cycling – Page 46

New Crabon Fibre Breaks

March 27, 2010

After coming across a rather good deal for a barely used (installed, but removed before the bike was built up) set of 2009 Avid Elixir CR disc brakes with black carbon fiber levers (blades) I got them installed last night. While they felt soft at first, the brief ride that Danielle and I took around Stony Creek’s Trolley Trails got them about 50% bedded in. Even using a smaller rotor in the front than I’d previously had (160mm vs. 185mm) they seem to be quite sufficient stopping my heavy person on big 29er wheels.

Since I had to disassemble things a bit to fit the new rotors and such, I ended up swapping out the 2.2″ Kenda Nevegals that came with the bike for some 2″ Specialized The Captain Control tires that I’d picked up in the MMBA annual meeting fundraiser auction for $40. These are simply a larger version of the tire I’ve had on my 26″ bike since July 2008, and a tire that I rather like.

I also swapped out the NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for my old Cateye Strada Wireless, which despite having a large and somewhat fiddly speed sensor is much more readable and usable. The NiteRider Rebel 1.0 had two problems that I couldn’t get over. The first is the angle of the display coupled with my stem mounting and the stem angle, leading to the LCD being hard to read when leaning right over it or standing over the bike. The second is a lot of latency between button pushes (up to 1.5 seconds while moving) making it hard to switch modes and check things while en route. It would be hard to tell if a button press was not registering or simply being slow^†. Both of these were irritating enough to make me simply go back to the old computer.

With all of this working out it looks like I might have a pair of BB7s and a NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for sale soon. I might even consider selling off the Nevegals, although having some 2.2″ tires hanging around could be nice come winter, or if I’m heading anywhere sandy.

^†I suspect the device uses an interrupt on change for the wheel sensor then just polls the button, and has a few opportunities for user input to be slowly read. Perhaps their higher end computers are better.

acquired things cycling

Early Spring 2010 Moblog Photos

March 23, 2010

Here, have some new photos posted to my moblog:

· I rolled up the rim and did not win.
· My Specialized is now lacking a fork, as the Fox is being sold and the new rigid fork has not yet arrived.
· UPS RMA label for sending back the damaged Belleville 700 boots received from Botach Tactical.
· Six bottles of Blenheim Ginger Ale in the fridge.
· Garlic and sesame bagel, part of my breakfast before going to work on the trails at Addison Oaks.
· The urinal at Pei Wei in Rochester, MI is rather close to the ground. It would be good for urinal pooping.
· Sending my census form in. This makes me feel like an adult.
· Ice and snow around a drain pipe on the Paint Creek behind Rochester library. Seen while wandering around before an MMBA marketing meeting.
· Forlorn bag of salt in the parking lot at work, with a bit more context.
· A cut open bag of salt left leaning against a curb at work. I imagine it was caught in a plowed pile of snow.

I should set up a more automated method of posting these than simple manual uploads.

cycling food found things outdoors work

Battery Charging Paranoia

March 23, 2010

This is my setup for the first charge of the Li-Poly battery used in the a Bicycle Video Recorder. I had the battery sitting in a partially covered ammo can, my multimeter and thermocouple monitoring the battery’s temperature, and the charger connected to a Kill-A-Watt to show current flow. While charging occurred I’d periodically check in on this to be sure the temp isn’t way up, current draw isn’t unexpectedly high, or the battery hadn’t exploded. Not pictured is the fire extinguisher which was located ten feet away from this setup towards the stairs.

As the green light on the charger shows, the battery is now charged, and everything sitting in place without a coating of extinguisher dust shows that nothing exploded. Now it’s time to grab an 8GB or 16GB SD card and do a runtime test. That sounds like a job for tomorrow, though.

cycling making things

Danielle Rides Trails!

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.

cycling family

Macomb Orchard Trail in March

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.

around the house cycling

Spring Has Sprung!

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. :)

cycling weather

Power Supply for Bicycle Video Camera

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 (photo gallery retired), if you’re interested.

cycling electronics making things

Dragon GAP Winter Race

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 (photo gallery retired) 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.

cycling

Great Weather, New Bar

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.

cycling weather

Trail’s Edge Racing Logos

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.

cycling