by the accounting department as anything else. Just buying a product forces you to bet on the health of the company and its future prospects. When a product includes critical assemblies from multiple companies, you're at risk from every one of them.
Monday, March 04, 2019
Monday, February 25, 2019
TIT
Driving season always gets me thinking about Time In Transit. I've written about it a number of times before, but a new entry puts it back on top of the pile.
The recent vacation week marathon required that I not only arrive on time, but early, to prepare the rental area for the coming day. A lot cannot be done the night before, because rental gear is being returned wet right up to closing time. The boots in particular have to be laid out with air space around them, so they can dry, before being tucked back into the close confines of the boot shelves. This could be a few pairs or 30. Or more, if we had a phenomenally big day. Thus, I am shooting to arrive a half-hour early to brush off the dried mud and rack the boots. After the boots I hang the ski poles. They are hung on pegs close set to fit as many as possible into the rack. I try to rotate them so that the same few aren't always going out. Then there might be snowshoes to brush off and hang, as well.
On a good day I can drive to town from home in 20 minutes. On a really good day, I might shave that down with a bit of sociopathic speeding on the highway stretch. That in itself demonstrates the creeping sociopathy bred by driving all the time. I will ask myself whether I am behaving like someone I would want to share the road with on my bike. The answer is a conditional yes. If there are cyclists, I amend my driving to cooperative mode. But absent any fellow pedalers I am easily lured into speeding, and playing the entire paved surface for cornering lines. I drive the way I ride.
On a bad day -- the more typical circumstance -- I get behind someone driving slowly, perhaps erratically, and the oncoming traffic eliminates any chance to pass legally and safely. I do not pass illegally and unsafely, though I do admit to the temptation. The highway department has eliminated two or three passing zones, all of which I had used over the years. I miss them.
The difference in transit time is considerable when I get behind someone pokey. If you take 20 minutes as the benchmark average for an unobstructed run, 30 minutes is 50% slower. I always have trouble with calculations like this, because 10 minutes is 33.33333% of 30 minutes. And 30 minutes is not an unreasonable transit time. When cycling, I prefer to be passed by someone going for 30 minutes rather than 20. On the other hand, if the road is clear enough for a clean 20-minute trip, the faster driver has plenty of room to give me space, and most of them do. It only gets ugly when traffic is tight and a speeder is still trying to push it. That's when people pull out to pass coming right at me, or try to pass in gaps that they should have declined. I will say that such shenanigans are fairly rare.
So there I am in bike season, riding along the highway at a steady speed. My time in transit varies very little. A major delay, like a flat tire, will blow the average completely, but if all goes well I can count on completing the inbound run in less than an hour. Even a ten-minute variation from a 55-minute average TiT is only about 18%. Most of the time, my longer times in transit are from route variations.
Weather can make a difference to drive time. This has been a somewhat snowy winter for commuting. But the difference still hinges more on traffic than on absolute driving conditions.
With a decent set of snow tires and years of experience, a driver can move along pretty well with no one else on the road. It's definitely below the dry pavement average, but still satisfactory. I've pushed through some pretty deep unplowed fluff with only front wheel drive, given a decent set of tires. But get behind someone handicapped by bad rubber and anxiety, and the drive turns into a slog. And not all snow is created equal. When the plow trucks have been on it, they may leave behind a fairly well scraped surface with exposed pavement or they may pack it into a skating rink worse than it was before they attended to it.
Winter conditions would have a big effect on bike time in transit. In years past I have made a few winter commutes, when the weather was not snowy, so the only obstacles were cold and darkness. You can dress for cold and light for night. I would also only ride on work days when my schedule allowed me to complete the whole route before nightfall. My interpretation of "nightfall" was loose enough to put me into dangerous dusk, but I was inexperienced and thoughtless enough to go for it. But the game changes when you add snow, ice, slush, and wide, deep puddles of brine. Whatever your legal rights to the road may be, when you force the interaction between motor vehicles and bicycles you will arouse feelings not easily addressed in the time you will have available to debate them with a steamed motorist.
Pushing the beginning of the season, I have set out in adequate conditions from home, only to find the highway coated with ice on the height of land on Route 28 coming into North Wolfeboro. Even worse, the shoulder might be coated, but the travel lane clear, forcing me to squeeze in with the flow of commuters driving to work, or risk falling beneath their wheels if I stay to the right. There's no good place to be in a situation like that. I reiterate that in some circumstances the assertion of legal rights will create more ill will than acceptance among the motoring public.
Studded tires are a limited answer. The metal provides sketchy traction on pavement, and wears down, so you might not have as much of it as you would like when you finally get to ice. The tires are heavy because of all the metal, and they're not cheap. And if you've ever had to fix a flat tire that's stiff, cold, wet, and studded with metal spikes, while hunkered down in a snow drift, as passing motor vehicles spray you with salty splather, you're not eager to repeat the experience. All the while, the clock ticks on your time in transit to work.
I've used studs on my park-n-ride path commute, but in virtually every year the snow has arrived deep and soft, and hung around until mud season. And the "park" portion becomes very difficult because many path entry points are not plowed out.
In full-on bike season, I run into traffic delays when I use the rail trail inbound. I run into some delays outbound as well, but I'm not shooting for a fixed arrival time. Because the path is very badly designed, improvised around the strictures of an active rail line, all users are crammed between the rails for much of its length. I have written a lot about its disappointing shortcomings, to no avail. The rail car club has disproportionate leverage, and bikes are at the bottom of everyone's priority list. Inbound on the path I can be forced to a walking pace as I accommodate pedestrians who all give me the stink eye anyway.
