Anyway, from a quick scan of t’web last night it appears to be some significant sausage waving with limited actual fact.  It stemmed from a Google translated sentence ‘The federal government declared that its intelligence agencies generally are able, to decrypt PGP and Secure Shell, at least in part’.  Given a standard PGP-encrypted message doesn’t hide the sender, recipient, subject or time sent, that’s probably enough to justify the ‘at least in part’ with any expenditure of effort.  Beyond that, the standard Government approach to decrypting PGP content appears to be using keyloggers etc to capture keyring passwords (see United States vs Scarfo), legally requiring someone to reveal a password (United States vs Boucher, UK use of RIPA legislation) or somewhat less subtle means (see rubber-hose cryptanalysis).  All of which have the potential to result in access to encrypted content, and none of which suggest there is any risk to the average user at the moment.

So we can all keep communicating bank details (or just generally communicating if you’re in China) via emails in safety a little while longer.

First then, a general introduction.  Behold; the Nazca Fuego.

The Fuego, basking in almost-sunshine by Loch Arklet

This model had two years of heavy use when it came to me from Laid Back Bikes, and I’ve put a respectable mileage on it since then.  Generally regarded as a semi-low racer, it’s rear wheel drive, has rear wheel suspension and has above seat tiller steering.  Brakes are cable-actuated discs, the seat is fully adjustable via quick releases and there’s a rear rack and optional pannier rack under the seat.

When I had my first test ride on recumbents, I thought I was after something blindingly quick and uncomfortable – a lightweight ninja machine that would hunt down roadies uphill and leave them for dust on the descents.  I quickly realised I wasn’t, not least because I need to carry a fresh change of clothes into work every day and therefore need a rear rack.  I also thought that if these recumbents were as comfortable as everyone claimed I might fancy doing a bit of touring on them rather than the upright, so the ability to carry a bit more luggage would be cool.  But I do like fast as well, because being overtaken by people with shaved legs hurts regardless of the bike you’re riding¹.

The Fuego ticks all these boxes so emphatically the pencil rips the paper.  If you want a stable, comfy, affordable HPV which can carry a full touring load yet keep up with the road bikes on the weekend jaunt and fits into the average tenement flat, I’m not sure you could find a better choice.  And you’ll still leave everything behind downhill.

Assuming you’ve read Dave’s review and are well up to date on the pros and cons of the stock Fuego, lets look at what I’ve changed in the pursuit of the perfect all-purpose HPV.

The stock tyres were Schwalbe Marathons, which are great heavy duty tyres, with a useful reflective tyre wall.  They are pretty slow to spin up mind, so I’ve stuck on some Duranos.  These are definitely quicker, have slightly better grip and I’ve still only p*nctured once (ok, twice, but the other time was a pothole so severe it also knocked the whole wheel out of true, so it hardly counts).  Less durable mind, so you’ll be buying them more often.

Back End

Back end of the Fuego, showing updated drivetrain, suspension and hydration, as well as the handlebars in the raised position to getting in and out of the seat

There’s now a Shimano XT derailleur, which offers great performance for a sensible cost.  The cable line is also much better than other options around this price point.  The cassette is a SRAM 11-23 road offering, which gives much closer ratios for easier spinning, and the chain is SRAM’s nickel plated PC991 which resists the salt of the roads considerably better than most.  The suspension has gone from a coil spring to an Epicon air shock, which is half the weight and considerably smoother and quieter.  Finishing off the drivetrain tweaks at this end there’s a Terracycle idler and much less chaintube.  I’m uncertain about the chaintube changes – there’s a touch less drag but bizarrely a lot more chain noise.  This could probably be reduced by increasing the tension on the derailleur tensioner to remove some of the chain slap.

You’ve also got my magical hydration system, which consists of a bladder in the rack pack with the tube held in place by two retracting hand gel bungee things.

You know, these.

This works brilliantly, if I say so myself.  I’ve cable-tied two bottle holders either side of the rack for either extra water or my breakfast.  These sit behind my shoulders so don’t add any extra drag, but unless you’re considerably more acrobatic than me you can’t reach them on the move.  Finally, there’s the business end of the Magicshine rear light (just at the top of the suspension), with the battery just visible between the seat and rack pack.  Aim it downwards to avoid blinding everyone behind you.

