MacGyver’s Shoes

As subtly hinted at by this morning’s tweet, I have been road testing a budget option of winter-proofing my SPD shoes.

Shown half-way through the delicate procedure, you may notice one of the bomb-proof Shimano shoes has been subtly modified to block off the toe ventilation.  The end result should hopefully be toasty piggies, whatever the weather.

Does this work?

No.  No it doesn’t.  Snug feet are achieved, even in the stiff breeze and sleet we had this morning.  However, the gaffer cap is already separating off from the toe, so unless you’re happy to recreate this every night, it might be time to pony up for some overshoes.

Anyway, I’ve decided that unless I am physically unable to open the front door due to snow fall tomorrow, the recumbent is getting an outing.  Upright bikes in a headwind are such hard work.  This means that I’ll be leading with a good half inch of rubber sole, and warm feet are a happy bonus.

Oscar mans the breach

Excitingly (and somewhat mysteriously) the recumbent front disc brake managed to eat its own pads on the way home last night.  I know, I didn’t know that could happen either.  As a result, you may have heard me limp past last night making a noise like a tin can in a washing machine.  It appears that part of the spring which keeps the two pads apart somehow got sucked between the caliper and the rotor, and punched a hole straight through the pad.  I was quite impressed at the damage…

Staggeringly the rotor has survived unscathed. However, whilst I wait for Wiggle to shunt me a new set of pads, the upright was pressed into service as a commuter.

Meet Oscar.

Oscar was my daily commuter until I went all recumbent-y. It’s a Kona Sutra, in what I’m sure Kona would rather call metallic chocolate but is in fact brown and glittery. It’s a spectacular bike, has no problem with the weekly shop/recycling load, was the only thing moving (ok, moving under vague control) in the Glasgow Day Of Snow And Ice last year and weighs the same as a small moon. Sadly in full winter get-up, with spikey tyres, DIY fenders, kickstands, a stupid amount of racks and me wheezing on top of it, it did get slightly left behind in the train of bikes powering into the base today.

Still, it was fun being able to see over cars for a change!

Cold & Dark Ride II

Having missed the first Cold & Dark Ride organised throught the Glasgow Fixed Gear forum due to a front brake cable deciding that existance as two separate halves was just more fun, I finally got out last night with NiallC from the forum for the rerun.  Ended up being a very pleasant evening ride along mainly quiet, unlit country lanes.  Even the rain held off.

Also discovered that a heavy, aerodynamic recumbent and an upright, lightweight fixed gear go (to steal Neill’s words) ’ at totally different speeds if any form of climb / descent is involved’.  The lower bike weight and more efficient upright climbing position is definitely the sole reason for the fixie’s increased climbing prowess.  Absolutely.  Definitely nothing to do with rider fitness…!

Anyway, I’m quite happy with an overall average of 23kph over 2 hours, especially as I still had the normal work luggage on the back.  GPS below (slightly bigger map through clicking on the title)

Cold & Dark Ride 2

Electrifying

Wheel back, dynamo fitted, light cabling done, heavy rain falling. Ideal Scottish testing conditions. Watch this space…

The Need For Speed

Finally got around to writing the post that really describes the point of this blog.  Regret you’re unlikely to find a philosophical epiphany, but there’s some faintly amusing alliteration.

I have a 30 mile (each way) commute, which is a bit of a pain. Currently 20 miles is done by train, which costs 30 quid a week. Travel time is about 3 hours a day. Disregarding the sanity of doing this just to sit behind a desk all day, the aim of the game is to decrease the time spent commuting without having to remortgage the flat and without becoming a broken cripple of an individual come the evening and weekend.

The recumbent was the first step down this road, giving a slight speed boost and a huge advantage in comfort. The other key benefit of such a bike is that the fettling of recumbents in search of going faster is a well documented and wide open avenue of discovery, glory and fibre glass. If the idea of some quality shed time appeals, there’s hardly a better subject.

So, some ground rules and objectives. 

