Cross Race #1 in the bag

Did my first cross race this weekend, and it was pretty sweet. Was only about a half hour drive, up in Fullerton. It was basically an all grass course, which makes it slow and hard... but since I did the 3/4 which was the last race on the 2nd day of racing, there was a beaten down path in the middle of the course which made it much faster than my trial runs on it before the elite race the day before.

I started in the 2nd row, and was probably about 10th through the first turn and into the first set of barriers. By the end of the first lap I had worked up to 6th or so, feel pretty good. My highest position was 5th, which I held for a lap, despite skidding out around one corner. My big mishap came on a concrete slab before a few stairs. I think that I didn't get my left cleat unclipped all the way before I started to lean over to start running, and both myself and the bike went down. Picked the bike up, but when I put it back down on top of the grass, the rear wheel was locked down. Damn. The canti caliper had been jammed down past the rim, and I needed to nail it back over with my hand. Took only about 15 seconds, but I lost about 10 places in the process. I was pretty bummed, and went real easy the next lap and a half, feeling like the race was all but over, but I managed to find some motivation to suffer a bit more, and over the last two laps made a bunch of places up as people were hurting to come back and secure a 10th.

All in all a good race. I just ordered some better calipers (not that they were really at fault for the rear wheel lockup) but they do suck, despite being orange. Also planning on making some spare tubie wheels into cross wheels if I can do it cheaply enough. They are box section rims, so I might beat them up a bit, but the cross riding out here isn't too terribly tough, so I hope to be able to use them so I can run tubies. I'll post some pictures later on if the photographer uploads them online.....

Next weekend, look out for another top 10.... hopefully.

Stealing some thunder

So Andy sent me a cool link today about a dual drive "fixed" gear. The question we had, though, was whether the gear ratio had to be the same for both sides. In case you are too lazy to read the link, the setup is basically two front chainrings, with chains running parallel back to two FREEWHEELS on either side of the rear hub. (if its two fixed gears the answer is much simpler)

I believe that the gear ratios can be different. I thought about it this way:If the two concentric circles are the two chainrings, and the two cogs on the outside are the rear cogs. Because they freewheel in opposite directions, they cannot produce torque against each other, so they have no physical mechanism that connects their motion.... so I drew it this way to make it more clear. Obviously the two gear ratios above are different.

So clearly the angular velocity has to be the same for both chainrings, being constrained by the bottom bracket. But if you then express the cogs' angular velocities through the gear ratios, you see that the only way that omega2 = omega1 is if r2/r3 = r1/r4, or if the gear ratios are the same.

Physically, if you had a big gear for going forward, and a small gear for stopping, or going backward, then the whole time you are moving forward, the other freewheel (on the non-drive side, or I should say the left) will be freewheeling like crazy, but because its going backwards it shouldn't matter. If you get a cheap freewheel like I have on my single speeds, then it might sap a few watts out though!

Anyway, if you disagree with my conclusions, let me know... I'd be curious if anyone sees this differently...

Holy shit....

legit....legit....legit.




Pictures of the Bianchi cruiser will be coming soon. 42x16 drivetrain, riser handlebars, orange grips, yellow seat. It's the shit.

That's MAJOR Jake to you

The Kona

Cockpit... cross brake levers... crossed up naturally. Yeah. Orange calipers.


Notice the brake housing.... running the whoooole length. The brazeons on the frame would not accept ferrels, so I had to run the housing the whole way, or buy these metal pieces from Kona that the deal said have a tendency to get sharp and cut people.....

Chainring... with chainguard and 3rd eye watcher. Still managed to hop the chain off on a descent the other night....don't think I'll do that in an actual race though, hopefully.

MAJOR Jake

Kona. notice the Alpha-Qness. Hot.

Fa-Fa-Fa Friday

Friday is going pretty well. I got word that the Easton wheels that I EP'ed almost a year ago finally made it to the shop, and arranged to have them shipped out to the West Coast. See this picture for why I'm so amped about that:

Full carbon rim, straight pull spokes. No J-bends where I usually break spokes.... lovely. I'm contemplating removing all the decals (pronounced deeeeee-cals) save for the E. Originally I had planned on somehow making other letters to spell out "ERIK", but I think I'm too lazy, and since watching the show "Entourage" 'E' will do just fine. So... not that big a deal, I knew they were coming, why such a 'must write in my blog about them' sort of deal?

The charge on my credit card was over $1,000 for them. What the balls? Supposed to be like 500 bucks. So I call up Easton, and after sitting on hold and listening to the same 30 second clip of a Beethoven invention (which having played it previously made it worse to listen to over and over) for 30 minutes I found out that they forgot to take the 40% off wholesale.... and they'll be cutting me a check for about $400. Even better... I even get the points on my credit card, and I get cash.

And then to top it off, I get back and get an email stating that the irDA usb hub that my old roomate Andy (see his blog for further humorous details on this debacle) bought and sent to me (to the incorrect address that I provided) had finally found its way back to the seller on eBay, and that she was sending it again.

Rocking. Now I just need to come up with a dynamic systems level model for a PEM CHP unit, validate to published data, tweak the code and then graduate and make bank. Rocking.

Cross riding... attracts cross weather?