Front End

The front end, showing new crankset, derailleur, lighting and, ah, my foot

At the pointy end, the crankset has been swapped for a Deore mountain bike offering.  You lose a little off the top end, but combined with the road rear cassette get a much nicer distribution across the range.  Note that due to the length of chain and middle idler there’s no need to worry about crosschaining gears, so you can happily sit in the big/big cog combination (or small/small) without any additional drag/noise.  This is useful, as the front derailleur remains pretty heavy to move.  This must be something to do with the cable routing, although I haven’t been able to improve it much despite some fettling.  Given the twist grip shifters changing the front gears can be a bit of a wobbly experience until you get used to it, although swapping to some trigger offerings would help if it bothered you.

The use of an XT front derailleur rather than a Deore was just because the offer on at the time made it cheaper – I’ve yet to find any performance difference.

You can see the reflective tape I’ve added to the cranks in an attempt to comply with the requirement for pedal reflectors.  Works well from the front, although is clearly invisible from the back as I’m in the way.  All a bit pointless given in any kind of dim visibility the bike is lit up like a Christmas tree, but it hopefully reduces any chance of a driver getting off on a technicality in SMIDSY circumstances.

Lastly there’s Supernova’s excellent E3 front light, driven off a SON hub in the front wheel.  This is all the front light you’ll ever need (or, admittedly, want to pay for), delivering oodles of light onto a well defined letterbox pattern.  Note the slightly lower recumbent postitioning of the light (as opposed to the handlebars of an upright, for example), means the letterbox reaches much further in front of you whilst still illuminating the area in front of your wheel.  Bit of a Brucey Bonus, there.

Conclusion

So, I’ve made plenty of changes – have I reached recumbent nirvana, or is there still something missing?

Well, it’s very close.  The drivetrain is still a little loud, and my current setup requires a plastic deflector on the front fork to prevent the return chain chewing into it on the granny ring.  It’s also undeniably chunky, so you better be in good shape if you’re planning on sprinting up hills or racing carbon framed uprights.

However, I’m not sure what I’d change.  I like the comfort given by the steel frame and suspension and the convenience offered by the rack options, and I wouldn’t reduce either of these just to make it a bit lighter.  The seat is low enough for real benefit in a headwind, and yet not so low that you feel uncomfortable in city traffic.  With luggage on the racks under the seat the thing rides like it’s on rails, and looks pretty smart as well given the black/orange colour scheme of my Carradice baggage. The lifting tiller adds a few grammes, but also makes getting in and out much much easier and allows a smooth-looking rolling dismount.  And it’s still hardly slow, and being low down and leaning hard into corners makes everything feel much faster anyway.

My one sentence summary?  A very nearly perfect HPV if you want to do a bit of everything on the road.

¹ I can confirm however that it is not possible to catch a roadie in full flight when caught unawares on a Raleigh Twenty. But by all means try.

RWGPS has three levels of accounts – free, basic ($50/year) or premium ($80/year).  I started with the free and then moved onto the premium, which in real money works out at just over £4 a month.  I’m happy with this – I can see new features coming in regularly, the site is booming in popularity and the founders are enthusiastic and respond to emails.  In fact, here they are:

So, what can you do with RWGPS?  To start with lets mosey across to my profile.  I can see a little more than you (well, I is my profile) including a feed and some tabs for segments (more on that lower down).

Clicking the picture links to the profile, if that above link in the text wasn't obvious enough

You’ll spot on the left the two bikes I have on here (albeit only one with a suitably glamorous photo), and some summary stats.  Note the hilariously high number of recorded trips is mainly due to my commute logging four trips a day (there’s a train in the middle of each leg).

The big edge that RWGPS has over, say, Strava is the ability to plan routes in advance rather than just upload rides from the GPS.  This works pretty well, although it can still be a bit frustrating until you get the hang of what type of actions to avoid.  It’s miles ahead of any other mapping stuff out there though, so let that soothe your angst.  The advised method is to click around your proposed route in small chunks (say 10km), dragging the line as you go to make tweaks.  The main engine is Googlemaps, so it’ should be familiar to most.  You can flick across to satellite or terrain overlays, or bring up OpenStreetMap and map on that.  A caveat to the last – the drag and drop to amend route doesn’t work with OSM.  Dunno why; it just doesn’t.

I’ll freely admit that my usual approach is to look at the map, pick a suitably tasty looking loch a suitably manly distance away, and then click on it.  I’ll then scoot down the proposed route to make sure it looks roughly ok.  Save as you go, because drag-to-edit on these long stretches occasionally throws a wobbler and you end up with weird loops you can’t remove.  I’ll then make about two further clicks to bring me in a loop back home, and job’s a good ‘un.  You’ll end up with something like this, which is the route I planned for Pedal On Parliament:

RWGPS POP28 planned route; again, click to jump to the site

Note that I’ve highlighted the spot on the map that corresponds to the peak of the chunky hill, but I could also do this the other way round by hovering over the elevation graph.  This works well if you’re trying to get somewhere without arriving in a sweaty heap, as you can detour around the odd mountain, or at least pick the least aggressive looking ones (this is Scotland, after all)

An aside: this elevation stuff (and RWGPS in general) relies heavily on Flash and Java.  That might be a problem for you, but it works fine on my Ubuntu laptop and Windows PC.