On wider paths, a rider can still encounter pedestrian volumes that fill the available space, as well as slower riders. Is the answer more lanes?
In urban and suburban areas where the majority of people drive to work, commuters allow for traffic by leaving earlier. More traffic? Leave even earlier. Super commuters living more than an hour by car from their place of employment have to pad their expected time in transit to allow for the time they know they will spend at a steaming standstill in normal morning gridlock. If by chance they get all the breaks and arrive at work early, congratulations! They've just flushed that free time down the toilet of gainful employment. I speak from the point of view of someone who wanted to have a life, not just a job and possessions. So time means different things to me than it might mean to them. From a purely biological standpoint, we all need only to reach maturity, find a mate, reproduce ourselves, and die. That makes everything else a luxury. It sounds pretty grim, though. If we're going to be that simple, I say we just go all the way back to photosynthesis. It's self-contained and solar powered. We wouldn't be bothering anyone. Make the world safe for stromatolites again.
The recent vacation week marathon required that I not only arrive on time, but early, to prepare the rental area for the coming day. A lot cannot be done the night before, because rental gear is being returned wet right up to closing time. The boots in particular have to be laid out with air space around them, so they can dry, before being tucked back into the close confines of the boot shelves. This could be a few pairs or 30. Or more, if we had a phenomenally big day. Thus, I am shooting to arrive a half-hour early to brush off the dried mud and rack the boots. After the boots I hang the ski poles. They are hung on pegs close set to fit as many as possible into the rack. I try to rotate them so that the same few aren't always going out. Then there might be snowshoes to brush off and hang, as well.
On a good day I can drive to town from home in 20 minutes. On a really good day, I might shave that down with a bit of sociopathic speeding on the highway stretch. That in itself demonstrates the creeping sociopathy bred by driving all the time. I will ask myself whether I am behaving like someone I would want to share the road with on my bike. The answer is a conditional yes. If there are cyclists, I amend my driving to cooperative mode. But absent any fellow pedalers I am easily lured into speeding, and playing the entire paved surface for cornering lines. I drive the way I ride.
On a bad day -- the more typical circumstance -- I get behind someone driving slowly, perhaps erratically, and the oncoming traffic eliminates any chance to pass legally and safely. I do not pass illegally and unsafely, though I do admit to the temptation. The highway department has eliminated two or three passing zones, all of which I had used over the years. I miss them.
The difference in transit time is considerable when I get behind someone pokey. If you take 20 minutes as the benchmark average for an unobstructed run, 30 minutes is 50% slower. I always have trouble with calculations like this, because 10 minutes is 33.33333% of 30 minutes. And 30 minutes is not an unreasonable transit time. When cycling, I prefer to be passed by someone going for 30 minutes rather than 20. On the other hand, if the road is clear enough for a clean 20-minute trip, the faster driver has plenty of room to give me space, and most of them do. It only gets ugly when traffic is tight and a speeder is still trying to push it. That's when people pull out to pass coming right at me, or try to pass in gaps that they should have declined. I will say that such shenanigans are fairly rare.
So there I am in bike season, riding along the highway at a steady speed. My time in transit varies very little. A major delay, like a flat tire, will blow the average completely, but if all goes well I can count on completing the inbound run in less than an hour. Even a ten-minute variation from a 55-minute average TiT is only about 18%. Most of the time, my longer times in transit are from route variations.
Weather can make a difference to drive time. This has been a somewhat snowy winter for commuting. But the difference still hinges more on traffic than on absolute driving conditions.
With a decent set of snow tires and years of experience, a driver can move along pretty well with no one else on the road. It's definitely below the dry pavement average, but still satisfactory. I've pushed through some pretty deep unplowed fluff with only front wheel drive, given a decent set of tires. But get behind someone handicapped by bad rubber and anxiety, and the drive turns into a slog. And not all snow is created equal. When the plow trucks have been on it, they may leave behind a fairly well scraped surface with exposed pavement or they may pack it into a skating rink worse than it was before they attended to it.
Winter conditions would have a big effect on bike time in transit. In years past I have made a few winter commutes, when the weather was not snowy, so the only obstacles were cold and darkness. You can dress for cold and light for night. I would also only ride on work days when my schedule allowed me to complete the whole route before nightfall. My interpretation of "nightfall" was loose enough to put me into dangerous dusk, but I was inexperienced and thoughtless enough to go for it. But the game changes when you add snow, ice, slush, and wide, deep puddles of brine. Whatever your legal rights to the road may be, when you force the interaction between motor vehicles and bicycles you will arouse feelings not easily addressed in the time you will have available to debate them with a steamed motorist.
Pushing the beginning of the season, I have set out in adequate conditions from home, only to find the highway coated with ice on the height of land on Route 28 coming into North Wolfeboro. Even worse, the shoulder might be coated, but the travel lane clear, forcing me to squeeze in with the flow of commuters driving to work, or risk falling beneath their wheels if I stay to the right. There's no good place to be in a situation like that. I reiterate that in some circumstances the assertion of legal rights will create more ill will than acceptance among the motoring public.
Studded tires are a limited answer. The metal provides sketchy traction on pavement, and wears down, so you might not have as much of it as you would like when you finally get to ice. The tires are heavy because of all the metal, and they're not cheap. And if you've ever had to fix a flat tire that's stiff, cold, wet, and studded with metal spikes, while hunkered down in a snow drift, as passing motor vehicles spray you with salty splather, you're not eager to repeat the experience. All the while, the clock ticks on your time in transit to work.
