Sunday, February 26, 2012

LiveStrong wristband

Oh, the yellow Lance Armstrong band!!!
If you bike, you may have this.
If you run, you may have this, too.
If you never do anything physical, you still may have this.
Is there anything else you can do with this other than wearing it?

I found a good use for it.

It grabs onto the break lever.
This way you can prevent your bike from moving when you lean it against a wall or something.
It doesn't grab onto the lever very strong, but it's strong enough to keep the bike still.

Lance Armstrong is awesome, and I like my LiveStrong wristband.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Evelyn Stevens

Do you know Evelyn?
Many people recognize Emilia Fahlin, but it seems Evelyn Stevens is not drawing as much attention as Emilia.
Emilia. She's blond. She's Swedish. She's a cyclist. Did I mention she's blond?

Don't get me wrong. I think Emilia is an awesome cyclist. She's 2009-2011 Swedish time trial champion, and she's only 21. 3 national championship win at age of 21 is pretty impressive.
I'm mentioning Emilia here because they are teammates and I saw many people talking about Emilia, but no one really said much about Evelyn. Evelyn is more intriguing to me because she has a very unusual history as a professional athlete.
Go to her wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Stevens

She's 28 years old, but her record starts in 2008, when she was 25. Plus, this 2008 record is not even professional (Cat 3/4 means she's starting out). Considering most pro cyclists start as junior and they show some results in their early 20's already, winning record starting at age of 25 seems a bit odd.

Then again, she's US time trial champion in 2010 and 2011. I'm sure she'll win the championship race this year again (I'll explain what time trial is some other time. Google it if you can't wait).
Hmm... wait. She started at 25 and 2 years later she's US champion? Really?

Evelyn used to work in finance on Wall Street and she discovered her talent rather later.
This article is her story on Wall Street Journal.

She's a top US cyclist now, but I hope to see her becoming a world champion in near future.
She's with Team Specialized-Lululemon now (formerly known as Team HTC-Highroad).
This video is not the really about her, but she's in it. So, here it is.


Sunday, February 19, 2012

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE


This is a great work. Probably one of the best I've seen.
The original is at http://vimeo.com/35927275




THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.




Friday, February 17, 2012

How to store your bike during the off-season

For many cyclist winter is a sad time of the year.
In October and November I tried to bike as much as possible, but when the temperature drops below 50 the wind shear is just unbearable.

So, for us living in the unfortunate part of the country winter means off-season.

Then, you have to store you bicycle somehow, but is there something to consider?

Imagine you're storing your car in a garage for 4-5 months. Of course if you ask different people they answer differently, but they all come up with a short list of things to do.
Some may change engine oil, some will wash their cars, some would even wax it for some reason.

What about bicycle?
Is there something that really needs to be done?

One important thing is moving the derailleurs (not deraillers) toward smallest gear rings.

Do you see that in the picture? I mean move derailleurs toward the green arrows.
Top view of the front derailleur. Move your derailleur (and chain) toward green arrow direction (inward)
Rear derailleur. Move your derailleur (and chain) toward green arrow direction (outward)

This is fairly important. To understand why, you may need to know how derailleur works.
Derailleurs are nothing but guides that align your chain to remain in certain position. Wherever the derailleurs go, chain will follow.
Imagine you're shifting rear derailleur from the outer-most gear to the second to the outer-most. First, the derailleur moves (because you're shifting). The chain does not move onto the new gear right away.
It stays onto the old gear until it gets to the shifting point.

If you look closely once every few teeth of the gear has different shape. Look at the picture below.
Do you see the blue arrows and the shape of teeth is different than their neighbors? That's where the shifting happens.

The teeth of that shifting point is smaller than others, so the chain can go in-and-out of the gear smoothly. Ah~.

Ok. Now, as you noticed the derailleurs are spring loaded, meaning there are springs applying force in one direction all the time. Take a look at the first two pictures above.
Do you see the green arrows? That's the direction of this spring force.
For example, in case of the rear derailleur, the spring mechanism inside of the derailleur is always pushing it outward.

When you shift gears you apply tension to the cable (there are a cable coming out of the derailleurs. One cable per a derailleur. Check your bike) and pull the derailleur toward the red arrow direction.

Inside the shifter (near your finger tips), there's a notched mechanism so it lets you pull the cable only so much, and that makes the derailleur stay in a certain position. (Imagine you're shifting from outer-most to second to outer-most, yet your derailleur ends up between some other random position. This notched mechanism prevents it from happening. It's like the derailleur is moving step-by-step and the size of this step is fixed by the shifter.)

Now you see how shifting works (beyond the chain and gears). You move shifter, shifter pulls the cable, cable pulls the derailleur to the next position, chain hits the shifting point on the gear, chain moves, you're on a new gear.

Shifting the other direction is pretty much the same except now you're not pulling the cable. The shifter let go of the cable, so the spring brings the derailleur back to smaller gear direction. This also happens by the step specified by the shifter mechanism.

Problem happens when you store your bike for a long time with derailleur in red arrow positions. Then you're constantly pulling the cable, fighting the force of the tension. A few hours or a few days in this position is fine. However, if it stays in that higher tension position for a long time (a few months) the cable gets stretched out.

Of course you can adjust the cable for smoother shifting, but when the cable is stretched out too much you need to get new cables. Other types of bicycles are a bit better, but for road bikes replacing cable is not really a simple job (it involves unwrapping bar tape, replacing cable and housing, re-routing the housing, putting the bar tape back on, and adjusting derailleurs).

So, move your shifter toward the green arrow directions during the storage.
If not, you may end up getting new shifting cables in the spring.

Monday, February 13, 2012

1st post

Well, this is my first post on this blog, and I don't expect to write much until weather gets better.
It's snowing outside and it's far from the biking season to resume.
Hmm. I wonder what it would be like to have a winter home in Australia.
I'm craving for some good biking time.