The Trek is getting there, and I will too

The Trek is nearing the perfect state of "dialed-in". New bike kinks are getting worked out, new saddle is on order. It's taking longer than usual due to a lot of travel lately, but it's getting done.

In other news, a dude I know took pity on my paltry pedaling prowess, and invited me along on one of his recovery rides to show me some of the roads of Wildwood. Quite frankly, I have no business riding with this fellow, as he's a leading racer in the area, regularly putting the beatdown on people in the mountain bike scene. I suspect he dialed back his "easy" pace even further just so I could keep up, and even then my legs were shot at the end of 30 miles. I'm not so used to hills, and Wildwood has plenty of them. Beautiful roads, though, and good company. My computer showed an average, jaw-dropping 13.3mph average, with ~2,800 ft. of climbing. The kind soul who hobbled himself to allow me to keep up, has done the same ride at an average pace of 20.6. That's pretty much the difference between a soapbox derby car, and an F1 car. And the relative horsepower is probably pretty close, too.

I've determined that I'm slow due to two primary factors. Excessive weight and lack of fitness. Too many hours noodling along on the Katy Trail, for sure. I need hills. I will have hills. Hills - and eventually some group rides - will kill both birds with one stone. Hills are probably good for building power, extending the aerobic threshold, and raising basal metabolic rate. Bam!

The Trek was awesome on the ride. Shifting was crisp and clean, no chain-dropping, didn't have to think about the bike at all. A couple of descents edged into the 40's, and one even into the 50mph range and the Trek was solid as a rock. The demo Arione was just a perch to park my butt while struggling along, which is what you want in a saddle. No rubbing, chafing, or other drama.

The "meh" ride

Meh. That's about all I can say about today's ride. The heat just took all the fire out of me. 'Bout an hour down in Chesterfield Valley, moderate pace. Around the end I started feeling like pushing the pedals, but then I was at my car and it looked so inviting. Certainly better than sitting on the non-existent couch, but not as much fun as less heat-intensive rides.

Some changes to the bike were also being investigated. Switched to a 110mm stem, from a 120mm. May not seem like much, but it matters. Now I can plant my hands firmly on the hoods while cruising in perfect comfort. Also some new tires, Conti 4000S, apparently all the rage. Felt pretty good, but then most tires do. Didn't really push them. And the local shop kindly attached a demo Arione saddle on my bike, which was being tested. The stock Bonty saddly was too wide, and too heavily padded for longer rides. The Arione is narrower, and less padded. Definitely fits me better, I can feel my sit bones in the right place, and after 30 minutes or so couldn't feel the saddle. Which is good, not a sign of numbness. ;) A lengthier ride is in order, but so far so good. Most likely Thursday.

The new Flite won't fit my bike, so that's out...

Drink lots of fluids. It's hot outside!

The Importance of Torque

So my new Trek has been having some front shifting problems, getting progressively worse. Dropping the chain both high and low, rubbing all over. This morning I gave in and took a look at it. I wrench on robots all day at work, I don't spend as much time on my bikes as I used to.

Lo, the derailleur had rotated and dropped about 2mm! Did a nice number on the paint, too. Investigating, the clamp bolt was barely doing anything. Not even what you'd call "snug".

Sure, I understand with lightweight frames you don't want to overtorque anything, having the risk of cracking the carbon or crumpling the metal and destroying the frame. But you don't want to undertorque it excessively, either. There is such a thing as PROPER torque. As my brother the engineer explained, proper torque for a fastener can be calculated. You want to stretch the threads just a wee bit, so they "lock" together. An experienced mechanic can feel this, to an extent. Where proper torque is important, good thread prep and a torque wrench are your friends. In seriously important fasteners, you can even buy special fasteners that limit their own torque, no torque wrench required!

Granted, the extremely thick paint on the Trek (I suspect they did not bother to remove the botched original paint, just sanded it down a bit and shot another coat over it) complicates matters.

But seriously. Torque. It's your friend. Too little is generally better than too much, but best of all is "just right".

The derailleur is to my liking now; lined up, vertical position good, stops set correctly, cable tension good. With proper setup, even the narrow SRAM front derailleur requires minimal trimming. I can see why bike shops may not like SRAM, because they do require more setup time than the competition's components.

I'm looking forward to today's ride and enjoying correct derailleur function!