I've used studs on my park-n-ride path commute, but in virtually every year the snow has arrived deep and soft, and hung around until mud season. And the "park" portion becomes very difficult because many path entry points are not plowed out.
In full-on bike season, I run into traffic delays when I use the rail trail inbound. I run into some delays outbound as well, but I'm not shooting for a fixed arrival time. Because the path is very badly designed, improvised around the strictures of an active rail line, all users are crammed between the rails for much of its length. I have written a lot about its disappointing shortcomings, to no avail. The rail car club has disproportionate leverage, and bikes are at the bottom of everyone's priority list. Inbound on the path I can be forced to a walking pace as I accommodate pedestrians who all give me the stink eye anyway.
On wider paths, a rider can still encounter pedestrian volumes that fill the available space, as well as slower riders. Is the answer more lanes?
In urban and suburban areas where the majority of people drive to work, commuters allow for traffic by leaving earlier. More traffic? Leave even earlier. Super commuters living more than an hour by car from their place of employment have to pad their expected time in transit to allow for the time they know they will spend at a steaming standstill in normal morning gridlock. If by chance they get all the breaks and arrive at work early, congratulations! They've just flushed that free time down the toilet of gainful employment. I speak from the point of view of someone who wanted to have a life, not just a job and possessions. So time means different things to me than it might mean to them. From a purely biological standpoint, we all need only to reach maturity, find a mate, reproduce ourselves, and die. That makes everything else a luxury. It sounds pretty grim, though. If we're going to be that simple, I say we just go all the way back to photosynthesis. It's self-contained and solar powered. We wouldn't be bothering anyone. Make the world safe for stromatolites again.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
The Last Marathoner
Today marks the close of what we in the winter tourism business in New Hampshire call Massachusetts Vacation Week. All of the New England states take a week of vacation in February, but they don't all take the same week. Typically, Massachusetts takes the week that begins with President's Day weekend, and New Hampshire takes the following week. For the ski industry up here, vacation weeks are the peak earning period of the winter.
Big operations might take on extra help, or routinely handle such a high volume that the vacation week onslaught just makes the normal shifts a little busier. In our little shop and touring center it's more like the Alamo. Everyone is on the parapet firing or behind some cover reloading. All leave was cancelled. We would work through our days off in a 12-day marathon. The shop is open seven days a week in the peak of winter or summer. Only in the past few years have we taken to closing on Sundays in the spring and fall. So each person's schedule overlaps, covering days off. Eliminate the days off from a week, and each schedule nets out to 12 in a row. I've written about the disorientation that develops during this period. That piece was written when we had the retail concession at Jackson Ski Touring, where we had a much heavier onslaught with a much lower common denominator. But we did the marathon before we had the Jackson gig, and we have continued since then.
Up until a couple of years ago, the Wolfeboro shop had two full-time backshop operatives. Then Big G decided to cut the wire and tunnel to freedom. For the past two winters we have only had part-timers in addition to me. So no one else goes through the 12-day grinder. El Queso Grande works seven days a week all the time, but the shop is his life's work. Despite the wretched financial state we all share, he does have the cachet of ownership, and justifiable pride at the considerable contribution his family has made to the community over the decades since they stepped into the tar pit of small business ownership. He appears to have nothing else he'd rather be doing, especially since various medical problems cut off his career as an aging athlete. If he felt better, he would want to ride his bike and ski more. But he doesn't have an unwritten novel or endless cartoon ideas hammering in his brain to make him constantly question his life choices. The two phases of his life are working and resting up to work some more. This is not said in disrespect. His life is hard and he works hard at it.
I am the last marathoner. Gone is the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the tourist wranglers. We'd be burnt out, irritable, zonked with fatigue, but we would have each other. I am the last.
Once the marathon ends, the season winds down very quickly, regardless of the amount of snow or the enthusiasm of the dedicated skiers. We can't reconfigure the shop to bike work for at least another month, but the general public is mostly finished with winter after their February gorge on it. If the weather enables it, we will have some busy weekends. For me, the easing of the schedule means that I might have the chance to dig through the scraps of paper with scribbled notes on them and develop the ideas captured there.
Big operations might take on extra help, or routinely handle such a high volume that the vacation week onslaught just makes the normal shifts a little busier. In our little shop and touring center it's more like the Alamo. Everyone is on the parapet firing or behind some cover reloading. All leave was cancelled. We would work through our days off in a 12-day marathon. The shop is open seven days a week in the peak of winter or summer. Only in the past few years have we taken to closing on Sundays in the spring and fall. So each person's schedule overlaps, covering days off. Eliminate the days off from a week, and each schedule nets out to 12 in a row. I've written about the disorientation that develops during this period. That piece was written when we had the retail concession at Jackson Ski Touring, where we had a much heavier onslaught with a much lower common denominator. But we did the marathon before we had the Jackson gig, and we have continued since then.
Up until a couple of years ago, the Wolfeboro shop had two full-time backshop operatives. Then Big G decided to cut the wire and tunnel to freedom. For the past two winters we have only had part-timers in addition to me. So no one else goes through the 12-day grinder. El Queso Grande works seven days a week all the time, but the shop is his life's work. Despite the wretched financial state we all share, he does have the cachet of ownership, and justifiable pride at the considerable contribution his family has made to the community over the decades since they stepped into the tar pit of small business ownership. He appears to have nothing else he'd rather be doing, especially since various medical problems cut off his career as an aging athlete. If he felt better, he would want to ride his bike and ski more. But he doesn't have an unwritten novel or endless cartoon ideas hammering in his brain to make him constantly question his life choices. The two phases of his life are working and resting up to work some more. This is not said in disrespect. His life is hard and he works hard at it.