Now, let’s move the route on to the GPS.  Connect your Garmin of choice – I’m wielding an EDGE705 with free OSM mapping (post to follow…).  Assuming you have all the drivers and you’re not on Linux (bah humbug to Garmin on that one) your system and browser should be able to detect the thing.  Under the ‘Export’ tab click ‘Garmin Write’.  Allow permission.  You’re done!  RWGPS tells you where to find it, so load it up, get a leg over and spin away.  Note that direct write to Garmin is a ‘premium feature’, from the free account or with Linux you’ll have to download the gpx to your PC and then shunt it across manually.  Not a biggy.

Having returned victorious from conquering the hills and holding your celebratory mug of tea (other caffeinated beverages are available), you’re obviously desparate to see some numbers.  Plug in the GPS, go to ‘Add Content’ / ‘Garmin Sync’ and let the browser do the work.  A point here – RWGPS does not have the Strava ability to keep private the area around your home and workplace.  Three options to counter this:

1. Mark the checkbox to keep the whole route private.
2. Be disciplined with when you start/stop the GPS to avoid recording the start and final stretch.
3. Live in a tenement flat so even the rough street area doesn’t reveal much and have your workplace surrounded by nested razor wire and the MOD Guards finest.

I’ve gone with option three.  I suppose there’s also an option 4 of ‘don’t care’, but just make sure you’re not advertising when you’re out of the house on that glorious week long cycling holiday.

Now we get the the sexy stuff.  Lets take this ride home from work via the Red Cross HQ which I did last Friday¹.  You can do nice things like play the route back with time acceleration and view graphs of time/speed/gradient/heart rate/power (which are more readable when you zoom in on sections).

Less useful at this level of zoom!

On the metrics tab, as well as some basic info, you can do some neat things like divide the trip up into set intervals (distance or time) and then view average speed and elevation gain for each:

Basic and Calculated Split metrics from RWGPS (I've moved the Splits alongside for ease of presentation)

You also get some graphs, or which the most interesting in my view are the two below.  Both give you a bit more information about your average speed.  From the top one, I can see that my average sits around 27-30kph.  The spike at 11kph is my ‘twiddling up hills’ speed, and the other at 4kph is my cruising towards red lights/walking speed.  The second graph (ignore the spikes either end caused by the GPS being a bit slow locking on) shows nicely that my average speed on the flat sat around 27-28, with smooth movement either way as the gradient shifts.

Examples of two of the graphs produced by RWGPS

Note this was an almost entirely level route. Looking instead at 175km of much more lumpy stuff from the 1st April, the average has dropped to around 23kph and the difference of speed with gradient is much more obvious:

I've already logged a suggestion that the x axis is marked at intervals rather than every unit...

Two more things to talk about.  The first is ‘segments’, which are remarkably similar to Strava’s segments if you’ve used that.  Effectively you select a chunk of road, and the system beavers away in the background across all recorded rides in the system and gives you a leaderboard.  Sadly fewer people use RWGPS in the UK than Strava so there’s a bit less competition, but it works really well.  Rather than try and explain I’m going to borrow their video on the subject:

Quick caveat – you’ll spot from that video the old RWGPS logo which includes a motorcycle helmet.  There’s still a few tracks logged by people using internal combustion to get around, so you’ll find the odd leader on a segment with clearly dodgy average speeds.  You can flag these to get them taken off the segment, so it’s not a huge issue.  The leaderboards on your profile occasionally get your position wrong as well, which is odd.  It’s still correct if you open up the segment, so I’m sure it’ll get sorted at some point.

The final aspect I’ll talk about is the maintenance logger, which I’m pretty sure is unique to RWGPS.  Remember back at the top where you could list your bikes under ‘my gear’?  If I select one, I can bring up the Maintenance Log, which allows you to record, you know, maintenance.  So what, I hear you ask.  Well, it also tracks when you did that maintenance, and how many miles you’ve done since.  So if you stick a new chain on and want to know how much mileage you get out of it, you can see at a glance.  It’s still in its infancy as a feature (ie if I swap out the chain for a new one, there’s no way to stop the old chain still racking up distance) , but RWGPS have made some promising noises about where it’ll go.

