Category: cycling

Danielle Rides Trails!

Published March 19, 2010

Today after work Danielle and I headed out to Stony Creek so she could try out her new 29er on some trails. Prior to today she hadn’t ridden a bike off road, and despite some initial (but quickly alleviated) fears about how a bike feels when it’s on loose gravel she did great. We rode most of the easy two-track; following the route P-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-17-18-19-5-4-3-2-1-P as seen on this map.

Here is another photo of Danielle, this time riding her bike and approaching marker #6 just before the entrance to The Pines.

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Macomb Orchard Trail in March

Published March 15, 2010

Since the trails are still thawing and thus generally unridable, a group of us got together tonight to ride the Macomb Orchard Trail from Onyx Ice Arena to the bridge over M-53 and back. Instead of driving up Jon and I decided to leave from my house to add a few more miles on it. The result ended up being 2:41:45 of moving time to cover 37.2 miles, for an average of 13.7 MPH. Peak speed was 24.6 MPH, likely achieved on the hill down from the bridge over M-53, even though there are times when I knew I was above 20 MPH on flat ground with the wind at my back.

Despite being a bit cold and with a 15 MPH headwind on the way out, with particularly chilly spots near the still-frozen low-laying swampy areas, it was a really nice ride. I didn’t eat enough and ran out of energy a few times, but small handfuls of granola and a bottle of double-strength HEED helped with that.

I also gave the aforementioned sample contact lenses a try tonight with some clear-lens protective glasses and they worked out very well. Without astigmatism-correcting lenses my vision wasn’t as perfect as it could be, my eyes weren’t dry and I could see quite well. I’ll wear another pair some other time this week and be sure that it’s not a fluke, but I’m pretty sure that these worked out well.

Now, off to get some more to eat, but only after figuring out why my furnace won’t light.

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Spring Has Sprung!

Published March 7, 2010

Setting out for a ride from Mt. Clemens at roughly 12:30pm today we headed out to Metro Beach and back along the pavement. The spring thaw has made the trails sloppy and unridable, so pavement is the only current option. The excellent weather that we’ve been having was perfect for riding a springtime paved weather bike ride, exactly the kind of shakedown the Titus needed so I could get a good feel for the bike geometry, shifting, new bar, etc. I logged roughly 22.2 miles over 1:34:04, making for a moving average of 14.2 MPH.

Such a nice day. :)

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Power Supply for Bicycle Video Camera

Published March 6, 2010

I’ve been working on a video camera system for my bike. The project is just getting started, but today I made the PCB for the power supply. You can see it above fit inside of its project box (a RadioShack 3x2x1″), or you can see the bottom side with solder and traces here.

It’s been a few years since I last etched a PCB, and as I’d run out of photoresist developer (a lye solution) I decided to make due with what I had readily available and laid out the board by hand, drawing it in pencil and marker and using nail polish as resist. I’m quite happy with how it came out. The many-year-expired tin plating chemicals that I had sitting around the basement even worked, giving it a nice tarnish-resistant silver finish.

This PCB and housing is designed to hold two eBay special step-down DC to DC switching regulators (buck converters) to get 5 VDC and 12 VDC from a 14.8 V 3000mAh LiPo battery pack. The 5V will power a SanDisk V-Mate solid state video recorder and the 12V a VioSport Action Cam 3. All of this together with an 8GB microSD card should allow for the continuous filming of eight to nine hours of mobile video while fitting in a small bento-style bicycle bag.

Now to wait for the rest of the parts to arrive so I can put it all together. The camera and recorder are here, I’m just waiting on the ~~hand grenade~~ battery and charger, bento bag, regulators, and powerpole connectors. Hopefully this won’t be too bad for a ~$200 project. The video quality should be decent as shown by this intentionally shaky test which features Danielle and Roxie (warning: contains dog nose) and single-charge recording length should be long enough to capture any bike ride that I might choose to record. More photos are available here, if you’re interested.

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Dragon GAP Winter Race

Published February 7, 2010

Yesterday was the third annual Lake Orion High School Guided Activities Program winter race. The sunny, cold weather was perfect for riding in the woods with all of the riding going well, except for the first extremely steep hill.

The first time I went down said hill I went a bit too fast, overshot the trail, and ended up running perpendicular into a ditch. This bottomed out my fork, dropped the chain to the outside of the cranks, twisted the bar a bit to the right, and rotated my left Ergon grip down a good ways. Somehow I didn’t get hurt, so I was able to continue riding after getting some tools out and straightening the bar. My shoulder is very minorly sore this morning, but that could also be from sleeping oddly.

Being a few minutes behind everyone else I now had a quiet, uneventful, ride alone through the woods, save for occasionally passing some of the kids slower folks. I don’t think I came in last, though, as two thirds of the way through the second of my two laps I passed someone who I believe was in my same category. That likely puts me at second to last.

The video of the race above is made by a local guy named Matt (mattmtb1 on YouTube) who is known for filming local races and events then doing an outstanding job putting together short, entertaining videos of them. I actually made it in at 2:00, where I’m shown turning up a steep corner with my studded rear wheel scraping audibly at the ice.