I am the last marathoner. Gone is the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the tourist wranglers. We'd be burnt out, irritable, zonked with fatigue, but we would have each other. I am the last.
Once the marathon ends, the season winds down very quickly, regardless of the amount of snow or the enthusiasm of the dedicated skiers. We can't reconfigure the shop to bike work for at least another month, but the general public is mostly finished with winter after their February gorge on it. If the weather enables it, we will have some busy weekends. For me, the easing of the schedule means that I might have the chance to dig through the scraps of paper with scribbled notes on them and develop the ideas captured there.
Monday, February 11, 2019
LOL! Biopace is back!
It starts with a spot of good news for a change: a driver in Oregon, who killed a bicyclist in a drug-fueled road rage incident, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. What a refreshing far cry from the usual slap on the wrist, or even complete acquittal, that usually follows the killing of a cyclist by a motorist.
As I was reading the article, I noticed the ads on the road.cc site announcing Shitno's latest marvel: Oval chainrings! Proven effective, once again, after a nice long sleep of decades since the last time they were discredited and discarded. If anything indicates the health of the road cycling market and the corresponding gullibility of the well-heeled but casual participants who will believe anything, it is the reintroduction of this tired old concept yet again.
Oval chainrings have been cropping up for about as long as there have been chainrings. They appear, they kill the cadence of an entire generation, and they submerge again. No less a luminary than the great Sheldon Brown thought that they were the cat's ass, thus proving that even the wisest have their susceptibilities. You can read his articles, conduct your own experiments, and decide for yourself. Thanks to Shimano's fundamental philosophy that no bad idea should ever die out, you will now get a new issue of parts to work with before the tide turns again. And maybe it never will, seeing that every activity has broken into smaller and smaller fragments of specialization, and manufacturers can apparently produce surgically small production runs to exploit ignorant enthusiasm generated by the marketing department.
You can tell I'm excited, can't you? Just turning friggin' cartwheels of joy that we're going to trundle out another raft of bullshit to dump on the bike market. Elliptical chainrings might actually be an excellent asset when trying to pedal your electric behemoth with a dead battery. So there's that. And now that we've killed the front derailleur you don't have to worry about the documented tendency of oval chainrings to cut chains during a hard front shift. Mountain bikes with Biopace rings were the original chain choppers in the early 1990s. The temperamental connecting pins of Shimano Hyperglide chains helped significantly with the spread of this problem.
Sheldon Brown's article on Biopace documents Shimano's wooing of the triathlon, mountain, and recreational road market segments with high-cam Biopace, followed by their carefully choreographed walkback through Biopace HP (low cam), and the triumphant announcement in the early 1990s of Superglide!!! Not only did this boast "new" chain tooth profiles -- reminiscent of their "W-Cut" chainrings circa 1980 for those who had been paying attention -- but they also utilized the latest computer-designed engineering breakthrough: Constant Radius. In other words, ROUND. The entire process took roughly a decade and contributed to Shimano's market dominance during the twilight of the road bike boom, the rise of triathlon, and the first surge of production mountain bikes. If you ever wanted proof that marketing trumps genuine product quality and support, Shimano provides a textbook example. It is but one among many from the tumultuous 1980s down to the present day, because their tactics have become the norm. Make something work well enough, hype the crap out of it, and abandon it as quickly as possible so that no one really gets a fix on it. Always claim that product changes are "for improvement."
With a modicum of engineering, ample capital, and a complete dearth of conscience, wealth can be yours.
As Sheldon pointed out, the concept works for riders who don't need a high cadence, or smooth, fast acceleration. He even claimed that they worked well for him on his fixed-gears, but John Allen, who now tends Sheldon's sites, reports the opposite. I side with Mr. Allen. My fixed gears have always exhibited enough change in chain tension just from irregularities in the round rings and cogs I already use. I never wanted to risk throwing a chain at high revs because I was using a non-round ring.
No doubt these turkeys will make their way onto new mountain bikes, since mountain bikers are one of the few market segments throwing down serious coin these days. But how much longer can that last anyway? The fundamentals of the entire industrialized economy are going to have to be overhauled pronto if we're not going to bake the atmosphere right off of this little muddy rock we call home. Disposable income might become an unsupportable luxury. If your pedal-powered machine isn't practical transportation at that point, you'd better be one of the few, the filthy rich, to keep playing at all.
Oval chainrings would serve on a cargo bike or other transportational machine, especially among riders who are adamantly opposed to looking the slightest bit racy. Nothing says "not a racer" quite like a good 60 rpm cadence. Then again, decades ago a top-caliber rider I had the good fortune to ride with said that top time trialists of the day (early 1980s) were running about 75 rpm in monster gears, because that netted out faster than spinning higher rpms in a gear low enough to spin at higher rpms. Hence the success of marketing original Biopace to triathletes, time trialists, and early mountain bikers, all of whom had more reasons to spin slowly than to rev up in the round.
Back when I first got lured back into the bike game, in 1989, Biopace was already fading. I did my best to help it on its way, recommending conversion to round chainrings for any rider willing to listen. I'm ready to do that again, but riders are all less willing to listen to real people in shops, now that they have YouTube and forums full of experienced misinformation. So I can also just clean things off, patch them together, and let riders find their own way through the welter of marketing blather. I know what I like, and what I will keep looking for, as long as I can find it.
As I was reading the article, I noticed the ads on the road.cc site announcing Shitno's latest marvel: Oval chainrings! Proven effective, once again, after a nice long sleep of decades since the last time they were discredited and discarded. If anything indicates the health of the road cycling market and the corresponding gullibility of the well-heeled but casual participants who will believe anything, it is the reintroduction of this tired old concept yet again.