The maintenance log for the Fuego.

Right, I’m going to stop there, as I’m beginning to bore myself.  A quick and dirty summary?  RWGPS lets you plan routes, record trips and dig into the numbers via a slick and obvious interface.  There are a few bugs, but the feature set is way ahead of anything else.

Awesome stuff.

###

¹ You’ll notice how the trip is a mainly straight line, and yesterday was pretty sunny?  You can’t beat that ‘one side of the body burnt’ look.

Please bear with me whilst I sort out layout, structure, content and all the other things that you’d normally do on a dev environment.  The pixellation on the header is already getting to me, so I’ll try and sort that sharpish.  I’m also attempting to import everything that was on the old Tumblr blog over, so we might even get some content.  Hurrah!

This is a long-winded way of saying that I rode behind one for much of Pedal On Parliament, and the rider has just put a review up.  Go and read it.  Not least because it describes me as ‘someone who can climb’…

And yes, it is true that I nearly created a five wheeled Fuego/Vortex monster due to a lack of awareness of respective braking ability.  On a disc braked recumbent you assume that you have the best stopping power available. 

It turns out this is not the case.

I’ve also made a few minor updates to ‘The Bikes’ page (clicky at the top, or here if you’re just to lazy to move the mouse all the way up there).  Includes a lovely picture of the much beloved ‘ripping it up’ on the Raleigh Twenty.

magnificentoctopus: Polis on Parliament! on Flickr. thankyou card for @LBP_Police who looked after 3000 cyclists at POP

Anyway, armed with this new enthusiasm over the past week or so I have dived into the sea of information about the Scottish Local Elections, taking place on Thursday.  I’m primarily interested in Langside (‘Ward 7’ – could that sound any more like the start of a horror film about some kind of epidemic?) and, obviously, the candidates’ thoughts on cycling will play a key role in deciding in what order I place my votes.

Turning to my reserve brain (Wikipedia), I was somewhat surprised to discover that eight folk are competing for the spot of Big Chief Langside.  We’ve only had three flyers through the door (SNP, Lib Dem and Conservative), but no matter – surely the others have all the information online and are avoiding printing paper for environmental reasons?

It appears not.  My ability to drag information out of Google is reasonably capable, but despite trying for more time than I’d like to admit, I struggled to find information on any of the candidates.  Here’s a wee summary of what I found:

• Susan Aitken (SNP) – Little blurb on the SNP website and a reasonably active twitter (even if the background is a bit aggressive on the eyes).  Nothing on what she intends to do.
• Paul Coleshill (Lib Dem) – A blog!  Plus a flyer.  Keen on recycling and maintaining green spaces and trees, and references the LD standard manifesto here (which doesn’t mention cycling at all)
• Cayleigh Dornan (Glasgow First).  Nothing.  Unless the twitter @caylz is hers (same name, and in Glasgow), in which case a single tweet: “Drinking bannana (sic) milk yummy!” from 2009.  Moving on…
• Archie Graham (Labour).  Fair bit about him online (he’s represented Glasgow City Council since it was formed in 1995, as it happens), but nothing about what he intends to do.
• Liam Hainey (Green).  A twitter feed which over the past week has been primarily about football and the Ched Evans rape case.  Scottish Green’s website has a bit more information, but nothing concrete about what Liam brings to the picture.
• Alex Hewetson (SNP).  Dormant twitter plus a bio here.  We may also have received something through the door, but it irritated my beloved enough to result in it being recycled.
• Russell Munn (Conservative). Aha.  Again, not a great deal online (although he did attend a WWF thing on the 19th of April), but we also received a manifesto through the post. Sections include ‘What I stand for’, ‘My Priorities’ and a third of one side on nothing other than the Times Cyclesafe campaign, with some actual interpretation on how it might apply to Langside.  Exciting stuff.  Other points include improving collection of recycling, providing more recycling points, improving local green spaces and some stuff for local businesses.  All seems a bit…Green.
• Ronnie Stevenson (Trade Unionist, actually part of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition).  I’m going to be biased here as I firmly believe that anyone who believes we can survive the current economic situation without cuts has their head so far in the sand they’re touching mantle.  Opinion piece here, SACC stuff here.  No news on how Ron intends to continue to fund services, but I’m sure it’ll all be gravy.

So that’s your lot.  Clearly you should be making your own decisions based on your own research, but there’s not a great deal to go on I’m afraid.  There’s a definite sense that some of the parties have token candidates in some wards just to make up the numbers, and a frustrating lack of any personality being conveyed by the majority.