So I went out for my first cross practice yesterday evening. I literally installed the cleats in the parking lot, then took a few minutes to spin around and practice hopping off and "hopping" on before we did a few laps around the park. It went relatively well.... need to do a lot of work so the whole process of hopping on and off is fluid and seamless, but I have some time, so I'll work on that. I did bite it once... at the bottom of a BIG hill. There is basically a large sand pit at the bottom, and I didn't realize how sloppy it actually was down there. So taking the turn at the bottom of the hill I just washed out... but it looked much more hardcore than it was due to my opening up an old cut. Sweet bloody cross.

Thursday morning... coffee crew ride. 30 miles which is usually relatively chill until the end which picks up the pace a bit, then hits two relatively good hills towards the end. The ride was completely different though. It was raining! Wasn't so bad when we started, and it didn't really even ever rain that hard on us, but the spray and all the gravel kicked up made the ride horrible. It was better out East when the constant rains drove junk off the road. There were tons of little stones in my eyes. (sunglasses were worthless). Oh well. My goal was to make it over Newport Coast Dr. (big climb at the end) with the group, but I didn't even really make it to the bottom with them... thanks rain and stoplights. Maybe it was the cyclocross that brought out the weather.... supposed to have more of it this weekend. bummer.

Harden the F&^# up

Well the cross bike isn't quite assembled yet... still need a saddle (coming) and cleats (ordered at the shop). Hopefully I'll be able to get it out a few times before the 30th, which will be the first race... that I already regged for.... sahweet.

Don't have much creative to say... but this dude does... the motivation behind Staurt O'Grady's black wristbands at the Tour...

Kona in charge

I got a cross bike! Kona Major Jake. I've got most of the cockpit assembled, but am still waiting for a few essentials in the mail... saddle, brakes... But I'll throw a picture up of the new steed up on the blog when she's all done. For now, suffice it to say... it's going to look HOT.

Took advantage of one of the last homework free weekends by squeezing in about 8.5 hours of riding. I will be taking this week reaaaal easy. Got a nice easy spin planned for early in the week up the Santa Ana river... looks like a cesspool on GoogleEarth, hope it doesn't smell too much.

Also likely switching my emphasis at work a bit... looks like I'll actually be doing work with some stationary PEM units for my MS work. Probably doesn't mean a whole lot to most people, but instead of doing SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cells) which are real big, high temperature units, I'll be doing smaller (though on the large size for PEM) PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells. Obviously most of the basics are the same with these different kinds of systems, but there are some big differences, which I'll highlight real quick. SOFCs have a solid electrolyte and need to be run at high temperatures so that this electrolyte can efficiently conduct oxide ions. The ion migration is from the cathode to the anode..... oxide ions. This differs from PEM fuel cells, which have a polymer (repeating chain of something or other... remember organic chemistry? neither do i... i didn't take it) electrolyte which generally require water to be conductive for protons, which originate from the hydrogen fuel. In PEM systems ion migration is from the anode to the cathode in the form of protons. The net reaction is the same for both types of cells, generally, but the actual chemical mechanisms are different. If you made it this far, then you are a trooper. Give yourself a pat on the back.

So, if you skipped down to here, don't blame you. I'll be working on large-scale PEM fuel cells, which would be placed in someone's house for example, which would provide power for the house 24/7, and the grid when the house doesn't need it (ie during the day when everyone is at work). They would run on pipeline natural gas (gasp! a fossil fuel!) which would be reformed to hydrogen (the clean answer right?? yeaaaaah). They would also provide heating and possibly cooling, through CHP (combined heat and power) equipped units. Basically heat exchangers to take advantage of the fuel cell's heat generation. With big enough units you can actually cool down air if you have hot air, by using a heat pump... but with small systems it becomes too costly, so smaller units would likely just have heating capabilities, which only require an exchanger, not a heat pump.

If you were interested in any of that mumbo jumbo, then good. If not, I didn't tell you you had to read it. If you want to know more, ask.

Off to bed... I rode 80 miles today...

Riding

I've been out in Cali for a bit now... and I know where the grocery store is, where the closest 173 Starbucks are, and where not to take a #2 on campus. Pretty productive first few weeks. I've also been riding quite a bit. Since I don't really have anything to do in the lab, sometimes I just don't go. Now I'm all physched for when I do have work.... I like getting stuff done (not gettin' 'er done), but when my adviser applauds my simply writing a 4 page fluffer of a thesis proposal, and says its a great start.... its time to slow it down and decrease those expectations.

So yeah... not so much work means a lot of riding. And a lot of riding I did. The first week back on the bike I logged 17 hours. Granted about 9 of those were just real easy spinning around, but still... 17 hours is a good chunk for me. I've done some sweet riding in Santiago Canyon nearby (which sucks when its really hot) and also along the coast (which never sucks). Also been finding some really cool hills to do repeats on later in the year... I'm really pumped for trimming down a bit, and hitting the hills hard in attempts to not be dropped on every climb in every race this year.

Also pumped at the prospect of finally doing a cross season. Despite having two cross bikes in the past, I've never gotten a good ride and a healthy Erik in the same season.... so hopefully this will be it. Got my eyes on a few gems (and a few rustbuckets) on eBay, and also a Major Jake w/ Alpha Q carbon fork locally that I'm checking out tomorrow..... wouldn't that be sweeeeet.