SRM, for its clever and entirely unanticipated inclusion of a solar panel on its power meter crankset. They say it significantly extends battery life of the power measuring unit.
I really have no use for a power meter, much less one that costs $3000, but I just love this. As my friend said the other day “this green stuff- it’s happening!”
Wish I had a picture. It looks really cool.Updated with picture. Nice.
Garmin recently announced the newest version of its bike computers (I love Interbike season!). I like my Edge 305 a lot. It’s a nice device that is 
sophisticated, but reasonably easy to figure out. It also plays well with my Mac, MotionBased and TrainingPeaks.
But . . . the new versions have. color. screens. Sure looks pretty.
And real maps- that beats the arrow at the top of the bread-crumb trail that’s all I’ve managed to get out of my 305. Guess I’ve never figured out how to export courses to the device- or I’ve never seen the point of downloading a course when I might deviate
from the route I rode last time.
The real nifty trick is power data, though. Pretty amazing to get HR, power data, GPS and street maps all in one device. Gadget-geek that I am I’m pretty excited to check this out, though at risk of sounding like a ridiculous fanboy I will say that the battery life on my Edge is slightly better than piss-poor. I’m worried I’ll have to set one of those bottle-dynamo things against my tire to get any kind of battery life out of a version with more features.
High-zoot carbon fiber wonder racing bikes are a dime a dozen. A beautiful commuter, on the other hand, has a sense of style and profligacy that no racer can match. Between this and the Kona I posted about last week I don’t know which one I’d rather do errands on. The front basket would definitely work better for bringing home take-out sushi, but the rear carrier is obviously much the better choice for heavy bags of kitty litter. And unless both bikes come with armed guards there’s no way you’d see me locking them up anywhere in San Francisco.
I’ve seen Xtracycles around town a bunch, though they’ve always looked a little kludgy to me. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a bike that is going to see hard use, but I still wondered what a custom-built version would look like. I seem to remember Surly demo-ing one at Interbike, and now it looks like Kona is actually going to sell a version.
I like it. A lot. The Xtracycle panniers look nicer, though.
My Garmin bike computer works well. The battery life is not so good, though, so I bought an external battery pack to get me through some long rides coming up. The name isn’t quite right, though.
The correct one is “Lil’ Stync’er”.
I like bike lights a lot. I really like those ones that replace bar-end plugs on drop bars. I find the ones that fit on your rear V-brake mounts and light up when you brake clever and amusing, though not enough to put on my bike.
Recently, though, I started wondering what I could do to add more light. Ideally there would be some feature on my bike or body just thin enough that the light radiates through, and spreads out. I came up short, but fortunately someone else perservered and came up with Indicatears. A handlebar mount apparently lets the wearer turn on the left/right blinking indicators.
These seemed perfect, but then I started to worry. What happens if I grow my hair long and it covers the lights? What if it’s cold out and I want to wear a beanie under my helmet that covers my ears? That’s why I decided that as good as the Indicatears seem, I’m going to wait for the next generation. With luck they’ll come up with some kind of attachment so that the lights can stick out a few inches from my head, ideally with several LEDs sticking straight out from either ear. Then I’ll buy them for sure.
I *am* a bike wanker, of course, but I don’t always like to be reminded of it.
I stopped at the convenience store near my house for a drink on my way home from riding. The guys in the store saw me trying to keep an eye on my bike and started talking.
“Bikes sure have gotten expensive these days. $500 – $600 for some of them!” said one guy. “No, no” said the other, some of them cost more than that- $2000 – $3000.
I knew where the conversation was going to end up. As I headed out of the store they came with me to see how my steed measured up. “Really light!” they said as they picked it up. “What did that cost $900 or $1000?”
What is the best response to that? “Umm, yeah about that” was the best I could come up with, and then make my escape. <sigh>
Update: A commentor pointed out that the bill applies only to bikes with 20″ and smaller wheels and excludes “adult specialty bicycles”. Shame on me for not reading the bill itself. I still haven’t, though, and probably won’t at all. Thus, I haven’t verified Fritz’s facts or bothered to check the bill or other New Jersey resources for a definition of “adult specialty bicycles”.
It seems as though folding and recumbent bikes are the only adult types with wheels small enough to be affected, but good on Trek for taking the apparent lead in raising awareness of this well-meaning, poorly implemented idea.
And finally, a commentor at drunkcyclist.com (when did that become work safe?) opines that the bill was sponsored by Montague, who allegedly do have a redundant QR design that never took off in the marketplace.
Too many questions, too much speculation, not enough time or interest in chasing down the facts. If I knew any Jersey cyclist I’d tell them to contact their state Senators. As is, I’m done with this story now.
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New Jersey Assembly legislators approved a bill this week aimed at preventing kids from getting hurt if their front wheels suddenly fall of their bikes. This does happen and can cause serious injury. I also have small kids and know something about freak accidents and their undesirable consequences, so I am basically ok with the concept.
However, the devil is in the details. Apparently the bill would ban the sale of any bike with quick release wheels. It also requires an automatic failsafe secondary retention mechanism, but doesn’t bother to explain what that might mean- never mind the fact that nothing currently on the market or anyone’s drawing board could hope to meet the standard.
So what this appears to mean is that if the bill passes the New Jersey Senate and then gets signed by the governor, it will be illegal in New Jersey to sell any bicycle currently available. Hmm. This sounds like one of those bills that gets approved as everyone is on the way out the door for summer vacation. Let’s hope the Senate waits until the fall session, then takes a second look.
I ride a 15 year old bike, so I don’t know a whole lot about carbon fiber frames and parts and stuff. It all looks cool, but I am starting to have my doubts about whether it really makes sense to make *everything* out of carbon fiber, as the bike industry seems to believe these days. Carbon fiber seatposts, in particular, have a tendency to slip- or so I have heard.
Case in point is Alessandro Ballan’s bike from Paris-Roubaix. Call me a luddite, but I’ll stick to my guns with the opinion that if you need to drill holes in your frame and put screws into the seat tube to keep the post from slipping, you aren’t working with the best equipment for the job.
This is probably not surprising to most people who have used an altimeter to hear that the data is not very accurate, but I have been somewhat amazed by how bad the data can get.
San Francisco is really hilly (wow- more amazing revelations!), which create “micro-climates”, which causes big variations in barometric pressure. I used to think it was funny to leave my house (altimeter calibrated properly), then go downtown and up to work on the 9th floor of an office building, only to have my altimeter watch tell me I was 50 feet below sea level.
My Garmin Edge 305 has a barometric altimeter that seemed to basically agree with the altimeter on my watch until I lost the watch. Now I just have the Garmin to go by, but I have noticed big differences in the data recorded on the device and data processed by MotionBased.com. A regular bike ride I do has something just under 6,000 feet of climbing. The Garmin’s screen will report 5,800 or so, but when I upload the file to MB it records it as 6,500.
Even worse is MB’s altitude correction feature. Apparently some altimeters are even worse than the Garmin, because MB’s help files say the Edge is more accurate than the correction feature. Still, I tested it out with some interesting results:
*The same ride described above consistently gets reported as 11,000+ feet of climbing.
*I do a regular workout around a basically flat track early in the mornings. The Edge reports the altitude pretty accurately, but when I turned on the correction it showed a gradual upward trend over the course of the laps. I eventually figured out that was because I do the workout early in the AM, so MB’s correction actually reflected the air warming up as the sun rose.
Too bad there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. I imagine this is why Trainingpeaks.com doesn’t record altitude data- they are super-analytical about their data and maybe they just feel that altitude isn’t reported accurately enough to work well with the rest of their data.