Oval chainrings have been cropping up for about as long as there have been chainrings. They appear, they kill the cadence of an entire generation, and they submerge again. No less a luminary than the great Sheldon Brown thought that they were the cat's ass, thus proving that even the wisest have their susceptibilities. You can read his articles, conduct your own experiments, and decide for yourself. Thanks to Shimano's fundamental philosophy that no bad idea should ever die out, you will now get a new issue of parts to work with before the tide turns again. And maybe it never will, seeing that every activity has broken into smaller and smaller fragments of specialization, and manufacturers can apparently produce surgically small production runs to exploit ignorant enthusiasm generated by the marketing department.
You can tell I'm excited, can't you? Just turning friggin' cartwheels of joy that we're going to trundle out another raft of bullshit to dump on the bike market. Elliptical chainrings might actually be an excellent asset when trying to pedal your electric behemoth with a dead battery. So there's that. And now that we've killed the front derailleur you don't have to worry about the documented tendency of oval chainrings to cut chains during a hard front shift. Mountain bikes with Biopace rings were the original chain choppers in the early 1990s. The temperamental connecting pins of Shimano Hyperglide chains helped significantly with the spread of this problem.
Sheldon Brown's article on Biopace documents Shimano's wooing of the triathlon, mountain, and recreational road market segments with high-cam Biopace, followed by their carefully choreographed walkback through Biopace HP (low cam), and the triumphant announcement in the early 1990s of Superglide!!! Not only did this boast "new" chain tooth profiles -- reminiscent of their "W-Cut" chainrings circa 1980 for those who had been paying attention -- but they also utilized the latest computer-designed engineering breakthrough: Constant Radius. In other words, ROUND. The entire process took roughly a decade and contributed to Shimano's market dominance during the twilight of the road bike boom, the rise of triathlon, and the first surge of production mountain bikes. If you ever wanted proof that marketing trumps genuine product quality and support, Shimano provides a textbook example. It is but one among many from the tumultuous 1980s down to the present day, because their tactics have become the norm. Make something work well enough, hype the crap out of it, and abandon it as quickly as possible so that no one really gets a fix on it. Always claim that product changes are "for improvement."
With a modicum of engineering, ample capital, and a complete dearth of conscience, wealth can be yours.
As Sheldon pointed out, the concept works for riders who don't need a high cadence, or smooth, fast acceleration. He even claimed that they worked well for him on his fixed-gears, but John Allen, who now tends Sheldon's sites, reports the opposite. I side with Mr. Allen. My fixed gears have always exhibited enough change in chain tension just from irregularities in the round rings and cogs I already use. I never wanted to risk throwing a chain at high revs because I was using a non-round ring.
No doubt these turkeys will make their way onto new mountain bikes, since mountain bikers are one of the few market segments throwing down serious coin these days. But how much longer can that last anyway? The fundamentals of the entire industrialized economy are going to have to be overhauled pronto if we're not going to bake the atmosphere right off of this little muddy rock we call home. Disposable income might become an unsupportable luxury. If your pedal-powered machine isn't practical transportation at that point, you'd better be one of the few, the filthy rich, to keep playing at all.
Oval chainrings would serve on a cargo bike or other transportational machine, especially among riders who are adamantly opposed to looking the slightest bit racy. Nothing says "not a racer" quite like a good 60 rpm cadence. Then again, decades ago a top-caliber rider I had the good fortune to ride with said that top time trialists of the day (early 1980s) were running about 75 rpm in monster gears, because that netted out faster than spinning higher rpms in a gear low enough to spin at higher rpms. Hence the success of marketing original Biopace to triathletes, time trialists, and early mountain bikers, all of whom had more reasons to spin slowly than to rev up in the round.
Back when I first got lured back into the bike game, in 1989, Biopace was already fading. I did my best to help it on its way, recommending conversion to round chainrings for any rider willing to listen. I'm ready to do that again, but riders are all less willing to listen to real people in shops, now that they have YouTube and forums full of experienced misinformation. So I can also just clean things off, patch them together, and let riders find their own way through the welter of marketing blather. I know what I like, and what I will keep looking for, as long as I can find it.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Yearning for spring
Winter can be quite enjoyable if you are in a position to use winter conditions with appropriate tools and activities. Otherwise, it is just a challenge to survival, both physical and mental.
As a college athlete -- albeit a dissipated and hedonistic one -- I had heard what happens to weekend warriors who try to continue to compete after they emerge into the Real World and let other responsibilities take over the time they used to spend on training. I only nursed delusions of higher level competition in fencing for a few years after graduation, but I had every intention of remaining physically active.
Physical capability requires continuous maintenance. I found lots of interesting ways to explore under my own power. I recommend all of them. But only a couple work well as routine daily transportation. Cycling is the only one that is basically universal. If you walk, you need to live within timely walking distance of your destination. If you row or paddle, you will need to transport your vessel or have a place to keep it on the water. Park-and-whatever options do reduce motor vehicle use, but don't allow you to be completely car-free.
Bike commuting provided continuous physical activity. It fit neatly into a part of the day already committed to commuting in general. Biking is not complete exercise, but it provides a great baseline from which to add a little of this and that to fill out your needs. It also marks you as some kind of arrested adolescent or weirdo, but that's society's problem, not cycling's. Society will make it your problem if you ride. You have to do your own cost/benefit analysis to decide if it's worth it to you.