Audioslave and Doctor Who

So I've been listening to a bit of Audioslave lately. Moments ago, while listening to "Cochise", I swear I heard the Tardis noise in there during the refrains, and even hidden in the deep background for most of the song.

You know the Tardis, don't you? "Doctor Who"? The wacky noise it makes when phasing into or out of a time/place? Yeah, it's in the song. You'd be surprised how often sounds or other references from the long-running "Doctor Who" series appears in our culture. And yes, that's a Dalek up there, staring you down. Don't F___ with the Daleks. In the most recent Who series, they countered a long running joke among Doctor Who fans - "To escape a Dalek, just go up some stairs." Well they had a big epic Dalek chase scene, the good Doctor ran up some stairs and looked back expectantly. Majestically, and with great suspense, the Dalek rose up and FLEW! Take that, mofo's. Scenes of mass Daleks flying, agile and graceful as birds, have been abundant recently.

So, who in Audioslave is a fan of The Doctor?

Cycling Psychology

So I read a lot of cyclists' blogs. Mostly after getting back from a ride of my own. One of the recent hot topics is "nutrition". It can not be denied: you need food to ride. I myself have bonked many times, though my bonks generally have more to do with dehydration than lack of fuel.

Which leads me to my topic. Somehow, over the years, I've come to look at water as "fuel". Other cyclists talk about slamming down a Gu or gel or energy bar and - though it is physiologically impossible to instantly metabolize sugar from your stomach into your bloodstream - immediately feel a boost. I get the same thing, but from water. Clearly there's no caloric value to water. Sometimes on a tough ride I will over-hydrate, feeling bloated from all the water intake, simply because when I'm suffering taking a swig of water alleviates some of the pain and gives me a little shot in the arm.

So where does psychology end and actual nutrition begin? For most, around 2 hours. If I do a ride with no food intake, I can "feel" my muscles run out of sugar around the 2 hour mark. Dehydration is much faster, and much more severe. On a fast ride on a hot day, I can feel the power loss after 30 minutes. If I don't drink something instantly (if not sooner, I should know better by now!) the bonk sets in and 13mph is about all I can manage. When the chills start, I know there's trouble on the horizon, and I look for some water and some shade.

So when I see people lining up for a 40-minute crit, or a 30-minute time trial with Gu packets tucked into every nook and cranny of their kit, I have to smile and marvel at the power of psychology. And I smile at my frugality - water is cheaper than Gu. Tastes better, too.

What keeps you going on rides?

I've made the leap

I've said it before and I'll say it again: SRAM rocks! The more miles I put on my SRAM road components, the more impressed I am. Brakes are phenomenal. Rival shifters are ok, but the Red shifters rock the house down. The derailleurs take a little time and care dialing in, but once set the shifts are lightning-fast. Double Tap shifting is the cat's meow. I'm a little "meh" about the gloss black finish on the Rival parts, but hey...you ride, not stare at your bike, right? All in all if they fit your bike and you like Double Tap, the price/performance of SRAM cannot be denied.

Pedals, pedestrians

Today I opted to do a couple hours at Creve Coeur Park. I've largely given up on this park, due to the high numbers of meandering pedestrians and/or meandering low speed cyclists. I don't mind pedestrians or slow cyclists...except when they completely disregard the lane striping and wander into the oncoming lane. Or better yet ride/walk four abreast and occupy the entire width of the path. This makes both approaching ped traffic, and people trying to overtake come to a dead stop while they scamper aside and apologize, belatedly, for their lack of common sense. Little children I can understand, they don't have the "right lane" thing embedded in their brain from years of driving. But adults? Makes me wonder how they drive...

At any rate, I braved the chaos today to do a little pedal cleat tuning. I've recently switched back to Shimano pedals, trying out the new "batwing" design and because their cleats are SO much easier to walk in than Speedplay. Made a few adjustments, cleat position feels much better. Toed in the brake pads a bit, as they were howling at Babler yesterday. Rear brake was dragging after the toe change, no cable adjustment left, so I opened the release and just didn't use it. Also some more tweaking of the drive train is in order, as well as transplanting the Red shifters from Velotron to the Trek. I checked, the Rival shifters that came on the Trek have about 3x the slack before moving any cable compared to Red. I wondered why they felt so sloppy and sluggish!