There’s also this photo of the four of us from Trail’s Edge Racing who participated: Bob Costello, (Me) Steve Vigneau, Bill Edgerton, Joe Siedl. Marty took this photo and posted it to Facebook, but due to the sillyness involved in linking directly to Facebook content I rehosted it.

Danielle came to watch and brought Roxie along with her. Both kids and adults loved having her there, and she loved being the center of attention. A number of people, including the Cannondale Midwest Racing folks, were taking photos and/or video of her, so hopefully those will surface online soon.

UPDATE: Here is another video of the race from YouTube.

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Great Weather, New Bar

Published February 4, 2010

After an overly long delay my new handle bar was finally delivered. It’s really nice looking, and hopefully I’ll get it fitted tomorrow. I would have done it tonight, but my friend Bob came by and we took a quick ride up to River Bends.

With the icy trails we’d both fitted studded tires, and these worked out very well. The weather was about perfect for winter night-time riding, with the air sitting at freezing, and the ground in the trails maintaining a nice layer of soft snow and ice. With the tires clinging to the trail it was possible to ride fast on some of the flat/straight sections, and the 20 MPH+ bursts were a very nice treat. Hopefully winter will continue to smile on biking, and the spring mud / thaw season won’t last long.

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Trail’s Edge Racing Logos

Published February 1, 2010

For this year I’ve joined the folks at Trail’s Edge Racing, the bike team for Trail’s Edge Outdoors. I’m a member of the B team, and will probably end up racing in either the Beginner or Sport categories, depending on the race.

As part of being on the team I have to put a shop logo on my bike. This makes sense, as shop-sponsored bike teams exist to promote and advertise for shops. While I like the Trail’s Edge logo, with the very shiny new Titus I didn’t want to put the standard black and white logo sticker on them; it demanded something appropriately colored. Thankfully Dave Cox, art director for DL Graphics and whom I know from the MMBA Metro South chapter, came to the rescue and made some 4″ wide silver vinyl-cut logos. These fit perfectly on the bike, and as can be seen in this view of the whole front triangle match very nicely with the other silver logos on the bike. I’m very happy with them.

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Rotor Truing Test

Published January 25, 2010

After acquiring a hub (from a trashed wheel that I was given) and borrowing a dial indicator I decided to test out a prototype of the disc brake rotor truing stand that I’ve been wanting to make. Initially I’d planned on making a wood base to hold a hub and either a feeler gauge or dial indicator, but after trying this all out in my bench vise, I’m quite happy with this setup.

I’ve ordered this dial indicator from Grizzly Industrial, Inc., which is the same one seen in the picture above. Next I’ll probably make a plastic or wooden block to fit in the jaws of the vise and hold the bottom of the quick release, and then future truing activities will use a setup just like this.

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Titus Racer X 29er

Published January 23, 2010

Here’s my new bike, the one which I’ve been hinting at for a while now, a Titus Racer X 29er. This is a discontinued model that I was able to get at a fairly reasonable price because it’s replacement is considerably higher end (and also titanium alloy or carbon fiber only). I’ve had the bike for roughly a month and have been taking my time getting it set up as I want, with an appropriate saddle, pedals, brakes, and other such bits.

Now that it’s essentially complete I wanted to take it out for a test ride. With the recent lack of snow, reasonably warm weather without much risk of mud (due to cold ground), and heavy precipitation forecasted for the next few days, today was the day. The result was a basic 21.1 mile ride over the course of 1:37:28, for an average of 12.9 MPH. Everything on the bike performed wonderfully and as expected, although I did realize that I need to move the saddle forward a bit and adjust the suspension a bit. The seatpost may also have slipped down a few millimeters, but that’s probably because I didn’t have the seatpost clamp particularly tight.

Thus far I’m really happy with the bike. I’m still waiting on the arrival of Carnegie’s Bar from Ragley, but that should be here any day now. It was ordered from Chain Reaction Cycles in the UK (Ragley does not yet have US distribution for their stuff), and postage from the UK always seems to take a while. I look forward to trying this bar because it looks like it’ll be comfortable, but if not I’ll probably be able to sell it for close to its cost.

If you’d like to see the full geeky list of parts currently on the bike, take the link below and look inside.

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Kenda Small Block Eight

Published January 18, 2010

A rep from Kenda was set up at Ray’s MTB on Saturday displaying all manner of tires, tubes, and such. Conveniently all tires were also available for sale, at US$20/each, which is quite a bit below retail. I’ve been wanting to try out the Small Block Eight (SB8), a small knob smooth-rolling tire good for hard pack surfaces, so I picked up a pair of them in 29″ x 2.1″, the only 29er size made.

The Nevegals (which came stock on the bike, front and rear) don’t roll particularly smoothly but supposedly offer great control. Following some online recommendations I fitted the SB8 on the rear of the bike, leaving the nice, big knobs up front for better control. We’ll see how this shakes out once I actually start riding the bike, but at least I’ve now got a few options to play with. If nothing else I’m sure I can sell the Nevegals and SB8s for a reasonable price to fund some other tires.

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