1. Commute time will be measured door to door and I’ll use an average taken across the week to measure progress.
2. I’ll be completely open about costs incurred in the pursuit of speed. Given my other half occasionally audits these pages, this places full carbon disc wheels firmly out of the question. 
3. To link 1 and 2, I’ll ‘pay’ myself £10 an hour. Therefore consistently saving 5 minutes a day would be worth it for a cost of £4.16 a week (£10 x 5/60 [fraction of hour] x 5 [days in week])
4. All day lycra and Spar sandwiches are both pretty grim. The bike must remain able to carry a change of clothes and my lunch.
5. Getting squashed forfeits the game: the bike must remain road legal.  Lights and brakes folks, lights and brakes.

So. How to approach this wee project? And where, for that matter, is the promised alliteration?

I reckon there are three groups of things that can be done to decrease commuting time, which I’ve given suitably cheesy titles:

Drop the Drag: Everything to do with reducing the forces slowing the bike down.  Aerodynamics, surface drag, weight - get it here.
Push the Power: More power reaching the rear wheel means more speed.  Ish.  Think things like training, nutrition, reducing drivetrain friction.
Maintain the Motion: Cruising at 30mph is no good if the route is peppered with red traffic lights, or if every corner slows the bike to a crawl.

Right.  Game on…

P.S.  For the sceptics, note that driving would save 45 minutes a day, plus the £30 of train fares a week.  Using the scoring in point 3, the total time and money saved comes to just over £3k a year (assuming I work 45 weeks a year).  The best car route is 33 miles one way, so we’re looking at a total of 14,850 miles in the same year.  Based on the AA’s latest cost of running tables (using 37.15p/mile) that’s likely to cost £5516, not including buying the car in the first place or the fact that insurance is generally hilarious for 25 year old males.  Superior transport indeed…

Ambulance cover for the Great North Run

The Great North Run 2011 took place last Sunday.  As well as being the occasion where a large number of unsuspecting men lose all the skin from their nipples, it is one of the world’s largest half marathons with over 38,000 runners and therefore a somewhat challenging duty to cover from an Ambulance point of view.  It’s one of the few events where British Red Cross, St John Ambulance and the NHS Ambulance Services cooperate in a big way.  A big part of the cover provided (and for a significant chunk of the race, the fastest responding assets available) is the ambulance cycles.

Effectively, if you call 999 anywhere near the finish line, it’s one of the above that will be sprinting to your aid.  

I won’t sing the praises of cycles in this particular post, but instead I’ll give you an idea of what we got up to over the course of the day.  Myself and a colleague from Northumbrian SJA provided the final pair of bikes, covering the patch after the finish line up to the metro station and ferry, where runners are cooling down, standing in long queues for public transport, and generally getting fairly wobbly.

The GPS trace is at the bottom, but most of the day was spent slowly cruising through dense crowds and dodging the queues of buses parked up.  The only real emergency run you can spot was after the 30km mark, with about a km run at around 26km/h.  Considering the weight of the kit (gas cylinder, defibrillator, full treatment kit), the knobbly tyres and the people and traffic (being able to stop cars and legally go the other side of road islands helps…) this isn’t too shabby in my mind.

Anyway, happily the ‘collapsed 50 year old male’ had recovered and wandered off by the time we arrived, and the nearby Diabetes UK charity tent graciously donated free cake to speed our recovery…

St John Ambulance C6 and C7 during Great North Run

For the terminally intrigued, I’ve thrown up pages with a bit more detail on the machine in question, as well as the loon riding it. You’ll find the links at the top.

It’s rude to point

It’s also unnecessary if you are blessed with the conventional style of indicators in your car.

The easiest way to indicate from the Fuego appears to be a nonchalant bent-elbow pointed finger in the direction intended. Whilst in the front of a queue waiting to turn right at a crossroads, I noticed that the driver of the car opposite was also pointing out of his window, signalling clearly that he also intended to turn right. Whilst I appreciate the extra effort to communicate with cyclists, I think in this case the bright flashing orange light is sufficient…