The joys of dialing in a new bicycle...it can take a while! My two weeks in Indy certainly didn't help, as my legs were gently cramping after only 1.5 hours...

Home!

After my two-week top-secret mission to Indianapolis, I am back at El Casa del Senor van Hossfeldo. Better known as my hovel. I am now fully able to tear apart, troubleshoot, and reassemble a couple more robots. Good for the resume, in these trying economic times. And since The Great Pharmaceutical Juggernaut picked up the $15,000 tab, I figured why not.

Class was interesting. I missed three questions on the final test. Two because of a lack of information - everyone (6 of us) in the class missed those two questions. One because I over-analyzed a trick double-negative question and confused myself. But I got my certificate, so it's all good. Beckman-Coulter (the company whose robots I was training on) has one of those "we are right and the customer must obey us" mentalities. Not so much with the customer service. I fear they are on their way out in the Great Laboratory Automation wars. Nothing really new in 6 years, high prices, poor engineering, and a general lack of customer focus. It's a competive business these days, and they no longer have a lock on the multichannel pipetting market like they used to. The writing is on the walls, but I don't think they are looking.

Best of all...get this...they engineered and build a plate-moving arm that can rotate. It's got the motors, gears, controllers, and is actually pretty elegant. But - shockingly - they couldn't be bothered to write the software to actually make it rotate! It can rotate, it wants to rotate...but the software is unable to tell it to rotate. Likewise with variable span of the tips. 6 extra motors, 8 lead screws...but no software to take advantage of it!!!! What the Hell? Those little servo motors are not cheap. Figure $700 a pop at wholesale. $1,600 for the control electronics. They have 8 of them in there that - because of software - don't do anything. That's like having a 12-cylinder car but only using 4 of them because the company couldn't be bothered to program the engine controller to fire all the spark plugs.

Indianapolis is a great place, but I could never live there. Despite the presence of the Major Taylor Velodrome (one of very few functional velodromes left in the US) the streets and motorists are decidely anti-cyclist. My hotel room had previously housed untold numbers of cats, which negatively impacted my sinuses, and resulted in a sinus infection. I switched rooms after the first couple of days, to no avail. The infection has already been roundly defeated, mind you, but it was tiring nonetheless.

I am pleased to be back in my home, my own bed, listening to a little Soundgarden. Tomorrow, I will get reacquainted with the Trek...

Nearly home...

Ah, travel. I went by car so none of that airline nonsense. Indianapolis! Indianapolis has a gorgeous downtown area, highlighted by the pictured canal. I am in the northwest suburbs, where apparently too much chlorine in the drinking water is not nearly enough. Burns your eyes in the shower! On the way, I encountered what must be among the world's largest crucifixes (crucifii?). It will be nice to get back to my own bed after two weeks away. I think I'll be needing some Imo's pizza, as well. Although I have to say, Indy has no shortage of good restaurants!

How NOT to build something

This past week, I've had the privilege of attending training for a particular breed of liquid-handling robot. It does its job, and it works reasonably well, and The Vast Pharmaceutical Juggernaut which gives me money owns quite a few. They do tend to break more (a lot more) than other brands, but they are also simpler to program.

Now that I've torn one down and rebuilt it, I am shocked, amazed, appalled, disgusted, dismayed, and mildly outraged. Engineers supposedly design these things, right? No engineer I've ever met would admit to designing this one.

Let's talk fasteners. Metric allen-head bolts? Sure, of course, they Da Bomb, and everyone knows it. Usually, that's about it. But WAIT! There's more! SAE freaking allen-head bolts. What?!?!? Two different measuring units on the same robot? Madness. But hold the phone, the insanity gets worse! FREAKING PHILLIPS-HEAD BOLTS! For the love of all that is Holy, these are the scourge of the universe. Is this a nightmare? No, no, sadly it is reality.

My dear brother the aerospace engineer, would be furious if he saw this thing. Blind bolts you can't get to without massive disassembly, high-stress bolts in shear (bad engineer! Bad! BAD!), an infinite amount of "tweaking" required to render the robot remotely operational. Incorrect Loktite application. And mind-scrambling opportunities for failure, any one of which requires a total rebuild. Hmm, this motor output shaft has a lovely flat on it...let's put a round coupler on it and completely ignore the convenient flat, and introduce the possibility - nay, certainty - that at some point the motor will spin and the drive shaft won't. Brilliant.

Rant over.