One of the hardest things to get used to when you're out there riding a bike and trying to live a low impact life is finding out how many people hate you for it and think you should die. It doesn't have to be the majority. You only have to encounter one homicidal jerk. That's true whether you get tagged by a hit and run driver or you happen to be at the mall the day one of them shows up and opens fire. In spite of that, I find myself trapped by winter, waiting for the opportunity to go expose myself to the contempt and hostility of the motoring public, just to be able to fit physical activity conveniently into my schedule again.
As a member of society and a denizen of a northern state, I don't go wobbling down the icy, narrowed roads on my bike when conditions are adverse. Once you accept that the majority of people have valid reasons not to use a bicycle for transportation, you have a responsibility to examine your own priorities as you expect them to bend to your decision to ride. If biking was really a valid option for low income people to get to their jobs around here we would see them out in all weather. In some places you do. Those would be the places that get first priority when someone starts handing out infrastructure improvements. In the other places, where harsh-weather cyclists are rare or nonexistent, people have clearly made other adaptations. In an open winter, or as winter finally loosens its grip, I will take training rides and ease into the full-distance commute. As long as most roads are lined with slumping snowbanks, and narrowed by flows of ice, I will find other things to do. But it is hard. So many other things I need to do involve no physical exertion at all. Case in point, I'm sitting here on my ass, writing, because this is the time I have.
Unfortunately for me, the shorter options for the commute aren't open until late in the spring, because they involve parking areas and sections of trail that are buried in snow. These thaw slowly to mud and then dry gradually to a decent riding surface. For the past several years I have had to pull off some sudden long days in the early season.
Trainer riding is not only mental torment, it is very abusive of the bike in the trainer. The bike is clamped into a frame instead of free to lean in response to rider input. The rider's sweat cascades down over the machine for the entire trainer season. I do my best to avoid using a trainer, preferring instead to use off-bike cross training activities and some roller riding for smoothness. But that was when I wasn't as mired in depression most of the time. The nice thing about commuting is that I can flog myself to do it even if I feel like a worthless piece of crap. It beats sitting in the car feeling like a worthless piece of crap.
When the days get longer, there's more daylight to burn. Even before commuting season it's easier to fit more things into a day away from work, or into the margins of a day wasted on gainful employment. Meanwhile, I'm keenly aware that one should not wish time away. Just keep tunneling, and look for rewards in each shovelful.
As a college athlete -- albeit a dissipated and hedonistic one -- I had heard what happens to weekend warriors who try to continue to compete after they emerge into the Real World and let other responsibilities take over the time they used to spend on training. I only nursed delusions of higher level competition in fencing for a few years after graduation, but I had every intention of remaining physically active.
Physical capability requires continuous maintenance. I found lots of interesting ways to explore under my own power. I recommend all of them. But only a couple work well as routine daily transportation. Cycling is the only one that is basically universal. If you walk, you need to live within timely walking distance of your destination. If you row or paddle, you will need to transport your vessel or have a place to keep it on the water. Park-and-whatever options do reduce motor vehicle use, but don't allow you to be completely car-free.
Bike commuting provided continuous physical activity. It fit neatly into a part of the day already committed to commuting in general. Biking is not complete exercise, but it provides a great baseline from which to add a little of this and that to fill out your needs. It also marks you as some kind of arrested adolescent or weirdo, but that's society's problem, not cycling's. Society will make it your problem if you ride. You have to do your own cost/benefit analysis to decide if it's worth it to you.
One of the hardest things to get used to when you're out there riding a bike and trying to live a low impact life is finding out how many people hate you for it and think you should die. It doesn't have to be the majority. You only have to encounter one homicidal jerk. That's true whether you get tagged by a hit and run driver or you happen to be at the mall the day one of them shows up and opens fire. In spite of that, I find myself trapped by winter, waiting for the opportunity to go expose myself to the contempt and hostility of the motoring public, just to be able to fit physical activity conveniently into my schedule again.
As a member of society and a denizen of a northern state, I don't go wobbling down the icy, narrowed roads on my bike when conditions are adverse. Once you accept that the majority of people have valid reasons not to use a bicycle for transportation, you have a responsibility to examine your own priorities as you expect them to bend to your decision to ride. If biking was really a valid option for low income people to get to their jobs around here we would see them out in all weather. In some places you do. Those would be the places that get first priority when someone starts handing out infrastructure improvements. In the other places, where harsh-weather cyclists are rare or nonexistent, people have clearly made other adaptations. In an open winter, or as winter finally loosens its grip, I will take training rides and ease into the full-distance commute. As long as most roads are lined with slumping snowbanks, and narrowed by flows of ice, I will find other things to do. But it is hard. So many other things I need to do involve no physical exertion at all. Case in point, I'm sitting here on my ass, writing, because this is the time I have.
Unfortunately for me, the shorter options for the commute aren't open until late in the spring, because they involve parking areas and sections of trail that are buried in snow. These thaw slowly to mud and then dry gradually to a decent riding surface. For the past several years I have had to pull off some sudden long days in the early season.
Trainer riding is not only mental torment, it is very abusive of the bike in the trainer. The bike is clamped into a frame instead of free to lean in response to rider input. The rider's sweat cascades down over the machine for the entire trainer season. I do my best to avoid using a trainer, preferring instead to use off-bike cross training activities and some roller riding for smoothness. But that was when I wasn't as mired in depression most of the time. The nice thing about commuting is that I can flog myself to do it even if I feel like a worthless piece of crap. It beats sitting in the car feeling like a worthless piece of crap.