Given the only candidate to mention cycling is also the only candidate to actually tell me what they’d do, I think it’s clear where my vote will go.  This is unfortunate, as to say that the Tories are unpopular in Scotland is a similar understatement to ‘Ms Thatcher was occasionally somewhat forthright’.  Still, stand up for your morals and all.

To end on a jolly note, according to Wikipedia Tory ‘derives from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe; modern Irish tóraí: outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning “pursuit”, since outlaws were “pursued men”’.  Isn’t that great?

The ride across from Glasgow to Edinburgh was considerably more hard work than expected.  A bitter headwind scorned my fingerless gloves and the satnav decided that today was the one day so far this year that it was going to throw all of its toys from the pram.  It spent the journey clutched to my handlebars throwing up occasional comments of ‘Do a U turn’ and ‘Road does not exist, continue?’ whilst mockingly displaying a speed that a fairly arthritic pig would be embarrassed about.  Anyway, I arrived at long last and joined a menagerie of the weird and wonderful outside Laid Back Bikes. 

Add to the above another three recumbents (all from Nazca) – the laid back side of life was represented in force, causing much amusement to all those who watched the circus pass.

We gathered on the Meadows, had a bit of music thanks to ruggtomcat’s portable trailer of tricks, rang bells, milled around, chatted to people we’d never met and lusted over a variety of weird machines and costumes (some of which made my comedy hat look restrained).  And then slowly turned around and realised that the entire centre stretch of the Meadow’s was full of people on bikes.  Blimey.

There was a minutes silence (we didn’t quite realise at the back – sorry!), a minute bell ringing, and then we were off!  Slowly.  Oh so slowly…  Which caused a new challenge for laid back folk of the two-wheeled persuasion who struggle somewhat at speeds below 5kph.  Cue much wild spasming of tillers, cowardly foot downs, and some drunken weaving (and sly use of a certain trailer as a support.  Stick to the left and he can’t see you in the mirror!).  It’s even more challenging if a cruel person attempts to draw you into a no hands competition…

Others have covered in much greater detail the ride itself, the reasons behind it and the 8 point POP manifesto, so I’ll stop here.  The thoughts I’ll take away are:

• I can’t think of any other thing that unifies such a broad a broad range of people whilst giving out such huge benefits.  This is something to protect, nurture and shout about.
• The Pastures does a really good “cyclists’ flapjack”
• Some day I am going to have to play on a trike.

PS: check the ‘speed’ box above, and try and spot where the road opened up and four recumbents leapt for the horizon.  Such childish fun

Look out of the window and find a hill (if you happen to live in south-east England, use your imagination).  Found one?  Great.  Can you walk up it?  I’m not thinking about your actual ability to haul that cornish pasty you had for lunch up the slopes, but more from the standpoint of legality.  Are you allowed to walk up it?  Gee, not sure eh?  Let’s whip out the trusty OS and examine the key. 

Erm, right.  So if you can find a green line of some sorts you’re probably ok, although there’s a risk that the local authority may have stuck a deal with the local farmer since the map was printed and everything’s changed.  Given most home collections of OS maps I’ve seen tend to still have the price tag on the back in shillings, I’d maybe wear the shotgun resistant hat. 

Now I’m going to do the same in the land of sunshine and freedom; Scotland.  I’ve found a hill (not overly challenging, I’ll admit) and using my trusty scouting skills have also pin-pointed the blighter on the map.  Now, where’s that key:

Seems to good to be true, doesn’t it?  Event the use of ‘most land and inland water’ doesn’t scupper it – closer investigation reveals the exclusions tend to be obvious things like houses and their immediate gardens, places where you have to pay to get in, growing crops (although you can walk around the edges), areas of industrialisation, nuclear submarine bases, etc.  But if it’s outside, it looks like countryside and you’re not planning on being an arse (stop me if you get lost with the legal nomenclature, folks), you can go pretty much anywhere and the law actively protects your right to do so.  To me, it’s the ultimate in ‘Big Society’ legislation, based on common sense and trust.

The excellent part of this is that it applies even if you’re on a bike.  Take it steady, be considerate to others and don’t rip up the footpath with your street skillz and you can get your steed all the way up to the top of Ben Nevis (although ability would probably play a tiny part in this endeavour.  That being said; anyone for cycle Munro bagging?)

So, with this new found freedom, what bike to take?  Certainly I’ll be the first to admit a recumbent is out of the question.  Fat tyres would be a help, both from a traction and a protecting the ground viewpoint.  Low gears.  Not overly grim on tarmac.  But beyond that, I’m not sure. 

Thoughts?