Bike Hugger goes into the whole Cancellara Conspiracy, doing a nice review of the published reports and comments.
I will say this morning I found myself pushing the "button" on my Levers to try and get a little assist on the hills today. It didn't work.
Many of the vegan arguments about why they don't eat meat are starting to sound like creationist rhetoric, based on mis-information or deliberate twists and omissions of salient facts. I am an omnivore. I do have many friends and family who are vegan, and with all the reading over the last many years I'm not sure that it is the healthiest way to exist, nor the most environmental.
The Atlantic popped up one of three great articles today. A home run "web publishing" day for them IMHO. The first of which, "Can Meat Eaters Also Be Environmentalists?" touches on the the vegan thing. I wonder what the VegNews take was (as a counter point to the article I just linked).
And yeah, Jerry. All about food. Go read Jonny's blog again.
Second article is about our favorite corporate yogurt maker. And yes i've said a few disparaging things about them, I still think their product is over sweetened and I question certain additives beyond milk and bacteria, but you have to give them props for what they are doing, and have done. And we all have to be grateful for the path that Gary is publicly blazing for this planet.
Thanks Gary.
Finally.
Coffee (G-ride you could read this if you want to but maybe not). That first Atlantic article about espresso from the illycafe Master Barista was great but from reading the second there was a bit of debate and he's made an attempt to clear it up.
Reading these couple articles really sort of makes me want to get a nice lever espresso maker thingy like baby-hill junkie has. Maybe it has to do with how tired I've been the last couple days. But then if I think about what I did these last couple days, yeah, no wonder I'm tired. Coffee won't help me get the sleep I need and is it really worth the trade off? Jury is still out on that. For now I'm muddling through with a reasonably busy schedule to keep my brain from falling asleep during the day. But still finding myself dreaming about having a Pavoni/Gaggia hand pump machine at home. Something like this would be awesome. Although I think honestly I'm more of a chrome person. And since, for that price point, I can get a decent new cx frame and maybe some carbon hoops on ebay, I'll probably keep dreaming and waiting until I win the lottery. Which if I have hopes of winning I will eventually have to buy a ticket... but then my odds of winning are about the same if I spend the money on a ticket or not.
Love the punch line here:
So the weather is nice, and missing the smack down last night combined with the fact that the Ballet schedule means the girls will be gone before I can get there and in rehearsal for most of the "dinner hour" means I'm going for a ride. I'd contemplated trying to get a ride down to Ninigret. But as much good as an hour of hanging on for dear life at Ninigret would do me, I would rather skip the time in the car and just ride. And that's what I'm doing. Sticking around local, couple hours on the bike, then ride home.
It just feels like the right thing to do. Not quite piling on from the weekend but getting a decent volume in an every other day sort of way. Have fun on the bike before the structure starts. Also, it fits with the don't pass up an opportunity to get out for a ride (IOW don't be a lazy fatass).
Not that many would care but it looks like my nice pleasant commute will be messed up next year for a couple years. Maybe the RIBike folks can work out a deal to have it open when it can be, I hope so.
But man when they finish? Ooooh that will be nice.
-G
6 comments:
yeah, chrome is the only way to go for a hand-pump. Well, unless you can find yourself a used commercial grade hand-pump. A restaurant I used to work at had a Rancilio hand-pump, and it made some of the best espresso I've ever had. (Its action is completely different from the Pavoni. With the Pavoni, you pull up the handle, which releases water which begins the extraction using steam pressure, and then the handle pushes the water though. I'm not sure what the mechanics are with the Rancilio, but you pull down on the handle, which starts the espresso, and finishes as the handle slowly moves back up.)
Hey thamks for the shout out Big Man.
That video looks very suspicious especially at Flanders when he seems to be trying to keep up with the pedals and excerting no force, while in comparison Boonen is flailing about like anyone would need to do, at that speed on that grade over cobbles. FC even seems to look down at his bottom bracket at the top in disbelief. I think he had help. With so many guys worried about testing positive, it was only a matter of time before they thought of this. Didn't he take a bike very close to that time too?
I thought it was bunk until i saw the Flanders bit. I thought the same thing, look at him trying to keep his feet chasing the pedals. He was barely rocking in the saddle, it was a very unnatural pedaling action. weird.
sort of like when Lance pedaled away from Ulrich?
all three of those shots with Fabian flying away in that context, definitely look odd.
But really.
I'm mostly skeptical that a self contained motor that you can put down the seat tube is going to make enough horse power to provide enough watts to make a difference for Fabian... He ain't small.
Full specs are on the Gruber website. You could conceivably get over 30 minutes of 100W boost out of this thing for about a 2-3kg weight penalty. It sounds extremely noisy though. That tiny diameter motor must spin crazy RPMs and go through equally crazy gearbox. It is hard to say if you had to ride a bike equipped with this gadget over a long, hilly course, if you'd realize a net gain. That is a lot of weight to carry around for about 180kJ of cheater energy. Bigger riders produce over 6000kJ of energy in the Paris-Roubaix.
Ya in the Flanders vid, he never even shows additional effort. When an attacker stands up and launches it's very obvious. When a strong guy like FC attacks in the saddle it's less noticable, but still, and especially in slow motion and with repetitive replays, we should be able to see the sudden extra emphasis on the pedals and on his face. None of that is there. He looks like he just twisted the throttle and dropped Boonen who didn't hesitate 1 split second,like a bad habbit.
All he would need is 10 or 15 seconds of "boost" to get the gap, and then he's strong enough to beat Boonen in a man on man TT.
When was that bike switch?
I'm tellin you, the history of cheating and shortcutting in cycling is as long as the sport itself. I think this is very plausible. Maybe we should submit it to mythbusters....
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