When the days get longer, there's more daylight to burn. Even before commuting season it's easier to fit more things into a day away from work, or into the margins of a day wasted on gainful employment. Meanwhile, I'm keenly aware that one should not wish time away. Just keep tunneling, and look for rewards in each shovelful.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Motorist Logic in Action
Conflicts with bicyclists and pedestrians are just symptoms of the selfishness and poor judgment motorists routinely exhibit toward each other. In addition to being a means of conveying people and their stuff from place to place, motor vehicles also serve a function like the pads worn by American football players, or ice hockey players. Motoring is a contact sport.
In the past two days I have gotten to witness two classic examples of motorist logic on my morning drive to work.
On Thursday, the weather was warm and wet. The landscape was shrouded in fog as the snow pack sublimated into vapor. Along with perhaps eight or ten other drivers, I came up behind a state highway truck winging back the plow drift along Route 28. The speed limit for most of that part of 28 is 55 miles per hour. In good weather, that means most of the locals are doing 60-65. Because the weather has not been good, the road surface was a mix of chunked-up wet ice, slush, and bits of exposed pavement, slathered with sand and brine. Average speed had been about 45 until we all caught up to the state truck. That vehicle was going about 18-25 mph. Its bulk filled the lane as its side blade bounced along the shoulder, shoving the snow further back to make room for whatever else the winter might deliver.
We were on a long, steady climb. The center line is double yellow. The height of land is a narrow crest, so the approach is blind from both sides. In spite of fog, unsteady traction, and the blind hill crest, impatient drivers went one after another out around the plow truck. There was no skill involved. The drivers had no way to judge whether it was safe to pass. It was a complete gamble. But these suicidal lemmings weren't just gambling with their own lives. They were also betting the lives of anyone who might be coming the other way.
No one happened to be coming the other way just then, but 28 is a busy road, especially on a workday morning. Passing there and then was a selfish and stupid move. Unfortunately, those traits are common.
Today, on a different part of 28, we were all moving along much better on mostly dry roads, when I saw a big work truck pull partway off the travel lane and throw it in reverse. A plastic container had blown out of the truck bed. The driver's automatic reflex was not to pull safely off the road and walk back, it was to back up against traffic. Driver's ed was a lot of years ago, but I definitely remember being told quite emphatically that you do not put it in reverse and back up on a highway. But we are a motoring culture. We drive as close as possible to our destination, and walk as little as possible. Of course you stay in your truck and back up against oncoming traffic to try to rescue your unsecured property from the center line of the road. No other driver will fault you for behaving completely normally. What else is a driver supposed to do?
The driver's selfish and dangerous maneuver increased the chances that another driver would hit the item that he was hoping to rescue, as we all tried to work around truck and its lost cargo.
In both cases, drivers were doing things that they shouldn't have done, that lots of people do anyway, and that most people get away with. It only reinforces the custom, because drivers so seldom suffer any consequences.
A motorist in free flight will react negatively to any obstacle that breaks the flow. The same fixation on forward motion prompts a driver squeezing past a cyclist or blazing around a plow truck on a blind hill crest in the fog.
Interestingly, the driver backing up on the highway to suit his own convenience has a philosophical kinship to the cyclist who rides against traffic and ignores one-way streets. It's the same kind of personal relationship with the law and right of way in either case. "It's only me, it's only here, it's only now." If everyone else would lighten up -- and adapt to my personal wants -- everything would be fine. A chunky truck going backwards on a highway has a bit more leverage, but the self-centeredness is spot on.
The cyclist who rides on the sidewalk is analogous to the driver who pulls into a designated cycle lane to get ahead in traffic or to park. These equivalencies are not meant to excuse the behavior of either side, only to emphasize that the problems are not motorist or pedaler problems but human problems. Wrapping the human in a motor vehicle makes the offenses worse because of the damage that the hard outer coating can inflict on softer opponents, but it's pilot error in either case.
We all want to flow smoothly to our chosen destination. Cyclists like to maintain speed. We take advantage of our small size and maneuverability to bend traffic rules in ways that actually enhance our safety and make traffic flow better. But some of us abuse the power and commit gross infractions that don't end well. If the result isn't an outright crash with injuries or death, it is at least a bad public relations move, with far-reaching consequences in the bike-hating community. Everyone bears some responsibility for making a multi-mode transportation culture work. However, the bigger the vehicle, the greater the responsibility.
In the past two days I have gotten to witness two classic examples of motorist logic on my morning drive to work.
On Thursday, the weather was warm and wet. The landscape was shrouded in fog as the snow pack sublimated into vapor. Along with perhaps eight or ten other drivers, I came up behind a state highway truck winging back the plow drift along Route 28. The speed limit for most of that part of 28 is 55 miles per hour. In good weather, that means most of the locals are doing 60-65. Because the weather has not been good, the road surface was a mix of chunked-up wet ice, slush, and bits of exposed pavement, slathered with sand and brine. Average speed had been about 45 until we all caught up to the state truck. That vehicle was going about 18-25 mph. Its bulk filled the lane as its side blade bounced along the shoulder, shoving the snow further back to make room for whatever else the winter might deliver.
We were on a long, steady climb. The center line is double yellow. The height of land is a narrow crest, so the approach is blind from both sides. In spite of fog, unsteady traction, and the blind hill crest, impatient drivers went one after another out around the plow truck. There was no skill involved. The drivers had no way to judge whether it was safe to pass. It was a complete gamble. But these suicidal lemmings weren't just gambling with their own lives. They were also betting the lives of anyone who might be coming the other way.
No one happened to be coming the other way just then, but 28 is a busy road, especially on a workday morning. Passing there and then was a selfish and stupid move. Unfortunately, those traits are common.
Today, on a different part of 28, we were all moving along much better on mostly dry roads, when I saw a big work truck pull partway off the travel lane and throw it in reverse. A plastic container had blown out of the truck bed. The driver's automatic reflex was not to pull safely off the road and walk back, it was to back up against traffic. Driver's ed was a lot of years ago, but I definitely remember being told quite emphatically that you do not put it in reverse and back up on a highway. But we are a motoring culture. We drive as close as possible to our destination, and walk as little as possible. Of course you stay in your truck and back up against oncoming traffic to try to rescue your unsecured property from the center line of the road. No other driver will fault you for behaving completely normally. What else is a driver supposed to do?
The driver's selfish and dangerous maneuver increased the chances that another driver would hit the item that he was hoping to rescue, as we all tried to work around truck and its lost cargo.
In both cases, drivers were doing things that they shouldn't have done, that lots of people do anyway, and that most people get away with. It only reinforces the custom, because drivers so seldom suffer any consequences.
A motorist in free flight will react negatively to any obstacle that breaks the flow. The same fixation on forward motion prompts a driver squeezing past a cyclist or blazing around a plow truck on a blind hill crest in the fog.
Interestingly, the driver backing up on the highway to suit his own convenience has a philosophical kinship to the cyclist who rides against traffic and ignores one-way streets. It's the same kind of personal relationship with the law and right of way in either case. "It's only me, it's only here, it's only now." If everyone else would lighten up -- and adapt to my personal wants -- everything would be fine. A chunky truck going backwards on a highway has a bit more leverage, but the self-centeredness is spot on.
The cyclist who rides on the sidewalk is analogous to the driver who pulls into a designated cycle lane to get ahead in traffic or to park. These equivalencies are not meant to excuse the behavior of either side, only to emphasize that the problems are not motorist or pedaler problems but human problems. Wrapping the human in a motor vehicle makes the offenses worse because of the damage that the hard outer coating can inflict on softer opponents, but it's pilot error in either case.
We all want to flow smoothly to our chosen destination. Cyclists like to maintain speed. We take advantage of our small size and maneuverability to bend traffic rules in ways that actually enhance our safety and make traffic flow better. But some of us abuse the power and commit gross infractions that don't end well. If the result isn't an outright crash with injuries or death, it is at least a bad public relations move, with far-reaching consequences in the bike-hating community. Everyone bears some responsibility for making a multi-mode transportation culture work. However, the bigger the vehicle, the greater the responsibility.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
The obstinacy of people on wheels
The snow thrower quit on me this morning as I was beginning the most critical part of the job. I have to clear the end of the driveway and a landing zone so that I can get out to work this morning and have a place to bury the car when I return home this evening. Snow continues to fall, with up to eight inches forecast for the day.
Because humans have adopted the wheel as the universal facilitator of land travel, massive efforts have been made over the centuries to make wheeled conveyances more powerful, and surfaces more available. My friends in Alaska talk about road conditions, and the challenges of operating a motor vehicle in Arctic and near-Arctic conditions.
The town plow makes life miserable for those of us who move their own snow, and more expensive for everyone. They make mobility possible in humanity's chosen way, but they build walls in front of driveways. If I could get around another way, I would forget the driveway and mothball the car for the winter. But many factors act against that.
This is relevant to cycling with the rise of fat bikes. Fat bikes can't break their own trail. They're lousy for bushwhacking. Fat bike riders are always looking for a packed surface to exploit. Some of them accept the challenge of packing their own trails, but as the user group expands it attracts more and more people who do not have that self sufficient ethic. They are fixated on using their expensive wheeled toy, and they push hard to be allowed on any existing packed surface. All they have to do to find peace is accept that wheels and snow were never meant to go together.
The rest of society cannot be weaned. In a place like New England, where snow is inconsistent, one winter might be white from end to end. Sleighs, snow machines, and skis would be great. But get a thaw, or have a dry or rainy winter and we're back to rolling. Most likely, get a winter that flips between the two extremes, and nothing works for long.
Today's blizzard will be followed by 40 degrees and rain by Thursday. That won't remove anything, it will just make it harder to deal with. It will be especially hard without the wheeled piece of power equipment that allows me to function at all.
Because humans have adopted the wheel as the universal facilitator of land travel, massive efforts have been made over the centuries to make wheeled conveyances more powerful, and surfaces more available. My friends in Alaska talk about road conditions, and the challenges of operating a motor vehicle in Arctic and near-Arctic conditions.
The town plow makes life miserable for those of us who move their own snow, and more expensive for everyone. They make mobility possible in humanity's chosen way, but they build walls in front of driveways. If I could get around another way, I would forget the driveway and mothball the car for the winter. But many factors act against that.
This is relevant to cycling with the rise of fat bikes. Fat bikes can't break their own trail. They're lousy for bushwhacking. Fat bike riders are always looking for a packed surface to exploit. Some of them accept the challenge of packing their own trails, but as the user group expands it attracts more and more people who do not have that self sufficient ethic. They are fixated on using their expensive wheeled toy, and they push hard to be allowed on any existing packed surface. All they have to do to find peace is accept that wheels and snow were never meant to go together.
The rest of society cannot be weaned. In a place like New England, where snow is inconsistent, one winter might be white from end to end. Sleighs, snow machines, and skis would be great. But get a thaw, or have a dry or rainy winter and we're back to rolling. Most likely, get a winter that flips between the two extremes, and nothing works for long.
Today's blizzard will be followed by 40 degrees and rain by Thursday. That won't remove anything, it will just make it harder to deal with. It will be especially hard without the wheeled piece of power equipment that allows me to function at all.
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